WJI's Daily Reads for July 27, 2022

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trial set for Shorewood woman charged with spitting on teen after she rejects plea deal.

Associated Press: Bureau of Prisons director faces bipartisan pressure during testimony before Senate subcommittee.

(Director Michael) Carvajal said several times that the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest component with a budget of more than $8 billion — was a “very large and complex organization” and that there was “no possible way” for him to know everything that was going on.

Carvajal’s attempts to deflect responsibility for his leadership failings didn’t sit well with the subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., nor its ranking member, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., whose scrutiny of the Bureau of Prisons was spurred in part by Associated Press reporting that has exposed myriad crises at the agency.

Reuters: In testimony before House committee, gunmaker execs blame criminals, not their products, for mass shootings.

Marty Daniel, the chief executive of Daniel Defense defended his company and the firearms industry, saying that the semi-automatic assault-style weapons sold today are "substantially the same as those manufactured 100 years ago."

"Our nation's response needs to focus not on the type of gun but on the type of person likely to commit mass shootings," he said in his opening statement.

The New York Times: Hawaii keeps schizophrenic man in custody for more than two years, ignoring his accurate claims of mistaken identity.

(Joshua) Spriestersbach was caught in a new nightmare: The more he said his name was Joshua — which the records show him insisting on Sept. 8, Sept. 13, Oct. 9, Oct. 16 and Nov. 6 — the more delusional he risked coming off. . . .

From the moment he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was set on a path largely beyond his control. Whenever he left a psychiatric setting, he would go off his prescriptions. Without the meds to muffle the symptoms, he would break down and eventually cut himself off from his family. Because he was alone enough to withdraw unhindered, he became homeless. Because he slept outside, he got arrested. Because he had a mental illness, he was confined longer than others. Because he was not dangerous and yet noncompliant, he couldn’t be treated and couldn’t be released. And because those hospitals primarily exist to restore competency, his own doctors were unable to discover that he’d been wrongly arrested, wrongly charged and wrongly incarcerated.

Associated Press: Subsidiary of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway settles racial discrimination case.

Trident Mortgage Co., a division of Berkshire’s HomeServices of America, deliberately avoided writing mortgages in minority-majority neighborhoods in West Philadelphia like Malcolm X Park; Camden, New Jersey; and in Wilmington, Delaware; the DOJ and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in their settlement with Trident. As part of the agreement with the DOJ and the CFPB, Trident will have to set aside $20 million to make loans in underserved neighborhoods.