24 November 21
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All this brings me to an issue that is always somewhat on my mind but has increasingly become more front and center: China.
Now to be sure, China is not a small or hidden story. America’s complicated relationship with the rising power keeps popping up in the headlines in many forms, but I worry that we aren’t stopping to think enough about the big picture, to weigh the risks and the potential for progress that might develop in the near term, and the more distant future.
The state of relations between the two countries is as fraught and as dangerous as I have seen in quite some time. Most of this is around China’s rapid military build-up. Its rhetoric is more bellicose and its actions more threatening, particularly when it comes to Taiwan. Now the issue of Taiwan is so complicated it cannot be handled in just one article (although here is a useful primer).
For the sake of our discussion, I note that for decades a status quo has allowed Taiwan to not only exist, but to emerge as a robust democracy and thriving economic power. But this status quo always been precarious. Mainland communist China sees Taiwan as unequivocally falling under its ultimate sovereignty, an issue Taiwan has not wanted to push for obvious reasons. Under this dance, the United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but we also tacitly see it as the independent-acting nation that it is.
The real question is what would happen if China decided to take Taiwan by force. Would the United States come to its defense? For a long time, America has had a policy of “strategic ambiguity” around this scenario. In other words, not definitively answering whether we would intervene in war has been a matter of national policy. This is a way to not threaten China directly, while also allowing Taiwan some level of assurance. It is not clear if this approach can continue as China has ramped up its threats.
It would be one thing if Taiwan was the only complicating factor between the two powers, but it is as much a symptom as it is a cause. It is clear that China, especially under its nationalistic leader Xi Jinping, wants to exert a more formidable military shadow over Asia and the rest of the globe, matching the economic might it has been pushing for decades.
This casts all of Asia into greater uncertainty. And other regional powers, from Japan to South Korea to Australia, are calibrating their actions accordingly. But the sphere of potential Chinese influence and conflict stretches beyond East Asia. India, Vietnam, and others are all having to react to Beijing’s growing ambitions.
China’s actions outside of its borders are complicated by what is happening internally. The horrific stories emerging of its treatment of the muslim Uyghur population in the country’s northwest points to human rights abuses on a massive scale, including torture and concentration camps. In a recent report, The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said the government “may be committing genocide.”
We have also seen the brutal crackdown on democracy protesters in Hong Kong and the suppression of free speech and other rights in mainland China. Now we have a story sweeping the sports world and beyond. A top Chinese women’s tennis player, Peng Shuai, has disappeared after accusing a prominent Chinese politician of sexual assault. To their credit, the Women’s Tennis Association has spoken out forcefully, risking its financial stake in China. And many others are taking up the cause.
In short you have a country with severe repression and grave abuses against its own citizens. America, as a champion of democracy and freedom (even if those ideals are under assault here at home) cannot let these kinds of actions occur without response and pressure.
However, there are many areas where we need China’s help and goodwill. First and foremost is the climate crisis. We will not have a sustainable planet if the United States and China can’t work together on driving down greenhouse gas emissions. There were some hopeful signs out of the climate summit in Scotland with announcements of cooperation and action between the two countries. But we will need a lot more than words in the years ahead. Then there is the issue of our economies, which are largely interwoven. There are trade issues and supply chains. There is the robust Chinese middle class and the market potential they represent.
It is impossible to capture even a small part of the complexities of this relationship, and I don’t pretend to be an expert on China. But I have been an observer through more than 60 years of rapid change. I first went to Taiwan with President Eisenhower in 1960 when it was under the iron-fisted rule of General Chiang Kai-shek. This was just 15 years after the end of World War II, and most of American foreign policy attention was geared to the Soviet Union and Europe at the time. But I could tell, even then, that we ignored Asia at our peril. When I went to China with President Nixon in his groundbreaking opening of relations in 1972, much had changed.
The Vietnam War had led to a tragic American military return to the region. And China was about to begin a rapid rise in stature. I was then back in 1989 to cover the democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, when Chinese government authorities literally pulled the plug on our CBS News efforts in advance of their bloody crackdown.
I have come to China and the region many, many times over the years. I say this not to suggest it yields any significant wisdom or to pad my part as a reporter. It is just a reminder that Asia must be central to American concerns.
I have long felt that our own history, and the European roots of those who founded the United States, have blinded us to the strength and depth of the cultures and history of China, and the rest of Asia. It is not so much that Asia is rising in importance. It is that it has always been there and we are episodic in paying suitable attention.
I worry that in our hyper-politicized environment, with Republicans holding up nominees for vital national security and diplomatic posts in the Biden Administration, the dangers in our relations with China will only increase. This is no time for self-defeating chest pounding or foreign policy by sloganeering. There are no easy answers to how we weigh global interests around the climate with the human rights of those being persecuted. We have seen with the pandemic how interconnected our world is. Our public health, the prospects for war and peace, the hopes of peoples seeking freedom, all of this and so much more is at stake.
What I have seen over the years, however, also gives me seeds of hope. For all the differences we see at the level of government and nations, I have been struck by the people I have met in my travels in China, and throughout Asia. Most want what we all want, a safe and secure world for ourselves and our families. Taiwan is a shining example of a country that turned from authoritarianism to democracy. That alone is a threat to the mainland Chinese narrative that somehow democracy doesn’t work in Asia.
Now is the time for steadfastness and hope, for diplomacy and resolve. I know that the specter of China will continue to be raised as a cudgel to score easy points in American politics. I hope and pray that those making the actual policy can find the room to maneuver through dangerous waters into calmer seas ahead.
White nationalist groups march with torches through the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Virginia, on 11 August 2017. (photo: Mykal McEldowney/AP)
Nine people who were physically or emotionally injured during the two days of demonstrations will receive payment
The defendants were accused of promoting and then carrying out racially motivated violence during the “Unite the Right” rally. After a nearly monthlong civil trial, a jury in US district court in Charlottesville deadlocked on two claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit that was filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during the two days of demonstrations.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan said the plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to refile the suit so a new jury can decide the two claims this jury could not reach a verdict on. She called the amount of damages awarded from the other counts “eye opening”.
“That sends a loud message,” Kaplan said.
The verdict, though mixed, is a rebuke to the white nationalist movement, particularly for the two dozen individuals and organizations who were accused in a federal lawsuit of orchestrating violence against African Americans, Jews and others in a meticulously planned conspiracy.
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer vowed to appeal. He said plaintiffs’ attorneys made it clear before the trial that they wanted to use the case to bankrupt him and other defendants.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs invoked a 150-year-old law passed after the civil war to shield freed slaves from violence and protect their civil rights. Commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, the law contains a rarely used provision that allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations.
Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville on 11-12 August 2017, ostensibly to protest the city’s plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen Robert E Lee.
During a march on the University of Virginia grounds, white nationalists surrounded counterprotesters, shouted, “Jews will not replace us!” and threw burning tiki torches at them. The next day, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler intentionally drove his car into a crowd, killing one woman and injuring 19.
Then-president Donald Trump touched off a political firestorm when he failed to immediately denounce the white nationalists, saying there were “very fine people on both sides”.
James Alex Fields Jr of Maumee, Ohio, is serving life in prison for murder and hate crimes for the car attack. He is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Fields is one of 24 defendants named in the lawsuit funded by Integrity First for America, a nonprofit civil rights organization formed in response to the violence in Charlottesville.
The lawsuit accused some of the country’s most well-known white nationalists of plotting the violence, including Jason Kessler, the rally’s main organizer; Spencer, who coined the term “alt-right” to describe a loosely connected band of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and others; and Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist who became known as the “crying Nazi” for posting a tearful video when a warrant was issued for his arrest on assault charges for using pepper spray against counter demonstrators.
The trial featured emotional testimony from people who were struck by Fields’ car or witnessed the attacks as well as plaintiffs who were beaten or subjected to racist taunts.
Melissa Blair, who was pushed out of the way as Fields’ car slammed into the crowd, described the horror of seeing her fiancé bleeding on the sidewalk and later learning that her friend, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, had been killed.
“I was confused. I was scared. I was worried about all the people that were there. It was a complete terror scene. It was blood everywhere. I was terrified,” said Blair, who became tearful several times during her testimony.
During their testimony, some of the defendants used racial epithets and defiantly expressed their support for white supremacy. They also blamed one another and the anti-fascist political movement known as antifa for the violence that erupted that weekend.
In closing arguments to the jury, the defendants and their lawyers tried to distance themselves from Fields and said the plaintiffs had not proved that they conspired to commit violence at the rally.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs showed the jury a vast collection of chat room exchanges, text messages and social media postings by the defendants to demonstrate the extent of their communications before the rally and try to prove their claim that they planned the violence well in advance.
“If you want a chance to crack some Antifa skulls in self defense don’t open carry,” Kessler wrote in a message about two months before the rally. “You will scare the shit out of them and they’ll just stand off to the side.”
The white nationalists maintained there was no conspiracy, and their blustery talk before the rally was just rhetoric and is protected by the first amendment.
Before the trial, Judge Norman Moon issued default judgments against an additional seven defendants who refused to respond to the lawsuit. The court will decide damages against those defendants.
Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. The mob stormed the Capitol, breaking windows and clashing with police officers. (photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
In all, the panel issued five new subpoenas, which includes demands for records and testimony. Subpoenas were also issued for Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, who on Jan. 6 was chairman of the Proud Boys; Elmer Stewart Rhodes, president of the Oath Keepers; and Robert Patrick Lewis, chairman of 1st Amendment Praetorian, which provided security at multiple rallies leading up to Jan. 6. The groups and individuals have been asked to turn over documents and testify by early December.
For his part, Tarrio, who was recently revealed to be an FBI informant, is serving a five-month prison term for burning a Black Lives Matter banner and bringing high-capacity firearm magazines to Washington, D.C.
"The Select Committee is seeking information from individuals and organizations reportedly involved with planning the attack, with the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, or with efforts to overturn the results of the election," the committee's chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in a statement. "We believe the individuals and organizations we subpoenaed today have relevant information about how violence erupted at the Capitol and the preparation leading up to this violent attack."
Before these new demands of testimony and documents, the committee issued more than three dozen subpoenas for former Trump officials, allies and Jan. 6 rally organizers. The recent subpoenas issued on Monday included controversial figures Roger Stone and Alex Jones.
"The Select Committee is moving swiftly to uncover the facts of what happened on that day and we expect every witness to comply with the law and cooperate so we can get answers to the American people," Thompson said.
So far, the committee has met with about 200 unnamed witnesses voluntarily, received 25,000 pages of documents and received more than 200 tips through a hotline.
Kevin Strickland at an evidentiary hearing on Nov. 8 in Kansas City, Mo. (photo: Tammy Ljungblad/Kansas City Star/AP)
The Black man convicted by an all-White jury in a 1978 triple murder in Kansas City has spent over four decades in prison
There are two places that Strickland — a 62-year-old Black man convicted by an all-White jury in 1979 and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole for 50 years — hopes to see: the ocean, which he has never visited in person, and his mother’s grave.
“If we don’t stop at the gravesite first, I’m going to get out of the car and I’m going to try to make it there on my hands and knees,” Strickland told The Washington Post.
Strickland will get that opportunity.
A judge on Tuesday exonerated him after more than 43 years in prison, making his case the longest confirmed wrongful-conviction case in Missouri’s history — and one of the longest-standing such convictions in the nation’s history. He was released shortly after the judge issued his decision.
Strickland was convicted of the 1978 murders of Sherrie Black, 22, Larry Ingram, 21, and John Walker, 20, even though no physical evidence linked him to the crime scene, family members provided alibis and the admitted killers said he was not there. The case was built on the testimony of Cynthia Douglas, the sole survivor and eyewitness, who later attempted multiple times to recant her testimony because she said she was pressured by police.
“Under these unique circumstances, the Court’s confidence in Strickland’s conviction is so undermined that it cannot stand, and the judgment of conviction must be set aside,” Judge James Welsh wrote Tuesday. “The State of Missouri shall immediately discharge Kevin Bernard Strickland from its custody.”
Tricia Rojo Bushnell, his attorney and executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said Strickland’s case was “a great example of how much a system cares about finality over fairness.”
While legal experts and elected officials in both parties supported Strickland’s case for exoneration, top Republicans in Missouri pushed back. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2022, said he believed Strickland committed the murders. Andrew Clarke, an assistant attorney general, argued that Strickland not only received a fair trial in 1979 but has “worked to evade responsibility” for decades.
Gov. Mike Parson (R) agreed with them, saying before Strickland was exonerated that pardoning him would not be a “priority.” Not long afterward, he pardoned Mark and Patricia McCloskey — a White couple who gained national notoriety for brandishing guns at peaceful social-justice protesters in St. Louis last year and pleaded guilty to firearms charges.
Spokesmen for Parson and Schmitt did not make them available for interviews.
Days before finding out he would be exonerated, Strickland spoke to The Post about his life and his chance at exoneration. Even with the groundswell of support, he said, decades of imprisonment left Strickland “pessimistic” about whether he would be released.
“I mean, I’m hoping for the best,” he said, “but I’m anticipating the worst.”
‘A fundamental American life’
Born June 7, 1959, Strickland was one of five children raised by parents who worked in the food service industry in a south Kansas City neighborhood. They lived across the street from his grandparents and great uncle, a handyman.
“We were pretty close-knit. We played together and went to school together,” said L.R. Strickland, 65, his older brother. “It was pretty much a fundamental American life.”
When he wasn’t busy as a junior deacon at his church, Kevin Strickland found ways to keep himself occupied — playing baseball, building go-karts from wheels that had fallen off old shopping carts, fishing and hunting rabbits, squirrels and groundhogs with his great uncle.
“Those were my best memories — my childhood,” he said.
But after his parents split when he was 16, Strickland said, he lost direction. His grades suffered as he and his siblings were largely left unsupervised at home. He began picking up “bad teenage habits” such as drinking and smoking marijuana, he said.
In early 1978, Strickland, then 18, became the father of a baby girl. He was eyeing potentially following his brother’s footsteps and joining the military, to give his newborn a chance at stability. His father also wanted him to stop his loose association with Vincent Bell, a neighborhood acquaintance who had come home from a stay in juvenile detention.
Strickland had a friendship with Bell’s sisters and would drive their father’s car for him regularly since the adult did not have a driver’s license, he said.
“My father told me to stay away from that boy: ‘He is bad news,’” Strickland recalled.
On April 25, 1978, Bell, 21, along with Kilm Adkins, 19, Terry Abbott, 21, and a 16-year-old, stopped on their way home to talk to Strickland outside his house, Strickland said. They chatted for a few minutes before Strickland told them he was going to spend time with his daughter.
The brief exchange ended, Strickland said, and he didn’t think much of it.
‘They picking up the wrong man’
Kansas City was grappling with high rates of violent crime at the time. In 1978, the city had 120 slayings, an increase of more than 20 percent from a decade earlier, according to data from the police department’s Citizens Task Force on Violence.
After they chatted with Strickland, Adkins and Abbott talked about what they could do to get back at Ingram, who had won $300 from Adkins in a craps game by using loaded dice, according to court records. To get retribution, they would pay a visit to Ingram’s rented bungalow on South Benton Avenue, where he hosted gambling parties.
Douglas, who was dating Ingram, had joined Black and Walker in drinking cognac, smoking weed and watching “Three’s Company” when Bell, Adkins and others stormed in and tied all four up. After plundering the home, they killed Ingram, Black and Walker in execution-style slayings, court records state. Douglas, who suffered nonfatal gunshot wounds to her thigh, slumped next to Black, her best friend, and pretended to be dead until the group left.
She freed herself and limped out of the house looking for help, eventually finding a 17-year-old girl outside, according to police records. Douglas begged for a hiding spot: “They don’t know I’m alive. They think they killed me.”
Around 10 p.m., Strickland was watching television when he was stunned by a news bulletin about the triple murder, he said. Strickland had stayed home that night, he said, and had been on the phone and playing games after eating dinner with family members. His alibi was verified by numerous relatives.
As Strickland’s girlfriend was dropping off their 7-week-old daughter for him the next morning, she allowed two Kansas City police detectives to enter the home, he said. They asked whether he would come to the police station to answer some questions. He asked police whether he had a choice. The answer was no.
Strickland, who acknowledged he had been drinking and smoking, said he was offended by what he called “stupid questions” by police on the ride to the station, such as them asking him how many guns he owned. In response, he “snapped” at them, he said, responding with, “I’ve got as many guns as you got.”
“I’m not thinking this is part of a police report or I’m under investigation,” he said. “I’m not thinking I’m a suspect at any point.”
When he got to the police station and the questioning intensified, it hit him: “Y’all are starting to accuse me of something.” It was at that point he realized there was a surviving victim — someone who was an acquaintance. He requested a suspect lineup that would easily clear his name for a crime he told them he did not commit.
Douglas — rattled less than 24 hours after she saw three of her friends brutally murdered — was shown a lineup of Black men that included Strickland. Eric Wesson, editor of the Kansas City Call, a Black-owned weekly newspaper, said she told him years later that she still had blood and brain matter on her face and in her hair. Douglas later acknowledged that police suggested she select a man in the lineup who went by “Nordy,” Strickland’s nickname.
“Just pick Strickland out of the lineup and we’ll be done,” Douglas recalled, according to court records. “It will all go away, you can go on, and you don’t have to worry about these guys no more.”
Douglas’s family has said Richard Zoulek, the detective who conducted the lineup, was the one who pressured her. John O’Connor, who worked as an investigator for the prosecutor’s office, described Zoulek in court this month as a “cowboy” known to have a bad reputation. Months after the killings, Zoulek fatally shot his wife and then took his own life, according to media reports.
Strickland said he was in “total disbelief” once police began reading him his Miranda rights.
“I’m thinking this lineup is going to turn the key and I’m going to walk on down to the bus station and go on about my business,” Strickland said. “Next thing I know, the lineup happens and police come over and tell me, ‘You’re under arrest.’”
Bell and Adkins were eventually arrested in June 1978 and charged with murder. Abbott was a suspect, but he and the 16-year-old were not charged. Before they were apprehended, Adkins told Bell that Strickland’s arrest was a good sign for them because police were “starting off wrong,” according to Bell’s court testimony.
“They picking up the wrong man,” Adkins said, according to Bell.
‘My life is gone’
Days before Thanksgiving, a bitter Midwest wind had overtaken Cameron — a small, flat city an hour north of Kansas City that is home to the Western Missouri Correctional Center.
Strickland, who uses a wheelchair and has faced health issues, entered one of the prison’s common areas wearing a gray uniform with a well-worn tag identifying him as Inmate 36922.
“You came here from D.C. for me?” he asked. “Well, let’s talk.”
His original trial in 1979 hinged on Douglas’s testimony. As the legal process went on, Douglas grew more convinced she had seen Strickland, even if she originally told police she did not know for sure. When asked by a county prosecutor whether there was “any doubt in your mind that the fellow with the shotgun was Kevin Strickland,” Douglas replied, “It is a fact.”
The trial ended with a hung jury after the only Black juror refused to find him guilty. Soon thereafter, Strickland was retried, this time with an all-White jury, and was convicted of the triple murder. Wesson, the editor, recalled that many in the Black community believed the quick decision was “racist to a degree.”
“They had a preconceived idea, regardless of what evidence was presented, that he was guilty,” he said.
When the jury announced a guilty verdict, Strickland, then 19, let out “a flood of tears” that felt voluminous enough to fill an ocean he had never seen.
“I didn’t know I could cry like that,” he said. “I thought, ‘My life is gone.’”
His brother, L.R. Strickland, was bewildered. But he wasn’t necessarily surprised, he said, given the mood in Kansas City and enthusiasm for “biblical justice.”
“I believe this city wanted some type of satisfaction and wanted someone to be held accountable,” he said. “I was just relieved my brother wasn’t given the death penalty.”
Four months after Kevin Strickland went to prison, Bell told the court that Douglas “made a hell of a mistake” by mixing up Strickland with the teenager allegedly with Bell’s crew at the scene of the crime. Bell, who along with Adkins received a 20-year sentence for their guilty pleas, stressed to the court that Strickland was not with them.
“I’m telling you the truth today that Kevin Strickland wasn’t there at the house that day,” Bell said in 1979. “I’m telling you the truth. Kevin Strickland wasn’t at that house.”
Bell died earlier this year at 64. Abbott, who was not charged in the triple murder but is serving a prison sentence for a robbery in Colorado, echoed Bell, telling an investigator in 2019 that there “couldn’t be a more innocent person” than Strickland. Adkins and the alleged accomplice who was a teen at the time did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Strickland’s time in prison has taken a toll on the baby he left behind. His daughter, who requested that her name not be used, for privacy reasons, told The Post that their relationship has been “challenged” from the start, especially when she would visit the prison as a child.
“I remember asking questions like, ‘Why is he here?’” she said. “But he always said how much he cared about me and would say, ‘When I get out of here …’ He always said ‘when,’ not ‘if.’”
‘Why me?’
As Strickland was fighting to have his case reexamined, Douglas was simultaneously trying to get someone to listen to her.
The first time Douglas approached a prosecutor after Bell’s testimony to indicate Strickland was not the right man, the prosecutor allegedly told her to go away and threatened her with a perjury charge, according to an affidavit signed by her ex-husband, Ronald Richardson. A similar incident happened in the 1990s, according to testimony from her sister, Cecile “Cookie” Simmons.
Wesson, who was friends with Douglas and Black growing up, said Douglas came to him for guidance in 2004, a shell of the funny, vibrant young woman he remembered. She contacted to him again in 2009, wondering how she could get her recantation out there. He suggested drafting an email to an organization that would listen, such as the Midwest Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that aids wrongfully convicted individuals.
“I am seeking info on how to help someone that was wrongfully accused,” Douglas wrote, according to court records. “I was the only eyewitness and things were not clear back then, but now I know more and would like to help this person if I can.”
Strickland, too, had reached out to the Midwest Innocence Project. After Bushnell joined the organization, she was tasked with going through older applications in a backlog of cases. Immediately, she saw Strickland’s case as “a shaky conviction.”
“I started to think, ‘What’s going on here?’” Bushnell said. “You get into the details and you see how Bell said clearly what happened and who did it.”
But when Strickland found out that Douglas had died in 2015 at 57, before she had the chance to formally recant her testimony, he said it felt as if his chances at exoneration had also expired.
“I think I cursed God: ‘Why me? Why did you tease me like this, God?’” he said. “I apologize to Him every day, but I cursed God.”
‘My chance to finally speak the truth’
His push for exoneration seemed to have stalled for good before his story was given a jolt of life by way of a Kansas City Star investigation last year reexamining the case. A couple of months later, Bushnell contacted Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker and asked her to open an investigation. The county attorney agreed. Among the new findings: Dozens of fingerprints, including those on the shotgun used in the murders, did not belong to Strickland.
“Every piece of evidence we looked at didn’t point to Kevin Strickland,” Baker told The Post.
When it was time for the evidentiary hearing in Jackson County Circuit Court, dozens of supporting witnesses were called to the stand — including Strickland.
“It was my chance to finally speak the truth about the entire situation,” he said. “I had to let it be known I had nothing to do with this crime.”
Days before the judge exonerated him on Tuesday, family, friends and legal experts interviewed said they felt cautiously optimistic or at least hopeful that Strickland would be home for his first Thanksgiving in decades. The stoic inmate broke down last week thinking about how if he were to be exonerated that his mother wouldn’t be there to celebrate. Rosetta Thornton died in August at 85.
Strickland did, however, still have the prospect of seeing the ocean. Before he exited the room for what turned out to be one of his final prison interviews, Strickland asked, “How are you going to live on planet Earth when you don’t see the ocean one time?”
You can't get heroin by prescription, but many heroin users start off abusing prescription opioids, then turn to this illegal opioid. (photo: Shutterstock)
The civil case, brought in federal court against CVS (CVS), Walmart (WMT) and Walgreens, marks the first time pharmacies have been found responsible in the nationwide epidemic.
"It is a precedent setting case," Mark Lanier, the lead trial attorney for Lake and Trumbull Counties, told CNN Tuesday.
Damages are set to be adjudicated in the spring. Lanier said that each county would be seeking over $1 billion in damages. Together, the counties represent some 440,000 Ohioans, according to court documents.
The suit, which was initially filed in 2018, was part of the federal multi-district litigation created that year to address the manifold claims against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
The counties alleged that the pharmacies "abused their position of special trust and responsibility" as registered dispensers of controlled drugs, and in so doing "fostered a black market for prescription opioids."
"Prescription opioid pill mills and rogue prescribers cannot channel opioids for illicit use without at least the tacit support and willful blindness of the Defendants, if not their knowing support," the complaint read.
In statements to CNN on Tuesday, all three pharmaceutical chains indicated that they would appeal the verdict.
"We are disappointed with the outcome of this trial. The facts and the law do not support the verdict. We believe the trial court committed significant legal errors in allowing the case to go before a jury on a flawed legal theory that is inconsistent with Ohio law," Fraser Engerman, a Walgreens spokesperson, told CNN.
"As we have said throughout this process, we never manufactured or marketed opioids nor did we distribute them to the 'pill mills' and internet pharmacies that fueled this crisis," Engerman added.
In a statement, Walmart criticized the trial as "riddled with remarkable legal and factual mistakes."
"Plaintiffs' attorneys sued Walmart in search of deep pockets while ignoring the real causes of the opioid crisis—such as pill mill doctors, illegal drugs, and regulators asleep at the switch—and they wrongly claimed pharmacists must second-guess doctors in a way the law never intended and many federal and state health regulators say interferes with the doctor-patient relationship," Walmart's statement read, in part. "As a pharmacy industry leader in the fight against the opioid crisis, Walmart is proud of our pharmacists, who are dedicated to helping patients in the face of a tangled web of conflicting federal and state opioid guidelines."
CVS similarly defended its pharmacists in a statement.
"We strongly disagree with the decision," CVS spokesperson Mike DeAngelis said. "Pharmacists fill legal prescriptions written by DEA-licensed doctors who prescribe legal, FDA-approved substances to treat actual patients in need."
"We're proud of the substantial work we've done to support our pharmacists in detecting illegitimate prescribing," he continued. "But the simple facts are that opioid prescriptions are written by doctors, not pharmacists; opioid medications are made and marketed by manufacturers, not pharmacists; and our health care system depends on pharmacists to fill legitimate prescriptions that doctors deem necessary for their patients."
Counties react
The verdict was happy news to officials in Lake and Trumbull counties, where damages are expected to fund opioid abatement measures.
"Today's verdict means a lot to Lake County, because it is a substantive step forward to real healing in this epidemic," Lake County Commissioner John Plecnik told CNN. "On behalf of all Lake County families, we thank the jury for sending a powerful message to rebuke those responsible for overselling opioids."
"This verdict will also mean greater resources to combat opioid addiction, which are desperately needed," Plecnik said. "I can't say this strongly enough, no one is immune to the impact of addiction and opioid abuse, and this is not just a victory for Lake and Trumbull, it is a victory for all Americans."
"Truly, in Lake County, we have not had a corner of the county that has not been impacted by this epidemic," Kim Frasier, head of Lake County's department of Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services, said in a Tuesday afternoon press conference. "This verdict gives voice to those individuals and those families who have been so traumatized."
April Caraway, head of Trumbull County's Mental Health and Recovery Board, echoed the sentiment.
"We appreciate some vindication," she said. "This was difficult, but we wanted to do it for the people who've lost people."
Next steps
Lanier told CNN that attorneys for both sides are still scheduling the damages phase, where Judge Dan Polster will put a dollar figure to the damages suffered by Lake and Trumbull counties. In the meantime, an appeal is expected in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
At least a dozen refugees have so far reportedly died in sub-zero temperatures along the Belarus-Poland border, but the real number is believed to be higher. (photo: Leonid Scheglov/Reuters)
Even if Belarus and the EU reach a deal, analysts say refugees may be long left in limbo at the border or in detention centres.
The 45-year-old is among thousands of people – mainly from the Middle East – who made their way to Belarus over the summer in hope of reaching the European Union.
As an activist in the 2019 anti-government protests, Ali says he was forced to leave Iraq when armed groups targeted him and threatened his family.
After landing in the Belarusian capital Minsk, Ali, whose name has been changed for security reasons, was caught by Lithuanian border guards while crossing the frontier.
He says he has since been barred from claiming asylum or leaving the detention centre, where 200 others are also being held.
He complains of inhumane conditions, food scarcity and mental ill-health. He is especially worried about his eight-year-old son.
“We’re not criminals. Why are we being treated like this?” the father-of-four told Al Jazeera by phone. “We just want to live.”
Last week, Iraq repatriated about 400 citizens – mostly from the Kurdish region in northern Iraq – who had been stranded at the Belarusian-Polish border for weeks.
A spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Jotiar Adil, told Al Jazeera that Erbil was working closely with Baghdad to repatriate more Kurdish refugees in Europe, but that it would not force anyone to return.
As the EU threatens more sanctions on Belarus, and Minsk refuses to back down, an agreement that will protect the interests of refugees seems increasingly farfetched, leaving Ali – who says he would rather die than go back to Iraq – and thousands of others in limbo as the migration crisis deepens.
“Even if they pay me, I won’t return. We saw death in Iraq. We’ll accept hell here,” said Ali.
Loggerheads
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who enraged the West by cracking down on dissent following last year’s disputed election that secured him a sixth term, has been accused of masterminding the crisis in revenge for sanctions the West subsequently imposed.
The conflict has also fuelled animosity towards Russia, Belarus’s main supporter, which is also being blamed.
Last week, Lukashenko proposed a plan that involved Minsk sending 5,000 refugees in Belarus back home, if Germany took in 2,000 of them – an idea Berlin and the EU rejected as an unacceptable solution.
“We are witnessing the reluctance of many European leaders at making any kind of deal with Lukashenko,” said Federica Infantino, a migration policy fellow at the European University Institute (EUI).
“I don’t see the EU funding Belarus to keep migrants like in other cases,” she said referring to a 2016 deal between Ankara and the EU that stemmed the flow of refugees from Turkey into Europe in exchange for financial support from the bloc.
James Dennison, professor of migration policy at EUI, said Belarus was hoping to recreate a scenario akin to the 2015 refugee crisis, leading to the bloc paying sums of money and non-financial incentives to non-EU governments to keep migration flows at bay.
Although Dennison said Belarus’ approach was unlikely to work, he predicted the EU and Minsk may eventually agree on “some face-saving measure” that involve people being returned to their countries of origin, “possibly paid for by the EU or Poland.”
“However, how exactly both sides would achieve this, given that the majority of migrants are refusing to go home, remains to be seen,” he said, highlighting the uncertainty of their futures.
Last week, the situation reached a boiling point.
People camped in sub-zero temperatures and surrounded by barbed wire clashed with armed Polish border guards; the guards sprayed water cannon and tear gas on those aiming to start new lives in Europe.
The crisis appeared to ease slightly after Belarus cleared a camp near the border crossing and transferred people to another location, following a phone call between Lukashenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But within days, Poland again accused Belarus of continuing to funnel refugees to the frontier. A solution appeared unlikely without Minsk’s demands being met.
“For Minsk, stopping the sanctions pressure and EU cooperation on migration issues are a baseline for it to resume delivering on previous agreements,” said Yauheni Preiherman, director of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations.
“That’s a matter of principle that Minsk won’t compromise on.”
Deepening refugee predicament
Kalina Czwarnog, a board member of Ocalenie Foundation, a Polish organisation that supports refugees with legal and humanitarian aid, says that most of those who crossed into Poland from Belarus have either been sent back or held at detention centres, estimating that about 1,800 people – mainly from the Kurdish region of Iraq – were being held.
Similar reports have come out of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Warsaw, which built a razor-wire fence along its frontier and imposed a state of emergency that bars journalists and aid workers from a 3km-deep (1.8-mile) strip along its frontier, has made it harder for people to access legal representation to seek asylum or humanitarian aid.
“Since the summer, many [refugees] have not been granted the right to seek asylum and are pushed back into Belarus where some say they’re being tortured,” she said.
Tadeusz Kolodziej, a lawyer at Ocalenie Foundation, said that people who manage breach the border are being immediately pushed back or handed over for deportation – a procedure that usually takes approximately 30 days.
“That’s better because they have the chance to seek legal representation for asylum during that time. We can potentially represent them in front of the court,” said Kolodziej.
He explained that the asylum-seeking process can be lengthy, taking months or even years as people remain in detention centres or “open camps” where they have some freedom of movement and the opportunity to seek undocumented employment.
In either case, refugees have a legal right to government aid in the form of shelter, food and some material support, but Czwarnog said camps are usually overcrowded and lack legal or mental health support.
According to Czwarnog, only those arriving in Poland in a critical medical state have been given a chance to seek legal protection and apply for asylum while being treated at a hospital.
‘Horrible position’
Lukashenko, who has acknowledged that Belarusian action may have helped refugees reach the European Union, has even floated the possibility of cutting gas supplies from Russia to the bloc if Brussels imposes new sanctions over the influx of refugees.
On Monday, he warned that if the crisis deteriorated “too far, war is unavoidable”.
His words echoed those of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who has said that the crisis could be a prelude to “something much worse”.
Polish authorities have deployed 15,000 troops along the border with Belarus, while Russia has increased its military presence near Ukraine, Belarus and the Kaliningrad enclave near Poland and Lithuania, and dispatched two bombers to patrol Belarusian airspace.
“There’s danger that all this may lay ground to military incidents,” said Preiherman, adding that an armed conflict would only put the refugees in an even more precarious state.
“They would be in a horrible position. No one, on either side, will care about them,” he said.
A blue orchard bee. (photo: Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America this month, found that bee populations can take a hit for generations if a bee is exposed just once to a common pesticide during its first year of life.
"Especially in agricultural areas, pesticides are often used multiple times a year and multiple years in a row," study lead author and University of California in Davis ecology Ph.D. candidate Clara Stuligross told The Guardian. "So this really shows us what that can actually mean for bee populations."
Stuligross and her team studied a type of bee called the blue orchard bee. These bees are about the size of a honeybee, but they live alone and have a blue, metallic color, National Geographic explained. They are also important pollinators for native U.S. wildflowers and crops like apples, cherries, almonds and peaches.
The researchers exposed the bees to a neonicotinoid called imidacloprid, which is the most commonly used neonicotinoid in the U.S. and one of the most used in California specifically, according to The Independent.
Neonicotinoids are well known to be harmful to bees and other insects because they bind to their nerve cells and prevent the insect from transmitting electrical signals, National Geographic explained. However, this study is unique in showing how exposure can continue to impact bee populations for generations, something known as the "carryover effect."
The scientists exposed the bees to the pesticide at different life stages and got the following results, The Guardian explained:
- Bees exposed only in their first year of life saw 20 percent fewer offspring.
- Bees exposed once as adults had 30 percent fewer offspring.
- Bees exposed once as both larvae and adults had 44 percent fewer offspring.
The research therefore adds to the evidence the neonicotinoids are harming bee and insect populations, which have both taken a dive in recent decades.
"These findings support what many of us beekeepers and solitary beekeepers suspect is happening in agricultural fields," researcher and beekeeper Steve Peterson, who was not involved with the research, told National Geographic. "We are seeing massive declines in all kinds of insects over the past several decades and much of it may be due to pesticide residues in the environment."
A quarter of bee species have not been sighted since the 1990s, and insects that live on land have seen their populations fall by around 25 percent in the last 30 years and 50 percent in the last 75. Pesticides are considered a major threat to insect populations, along with other stressors like habitat loss, pollution and the climate crisis.
The latest research offers another argument that U.S. regulators should follow the EU and ban neonicotinoids.
"I hope that the EPA will review studies like this and carefully consider these kinds of effects in their risk assessment," Peterson told National Geographic. "I do think that multigenerational and non-direct contact studies need to be required as part of the risk assessment for pesticides."
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