For the last 13 summers Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney has conducted the Junior DA Program , a crime prevention and educational program designed to provide rising seventh-grade students an overview of the criminal justice system. One of the program’s recent graduates has already put what she learned into practice, using the detective skills and knowledge of the criminal justice system that she was taught this past summer to gather clues and pinpoint the culprit that burglarized the home of her great-grandmother. ABC News reports on Jessica Maple , the 12-year-old Atlanta girl who claims to have found and got a confession from the burglar who ransacked a home that has been in her family for 70 years: “‘The windows were broken. There were finger prints by the glass. Everything was ramshackled. There were clothes everywhere.’ Not only did Jessica find a crucial clue police missed, but she took it one step further by visiting a pawn shop down the street. Sure enough, she found her great-grandmother’s furniture for sale. ‘They weren’t thinking,’ she said of the robbers. ‘They put everything in the same shop!” The two men who sold the furniture are frequent clients of the pawn shop, and the manager gave Maple their identification. Maple claims to have gone with her mother to the home of one of the suspects to confront him on the crime: “‘We went up to him and I asked him why he did it,’ Jessica said. ‘At first he denied it, but then he confessed.” After taking on the role of detective herself in finding clues and ultimately tracking down the burglars who robbed her great-grandmother, Maple is asking police to step up and do the one thing she can’t; arrest the suspects. Atlanta Journal Constitution on where the case stands: “‘It’s been a month and five days, and they haven’t been arrested,’ Jessica said. “It’s really frustrating. If you have all of the evidence right there, why can’t you go arrest them?” The crime took place in southern Fitzgerald, Georgia, outside of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard’s jurisdiction. While Howard is unable to move the case forward, he is proud of Maple. “It was incredible. She was so bright and such a great personality,” he said to ABC News. “I’m sure the police are probably a little bit embarrassed.” “These young people are a testament to what is good about our youth,” Howard told the AJC. “Jessica showed initiative and zeal and in the process, helped to create a better society by assisting police in their quest to get two criminals off the street. Her future is bright.”
Read the original here:
Real Life Nancy Drew: 12-Year-Old Girl Solves Burglary and Confronts Suspects
At LAT : On July 30, Kevin Morrissey printed a note, gathered his identification and called the Charlottesville, Va., police to report a shooting at the coal tower, a local landmark. When they arrived, it was Morrissey they found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his papers laid out neatly beside him. Morrissey was the 52-year-old managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, an award-winning literary journal published by the University of Virginia. He had worked at the journal since 2004, handling accounting, payments, contracts and other administrative details. “Kevin’s job was his life,” said co-worker Waldo Jaquith. Morrissey’s death might have affected only his small circle of friends and colleagues, but it has also had an unexpected impact, spurring the university to conduct an audit of the finances and management of the VQR. And now, a month after Morrissey’s death, the Virginia Quarterly Review is on indefinite hiatus. The move follows a stream of reports and extended online discussion about Morrissey’s suicide. Those reports have focused on the VQR workplace and have been critical of the magazine’s editor, Ted Genoways. Genoways, who has been locked out of the office by university officials since Morrissey’s death, has been labeled a “workplace bully” in media reports with few actual details. The “Today” show reported that Genoways was “under investigation for allegedly driving one of his employees to suicide.” But although contributing editors, writers and associates found Genoways “professional, tactful and respectful” — as two dozen wrote in an August letter of support — it is clear from comments after Morrissey’s death that most of his five-person staff was, to some degree, unhappy. It is their complaints that have dominated media accounts of Morrissey’s death and the subsequent cloud over the VQR. RTWT.
Go here to read the rest:
Suicide at Virginia Quarterly Review
