Star Spangled mess: Mavs’ Howard insults anthem

The battered reputation of Josh Howard took another hit this week when an online video surfaced showing the Dallas Mavericks forward disrespecting the national anthem.

In a video posted on YouTube, Howard is shown on a football field at a charity flag football game. As the national anthem plays in the background, Howard approaches a camera and says: “‘The Star Spangled Banner’ is going on right now. I don’t even celebrate that (expletive). I’m black.”

Howard’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks’ president of basketball operations, directed questions to team owner Mark Cuban, who in an e-mail declined to comment.

The incident is the latest off-court problem for Howard, a fifth-year pro from Wake Forest who averaged 19.9 points and seven rebounds last season. He was arrested in July when police said he was drag racing at 94 mph in a 55 zone. A court appearance was scheduled for next week.

Howard was criticized last season for saying in a radio interview during a first-round playoff series against New Orleans that he occasionally smokes marijuana. Later that same series, he angered coach Avery Johnson by throwing himself a birthday bash after a Game 4 loss to the Hornets.

(AP)

Legal Defense Fund Persuades Federal Court to Overturn Death Sentence in Alabama Case

On September 17, 2008, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted relief to Herbert Williams, an NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF) client sentenced to death nearly 20 years ago. Holland & Knight LLP served as co-counsel in the case, and former LDF Assistant Counsel, Miriam Gohara, argued the case. The court declared that Mr. Williams’ trial attorneys failed to carry out their duty to investigate and present evidence regarding the extreme abuse Mr. Williams suffered as a child at the hands of his parents. The court also reversed the district court ruling that Mr. Williams had not properly presented his Batson v. Kentucky claim that the prosecutor unconstitutionally struck blacks from his jury.

LDF has represented Mr. Williams since 2002, arguing before the federal district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that his trial attorneys had failed to provide the level of defense required by the constitution. During the penalty phase of his trial, Mr. Williams’ attorneys presented only one witness, who offered a wholly incomplete portrait of his childhood, which was rife with abuse.

Evidence later uncovered by Mr. Williams’ appellate attorneys, who interviewed Mr. Williams’ siblings and relatives, presented a completely different picture. The evidence LDF presented to the 11th Circuit, and cited by the court in its opinion, revealed that Mr. Williams was beaten not only with hands and fists, but with belts and electrical cords; that his father threatened the family with weapons; and that throughout his childhood Mr. Williams had inadequate food and clothing, that his parents neglected his basic hygiene and medical needs, and that he was permitted to roam the neighborhood unsupervised.

The 11th Circuit decision noted that the trial attorneys’ performance was particularly damaging because this was a case where the jury voted 9-3 for a life sentence, and the trial judge overturned the jury ruling and imposed a sentence of death. Under those circumstances, the court found that the additional evidence could have made a difference. Commented LDF attorney Holly Thomas, “The evidence regarding Mr. Williams’ life was there - all his attorneys had to do was ask. We are pleased that the 11th Circuit has affirmed what we have been arguing throughout this case: Mr. Williams’ attorneys failed him when they did not do the investigation into his background that could well have prevented a death sentence.”

In addition to the claims about Mr. Williams’ trial attorneys, LDF had also argued before the 11th Circuit that the district court erred when it denied Mr. Williams the opportunity to present his Batson v. Kentucky claim. The district court found that Mr. Williams’ Batson claim was barred because he had failed to adequately raise it in the state courts. The 11th Circuit, however, agreed with LDF, saying that “[a] review of Williams’ [state court brief] demonstrates that his Batson argument was broader than the district court’s opinion suggests.”

Stated LDF Director-Counsel John Payton, “Mr. Williams has been on death row for nearly 20 years, in a case where the jury voted overwhelmingly for life. We are thrilled that the 11th Circuit has recognized what should have been clear all along - that Mr. Williams was entitled to have the judge and jury hear all of the evidence that weighed in favor of saving his life.”

Lawyer struggles to restore Sammy Davis Jr.’s legacy

AP

- For all the grief that Sammy Davis Jr. took in life — remember the uproar over his embrace of Richard Nixon? — he’s getting it even worse in death.

Eighteen years after the legendary entertainer succumbed to throat cancer at age 64, his estate is in tatters, burdened by debt and infighting among family members and business associates.

Despite recording hundreds of songs, starring in dozens of movies and TV shows, and giving countless live performances, his posthumous earning power is dwarfed by the likes of Elvis Presley and fellow Rat Packer Frank Sinatra.

“This is one of the most dysfunctional situations, and they still can’t get it together,” says Albert “Sonny” Murray Jr., who should know.

Murray, a lawyer based in the Poconos, was hired by Davis’s widow to resolve his staggering $7 million IRS tax debt and restore the legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest showmen.

His Herculean efforts, stretched out over seven years, are chronicled in “Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob,” a book by journalist and author Matt Birkbeck expected out September 16 that reveals Murray as a man of stubborn tenacity — and Davis as one of extraordinary complexity.

Here’s Davis the showbiz legend: a consummate performer who got his start in vaudeville, a triple threat of singing, acting and dancing, a charter member of the high-flying, hard-partying Rat Pack.

Here’s Davis the civil rights campaigner: a man who endured horrid acts of racism while serving with the Army’s first integrated unit during World War II, and who later marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and used his fame to try to heal racial divisions.

And here’s Davis the flawed family man: an absentee father, abusive husband, drug-addled hedonist, and bad businessman who surrounded himself with people who didn’t always have his best interests at heart.

“I think everyone, for the most part, thought he was nothing more than a caricature, a guy who was always laughing, happy and up,” says Birkbeck, 49. “I was really shocked at how his life behind the scenes was falling apart over the last 15 or 20 years.”

Davis’s remarkable life is certainly well-trod territory. Nevertheless, through interviews with close friends and confidants who had never spoken publicly before, Birkbeck digs up many startling details. (Example: Davis confided in his bodyguard, a former British intelligence agent, that he believed the Secret Service had a role in the Kennedy assassination.)

But the real heart and soul of “Deconstructing Sammy” belongs to Sonny Murray, and his quest to save not one endangered black legacy — but two.

In 1954, Murray’s parents founded a visionary Poconos resort, the Hillside Inn, that catered to blacks at a time when blacks were routinely denied accommodations.

The Murrays saw the Hillside as a welcoming refuge, and for a long time, that’s exactly what it was, eventually becoming the oldest black-owned resort in the United States. By the 1990s, however, business began to slip. And it fell to their son to keep the Hillside afloat.

“Deconstructing Sammy” follows Murray as he struggles to save the Hillside — and the Sammy Davis Jr. brand.

Murray, now 59, never thought much of Davis. Like many other blacks who came of age during the tumultuous 1960s, he saw Davis as little more than a minstrel, an Uncle Tom, a plaything of the white establishment.

But he felt sorry for Davis’s widow, Altovise Davis, who was virtually penniless, in the grips of a life-threatening alcohol addiction, and, as it happened, living in a private home on the grounds of the Hillside. And the more Murray dug into Davis’s life, the more he came to appreciate his contributions to American culture and civil rights.

“He was much more than the Stepin Fetchit that he appeared to be,” Murray said in a recent interview at the Hillside. “He went through struggles as a black man, he went through struggles with his own identity, he went through all of the things that we go through as minorities. At the same time, he gave of himself as an entertainer. And yet at the end of his life, there was nothing to show for it.”

Murray worked hard to rectify that. He struck a deal with the IRS in 1997, and with the tax debt finally settled, offers began pouring in. A four-CD retrospective was released in 1999 and Murray helped secure for Davis a lifetime achievement award at the 2001 Grammys.

Yet the story continues to unfold, and both legacies face an uncertain future.

Murray and Altovise parted ways in 2001, and the Davis estate has once again fallen into disrepair, “mired in failure and controversy,” as Birkbeck writes. Altovise Davis has sued two former business partners in federal court, claiming they tricked her into signing away the rights to her husband’s estate. The suit is pending.

Murray, meanwhile, has put the Hillside up for sale.

His parents are deceased and the 33-room resort, he says, is a dinosaur. Blacks have long been able to stay at any public accommodation they want, and increasingly, they’re choosing to stay somewhere else. And whites may be reluctant to go to a resort whose clientele is primarily black.

Murray hopes it is bought by a nonprofit, perhaps a shelter. Which would be a fitting way to honor the Hillside’s history.

Rangel withdraws divorce petition

UPI

- Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has withdrawn a divorce petition just as jurors were to be selected for a trial regarding the couple’s division of assets.

“We’ve never been separated, we’re not separated now and there is no divorce,” Rangel said in a statement about his relationship with his wife Alma, to whom he has been married for 42 years, the New York Daily News reported Saturday.

Rangel, 78, who filed for divorce in February 2007, has been plagued by recent revelations he failed to report $75,000 in rental income from a waterfront villa in the Dominican Republic.

That and a brouhaha over Rangel’s four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem building have led to Republican calls for Rangel to resign from the influential House Ways and Means Committee.

Sculptor Tina Allen dies at 58 in Los Angeles

AP

- Sculptor Tina Allen, who depicted such figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Fredrick Douglas in her works, has died. She was 58.

Allen died Tuesday at a Los Angeles hospital from complications of a heart attack, said her ex-husband, Roger Allen.

Among her bronze sculptures are George Washington Carver in the St. Louis Botanical Garden; Douglas in the African American Museum in Birmingham, Ala.; Sojourner Truth in Battle Creek, Mich.; and King in Las Vegas.

Allen may be best known for her 13-foot statue of “Roots” author Alex Haley located in Haley’s hometown of Knoxville, Tenn.

Allen was born in December 1949 in New York. Her father was jazz musician Gordon “Specs” Powell. When she was 11 years old, she worked with renowned sculptor William Zorach. She graduated from the University of South Alabama and later continued her education at the Pratt Institute in New York and the University of Venice in Italy.

She is survived by her mother, Rosecleer Powell; her three children, Koryan Allen, Josephine Allen and Tara Allen; and two grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled for next month in Los Angeles.

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