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NEWS > 12 April 2007

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Police chief accused of murder
BAGUIO CITY - The director of the Kalinga police and some of his men could be charged criminally and administratively for allegedly conniving in the alleged extrajudicial killings of two suspected syndicate members in May this year.

Two of the surviving companions of the syndicate members said in their sworn affidavit that Supt. Pedro Ramon and his men were behind the killing of Noel Gubiangan and Elmer Gallema.

Survivors Rodel Gallema and Robert Lutao said their companions died when they were ran over by a truck that was following a police convoy while they were being br... Read more

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Appeals Court Keeps Crooked NY

The state parole board acted properly when it refused to free a former New York Police Department officer who was a key witness at corruption hearings in the 1970s and has been in prison since 1974, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 5-0 decision by the state Supreme Court's Appellate Division reversed a lower court ruling that directed the board to parole the aging and ailing William R. Phillips, who has been imprisoned 32 years.

Phillips, a star witness at the Knapp Commission hearings on police corruption, was convicted in 1974 on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder for fatally shooting a pimp and a prostitute and wounding a witness while trying to collect protection money. He was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Phillips, a police officer from 1957 to 1974, was arrested after he appeared on television while giving Knapp Commission testimony. He was identified as the person wanted for the two killings and for trying to kill a third person.

Phillips, who will be 77 in May, has lost an eye to cancer, has had surgery twice for prostate cancer and has had a stroke, his lawyer Daniel M. Perez said.

In October 2006, Justice Marcy Friedman annulled the board's September 2005 rejection of Phillips' fourth parole request. She said the board improperly based its decision on the seriousness of the crimes alone.

Phillips expressed deep remorse for his crimes, the judge said, and he presented uncontradicted evidence of his unblemished record during his three decades in maximum-security institutions.

She said the parole board "affirmatively recognized at the September 2005 hearing that petitioner can do no more to rehabilitate himself and is not a threat to society.''

The judge said the board's decision to deny Phillips' parole petition "was so irrational as to border on impropriety and should be annulled.''

The Appellate Division disagreed.

"We conclude that the challenged determination was rationally based upon appropriate considerations following a weighing of all applicable statutory standards and factors,'' the appeals judges wrote.

The judges, suggesting that Phillips had not shown remorse or accepted responsibility for his crimes, said that at his last parole hearing he spoke so as "to avoid direct acknowledgment that he precipitated the incident by his conduct in attempting to extort payment from his victim.''

"In our view,'' the judges wrote, "notwithstanding the board's recognition that he has been an exemplary inmate who no longer poses a threat to society, other facts, properly considered as elements of the factors listed in the statute, support the board's denial of parole.''

Perez, Phillips' lawyer, said, "We couldn't disagree with the decision more strongly.''

He said he will ask permission to appeal to the state's highest tribunal, the Court of Appeals in Albany.

 

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