Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The fate of a lawsuit filed against Pottawattamie County officials by two men who were wrongfully convicted of murder will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. The Court announced today that it will hear an appeal from former Pottawattamie County prosecutors who were named in the civil action.
The suit, filed by Terry Harrington and Curtis W. McGhee Jr., stems from their first-degree murder convictions in 1978 for the death of retired Council Bluffs police captain John Schweer. Twenty-five years later, in 2003, the convictions were overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court because prosecutors and police withheld evidence of a more likely suspect. In addition, several trial witnesses later recanted their testimony.
Former Pottawattamie County Attorney David Richter and then-deputy Joseph Hrvol are accused in the suit of not only ignoring evidence pointing to another suspect, but of purposefully painting Harrington and McGhee, who were then black teenagers from Omaha, as guilty of murder. Instead of alluding to the possibility of racial profiling, the suit alleges that county officers were motivated by political concerns to convict the black men of killing a white police officer.
Prosecutors have argued that they are immune from civil suit because their actions fell within the scope of their duties. That argument was rejected by federal courts and, previous to today’s announcement by the Supreme Court, the case was set to begin in late summer in U.S. District Court in Des Moines.
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