English fo MP student book

UNIT 4 – Crime and Social Relevance

Text A Answer the questions by choosing the best alternative a, b, c, or d.

2.Police investigative work in Atlanta relied very much on

3.Social deviants (potential lawbreakers) in Atlanta were

a)concealed by the police

b)kept under surveillance

c)allowed to cause trouble without fear of punishment

d)discouraged by the Klan and other white supremacist groups.

4.The situation in Atlanta was

a)quite different from other cities in the South

b)much less tolerant than other places

c)about the same as most cities in the Southern states

d)extremely tense with Klan leaders in control

5.The City leaders and officials in Atlanta

a)were known for their corrupt practices

b)had a high moral code

c)rejected Washington’s directives

d)were in the pay of the Ku Klux Klan

At the top of Police Chief Jenkins list of suspects in the Temple bombing were the men arrested that summer for the anti-Semitic picketing of the newspaper trial. (The Constitution had been charged with publishing anti-Jewish statements and was found guilty.)

George Bright, Chester Griffin, Luther Corley all members of the white extremist organisation, the National States Rights Party (NSRP). The Atlanta police moved towards locating, detaining and questioning these men. But the FBI had earlier gone a step further than the Atlanta police. They had had an informant within the NSRP almost from the beginning.

George Bright had been suspicious of informants infiltrating their group and he was right in his suspicions. L.E. Rogers – a vulgar, overweight, out-of-pocket, unskilled janitor services man. He was an FBI spyor in the language of the day- a sneak. He had joined both the NSRP and the KKK for the purposes of relaying information to the FBIhe had done it, according to his own high-minded statements, for the highest motives of citizenship. Meanwhile he earned $50 to $75 for each report and had earned $1,150 by October 1958, filling the FBI files with reports of discussions such as the one in May 1958, where the NSRP members’ talk was of shooting down Jews in the streets.

The FBI therefore concurred with the Atlanta Police Department, contributing three more names: the brothers Richard and Robert Bowling, known since boyhood for trouble-making and experimenting with explosives, and who had been spotted recently in the company of some of the South’s most dangerous extremists.

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Text B Answer the questions by choosing one of the alternatives a, b, c or d.

2.The FBI informant was

a)motivated only by high moral principles

b)claimed he was acting only for the good of the country

c)open about his financial reasons for being a spy

d)a man of good character and education

3.The NSRP members were

a)totally unaware that there might be a spy among them

b)aware of the possibility that they were being spied on

c)aware of Rogers’ role but were feeding him false information

d)able to identify Rogers easily

On Monday 13 October 1958, the day after the bombing, Atlanta police detectives were sent out by Police Chief Jenkins to arrest the suspects. Robert Bowling was apprehended without incident, but Chester Griffin and Richard Bowling had disappeared.

The moment that Griffin learned of the bombingon the morning of the bombing-, he guessed that he would be the target of a massive manhunt and had taken off. He had gone to Stone Mountain in search of James Venable, the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Klan, who had represented Griffin and the others when they were arrested for picketing the Constitution trial.

“ Knowing the warped minds of the FBI, the Atlanta police, the Anti-Defamation League and the Atlanta newspapers, I well enough anticipated what lay in store for me. They had already broadcast that regardless of whether I was guilty or innocent, they were going to come over and try to pin anything that happened on me. So, that’s why I drove out to Stone Mountain and tried to get in touch with Mr Venable.” But Venable was out. Griffin delayed returning home.

“I decided the best thing to do was to lay low and try to get in touch with my attorney first thing bright and early on Monday morning,” he said later.

“So, I went to East Point and saw a show and then I came back to Atlanta and caught a cab and went over to Highland Theater and I saw it was the same one I had already seen, so I just stayed around that drug store at the corner of Highland and Greenland until the show at the Plaza was due to come on, and finally around eight o’clock, I went on to that show and it was a long one and it was about 11:30 before I got out and I walked across the street, caught a taxi at the Briarclif Hotel, went home. When I got home, there were 2 FBI men and a city policeman who surrounded me and they didn’t … they tried to prevent me from paying the taxi operator and it was necessary to shove them out of the way before I could do so. I hollered for my brother so he would know what was happening and do something about it, and I demanded that they show me a warrant for my arrest which they did not have and they commenced questioning me about where I had been.

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UNIT 4 – Crime and Social Relevance

Text C Answer the questions by choosing one of the alternatives a, b, c, or d

2.He claimed that

a)he would be treated fairly by the authorities

b)he would be falsely charged

c)he would be falsely accused

d)he would be tortured until he confessed

3.His alibi story

a)was lacking in detail

b)accounted for a day when he wasn’t suspected of anything

c)was full of holes and obvious contradictions

d)accounted for the time of the bombing

Detective W.K. Perry drove forty minutes north of town to arrest Wallace Allen. Allen was home when the detectives appeared. He let his dog loose on them.

“Well, we had a warrant to go up there and arrest him,” said Perry, later the chief of homicide. “We got up there and he had a chain link fence right up against the sidewalk and the gate was closed. He had a large front yard to his house and he was on the porch. I told him I had two uniformed men with me as well as my partner. I started to open the gate and he told me not to come in the yard. He was real arrogant. And I told him who I was and I said, “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest.” About that time he turned his dog loose on us. He called him “Adolf”- that was the dog’s name and the dog started running towards the gate. Well, I knew I was going in that gate, so I off and told him “When that dog gets to this gate, I’m going to kill it.” So, I pulled my gun and the dog stopped just before it got to the gate. He hollered at him and he stopped, because I would have shot him.”

“But anyway we went on in, and he had a picture of Hitler over the mantle with little electric candles burning underneath it. He was in the printing business. He had all kinds of pamphlets that he would print. We were looking for explosives or anything pertaining to the bombing, but we didn’t find it.”

Text D Answer the questions by choosing the best alternative from a, b, c, or d.

1. Perry set out to arrest Allen

a) with uniformed officers and his partner b) alone

c) with agents from the FBI d) through the local sheriff

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4.The inside of Allen’s home was

a)nothing out of the ordinary

b)b) full of explosives and bomb-making materials

c)indicative of his extremist politics

d)decorated in Nazi emblems and symbols

5.Incriminating evidence

ALL THE CLASS SHOULD READ THE NEXT TEXT

THE TEMPLE BOMBING: The Limits of Forensic Sscience in 1958

One hundred officers were assigned to the case, given highest priority by Chief Herbert Jenkins. FBI laboratory technicians were flown in from Washington. Police departments in Alabama, Florida and Tennessee opened their bombing files to the Atlanta police. Atlanta detectives were paired with FBI agents to visit hotels, and railway, bus and air terminals; they set up roadblocks on Peachtree and questioned drivers; and knocked on doors in a block-by-block search of the area around the Temple.

On Monday, detectives announced the recovery from the rubble of a piece of brown wrapping paper, which they turned over to the FBI. In an announcement to the press, FBI laboratory experts confirmed that the paper was “similar to that used in wrapping dynamite.”

This was the extent of the information collected at the crime scene.

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UNIT 4 – Crime and Social Relevance

# Exercise 5 Complete with a suitable modal form

If modern FBI and ATF experts had visited the Temple on October 12 1958, they

(1) (recover) __________________________________ chemicals, gunpowder, fuse fragments, footprints and tire markings.

Within a few weeks, they (2) (know) _____________________________ precisely the type of nitroglycerine used in the bomb, how much of the substance was “available” in America. They (3) (find out) _____________________________ the names of people with access to it, how it (4) (transport) ___________________ into Georgia and whether it had been in any of the vehicles or houses of the suspects.

They (5) (know) __________________________________ what kind of timing device was used and (6) (check) ________________________________ in what other locations such a device had been used.

Whereas the 1958 experts announced the recovery of a small piece of brown wrapping paper that they thought was “similar” to that used to wrap dynamite, modern experts (7) (know) ____________________________ precisely.

Not all brown wrapping paper is identical. The piece of wrapping paper recovered from the bomb crater (8) (reveal) _________________________________ a lot of information to modern experts, it (9) (be imprinted) __________________________

with a grain of gunpowder, a fleck of skin, a hair follicle or even a fingerprint that (10) (cause) ________________________________________ computers to become active and lights to flash back at headquarters.

If modern detectives (11) (be airlifted) _______________________________ to the crime scene, via a time machine, the whole, dark history of the South (12) (be altered)

_____________________________. Where there were no arrests, there (13) (be)

_____________________arrests, arrests but no convictions, there (14) (be)

_____________________convictions.

The children killed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 might be alive today, raising children in an integrated world because the criminals who bombed their church (15) (be identified) ________________________________ earlier or (16) (be imprisoned) ______________________________________ for their earlier crimes.

Weak, vague alibis (17) (sound) _______________________________ even more feeble confronted by the poster-sized blow-up of a suspect’s fingerprint on a timing device or electronic voice recognition evidence from surveillance microphones.

Almost forty years ago, all the police could say with any degree of certainty was that whoever had planted the bomb was knowledgeable about explosives.

They “believed” that funds for the bombing had come from sources outside the South. They “believed” that the bombing was linked to others around the South.

They “knew” the bomb had been wrapped in paper commonly used for wrapping dynamite. “The bombing was definitely done by someone who knew his explosives,” said one detective in a news conference. “An amateur tends to set the fuse so that only one or two sticks explode and the rest just scatter.”

That “knowledge” narrowed down the field of suspects to several thousand army veterans and munitions experts!

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¾ Activity 6

Read the details of an “old” case with a fairly recent end result!

Church Bombing Case at a Glance

Important dates in the investigation of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

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UNIT 4 – Crime and Social Relevance

¾ Activity 7

Discuss the following issues with a colleague

1.What do you think the case illustrates about the American justice system?

2.Without the pressure in the 1990s under a Clinton regime, do you think the investigations would have been re-opened?

3.How would the majority of Americans react to this most recent verdict?

4.Do you think the FBI engaged in some sort of cover-up?

5.Find some information on the Grand Jury. Does it seem like a necessary step?

6.What laws are there in Romania relating to the time a crime has been committed and when a person may be charged with that crime?

7.What laws relate to “double jeopardy” i.e. not being able to try a person twice for the same crime?

From the FBI homepage www.fbi.gov

White Collar and Violent Crime: The Blurred Line

Baby Tara was Dina Abdel Haq’s second healthy infant to die mysteriously in just over a year. The death of her first child in September 1994, only 18 days old, was attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a diagnosis applied where the cause of death remains unexplained after an autopsy, investigation and review of the family medical history. Seven week old Tara'’ death in November 1995 was also a medical mystery, but different in one significant way. Approximately two weeks before Tara’s death, Abdel Haq had purchased a $200,000 life insurance policy, naming herself as the sole beneficiary. She submitted a claim within two months of Tara’s death.

Despite what seemed a heinous possibility, that she had killed Tara for the insurance money, no state charges were brought. There was neither physical evidence of a murder nor any medical or forensic indicators. The autopsy was negative and Abdel Haq had herself placed a very emotional 911 call to the local police department after the baby died. At first, nothing except the life insurance policy seemed to point to a motive for murder, but a federal investigation was launched.

There was not enough evidence to successfully prosecute the case as murder. Therefore, a special agent from the Chicago field office investigated the case with an eye to prosecuting it as a fraud. The agent did research on SIDS and found reports suggesting that multiple SIDS deaths in a single family were most likely the result of homicide by a parent.

The Special Agent worked with the US Assistant Attorney’s Office on the theory that baby Tara had not died of SIDS but had been suffocated by a troubled young mother.

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By proving murder, they would be able to prosecute the case federally as a fraud against the insurance company and the murder of the child could be considered “relevant conduct” during sentencing. The evidence began slowly to point to the truth.

The initial investigation revealed that Abdel Haq was addicted to gambling, having engaged in a series of financial crimes, insurance frauds and health care frauds for years to obtain money to support her addiction. Original gambling records documented Abdel Haq’s winnings at Illinois riverboat casinos and established her whereabouts on important days, proving that she had lied on numerous occasions to insurance investigators.

Further, Abdel Haq was found to have submitted claims to at least 8 insurance companies regarding various thefts, accidents and injuries she allegedly suffered since 1980. The Special Agent combined the information he had subpoenaed from public and private agencies with other evidence including police reports of Abdel Haq’s confessions to petty crimes, domestic incidence reports and civil lawsuits where Abdel Haq was the defendant. The Agent created a comprehensive crime time-line from 1980 through 1998, showing an increasingly common pattern of criminal conduct.

The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming and in February 1999, a federal jury in Chicago returned a guilty verdict in the case on all counts. AT the conclusion of the one-month trial with many witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, the jury found that beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had deliberately killed Tara, thus committing a fraud against the insurance company.

Abdel Haq was sentenced on September 8 1999 to 21 years incarceration, a substantially higher sentence than for normal mail fraud, to make the punishment consistent with the magnitude of her crime. Attorneys for Abdel Haq immediately filed an appeal but on April 7 2001, the Appellate Court unanimously upheld the conviction of Dina Abdel Haq.

Answer the questions about the text. Choose the ONE best answer.

Do NOT mark more than one alternative.

2.Family medical history means…

a)the health pattern within a family

b)b) the number of healthy members in a family

c)the details and background of the family doctor

d)the number of hospitalisations in a family

3.The mother had taken out the insurance policy when

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UNIT 4 – Crime and Social Relevance

4.According to the insurance policy…

a)the mother would receive US$ 200,000 in the event of the death of the insured

b)the mother and father would receive the insurance money only if the claim was submitted within two months

c)no insurance money would be paid if the death occurred within the first two months

d)the mother would receive US$ 200,000 in the event of the death of a child under two months old

5.The medical evidence seemed …

a)to indicate a cleverly disguised murder

b)to be inconclusive

c)to indicate a possible undetected medical cause of death

d)to point to an accident which had been covered up

6.The mother’s behaviour immediately after the baby died was described as being

a)highly suspicious

b)highly distressed

c)cold and calculating

d)extremely calm

7.The FBI agent’s research showed that

a)multiple SIDS cases often occurred in poorer families

b)parental homicide was common in multiple SIDS cases

c)parents who committed other crimes were often involved in multiple SIDS cases

d)multiple SIDS cases were most likely related to fraud

8.After consultation, the FBI agent decided to

a)prosecute the case as murder but with mitigating circumstances

b)treat the mother as a disturbed person and not pursue the investigation

c)carry out a murder investigation on behalf of the insurance company

d)investigate the strong possibility of fraud

9.The initial investigation concentrated on

a)the mother’s involvement in crime to pay for her addiction to drugs

b)the mother’s previous criminal activities to pay for her betting addiction

c)the mother’s previous neglect of her child because of her addiction

d)the mother’s involvement in crime to pay for her lawyers in other criminal cases

10.The false insurance claims Abdel Haq had made between 1980 and 1995 related to

a)accidental injuries she had supposedly received

b)the costs of contesting custody hearings for the first child

c)the accidental death of her husband in a car crash

d)increased unemployment benefits which she was entitled to from public aid funds.

11.The FBI Agent’s gathering of the evidence showed a lot of information came as a result of

a)extremely methodical investigation

b)Abdelhaq’s own confession to the murder charge

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c)a raid on an Illinois riverboat casino

d)the public telephoning the FBI with evidence

12.When the case went to court the jury…

a)was confused by the large amount of evidence and returned an incorrect guilty verdict

b)found the defendant guilty of the lesser charge of fraud but not guilty of murder

c)was able to identify from the evidence, on a balance of probabilities, that the killing was intentional

d)decided the unlawful killing was carried out in pursuance of a fraud

13.The federal trial in Chicago…

a)lasted until sentencing in September

b)lasted 21 years

c)lasted about four weeks

d)lasted from September till April

14.Abdel Haq was sentenced to a long prison term…

a)which was appropriate for the type of mail fraud she had committed involving an insurance company

b)because so many witnesses clearly showed the SIDS was murder

c)which was more severe because of the serious nature of the accompanying circumstances

d)in view of the fact that the minimum punishment for fraud is 21 years

15.Abdel Haq's attorneys

a)appealed against the severity of the sentence on the grounds of misdirection

b)demanded a re-trial on the grounds of lack of evidence

c)decided to appeal on the issue of the guilty verdict on fraud charges

d)decided to affirm the conviction and appeal against the incarceration

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