In this space on Friday, February 11th, in a blog post I titled, "Killer convicted! Illegal immigrant from El Salvador sentenced to 60 years in prison by D.C. jury for 2001 murder of Chandra Levy" http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/killer-convicted-illegal-immigrant-from.html
I posited the deeply-felt personal belief that within days, when the time came for the Miami Herald to finally run their story on the verdict of this murder trial, they would completely ignore the fact that the convicted killer of Chandra Levy, Ingmar Guandique, was an El Salvadoran who was in the United States illegally.
And, in fact, Guandique had been here illegally for YEARS.
As you can see from my snapshot of that article as it appeared in print, above, and the actual article, below, my prediction went from my brain and lips to the Miami Herald's printing press.
That I could predict such a thing with such utter confidence ought to give you some real insight into the extent which the traditional Chinese Wall between editorial and reporting is a non-existent one at the Miami Herald on the issue of immigration policy.
They don't even bother trying to pretend anymore and hide their bias.
The real kicker is that the McClatchy reporter, Michael Doyle, actually used the word "immigrant" in his version of the story.
"Immigrant?"
"Immigrant," really?
Knute Rockne was an immigrant. Albert Einstein was an immigrant. Lou Gehrig and Martin Scorsese's family were immigrants.
Ingmar Guandique is an illegal alien who stone-cold murdered an innocent woman named Chandra Levy, a 24-year old young woman with an outgoing personality who continually gave to her community in her hometown, and was killed because to Guandique, she was just a loose-end to his latest crime.
Period!
Guadique is a person with a very long criminal record that this Herald article, as it actually appeared in print, hardly even begins to skim the surface of. The Washington Post reported on that criminal record in detail years ago, but but for whatever reasons, the Herald has NEVER ever mentioned it.
Tell me, why would the Miami Herald censor his long criminal background for so long?
And why was he STILL here?
Those are good questions, why don't you call illegal alien advocate Chery Little, founder and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, and ask her?
There's clearly someone up in the Washington, D.C. area doing the same thing for the illegals up there that she does in Miami, where she has serially manipulated the hell out of the pliant South Florida news media, especially the Miami Herald.
Little limits information on the carefully-chosen 'clients' she trots out for the news media
and keeps the illegal alien parents -who came here and ignored U.S. govt. notices to return home or update information- completely out of the reach of reporters.
All in order to get the most positive spin possible for herself, FIAC and the issue.
If you have paid close attention to her and her dog-and-pony shows for the local South Florida media thru the years, it's hard not to notice that her 'clients' are almost always straight out of Central Casting, and that's not by mistake.And did you ever notice how few of the Hispanic 'clients' are dark-skinned?
I have!
And so have many of my friends throughout South Florida.
That was especially noticeable when she was trying to rally public support for the absurd and unpopular DREAM ACT that the vast majority of Americans have always opposed.
The people she trotted out were almost invariably articulate high school kids getting very good grades with lots of potential and lots of options, as if that was at all representative of what most of the kids here in South Florida illegally have.
It's completely preposterous.
But the South Florida news media ate it up, anyway!
That's not by accident, since it's clear that Little carefully chose which people to trot out for all the predictable questions from the sleepwalking media, many of whom seem more like aspiring spokesmodels than journalists.
And because so many of the local Miami print and TV reporters lack much backbone to speak of, much less, a nose for real news, especially the ones under the age of 35, they swallow it whole every time, never bothering to ask how someone -a culpable parent- NEVER quite learned enough English in 17 years in Miami to make themselves understood in English, even while their kid might be getting straight-A's.
(Now there's THE real story -the reality disconnect and the media's perpetual lack of curiosity.)
And almost every time Cheryl Little's name appears in print in the Herald, who's the (faux) reporter doing the stenography?
Correct, Alfonso Chardy, the most self-evidently biased reporter at the Miami Herald -or just about any newspaper I can think of, actually.
If you ever wondered about the inherent and over-weaning bias of the Miami Herald and their parent company, The McClatchy Company, on the issue of immigration policy, I think this story is the final nail in the coffin.
Game, set, match.
If Carlos Alvarez or Dwyane Wade or Don Shula were killed in a robbery or drive-by outside of a Shula's Steakhouse by an illegal alien, would the Miami Herald mention that pertinent fact, or would they intentionally keep it out?
I guess we know the answer to that question now, as this snapshot I took, above, of Saturday's Miami Herald, page 4A -with no photos, no links, no nothing...- makes abundantly clear.
Or read it yourself!
For the record, the text in blue in the article below NEVER appeared in yesterday's print edition.
-----
Chandra Levy's killer gets 60-year prison sentence
By Michael Doyle
The man convicted of killing Chandra Levy was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison.
Punctuating a law-and-order saga that's lasted nearly a decade, D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher rejected a defense bid for a new trial and imposed the stiff sentence on Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique.
"I think he is a dangerous person," Fisher said. "I think he is a dangerous person to women, in particular, and I think he will remain one for a long time."
Chandra's mother, Susan Levy, drove the point home, with a firmly delivered victim's impact statement that she directed, at times, right at Guandique.
"You, Mr. Guandique, you are lower than a cockroach," Levy said.
At the end of her 16-minute statement, in which she also read comments written by her son, Adam, and her husband, Robert, Levy turned to her daughter's killer and pointed at him.
"Finally, (expletive) you," Susan Levy said. "That is it."
Now 29, Guandique will be at least 80 before he becomes eligible for parole from federal prison. Fisher rejected prosecutors' request to deny any possibility of parole, raising the faint possibility that Guandique will die outside of prison.
"This might be a life sentence," Fisher acknowledged. "In all likelihood, it will be a life sentence."
Manacled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Guandique showed little emotion during most of the 90-minute sentencing hearing. When given a chance to speak, though, he appeared to rub tears from his eyes before protesting his innocence.
"I am sorry, I am very sorry for what happened to (Chandra)," Guandique said, speaking through an interpreter, "but I had nothing to do with it. I am innocent."
Following a little more than three days of deliberations, the jury of three men and nine women on Nov. 22 had found Guandique guilty on two counts of first-degree felony murder.
The jury concluded Guandique had attacked Chandra on May 1, 2001, while she was walking or jogging in a remote reach of Washington's Rock Creek Park. The felony murder charge was formally predicated on a claim that Guandique was attempting to rob Levy, although prosecutors emphasized the possibility that the attack was sexual in nature.
Citing prison disciplinary records and other crimes, including several Guandique admitted to and others that were never proven in court, prosecutors had argued he was an implacable menace to society.
"Guandique has demonstrated predatory behavior that seems incapable of rehabilitation," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Haines and Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez wrote in an 18-page sentencing memo.
Meanwhile this very afternoon, the St. Petersburg Times, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Company, has a story on their website, highlighted in blue below, titled, "Illegal immigrant held in connection with standoff in Carrollwood."Punctuating a law-and-order saga that's lasted nearly a decade, D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher rejected a defense bid for a new trial and imposed the stiff sentence on Salvadoran immigrant Ingmar Guandique.
"I think he is a dangerous person," Fisher said. "I think he is a dangerous person to women, in particular, and I think he will remain one for a long time."
Chandra's mother, Susan Levy, drove the point home, with a firmly delivered victim's impact statement that she directed, at times, right at Guandique.
"You, Mr. Guandique, you are lower than a cockroach," Levy said.
At the end of her 16-minute statement, in which she also read comments written by her son, Adam, and her husband, Robert, Levy turned to her daughter's killer and pointed at him.
"Finally, (expletive) you," Susan Levy said. "That is it."
Now 29, Guandique will be at least 80 before he becomes eligible for parole from federal prison. Fisher rejected prosecutors' request to deny any possibility of parole, raising the faint possibility that Guandique will die outside of prison.
"This might be a life sentence," Fisher acknowledged. "In all likelihood, it will be a life sentence."
Manacled and dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Guandique showed little emotion during most of the 90-minute sentencing hearing. When given a chance to speak, though, he appeared to rub tears from his eyes before protesting his innocence.
"I am sorry, I am very sorry for what happened to (Chandra)," Guandique said, speaking through an interpreter, "but I had nothing to do with it. I am innocent."
Following a little more than three days of deliberations, the jury of three men and nine women on Nov. 22 had found Guandique guilty on two counts of first-degree felony murder.
The jury concluded Guandique had attacked Chandra on May 1, 2001, while she was walking or jogging in a remote reach of Washington's Rock Creek Park. The felony murder charge was formally predicated on a claim that Guandique was attempting to rob Levy, although prosecutors emphasized the possibility that the attack was sexual in nature.
Citing prison disciplinary records and other crimes, including several Guandique admitted to and others that were never proven in court, prosecutors had argued he was an implacable menace to society.
"Guandique has demonstrated predatory behavior that seems incapable of rehabilitation," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Haines and Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez wrote in an 18-page sentencing memo.
Defense attorneys Santha Sonenberg and Maria Hawilo retorted with their own sentencing memo of more than 11 pages, in which they cited a violent, impoverished upbringing as well as learning and psychological problems.
"He grew up without running water or electricity ... and he suffers from a number of different afflictions," Sonenberg said.
A former defense attorney, appointed to the D.C. Superior Court bench by President Bill Clinton in 2001, Fisher had also overseen preliminary proceedings in the Levy case for more than a year before the trial began.
Levy had just turned 24 when she disappeared. She had finished her University of Southern California graduate studies and a federal Bureau of Prisons internship and was planning to take a May 5 Amtrak train back home to California's San Joaquin Valley, trial testimony revealed.
Levy was also sexually involved with then-Congressman Gary Condit, trial evidence and testimony graphically confirmed. Early speculation about her shadowy relationship with the much-older politician had helped make Levy's disappearance a news sensation in the first place.
An uncomfortable-looking Condit testified that he had nothing to do with Levy's death, but the judge also permitted him to stiff-arm questions about the exact nature of his affair with Levy.
Prosecutors lacked any DNA, fingerprint, fiber or other physical evidence connecting Guandique to Levy or the wooded Rock Creek Park hillside where her skeletal remains were found in May 2002. There were no eyewitnesses.
Prosecutors also didn't get a chance to cross-examine Guandique, who listened to the translated trial proceedings through a headset.
Of the 40 prosecution witnesses, only former Fresno Bulldogs gang member Alberto Morales directly connected Guandique to Levy. A one-time cellmate, Morales testified that Guandique confessed the killing to him.
Morales, currently scheduled to be released in 2016, is not currently in federal Bureau of Prisons custody, according to the agency's inmate locator. During the Levy trial, he was said to be "in transit." It is not yet known which federal prison Guandique will be dispatched to; previously, he was serving his sentence on other charges at U.S. Penitentiary Victorville, on the unforgivably hot margins of California's Mojave Desert.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/illegal-immigrant-held-in-connection-with-standoff-in-carrollwood/1151437
Yes, even the St. Pete Times, a very liberal newspaper that employs reporters I personally know, DOESN'T engage in such ham-handed and selective use of facts -much less, in a murder case!- to the extent that McClatchy and the Miami Herald has -and does.
"Illegal immigrant held in connection with standoff in Carrollwood."http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/illegal-immigrant-held-in-connection-with-standoff-in-carrollwood/1151437
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