Richard C. Hottelet, a war correspondent who covered the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge for CBS, has died at the age of 97.

Hottelet was the last surviving member of the “Murrow Boys,” a team of correspondents originally assembled by Edward R. Murrow before the Second World War. Hottelet joined the team in 1944 to cover the invasion of Normandy. 

[Photo credit: Peter Willows/AP, Creative Commons via wikipedia.]

The Best of the Week’s News

• We missed this when it came out, but it’s a must read: Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than their white counterparts.

• WalMart’s tomato supplier kept Mexican workers in de facto slavery.

• The Supreme Court rules that Amazon workers don’t have to be paid for time in security screening lines.

• ”Rectal feeding” is a CIA euphemism for rape.

• See photos from Geoffrey Hiller’s new book, “Daybreak in Myanmar,” a work 27 years in the making.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

What is it like to serve on a grand jury? Lots of people are suddenly curious after grand juries in Ferguson, MO and Staten Island, NY failed to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men.

Misha Leptic of 3QuarksDaily recalls his experiences as a grand juror in New York City:

Eventually, in the course of our daily proceedings a curiously adversarial dynamic developed. As a jury, we did our best to establish a solid understanding of what transpired for any given case. But much of it felt like being in Plato’s cave. We only saw what the prosecutors and police wanted us to see, and would further guide us, as much as possible, in how to see it. Due to the confidential nature of the proceedings, note-taking was prohibited. And without the counterbalancing presence of a defense counsel, or of the salutary effects of cross-examination, the end result was, more often than not, a shrug of the shoulders and a vote to indict. [3QD]

Leptic concludes that, “[i]f the purpose of the system is to generate indictments, then the system works really well. Hence the well-known quote from chief justice Wachtler about the indictability of ham sandwiches.”

If it’s that easy for a semi-motivated prosecutor to get an indictment at a low standard of proof in an unopposed proceeding, it really makes you wonder why the police officer who choked Eric Garner walked free and the guy who filmed the attack got indicted on an ostensibly unrelated charge. It’s all about priorities.

[Photo credit: Indict! Indict! Indict! Jeffreyw, Creative Commons.]

The history of coal mining is full of disasters and deaths caused by management negligence, but former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is the first U.S. coal executive to face criminal charges for his role in the deaths of miners:

Legal experts call the case against Mr. Blankenship, a figure both feared and renowned for his power in West Virginia, a turning point after a century in which the power of coal barons over politicians, courts and the economy protected them.

“Those responsible for managing mines in a way that caused multiple deaths were never held responsible,” said Patrick McGinley, a law professor at West Virginia University.

“It shocks the conscience.” The Charleston Gazette, a newspaper with a history of reporting on coal’s costs to the state, said simply, “This indictment is momentous.” [NYT]

This could be a watershed moment in labor history.

[Photo credit: Wendy Cooper, Creative Commons.]