Last Friday afternoon, Erick Daniels walked out of the Durham County Jail into the sunshine, threw up his arms and screamed, “I’m free.” At 22, Daniels went home for the first time since eighth grade. About four hours earlier, Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson had declared Daniels innocent, wrongly convicted of robbing a police […]
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Posted inElections
Bordley wins Durham school board seat
With less than five percent of Durham’s registered voters showing up at the polls yesterday, Leigh Bordley won handily over Jonathan Alston in the runoff for the at-large seat on the Durham Public Schools Board of Education. Bordley won 82.6 percent of the vote, with 6,384 ballots cast in her favor, according to unofficial results […]
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Motions favor convicted teen
Convicted robber Erick Daniels won another break last week when Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson ordered the Durham Police Department to turn over evidence that could clear Daniels’ name. In response to a motion filed earlier this month by defense attorney Carlos Mahoney, Hudson ordered the Durham Police Department to turn over the fingerprints […]
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Durham restores funding to arts groups
Arts supporters won major victories Monday night when the Durham City Council restored funding that had been cut in its preliminary 2008-09 budget (see “Durham arts groups face steep cuts in city funding“). The council funded the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation, housed at the Hayti Heritage Center, at last year’s levels, reversing $58,000 in proposed […]
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Tom Bonfield, Durham’s new city manager
Durham’s months-long search for a new city manager came to a close last week when the city council named Tom Bonfield, the manager of Pensacola, Fla., as a successor to Patrick Baker. Bonfield is expected to start work no later than Sept. 1, at a salary of $178,000. His hire came after council members failed […]
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Setting a progressive agenda for the legislature’s short session
Every other summer, lawmakers at the General Assembly hope to get in, get the budget done and get out of Raleigh. But with the governor’s race wide open and the state strapped by a recession, the budget will get plenty of political tinkering. Meanwhile, progressives and conservatives alike hope to push forward a handful of […]
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Does the return of a neighborhood mean the poor have to leave?
Earlier this spring, a wrecker hauling a John Deere backhoe pulled up to 407 Ottawa Ave., a long-vacant bungalow in the heart of the Cleveland-Holloway historic district, three blocks northeast of downtown Durham (map). After driving the machine off the flatbed into the yard, Brad Proctor surveyed the home and planned how he would “chew […]
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Erick Daniels could get new trial
Convicted robber Erick Daniels won another chance to prove his innocence claims last week when a superior court judge granted him a hearing that could overturn his conviction and lead to a new trial. The move came just days after Daniels’ appellate attorney, Carlos Mahoney, filed a lengthy appeal, known as a motion for appropriate […]
Posted inElections
Joe Bowser? Yes, Joe Bowser.
As voters walked across the hot asphalt toward the Mt. Calvary Lighthouse of Faith polling place yesterday, Charles Leslie called out to them from the shade and handed them a list of mostly black candidates endorsed by the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People. People like 63-year-old David Burnette, a first-time voter full […]
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NAACP blasts illegal robo-calls
The North Carolina NAACP has asked the state to investigate illegal robo-calls and whether they were intended to suppress voter participation, particularly among blacks. The NAACP filed a formal complaint May 2 with the N.C. Attorney General and the State Board of Elections against Womens Voices Women Vote, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit behind the robo-calls, […]