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ByEricTucker TheAssociatedPress WASHINGTON The Jus- tice Department cleared a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the fatal shooting of an un- armed black 18-year-old on Wednesday, but also is- sued a scathing report call- ing for sweeping changes in city law enforcement prac- tices it called discrimina- tory and unconstitutional. The dual reports marked the culmination of months- long federal investigations into a shooting that sparked weeks of protests and a na- tional dialogue on race and law enforcement as the ten- ure of Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black person to hold that office, draws to a close. In pairing the announce- ments, the Obama admin- istration sought to offset community disappointment over the conclusion that the shooting of Michael Brown was legally justified with a message of hope for Fer- guson's majority-black cit- izens. Officials announced 26 recommendations, in- cluding training officers in how to de-escalate confron- tations and banning the use of ticketing and arrest quo- tas. Holder called the fed- eral report a "searing" por- trait of a police department that he said functions as a collection agency for the city, with officers prioritiz- ing revenue from fines over public safety and trouncing the constitutional rights of minorities. "It is not difficult to imag- ine how a single tragic inci- dent set off the city of Fer- guson like a powder keg," Holder said. The decision not to pros- ecute Darren Wilson, the white officer who was cleared in November by a state grand jury and has since resigned, had been expected. To win a fed- eral civil rights case, offi- cials would have needed to prove that Wilson will- fully deprived Brown of his rights by using unreason- able force. But the report found no evidence to disprove Wil- son's testimony that he feared for his safety dur- ing the Aug. 9 confronta- tion. Nor were there reli- able witness accounts to es- tablish that Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot, Justice Depart- ment lawyers said. One of Wilson's attor- neys, Neil Bruntrager, said his client was sat- isfied with the outcome. Brown family lawyer Ben- jamin Crump said the fam- ily was not surprised but very disappointed, and one of Brown's uncles, Charles Ewing, said he believed Wilson was "getting away with it." "I really was hoping they would have come up with better findings because this whole thing just does not add up," Ewing said. "Ev- erything just doesn't make sense." While the federal gov- ernment declined to pros- ecute Wilson, it found that the shooting occurred in an environment of systematic mistreatment of blacks, in which officials swapped rac- ist emails and jokes without punishment and black res- idents were disproportion- ately stopped and searched, fined for petty offenses and subjected to excessive po- lice force. A 102-page report about the department found that its lack of racial diversity — only four of 54 commis- sioned officers are black — undermined commu- nity trust. It also found that the city relied heav- ily on fines for petty of- fenses, such as jaywalking, to raise revenue. Police in- terpreted "innocent move- ments as physical threats" and engaged in practices that overwhelmingly af- fected minorities and re- inforced patterns of racial bias, it said. FEDERAL INVESTIGATION USclearsofficerinFergusoncase, criticizes police force for practices CAROLYNKASTER—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS The Justice Department will not prosecute a white former police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old who died in Ferguson, Missouri. MICHAEL DWYER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Boston Marathon bombing survivor Marc Fucarile, center, and his wife Jennifer, le , walk past protester Jose Briceno, right, as they leave federal court, Wednesday. By Denise Lavoie The Associated Press BOSTON The question, for all practical purposes, is no longer whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev took part in the Boston Mara- thon bombing. It's whether he deserves to die for it. In a blunt opening state- ment at the nation's biggest terrorism trial in nearly 20 years, Tsarnaev's own law- yer flatly told a jury that the 21-year-old former col- lege student committed the crime. "It WAS him," said de- fense attorney Judy Clarke, one of the nation's fore- most death-penalty spe- cialists. But in a strategy aimed at saving Tsarnaev from a death sentence, she ar- gued that he had fallen under the malevolent influ- ence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan. "The evidence will not establish and we will not argue that Tamerlan put a gun to Dzhokhar's head or that he forced him to join in the plan," Clarke said, "but you will hear evidence about the kind of influence that this older brother had." Three people were killed and more than 260 hurt when two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs ex- ploded near the finish line on April 15, 2013. Tsar- naev, then 19, was accused of carrying out the attacks with 26-year-old Tamer- lan, who was killed in a shootout and getaway at- tempt days later. Authorities contend the brothers — ethnic Chech- ens who arrived from Rus- sia more than a decade ago — were driven by an- ger over U.S. wars in Mus- lim lands. Federal prosecutors used their opening state- ments, along with heart- breaking testimony and grisly video, to sketch a picture of torn-off limbs, ghastly screams, pools of blood, and the smell of sulfur and burned hair in the streets of Boston. They painted Tsarnaev as a cold-blooded killer. Tsarnaev planted a bomb designed to "tear people apart and create a bloody spectacle," then hung out with his college buddies as if he didn't have a care in the world, prosecutor Wil- liam Weinreb said. "He believed that he was a soldier in a holy war against Americans," Wein- reb said. "He also believed that by winning that vic- tory, he had taken a step toward reaching paradise." Among the first wit- nesses for the prosecution were two women who lost legs in the attack, includ- ing Rebekah Gregory, who walked slowly to the stand on an artificial limb. "I remember being thrown back, hoisted into the air," said Gregory, who had gone to watch the race with her 5-year-old son, Noah. "My first instinct as a mother was, where in the world was my baby, where was my son?" She said she looked down at her leg: "My bones were literally lay- ing next to me on the side- walk and blood was every- where." She saw other peo- ples' body parts all around her, and "at that point, I thought that was the day I would die." "I could hear Noah, I don't know how, but I could hear my little boy. She said he was saying, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,' over and over again." A shaggy-haired, goa- teed Tsarnaev slouched in his seat and showed little reaction as the case un- folded. The defense did not ask a single question of the four victims who testified Wednesday. Defense admits Tsarnaev bombed Boston Marathon TERRORISM TRIAL By Malcolm Ritter The Associated Press NEW YORK A fragment of jawbone found in Ethiopia is the oldest known fossil from an evolutionary tree branch that eventually led to modern humans, scien- tist reported Wednesday. The fossil comes from very close to the time that our branch split away from more ape-like ancestors best known for the fossil skeleton Lucy. So it gives a rare glimpse of what very early members of our branch looked like. At about 2.8 million years old, the partial jaw- bone pushes back the fossil record by at least 400,000 years for our branch, which scientists call Homo. It was found two years ago at a site not far from where Lucy was un- earthed. Africa is a hotbed for human ancestor fossils, and scientists from Ari- zona State University have worked for years at the site in northeast Ethiopia, try- ing to find fossils from the dimly understood period when the Homo genus, or group, arose. Our species, called Homo sapiens, is the only surviv- ing member of this group. The jaw fragment, which includes five teeth, was dis- covered in pieces one morn- ing by Chalachew Seyoum, an Ethiopian graduate stu- dent at Arizona State. He said he spotted a tooth pok- ing out of the ground while looking for fossils. The discovery is de- scribed in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Science. Arizona State's William Kimbel, an author of the paper, said it's not clear whether the fossil came from a known early spe- cies of Homo or whether it reveals a new one. Field work is continuing to look for more fossils at the site, said another author, Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Analysis indicates the jaw fossil came from one of the earliest populations of Homo, and its age helps narrow the range of possi- bilities for when the first Homo species appeared, Kimbel said. The fossil dates to as little as 200,000 years after the last known fossil from Lucy's species. The fossil is from the left lower jaw of an adult. It com- bines ancestral features, like a primitive chin shape, with some traits found in later Homo fossils, like teeth that are slimmer than the bul- bous molars of Lucy's ilk. Despite that mix, experts not involved in the paper said the researchers make a convincing case that the fossil belongs in the Homo category. And they present good evidence that it came from a creature that was ei- ther at the origin of Homo or "within shouting dis- tance," said Bernard Wood of George Washington Uni- versity. The find also bolsters the argument that Homo arose from Lucy's species rather than a related one, said Su- san Anton of New York Uni- versity. The new paper's analy- sis is first-rate, but the fos- sil could reveal only a lim- ited amount of informa- tion about the creature, said Eric Delson of Lehman Col- lege in New York. FOUND IN ETHIOPIA Jaw sheds light on turning point in human evolution By Jay Reeves The Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, ALA. Ala- bama's stand against same- sex marriage regained ground Wednesday after the state's highest court ruled that its ban remains legal, despite federal court pressure to begin issuing li- censes to gays and lesbians. The Alabama Supreme Court ordered county pro- bate judges to uphold the state ban pending a final ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears argu- ments in April on whether gay couples nationwide have a right tomarry and whether states can ban such unions. Stuck between the state's highest court and a series of federal rulings, many probate judges were at a loss. Mobile County, one of the state's largest, an- nounced early Wednesday that it would not issue mar- riage licenses to anyone for now, "given the unprece- dented circumstances." But more judges were likely to follow Montgom- ery County Probate Judge Steven Reed, a Democrat and one of the first to com- ply with U.S. District Judge Callie Granade, who said Wednesday that he has no choice but to turn gays and lesbians away again. "As a named party in con- tinuing litigation on this matter, I am bound by this order from the state's high- est court, whether I agree with it or not," Reed said in a statement. The all-Republican court ruled 7-1 that Alabama's 68 probate judges must stop issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. The justices said U.S. Dis- trict Judge Callie Granade in Mobile, who ruled the ban unconstitutional, does not get the last word in Al- abama, and gave probate judges five days to respond if they believe otherwise. Saying so could be po- litically risky in the deeply conservative state, where Alabama's justices and pro- bate judges must run for of- fice after each term. Before Tuesday's ruling, 48 of the state's 67 counties were acknowledging that Alabama had become the 37th U.S. state where gays can legally wed, according to the Human Rights Cam- paign, which advocates for gay marriage nationwide. By Wednesday afternoon, the group couldn't find any county issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples. STATE SUPREME COURT Alabama regains ground against gay marriage | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2015 8 A