[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., FLA., MO., ARK., UTAH, CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 6



TEXAS----impending execution

Jews call to halt death row inmate's execution, citing antisemitism ---- Mr. 
Halprin was referred to as a “f****n’ Jew” and a “G*****n k**e,” Halprin’s 
attorney, Tivon Schardl, said in a statement.



A number of Jewish groups and lawyers are urging the Texas Court of Criminal 
Appeals to stay the scheduled execution of a Jewish inmate who said his judge 
was antisemitic.

In July, Dallas County Judge Lela Mays approved an Oct. 10 execution date for 
Randy Halprin, who was part of the “Texas 7” group of prisoners who escaped 
from a prison in the state in 2000. They were convicted and sentenced to death 
for the murder of a police officer who responded to a robbery they committed. 4 
of them already have been executed.

But Halprin, 41, said in an appeal in May that the judge who sentenced him in 
2003, Vickers Cunningham, referred to him using antisemitic language. He wants 
a new trial.

“Mr. Halprin’s trial judge, who presided over the death-penalty trial, made 
critical decisions about what evidence the jury would hear, and sentenced Mr. 
Halprin to die, was biased against Mr. Halprin, referring to him as a “f****n’ 
Jew” and a “G*****n k**e,” Halprin’s attorney, Tivon Schardl, said in a 
statement.

Last year, The Dallas Morning News reported that Cunningham set up a trust in 
2010 to give his children money if they marry a white Christian of the opposite 
sex.

On Thursday, the American Jewish Committee, Central Conference of American 
Rabbis, Men of Reform Judaism and Union for Reform Judaism filed an amicus 
brief in support of his appeal. More than 100 Jewish Texas lawyers signed on to 
the brief.

The brief said the issue at stake was not whether Halprin was guilty or not.

“[T]hose issues are irrelevant, because questions of guilt and punishment 
follow a fair trial; they do not precede it,” it reads. “And if Judge 
Cunningham is the bigot described in the application, a fair trial has not yet 
happened.”

The groups call for the court to “stay the applicant’s scheduled execution, and 
remand this case to the trial court for findings of fact and conclusions of 
law.”

In June, the Anti-Defamation League filed an amicus brief in support of 
Halprin’s petition.

(source: The Jerusalem Post)

*************

If Harris County is death penalty capital, how do Houston’s surrounding 
counties stack up?



Fort Bend County: Spencer Goodman, 31, was executed on Jan. 18, 2000. Goodman 
was convicted of the 1991 kidnapping and killing 38-year-old Cecile Ham. He was 
later tracked down in central Texas after using Ham’s stolen credit cards.

There's no doubt that Harris County is the capital of capital punishment in 
Texas.

But how do the counties surrounding Harris fare? Of the seven contiguous 
counties (Montgomery, Galveston, Fort Bend, Brazoria, Liberty, Chambers and 
Waller), Montgomery County takes the cake with 16 executions since 1982.

That's compared to the 130 inmates out of Harris County who have been executed 
since that same year.

Galveston has 6 inmates who have been executed, while Fort Bend has 5 inmates, 
Brazoria has 4 and Liberty has executed 3. Chambers has 1 inmate who has been 
executed, while Waller has never sent anyone to death row.

(source: Houston Chronicle)

*************

Webb County District Attorney in pursuit of justice----An alleged killing spree 
that shook the Laredo community is still being felt a year later.



The Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz says he has decided to seek the 
death penalty against former Border Patrol agent Juan David Ortiz who is 
accused of killing 4 people.

Alaniz says the death penalty is reserved for the most heinous crimes; the type 
of crimes that are hard to fathom.

It’s also a case that garnered national attention and like all cases, his goal 
is to seek the truth and justice for the victims of these horrific crimes.

The journey to seek the truth can take longer from case to case which takes a 
lot of resources from the DA’s office to carry out a capital murder trial.

Alaniz says a case like this will have a team of 5 attorneys that are 
designated to the trial who are in charge of organizing the evidence and 
everything that is needed to present the case in court.

Because things can always change, Alaniz is in constant communication with the 
victim’s families and other law enforcement agencies on how the case will be 
developed.

The district attorney feels the decision to seek the death penalty falls 
heavily on his shoulders.

Alaniz says he takes the family members feelings, and opinions into 
consideration, but ultimately his responsibility is to the community at large.

This is not the first time that Alaniz has decided to seek the death penalty 
but he says it never gets easier.

The District Attorney’s Office is hoping to begin the jury selection process by 
the end of 2020 or early 2021.

In the meantime, Ortiz’s next hearing is set for October 8th.

(source: KGNS TV news)








NORTH CAROLINA:

Will North Carolina’s Supreme Court allow racism to remain a persistent factor 
in death penalty?



In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed 
defendants to strike the death penalty from their cases if they could show that 
racial discrimination was a factor in their prosecution. The law came as a 
response to a series of exonerations of Black people who were falsely convicted 
of crimes they did not commit by all-White or nearly all-White juries. The 
legislature took a bold step to address was what suspected to be deeply 
troubling evidence of racism infecting the death penalty—but no one knew for 
sure what evidence uncovered by the RJA would find.

In 2010, people on death row began filing RJA claims. Four had hearings, and 
the evidence uncovered was indeed stark, troubling, and clearly pointed to the 
systemic ways that racism infects capital cases in North Carolina. The four 
petitioners had death sentences reversed and were resentenced to life without 
parole (LWOP).

But in 2013, the law was repealed by the same new legislature that targeted 
Black voters with “surgical precision” in voter suppression, and the 4 
petitioners were all sent back to death row without new trials. 2 additional 
petitioners—who had uncovered evidence through the RJA but not yet had 
hearings—were also subsequently denied their day in court.

On August 26-27, we, along with 5 other legal teams and the NAACP Legal Defense 
and Educational Fund, Inc., will go before the North Carolina Supreme Court to 
fight for the rights of the 6 petitioners to have their evidence recognized and 
their death sentences overturned. The Attorney General for North Carolina will 
ask the Court to do 1 of 2 things: Sweep clear and obvious evidence of racism 
under the rug and pretend it does not exist or hold that, in 2019, it is fine 
to use trials infected with racism as the vehicle to execute Black men.

In its quest to disregard the troubling evidence of racial bias, the State will 
ask the North Carolina Supreme Court to overturn constitutional law, dating 
back to the Civil War, protecting the right to have a legally filed defense 
heard in court, regardless of whether those defenses are later repealed. North 
Carolina established this legal principle in a case that dismissed prosecution 
for multiple murders committed during the Civil War, based on a law granting 
immunity for such acts, even though the law was later repealed. That precedent 
has stood in North Carolina law for almost 150 years.

Hypocrisy often produces irony, and that is true here: A legal principle was 
established to protect confederate soldiers for the massacres of civilian 
children and men. Now, the North Carolina Supreme Court is being asked to 
ignore this principle in a case challenging discrimination against Black jurors 
at the life and death trials of persons of color. We can learn a lot by 
studying who the law is selectively applied to benefit.

Allegations made in the 6 complaints and evidence produced in the hearings 
included a prosecutor calling a defendant “a big Black bull;” a suggestion 
during jury selection that a Black defendant should have been lynched; the use 
of crime scene tape to section off the area behind the defense table, with the 
defendant’s family forced to sit in the back of the courtroom, while the White 
family of the victim sat in front behind the prosecutor; derogatory and 
demeaning interrogation of Black jurors, including questions about whether a 
juror had trouble reading and whether he had gone “straight-through” school, 
implying he may have repeated grades.

One prosecutor wrote in his notes that a Black juror with a criminal history 
was a “thug” while a White juror who trafficked in drugs was “a fine guy.” A 
Black juror was described as a “Black wino,” while a White juror with a DUI 
conviction was a “country boy, okay?”

There is evidence prosecutors were trained on how to give pre-planned responses 
to Batson objections regardless of the evidence. At least one of the 
prosecutors in the RJA cases persistently relied on this training to respond to 
Batson objections to her decisions about removing Black jurors. One had the 
audacity to read from a list of excuses and struck a Black juror for age, 
despite the fact that she had let a white juror with the same birthday remain 
immediately prior. When the judge noticed and asked her about it, she ran down 
to the next reasons on her cheat sheet.

The data corroborate all of this anecdotal evidence and prove that racial bias 
in North Carolina’s death penalty is systematic—not the work of a few isolated 
bad actors. The state’s own statistical expert conceded that the patterns of 
exclusion of Black jurors in the cases suggested racial discrimination. A 
Michigan State University study conducted in connection with the RJA examined 
the decisions of prosecutors across the state involving over 7,000 jurors, in 
173 capital trials, over 20 years. The study found that (across all time 
periods and geographic areas) race played an “overwhelming” role in jury 
selection in the state. A subsequent study, conducted by former prosecutors 
from Wake Forest Law, found the same patterns. All of this evidence is clear, 
shameful, and undeniable.

The state has continually argued that all of the evidence of blatant racism in 
all 6 cases should be ignored or that it just does not matter. Those positions 
are especially shameful in light of North Carolina’s legacy of racial terror 
and lynching. EJI calculated 123 lynchings in North Carolina between 1877 and 
1950. This legacy of executions should be a stark reminder of the role race has 
played in who is executed in North Carolina.

Sweeping this under a rug won’t work: There is no rug big enough to hide the 
stench of this evidence. More than a century of North Carolina law says you get 
your day in court even if the law is repealed. Seventy-three years of lynchings 
and evidence of extensive racial bias in the death penalty say enough is 
enough. If North Carolinians are to have any faith in their legal system, the 
Court must intervene and set this right. Our democracy depends on it.

(source: pridepublishinggroup.com)








FLORIDA----female faces death penalty

Sievers murder trial slowing down 'Killer Grandma' case----Lois Riess is facing 
a 1st-degree murder charge and the death penalty



The woman accused of killing her husband in Minnesota then killing a stranger 
on Fort Myers Beach to steal her identity was in court Thursday morning.

Lois Riess is facing a 1st-degree murder charge and the death penalty.

Riess is being represented by public defenders. In court Thursday morning, her 
attorneys noted delays in this case because of other on-going death penalty 
cases for their office. Jimmy Rodgers, one of the men accused of killing Bonita 
Springs doctor Teresa Sievers, is also facing the death penalty and is using 
the same public defenders. Sievers was murdered more than 4 years ago and the 
case has yet to go to trial. Dozens of motions continue to delay the case, but 
a trial date is expected for October 1.

The judge has set Riess' next pre-trial conference hearing in December, hoping 
to get her case moving forward.

Riess is accused of killing her husband in Minnesota last spring. Investigators 
believe she traveled south to Florida, hitting multiple casinos on the way to 
Fort Myers Beach. Once she got to Lee County, deputies said she befriended a 
woman named Pamela Hutchinson, killed her in her condo, then stole her car and 
identity.

In brand new documents released from investigators in Minnesota, detectives 
believe Riess' husband hadn't been seen in 16 days. His co-workers said they 
knew something was up after they received text messages from his phone that 
used punctuation; his friends said he didn't use punctuation in texts.

Riess told friends and family her husband had gone on a fishing trip, then was 
sick so they shouldn't bother him in the house. Really, investigators believe 
Riess shot him several times, at least once in the chest, killing him in their 
bathroom. According to the new documents, Riess covered her husband's body in a 
blanket.

The dubbed "Killer Grandma" took off to Texas and was eventually captured at a 
restaurant in South Padre Island. Detectives said the gun that was used to kill 
her husband was the same one used to kill Hutchinson. The gun was found in 
Riess' Texas hotel room.

(source: WBBH news)








MISSOURI:

IACHR Urges the United States to Stay the Execution of Russell Bucklew



The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) urges the United States 
of America to stay the execution of Russell Bucklew, which is scheduled to take 
place on October 1, 2019, in the state of Missouri, and to grant him effective 
relief. The United States is subject to the international obligations derived 
from the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the American 
Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man since it joined the OAS in 1951. 
Accordingly, the IACHR urges the United States, and in particular the state of 
Missouri, to fully respect its international human rights obligations.

On May 20, 2014, the IACHR granted precautionary measures in favor of Russell 
Bucklew, requesting that the United States refrain from executing him pending 
the Commission’s investigation of the allegations raised in his petition.

The IACHR adopted Admissibility Report No. 54/14 on July 21, 2014. On May 10, 
2018, the Commission adopted Merits Report No. 71/18 in which it concluded that 
the United States was responsible for violating Russell Bucklew’s rights to 
life, liberty and security of the person, to a fair trial, to protection from 
arbitrary arrest, and to due process of law. In that report, the Inter-American 
Commission concluded that the United States failed to provide him with 
effective access to judicial protection regarding his right to be free from 
cruel and inhuman punishment and torture in the context of the application of 
lethal injection as the method of execution and further, that the amount of 
time that he had spent on death row, over 20 years, greatly exceeded the length 
of time that international and domestic courts have characterized as cruel, 
inhuman and degrading treatment.

Russell Bucklew suffers a rare, congenital medical condition that presents a 
concrete risk of excessive suffering and pain during his execution. On April 1, 
2019, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the argument that 
Missouri’s current lethal execution protocol amounted to “cruel and unusual” 
punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, 
holding that “[t]he Eight Amendment forbids ‘cruel and unusual’ methods of 
capital punishment but does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death”, and 
finding that his defense had failed to establish the existence of an 
alternative method of execution that would reduce the suffering.

In Merits Report No. 71/18, the IACHR recommended that the United States grant 
Russell Bucklew effective relief. Taking into account its conclusions on the 
lack of an effective remedy to challenge the method of execution, the time that 
Russell Bucklew had already been held on death row, his rare medical condition 
and the significant risk, due to that condition, that his execution would cause 
excessive suffering incompatible with the American Declaration, the Commission 
recommended that his sentence be commuted, that he be transferred out of death 
row, and that the State ensure that his conditions of detention be compatible 
with his human dignity. Despite having made this recommendation in 2018, the 
State has not adopted actions to comply with it.

The Inter-American Commission reminds the State that, in carrying out the 
execution of Russell Bucklew, it would commit a grave and irreparable violation 
of the fundamental rights to life and to not receive cruel, infamous or unusual 
punishment protected by Articles I and XXVI of the American Declaration. 
Further, it would mean that the State has failed to comply with the 
recommendations of the IACHR, an action which contravenes the United States’ 
international human rights obligations as an OAS Member State under the OAS 
Charter and related instruments.

The Commission also urges the United States to comply with the non-repetition 
measures recommended in the merits report, specifically, that it should review 
its laws, procedures and practices to ensure that persons sentenced to the 
death penalty have access to effective judicial remedies to challenge the 
possible impact of the method of execution on their fundamental rights, and 
that it should adopt a moratorium on the execution of persons sentenced to 
death.

The Inter-American Commission has dealt with the death penalty as a crucial 
human rights challenge for decades. While a majority of OAS Member States has 
abolished capital punishment, a substantial minority retains it. In this 
regard, the Commission notes that the United States is currently the only 
country in the region that is carrying out executions under the death penalty. 
The Commission further notes with concern the announcement of the Federal 
Government of the United States on July 25, 2019, to resume the execution of 
federal inmates on death row. In this sense, the IACHR reiterates the 
recommendation made in its report “The Death Penalty in the Inter-American 
Human Rights System: From Restrictions to Abolition”, that States impose a 
moratorium on executions as a step toward the gradual disappearance of the 
death penalty.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the 
IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on 
Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect 
for and to defend human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to 
the OAS in this area. The Commission is composed of seven independent members 
who are elected in an individual capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who 
do not represent their countries of origin or residence.

(source: oas.org)








ARKANSAS:

Arkansas man charged with capital murder in cellmate's death



Prosecutors have filed a murder charge against the man accused of killing his 
cellmate last month while he was awaiting trial on a separate murder charge 
related to fatally shooting a woman earlier this year.

Washington County Prosecuting Attorney Matt Durrett said Thursday he filed a 
capital murder charge against Dekota James Harvey.

Arraignment is set for Monday in circuit court. Capital murder is punishable by 
either life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.

A deputy found Harvey on Aug. 27 waiting at the door of his cell in the county 
jail and Luis Cobos-Cenobio laying on his back on the floor by his bunk bed.

Kelly Cantrell, public information officer for the sheriff's office, said the 
initial indications were Cobos-Cenobio was strangled. No weapons were found in 
the cell.

Harvey, of Fayetteville, was arrested in March in connection with the shooting 
death of Elizabeth Dawson. He has pleaded not guilty to capital murder in that 
case.

(source: arkansasonline.com)

****************

Ark. death row inmate asks court for new DNA testing----The inmate was spared 
from execution 2 years ago



An Arkansas death row inmate who was spared from execution 2 years ago asked 
the state Supreme Court on Thursday to allow new DNA testing of evidence that 
his attorneys say could exonerate him.

Attorneys for convicted murderer Stacey Johnson and for the state appeared 
before the court over the testing requested of evidence from the 1993 killing 
of Carol Heath. Johnson is appealing a lower court's ruling denying the request 
for additional testing. Johnson's attorneys say there were major limitations in 
DNA testing when Johnson was convicted of Heath's murder. The items they're 
seeking to test include the rape kit and a towel found at the scene.

"All that Mr. Johnson is asking is that before the state go forward with the 
irreversible punishment of execution, that he be allowed to subject this 
evidence to precisely the kind of testing that would be used if this murder 
were committed today," Olga Akselrod, a staff attorney with the Innocence 
Project, told justices.

The state, however, argued that the DNA evidence can't outweigh other evidence 
that proves Johnson's guilt and called the request an attempt to continue 
delaying his execution.

"What (Heath's family) is entitled to is closure, and they haven't gotten that 
closure," Solicitor General Nicholas Bronni told the court.

Arkansas doesn't have any executions scheduled. The last of the state's lethal 
injection drugs expiredin January and the state has not replaced them.

Johnson was 1 of 8 inmates Arkansas sought to execute in April 2017 before the 
state's supply of a lethal injection drug expired. Johnson and 3 other inmates 
were spared by the courts. Johnson's execution was stayed so a lower court 
could hear arguments on the request for additional evidence. The Supreme 
Court's makeup hasn't changed since it halted Johnson's execution in a 4-3 
ruling.

Bronni repeatedly faced heated questioning from Justice Jo Hart, who asked 
about the state's resistance to the additional testing.

"What is it you're afraid of finding out with the testing?" she said.

Johnson's claims faced skepticism from Justice Shawn Womack, who was among the 
3 justices who opposed the inmate's stay 3 years ago. Womack questioned how 
capital cases could be resolved if the court was asked repeatedly to revisit 
them.

"How do we ever get to finality?" he said.

Johnson's case is being considered as the state awaits a ruling in a federal 
lawsuit challenging its use of the sedative midazolam in executions. A federal 
judge hasn't ruled since holding a trial in the case in May.

(source: Associated Press)








UTAH:

The Justice Files: The execution of Ron Lafferty----Utah man closer to death by 
firing squad after losing appeal



He went eye to eye with Ron Lafferty the convicted killer who is on death row.

Dr. Noel Gardner was appointed by the courts to evaluate Lafferty in 1993. But 
he continued his meetings with Lafferty over the course of several years when 
the need for a psychiatric evaluation was needed.

Gardner made his final report in 2012 and never wavered from his findings that 
Lafferty was competent to stand trial or understood the appeal process.

“I told him he was quite narcissistic and told him ‘my you’re quite a student 
and brilliant’ and he liked that,” said Dr. Gardner.

Gardner had a degree in theology and using that background clicked with 
Lafferty.

In 1984, Lafferty had a revelation that he must kill his sister-in-law, her 
child, and 2 others.

That year, he and his brother Dan carried out that order. They went into the 
home of their brother Allan in American Fork.

Allan’s wife, Brenda was brutally stabbed to death as was their baby daughter.

His brother Dan was convicted of the murders but avoided the death penalty when 
a juror held out. He was sentenced to life in prison.

After 2 trials, Ron Lafferty was sentenced to die in 1996. But over the next 
decade, he appealed on several issues including competency.

And Dr. Gardner was there to evaluate Lafferty when summoned. The psychiatrist 
tapped into Lafferty’s religious views and described them this way.

“(The views were) so idiosyncratic, unusual, odd, eccentric and extreme that I 
think it fooled a lot of experts thinking that he was seriously mentally ill,” 
said Dr. Gardner.

He was one of several psychiatrists that evaluated Lafferty on behalf of the 
courts.

Gardner found that Lafferty wasn’t suffering from mental illness but had a 
severe personality disorder.

Lafferty along with his brother was pursuing a polygamous lifestyle and 
abandoned his Latter-day Saint faith.

The brothers were now members of the School of Prophets in Utah County. Gardner 
said Lafferty’s views were pieced together from books and the pioneers.

“But that is completely different from what we see in patients with severe 
mental illness where these ideas come up from nowhere,” he said.

As for the crime itself, Gardiner claimed Lafferty implicated himself and 
understood those comments could be used against him.

He said Lafferty blamed the federal government for his troubles. He told 
Gardner that he was the “victim of an unjust system” and the government 
shouldn’t “murder” him.

“(He said) that’s proof that they are evil but he said if they’re going to do 
it, I want to be executed by firing squad and they can have the blood on their 
hands,” said Gardner.

He said that line of thinking isn’t from someone who suffers from mental 
illness.

Others who evaluated Lafferty disagreed with his conclusions but in the end, a 
federal judge found Lafferty competent.

Meanwhile, Lafferty’s appeals are nearly exhausted and many believe his days 
are numbered after his latest appeal was denied.

(source: ABC News)








CALIFORNIA:

California man who rapped about burying girlfriend charged in girlfriend's 
murder ---- Robert Anthony Camou has been charged in the death of his 
girlfriend who disappeared earlier this summer.



A California man who officials say was on video rapping about burying his 
girlfriend has been charged in the death of his girlfriend.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles County charged Robert Anthony Camou with killing his 
girlfriend, who disappeared in July and whose body has not been found, the 
district attorney's office said Wednesday.

A decision to seek the death penalty has not yet been made.

Camou, 27, of Monrovia, faces 1 count of murder with a special circumstance 
allegation of killing a witness in the death of a woman identified by the 
district attorney's office as Amanda C., 31.

Prosecutors believe that Camou killed the woman on or about July 29 while out 
on bail on an April charge of battering his girlfriend.

A video of Camou rapping about burying his girlfriend surfaced in July, NBC Los 
Angeles reported, but it was not immediately clear Wednesday night whether it 
played any role in the murder charge.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office in early August named Camou a suspect 
in the disappearance of Amanda Kathleen Custer, who was believed to have been 
taken against her will after a domestic violence incident on July 29.

The sheriff's office also said at that time that it was aware of a video 
showing Camou rapping.

(source: NBC News)

**********************

Death row inmate sentenced for 1998 Compton murders dies in San Quentin state 
prison; investigated as suicide



A man sentenced to death in 2000 for taking part in the murder of four people, 
including a Corona man, at a Compton car wash died Thursday at San Quentin 
State Prison, officials said.

The death of 48-year-old Aswad Pops is being investigated as a suicide, though 
the cause of death will not be determined until an autopsy is conducted, 
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials said in a 
statement.

On Jan. 25, 1998, Pops and his accomplice, Byron Paul Wilson, murdered the 
Compton car wash’s owner, Charles Hurd, 33, and 3 of his employees, Michael 
Hoard, 41, Shawn Potter, 20 and Jessie Dunn, 36, prison officials said.

According to a Los Angeles Times report from 1998, Hurd was a resident of 
Corona. The other 3 men were Compton residents. At the time, investigators 
believed the murders were a result of drug robbery gone wrong, the Times 
reported.

Pops was sentenced to death in April 2000 and since then has been on San 
Quentin’s death row, officials said. He was among 731 other inmates on 
California’s death row.

Since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment, 27 inmates awaiting 
execution have committed suicide, 82 inmates have died from natural causes, 
while 14 have died from other causes with one that is pending further 
investigation, according to CDCR numbers. 13 people have been executed in 
California.

In March of this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing . 
The order also withdrew the state’s lethal injection protocol and immediately 
closed the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

(source: douglasdigitaldaily.com)