Matthew Heller

Save A Warrior Group Tackles PTSD — Cohort by Cohort

Project founder Jake Clark pawned a couple of Rolexes to start the program to stem an epidemic of suicides among veterans.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller
Photo Courtesy of Save a Warrior.

MALIBU, Calif. -- At first glance, the scene unfolding at a Malibu ranch might appear to be a petting zoo for adults, as a group of men takes turns slowly leading two horses and a pony by the reins around a dusty corral. A woman in a cowboy hat orchestrates the proceedings while from outside the corral, others watch intently. But what’s happening

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Lawsuit Claims Some Schools Hostile To Native American Students

The public educational system has been discriminating against Native American students by “ignoring or actively affronting” their culture.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller
** ADVANCE FOR Mildred Quaempts, left, sings in the Sahaptin dialect of the Umatilla tribe before lunch to a headstart class at the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, March 6, 2002. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

LOS ANGELES -- The history of white settlers' contact with the aboriginal natives of Humboldt County, Calif., in the mid-19th century is as bloody as any of the wars over white colonization of the Great Plains, culminating in the Indian Island Massacre of about 100 members of the Wiyot tribe in February 1860. More than 150 years later, that

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Six Wrongfully Convicted Of 1985 Murder in Nebraska Seek Civil Rights Damages

“The only good thing I can tell you about this case is that no one was electrocuted.”

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

Almost 19 years after a 68-year-old woman was raped and murdered in her Beatrice, Neb., home, a federal jury has started hearing evidence in a civil rights case alleging law enforcement officials recklessly investigated the crime, leading to the wrongful convictions of six people. The so-called Beatrice Six — three men and three women —

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Drones: Unmanned, Armed — and Dangerous?

Domestic drones “pose a threat to privacy and civil liberties … Law enforcement has not been very transparent about what kind of data is being collected by these drones.”

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES --- To a shopkeeper in the Pakistani town of Miramshah, they are “like the angels of death. Only they know when and where they will strike.” To civil libertarians, they are a threat to our most basic rights, eyes in the sky that can peek into our most private activities. To others, they have revolutionized warfare and could do the same

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Controversy Heats Up Over Solar Project Near Historic Internment Camp Site

Manzanar internment camp was designated a National Historic Site in 1992 for its importance civil rights history in the U.S.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has not been popular in California's remote Owens Valley since it began diverting water from the Owens River a century ago, reducing the area to a dust bowl. Now it's making noise in the valley again by proposing to build a $680-million 200-megawatt solar energy plant within view of the

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California’s De-Incarceration Experiment Fuels Public Safety Fears

Federal judges said California’s prison conditions violated inmates’ constitutional rights and forced the state into a historic prisoner-release experiment.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES --It was at one of the most popular tourist destinations in Los Angeles that public safety came face-to-face with what one legal scholar has called “probably the greatest de-incarceration experiment in American history.” During a visit to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 19, Christine Calderon, 23, spotted three transients

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Calif. Grandma Continues Epic Fight For Environmental Justice

Latino families battle against pesticides and the government agencies charged with regulating their use.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES - The fields surrounding Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard, Calif., have yielded bountiful harvests of the strawberries that are the most valuable crop in Ventura County, bringing growers $691 million in revenues in 2012. They have also produced an epic legal battle that pits Latino families who live near Rio Mesa High against the

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