Whether the Bush administration, after years of vicious attacks on anyone who would dare to mention timetables for the U.S. disengagement in Iraq, is caving in to Maliki’s demands and is now itself discussing timetables, is debatable. But what is not debatable is the pains the administration is taking to avoid giving the impression that it is in fact discussing timetables.
Just examine the words and the language: a “general time horizon for meeting aspirational goals,” “goal dates for transition of responsibilities,” They even resurrected “aspirational goals.” (It must have taken a lot of inspirational neocons to come up with this latest cliché)
This language gets about as convoluted and, pardon the expression, as tortuous as the language Bush and his minions have used and continue to use to both justify and deny that the United States of America uses torture: “Enhanced interrogation techniques,” “alternative interrogation methods,” “coercive interrogation methods,” “fairly robust interrogation program,” and this best-selling one:
An act that “is equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
But, don’t worry, “We don’t torture.”
While we are on the subject of torture, it is “aspirational” to revisit President Bush’s statement of June 26, 2003, on the occasion of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (Remember, this was before the world saw the images of Abu Ghraib, and before we knew about “rendition,” waterboarding, etc.):
Statement by the President
United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
Today, on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the United States declares its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world. Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.
Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.
Notorious human rights abusers, including, among others, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Zimbabwe, have long sought to shield their abuses from the eyes of the world by staging elaborate deceptions and denying access to international human rights monitors. Until recently, Saddam Hussein used similar means to hide the crimes of his regime. With Iraq’s liberation, the world is only now learning the enormity of the dictator’s three decades of victimization of the Iraqi people. Across the country, evidence of Baathist atrocities is mounting, including scores of mass graves containing the remains of thousands of men, women, and children and torture chambers hidden inside palaces and ministries. The most compelling evidence of all lies in the stories told by torture survivors, who are recounting a vast array of sadistic acts perpetrated against the innocent. Their testimony reminds us of their great courage in outlasting one of history’s most brutal regimes, and it reminds us that similar cruelties are taking place behind the closed doors of other prison states.
The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy. I further urge governments to join America and others in supporting torture victims’ treatment centers, contributing to the UN Fund for the Victims of Torture, and supporting the efforts of non-governmental organizations to end torture and assist its victims.
No people, no matter where they reside, should have to live in fear of their own government. Nowhere should the midnight knock foreshadow a nightmare of state-commissioned crime. The suffering of torture victims must end, and the United States calls on all governments to assume this great mission.
This time, the terror watch list has picked up Clinton-era assistant attorney general, Jim Robinson. He is on this list despite having a recently renewed set of security clearances. It’s ok for him to have access to nuclear secrets, but not to get on an airplane without some serious extra hassle. He’s been quoted several places:
I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it. But I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced.
While Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the Terrorist Screening Center, says there are only about 400,000 people on that list — and most of them are foreigners — other sources disagree. Back in April, there were estimated to be 700,000 names on that list, last October it was estimated at over 860,000, and today the ACLU thinks the list probably tops 1,000,000. That’s one million. One out of every 304 Americans — minimum, since the list only includes names rather than unique identifiers. Even if the list does serve its intended purpose, there are too many names on it to be truly efficient.
So why is it that we only hear about prominent critics of the way the Global War on Terror is waged, and prominent Democrats mistakenly ending up on this list? Why is it we never hear about Republicans like, say, Larry Craig ending up on the list? He at least is accused of doing something questionable in an airport.
He is refusing to testify before Congress about Bush crimes but he just won’t shut up in the Wall Street Journal about how Barack Obama is using his political genius for the ‘08 election.
Citing a letter from the Bush Justice Department, Karl Rove’s lawyer claims he is “constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony” but is willing to grant an “informal interview” or answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Bush’s Brain is accused of arranging.
But Rove is showing no such reticence in the Journal claiming that “the Obama for President effort has cribbed an awful lot from the Bush-Cheney playbooks of 2000 and 2004.”
On closer inspection, the “awful lot” turns out to be the nuts and bolts of modern electioneering, although Rove insists that “by setting a world indoor record for jettisoning past positions, Mr. Obama may be risking his reputation for truthfulness. A candidate’s credibility, once lost, is very hard to restore, regardless of how fine an organization he has built.”
Lost credibility is a subject Rove knows inside out and, if the Judiciary Committee can make its subpoenas hold up in court, he will get ample opportunity to expatiate on it under oath, not for pay by Fox News and the Journal, but under penalty for perjury.
Meanwhile, Obama and the rest of us may be excused for not wanting to hear the brilliant insights of the man who made the White House a cesspool of lies and deception.
After his disgraceful tenure as U.S. Attorney General and his humiliating resignation, I did not expect to hear from Alberto Gonzales for at least the number of years John McCain says we will be in Iraq.
But, lo-and-behold, on July 2, Alberto Gonzales published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. That alone is surprising. But what is even more remarkable is the subject of his piece.
In “What Latinos want from their president,” the disgraced former Attorney General, a Latino, has the audacity to purport to speak for the Latino community in the U.S. and to offer advice to the presidential candidates on how to court, attract and capture the Latino vote.
In his piece, Gonzales says
Pew’s numbers now show that Latino voters are heading back into the Democratic fold, but the message in these voting patterns and in the demographic projections is that neither party can afford to take the Latino vote for granted.
What a condescending piece of advice from a person who took the American people, the Constitution, the law, etc., for granted, and worse.
When discussing the issues that “resonate” with Latinos, Gonzales says:
Among them, of course, is immigration. Latino support will swing to the political party that has the courage and fortitude to put forward a specific immigration solution that is effective and efficient in securing our borders, that supports the economic interests of the nation and that is compassionate in a way that is consistent with the character of a nation of immigrants.
What did you do, Mr. Gonzales, to put forward or champion a “specific immigration solution” during your tenure?
And
…although we know that America strives to be a fair country, the harsh reality is we are not one nation with liberty and justice for all. And yet equal opportunity — to a job, to capital and to credit — is a cornerstone of American success. The promise of equal opportunity is what drew our parents and grandparents and what still draws immigrants to the U.S., and it is what firmly knits them into the country once they are citizens.
“The harsh reality is we are not one nation with liberty and justice for all.”? As the people’s lawyer, this is one area you could have really helped improve, Mr. Gonzales. Instead we got illegal, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens and other horrors.
“…equal opportunity — to a job”? How about the eight fired U.S. attorneys, including one of your own, David Iglesias.
Now, some may call this “reverse stereotyping,” but it is Mr. Gonzales himself who puts his Latino heritage at play when he says, “We must also consider the divide between the majority from another group, one that I happen to belong to: Latinos.” By the way, I am a Latino, too.
A letter to the editor writer in today’s LA Times, Julio Zamarripa, perhaps says it best:
I was certainly hoping never to hear from Gonzales again; however, since he decided to appoint himself as some kind of a spokesman for the Latino community, I feel the former attorney general needs help on his convenient lack of recollection about some important issues that were intrinsic to his duties as the highest law enforcement official in the land.
He writes that Latinos share the common prayer, “Just give me a chance to succeed.” Does he not remember that his actions and reckless disregard for the law denied countless people the “chance to succeed”?
During his watch, the scandal of the political firing of 11 U.S. attorneys reached all the way to Congress, where Gonzales demonstrated contempt for the very laws he had taken an oath to uphold. He became an embarrassment to the entire nation. His lack of integrity hardly gives him moral authority to speak on behalf of any racial, political or religious group.
A decision by Georgia legislators to relax the state’s gun laws has led to a dispute over whether people can legally carry concealed firearms in the nation’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International.
A Georgia gun rights group filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Atlanta on Tuesday after airport officials said they would continue to enforce a ban on concealed weapons in the terminal despite the changes to the state law. The changes, which were approved by the Georgia legislature in the spring and took effect on Tuesday, relax the state’s prohibition on carrying weapons on public transportation and in some other areas, including restaurants serving alcohol.
“This is a matter of national significance,” Mayor Shirley Franklin told reporters at a news conference. Permitting guns inside an airport, even weapons carried by permit holders, would create an unsafe environment that “would endanger millions of people,” the mayor said.
Franklin vowed Tuesday to lobby Congress and federal officials to mandate that any public facility receiving federal money be declared a “gun-free zone.” That would affect airports nationwide.
The Georgia state law allowing civilians to carry concealed weapons on public transit, state parks, and restaurants has been highly controversial.
Still last week the Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle announced a new committee led by pro-National Rifle Association senators to study the state’s “complex firearms laws and recommend new legislation for the 2009 session.”
According to the resolution creating the study committee, it will “examine Georgia’s firearms law and the way these laws are applied in our state to ensure that the constitutional right to bear arms and the right to self-defense are properly protected.”
Following up on yesterday’s post about the Georgia Supreme Court considering proportionality in a sex offender case, there were some hopeful signs in the courtroom yesterday.
The request was unusual in that it was made by both the prosecutor who wants the life sentence upheld as well as the public defender who contends the sentence is cruel and unusual punishment.
At issue is a mandatory life sentence imposed in December on Cedric Bradshaw in Bulloch County for failing to register as a sex offender for the second time…
[Public defender Robert L.] Persse asked the justices to look to their decision in the Genarlow Wilson case. In October, the justices ruled Wilson’s 10-year prison sentence was unconstitutional. Wilson was given the sentence in Douglas County for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
If the state Supreme Court follows the same reasoning it used in overturning that sentence, it should throw out Bradshaw’s life sentence as well, Persse said…
But Assistant District Attorney W. Scott Brannen told the justices that the Wilson decision was handed down after the Legislature changed the law. Lawmakers lessened the sentence for such a crime from a 10-year prison sentence to no more than one year in custody.
Brannen argued that in this case the legislative intent was to increase prison time for a second offense. In 2006, the prosecutor noted, lawmakers increased the sentence for failing to register for the second time from three years in prison to life.
The Legislature’s action reflected the will of the community and should be given great deference, Brannen said…
But Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears asked whether legislative intent should always carry the day. “What if the Legislature had said of this crime, ‘We give the death penalty’?” she asked…
Justice Carol Hunstein also expressed concern the law makes no distinctions between “fixated pedophiles and teenagers” convicted of sex offenses. The court is expected to issue its decision in the coming months.
The Supreme Court looked at death penalty as deterrent arguments before ruling to reaffirm its constitutionality in Baze v. Rees this term. The opinion [pdf] cited research by both Cass R. Sunstein (arguing that the data points to deterrence) and Justin Wolfers (no deterrence).
As two of the supposed flag bearers for the competing views cited by the court, Sunstein and I thought it worth poring over the data to see what we agree on. It turns out there’s a lot of agreement between us:
“In short, the best reading of the accumulated data is that they do not establish a deterrent effect of the death penalty.”
To support their competing conclusions on the legal issue, different members of the court invoked work by each of us on the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Unfortunately, they misread the evidence.
Justice John Paul Stevens cited recent research by Wolfers (with co-author John Donohue) to justify the claim that “there remains no reliable statistical evidence that capital punishment in fact deters potential offenders.” Justice Antonin Scalia cited a suggestion by Sunstein (with co-author Adrian Vermeule) that “a significant body of recent evidence” shows “that capital punishment may well have a deterrent effect, possibly a quite powerful one.”
What does the evidence actually say?
After a very interesting review their conclusion is… inconclusive:
The number of homicides is so large, and varies so much year to year, that it is impossible to disentangle the effects of execution policy from other changes affecting murder rates. Moreover, execution policy doesn’t change often or much. Just as a laboratory scientist with too few experimental subjects cannot draw strong conclusions, the best we can say is that homicide rates are not closely associated with capital punishment. On the basis of existing evidence, it is especially hard to justify claims about causality.
Justice Stevens argues, “In the absence of such evidence, deterrence cannot serve as a sufficient penological justification for this uniquely severe and irrevocable punishment.” Perhaps. But the absence of evidence of deterrence should not be confused with evidence of absence.
Why are we talking deterrence anyway?
A prominent line of reasoning, endorsed by several justices, holds that if capital punishment fails to deter crime, it serves no useful purpose and hence is cruel and unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment. This reasoning tracks public debate as well. While some favor the death penalty on retributive grounds, many others (including President Bush) argue that the only sound reason for capital punishment is to deter murder.
We concur with Scalia that if a strong deterrent effect could be demonstrated, a plausible argument could be made on behalf of executions. But what if the evidence is inconclusive?
We are not sure how to answer that question. But as executions resume, the debates over the death penalty should not be distorted by a misunderstanding of what the evidence actually shows.
As most of you know the Supreme Court has been fairly busy the last few days handing down a series of rulings. I had hoped to post a little of my very amateur legal comments on the decisions but have been somewhat swamped by work lately so I haven’t had a chance to post until now.
Since it just came down today I thought I would start with the Heller decision (more properly District of Columbia v. Heller). This was another 5-4 ruling with the court liberals (Breyer, Ginsberg, Stevens and Souter) on one side and the court conservatives (Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Roberts) on the other. As usual middle justice Anthony Kennedy provided the swing vote.
In this case he swung to the conservative side in helping to strike down the District of Columbia gun ban which had been in place since 1976. The suit was brought by Dick Heller, a security guard who was denied his application to keep a gun at his home in the District. Six others also joined as plaintiffs but Heller is the name we will remember.
In striking down the law, Justice Scalia stated that the basic right for individuals to keep and bear arms for self protection is protected by the 2nd Amendment. He rejected the argument by supporters of the law that the words ‘well regulated militia’ in the amendment meant that the right was only connected to military service.
His opinion goes into great detail, breaking down the words of the amendment part by part to support the position that the purpose is to protect gun ownership rights by individuals and that since the purpose of the right is, at least in part, to defend people against an oppressive government it would be illogical to then assume the right could only be exercised through the government (IE a formal government militia).
He also points out that at the time the amendment was adopted that militia had a much looser meaning, applying simply to the concept that the men of a given community would be expected to come to the defense of the citizenry in case of emergency, such as attacks by Natives.
The dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens takes a narrower view, interpreting the term militia in a more modern formal sense, saying that it applies only to legally recognized organizations such as the National Guard or a State (ie government) organized body.
Regardless of my personal views on the merits or flaws of private gun ownership, I would tend to side with Scalia on this debate. As he points out it would be ridiculous to say that on the one hand the 2nd amendment right is there to protect against an intrusive government but then to say that the only way to exercise that right is with government permission.
Of course this is just a cursory review of the opinions and I would urge you all to go to the various web sites to read it for yourself, I will be offering a more detailed analysis this weekend.
However it is also worth noting that the ruling really does not change that much. The DC law was pretty much an absolute ban on gun ownership, about as restrictive as you can get. The majority opinion makes it clear that they do NOT intend to strike down any gun restrictions, only ones as absolute as the DC law.
The court has previously affirmed laws that required gun licenses or waiting periods, as well as banning felons or the mentally ill from owning guns. They have also supported laws that restricted gun possession at schools or other public buildings. The ruling makes it clear that these positions still stand.
So if you have a local law that requires applications, permits, waiting periods and the like, it is unlikely anything will change. Guns will not be carried into schools or courtrooms, nor will the unstable be allowed to own them.
So as is often the case, the actual impact of the ruling is not nearly as broad as the hype suggests, though it is clearly a major statement of 2nd amendment rights.
If you missed my co-blogger The Talking Dog’s interview with attorney Rebecca Dick of the Washington, D.C. office of Dechert, LLP, who is representing a number of Afghan nationals currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I urge you to go back and read it.
Among the passages that struck me… We now know well how the Bush administration sought to redefine torture. Well it turns out that it has redefined solitary confinement, too:
The Talking DogYou have been quoted recently observing that the current regime of near total isolation in which most of the Guantanamo detainees are now being held has contributed to a deterioration in their mental health. To what extent have you observed this with your own clients, and what, if anything, has the government said in response when you have raised these issues?
Rebecca Dick: All clients have become more depressed in solitary. One told me, “I look alive, but actually I’m dead.” Some also become somewhat paranoid and at the same time, intellectually paralyzed, unable to make even small decisions. I meet with them every 3-4 months, and each time I see further deterioration.
The government has not responded directly to complaints about solitary confinement. Its public tone has shifted, however, from defending solitary as the only way to handle “the worst of the worst,” to suggesting that the prisoners aren’t really in solitary after all. One official actually said the prisoners are just in “single-occupancy cells.” He neglected to mention that the prisoners don’t get out of these cells very much, and, when they do, don’t always see anyone else who speaks their language.
Something is happening, clearly. The question is what. The caveats against drawing any hard conclusions at this stage are obvious. For one thing, the term is functionally only half over, with 35 cases down and 32 to come. And it is common for the hardest-fought decisions to come at the very end. The District of Columbia gun control case, the latest case on the rights of the Guantánamo detainees and a case on whether the death penalty is a constitutional punishment for raping a child are yet to be decided.
Still, there is a clear pattern in the cases the court has already decided this term. The court upheld Kentucky’s method of execution by lethal injection by a vote of 7 to 2. It upheld Indiana’s law requiring photo identification at the polls by a vote of 6 to 3. The justices voted 7 to 2 on Monday to uphold the latest federal effort to curb trade in child pornography.
All were major cases, all plausible candidates for 5-to-4 outcomes. All were government victories, hardly surprising coming from a conservative court. But even Justice John Paul Stevens, the leader of the court’s beleaguered liberal bloc, voted with the majority in all three cases. The surprise was that the government side won each so handily.
It would be too simplistic an explanation to say that the liberal justices, at least some of them, have simply given up. Something deeper seems to be at work. Each of those three cases might have received a harder-edged, more conclusively conservative treatment at the hands of the same five-member majority that controlled the last term.
She notes three areas that may have something to do with it:
- Political scientists have long observed an “election effect” which results in more consensus on the court.
- The conservative justices may have been taken aback by the public response to last term’s Ledbetter case, which placed a tight time limit on an employee’s ability to file a pay discrimination claim.
- And, perhaps most interestingly, she says that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s early claims that he would seek consensus and lead in a modest judicial voice have been called into question by liberals and conservatives alike.
Today, Kansas is a leader in a spreading national effort to make parole more effective and useful — to reduce violations and reincarcerations as it protects the public and seeks to help more offenders go straight. Mr. Kemp’s parole officer is keeping close tabs on him, but instead of sending him for a punitive stretch behind bars, he required Mr. Kemp to attend a substance-abuse program, made sure he had a stable home with a relative and helped him get a job with a construction company.
A similar transformation of the parole system has begun in several states including Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Texas. It has been prompted in part by financial concerns: more than one-third of all prison admissions are for parole violations, helping to drive an unsustainable surge in prison-building.
Conventional parole — monitoring parolees to see if a violation occurs — does not work. The idea is to work with offenders to prevent them from violating their conditions of release.
In a sharp break with tradition, here and in some other states, parole agencies are hiring officers with backgrounds in social work rather than law enforcement. Parole officers are partnering with re-entry case workers who help prepare prisoners for society with group therapy and housing and job assistance. They start meeting prisoners well before their release, visit their families and may even drive them to a job interview. […]
The changes, introduced over the last few years, are having measurable success, Mr. Werholtz said.
In Kansas in 2003, he said, an average of 203 parolees were returned to prison each month. By last year the number dropped to 103 a month. This could simply mean that those violating parole were left unpunished. But the number of convictions for new crimes by parolees has also declined; in the late 1990s, the number of people on parole with new convictions averaged 424 a year; in the last three years, it was down to 280 despite greater overall numbers under supervision.
Money talks — because of the changes the state has been able to put off costly prison construction plans. Those who work in the prison system knoware learning what works. The job is to get the public and the politicians to understand.
First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.
More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency’s computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch’s home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.
The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation — a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.
Bloch was a controversial Bush appointee from the start. NPR:
One of Bloch’s first official actions was to refuse to investigate any claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. When the news of his refusal was leaked to the press, career employees in his office say, Bloch blamed them for the leak. He retaliated, the employees said, by creating a new field office in Detroit and forcing them either to accept assignments there or resign.
The Washington Blade has more on his anti-gay record:
A high-level gay employee at the U.S. Office of Special Council was among seven OSC employees that received termination notices in 2005 after refusing to be transferred to distant cities in a staff shakeup that critics called a purge of employees considered disloyal to Bloch.
A second gay employee resigned to take a job outside OSC rather than accept the transfer ordered by Bloch, according to sources familiar with OSC.
Sources familiar with the agency said Bloch targeted a total of 12 employees — including the only two known gay staffers — for involuntary transfers, in part, because they disagreed with his decision to curtail OSC’s role in investigating and adjudicating complaints of employment discrimination against gay federal workers.
NPR’s sources say a grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas for several OSC employees, including Bloch, and that his home was also searched:
In addition to concerns about obstruction of justice, investigators are also looking into whether Bloch violated the Hatch Act, a congressional mandate that prohibits employees from using their offices for partisan political purposes.
Bloch has admitted to hiring Geeks on Call — a computer servicing company — to purge his computer and two of his deputies’ computers, sources said. But he said the computers contained a virus, which necessitated a purge. Investigators are looking into whether the purge was meant to destroy evidence related to the current investigation.
Reflecting some more on James Woodard, the man profiled last night on 60 Minutes who was released last week after serving 27 years and four months, the longest of any inmate in the nation to be cleared with the help of DNA…
The last time I quoted Mount Holyoke College criminology professor Richard Moran about malicious prosecution was when I was all fired up about Kennedy Brewer, the Mississippi man freed from Death Row after 15 years. The DNA showed that Brewer didn’t murder his girlfriend but he was still held in jail several additional years as prosecutors decided whether to retry him.
My recently completed study of the 124 exonerations of death row inmates in America from 1973 to 2007 indicated that 80, or about two-thirds, of their so-called wrongful convictions resulted not from good-faith mistakes or errors but from intentional, willful, malicious prosecutions by criminal justice personnel. (There were four cases in which a determination could not be made one way or another.)
Yet too often this behavior is not singled out and identified for what it is. When a prosecutor puts a witness on the stand whom he knows to be lying, or fails to turn over evidence favorable to the defense, or when a police officer manufactures or destroys evidence to further the likelihood of a conviction, then it is deceptive to term these conscious violations of the law — all of which I found in my research — as merely mistakes or errors.
Mistakes are good-faith errors — like taking the wrong exit off the highway, or dialing the wrong telephone number. There is no malice behind them. However, when officers of the court conspire to convict a defendant of first-degree murder and send him to death row, they are doing much more than making an innocent mistake or error. They are breaking the law.
It’s time we do something about it!In Dallas they’re doing something about it!
“We have a responsibility to go back and right the wrongs of the past and free the innocent,” [Dallas County District Attorney Craig] Watkins tells Pelley.
“You know, some people say that you’re wasting time and money that you’re looking back at these old cases when you’re sitting in the middle of the city that has the highest crime rate in the nation,” Pelley remarks.
“You know, I disagree with that,” Watkins says. “The job of the district attorney is to seek justice. And when justice has failed, then we have to fix it.”
James Woodard spent 27 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. He was released last week as a result of DNA evidence gathered through an unprecedented cooperative effort between Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, a Democrat and the first black DA in the history of Texas, and the Texas Innocence Project.
Together they re-examined hundreds of cases and have freed 17 Texas inmates so far — their effort still has 250 more cases to review. Last year NPR’s Morning Edition profiled DA Watkins. Last night 60 Minutes did a segment on the DA and the Innocence Project that featured the story of James Woodard. Convicted in the 1981 murder of his girlfriend, Woodard served 27 years and four months, the longest of any inmate in the nation to be cleared with the help of DNA.
Woodard had always maintained his innocence, he says, including every one of the 12 times he came up for parole:
“They always told me, as long as you deny your guilt its saying something about you, you know you are not willing to own up to your deed. And we gonna deny you,” Woodard says.
But Woodard refused to admit guilt. “I wasn’t guilty,” he says.
“You chose truth over freedom,” Pelley remarks.
“I mean, a man has to stand for something,” Woodard says.
Jeralyn at Talk Left called it “one of the most moving segments ‘60 Minutes’ has ever done” and points to a summit on the wrongfully convicted in the Texas Senate on May 8.
A Georgia resident, I am reminded of the case of convicted “cop killer” Troy Anthony Davis who sits on death row here despite the recantations of seven witnesses who testified against him, despite the fact that no murder weapon was ever found and no physical evidence linked him to the crime, and despite the fact that he has maintained his innocence throughout.
RELATED: 60 Minutes was at the top of its game last night. Crooks & Liars and Think Progress both applaud the What Really Happened to Pat Tillman? segment. Said Pat’s mother Mary Tillman, “this isn’t about us. It’s about what they’ve done to the public. This was a public deception.”
The Austin American-Statesman is reporting a white secret service agent has been placed on leave after an African American employee reported finding a noose hanging at the service’s main training facility outside Washington D.C.
Making matters worse:
The alleged incident happened as U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is expected to decide next month whether to sanction the service for failing to turn over evidence in a long-running lawsuit alleging that the service created a racially hostile atmosphere that tolerated discrimination.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Atlanta native Reginald G. Moore, alleges that the Secret Service routinely discriminates against black agents seeking promotion in favor of white agents who scored lower on promotional exams.
Nearly 60 black agents have submitted sworn statements to the court in support of the lawsuit’s allegations.
Robinson has already sanctioned the service three times since the discovery process of the lawsuit began 3 1/2 years ago.
Via Joe Sudbay (DC) at AMERICAblog, “We’re supposed to believe the Secret Service is the best of the best when it comes to law enforcement. Instead, it sounds like it’s rampant with racism.”
April 13th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Once he was the nation’s Attorney General, appointed — and constantly protected and defended by — President George Bush. But he is considered by some to have been one of the worst Attorney Generals in recent history — and now Alberto Gonzales is having a hard time finding a job at a law firm.
Maybe not yet — but the New York Times reports that Gonzales is finding the response to his resume has not been enthusiastic:
Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.
He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.
A longtime loyalist to George W. Bush dating to their years together in Texas, Mr. Gonzales was once widely viewed as a strong candidate to be the first Hispanic-American nominated one day to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he carried an impressive personal story as the child of poor Mexican immigrants.
Despite those credentials, he left office last August with a frayed reputation over his role in the dismissal of several federal prosecutors and the truthfulness of his testimony about a secret eavesdropping program. He has had no full-time job since his resignation, and his principal income has come from giving a handful of talks at colleges and before private business groups.
“Frayed,” indeed. Any prospective employer from Mars who did not know who Gonzales is could do a Google search about his legacy and not be impressed by this,this,this, this,this,this or this.
But has there been a new development that won’t improve his legacy but will perhaps end even the remaining half-ounce of doubt about his role in “enhanced interrogation techniques” (the phrase used for “torture” by those defending the administration who apparently also like the phrase “pre-owned cars” instead of “used cars.”) and why he played the role.
There’s certainly an argument that we get the government we deserve. It’s just that I feel that I personally deserve better.
About the best we can say about Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s testimony Wednesday in the Senate is that he was no Alberto Gonzales, with the frequent memory lapses and possibly intentional misstatements.
But that is a very low bar.(New York Times)
It certainly is. Dahlia Lithwick snarks, "Mukasey is only willing to make and defend his decisions without explaining them. Still, he is very convincing in asserting that even though his decision is secret and its rationale is secret, and all future applications are secret, he is nevertheless confident that it’s the right decision." (Slate) Isn’t this the conduct we’ve come to expect and take for granted whenever a Bush administration official is asked to demonstrate accountability to the public?:
Yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, featuring day-long testimony from Attorney General Michael Mukasey, was extraordinary foronly one reason: for our country, what happened in the hearing is now completely ordinary….[Mukasey] is, ideologically,…as much of a loyal adherent to the Bush/Cheney extremist worldview as Gonzales ever was.
Mukasey explicitly embraces the most extreme theories of presidential omnipotence and lawlessness and displays as much Cheney-ite contempt for the notion of Congressional oversight as the Vice President himself. He repeatedly endorsed patently illegal behavior — including torture — and refused even to pretend that he cared what the Senate thought about any of it. He even told Republican Senators that they have no right to pass a whistleblower law allowing federal employees who learn of lawbreaking to inform Congress about it, because such a law would infringe on the President’s constitutional powers. In Mukasey’s worldview, the President has unlimited power and
Congress has none. (Salon: Greenwald; links in original)
An op-ed in The New York Times suggests that the American people "deserve better from their highest law-enforcement official."(New York Times) I wonder if we do. If so, we clearly haven’t done an effective job of conveying this to our elected representatives. Read the rest of this entry »
Major hattip to TMV co-blogger, Holly in Cincinnati/Holly Robinson for the heads up that someone’s persuaded Canada that the U.S. and Israel are not countries that might potentially torture or abuse prisoners. The original TMV post on the topic is here.
Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.
Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.
Of course, the factual questions still remain: what methods of interrogation are used and do they or don’t they constitute torture or abuse? As most people know, in regard to pretty much anything - poverty, education, quality of life - being on a list often has no real meaning beyond the very specific methodologies used by the list-maker.
Do you agree with the inclusion or the exclusion of the U.S. and/or Israel from the Canadian Foreign Ministry’s torture awareness manual?
A training manual for Canadian diplomats lists the United States among countries that potentially torture or abuse prisoners.
The manual is an internal document of the Department of Foreign Affairs. A spokesman for the foreign minister confirmed the contents of the manual after news reports about it circulated on Thursday.
[snip]
The manual, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, is used for training diplomats in how to protect Canadians detained by foreign governments from torture and how to handle suspicions that inmates are abused.
Any guesses on how long it will be before the PowerPoint slides make it onto the Internet?
According to the Times, other countries on the list include Israel, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and China. Strange bedfellows.
So - should we or shouldn’t we be on such a list? Well, according to this BBC report, the document includes, “forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under the ‘definition of torture.’”
While I can chide and say that, as an overachieving multi-tasker, I don’t see isolation as torture for me, in the context of how one country treats its POWs? I’m sure we’re not talking the same kind of isolation offered or achieved.
Where do we draw the line? Are we allowed to be hypocrites in the name of security?
Here’s more context as to why the Canadian Foreign Ministry felt compelled to produce the manual and training in the first place.
