A police procedural reform, long advocated by TalkLeft and by a variety of organizations and concerned citizens who want to reduce the risk of mistaken accusations and convictions, continues to gain steam. The Judiciary Committee of Connecticut's General Assembly is considering a bill that would render confessions obtained in a custodial interrogation presumptively inadmissible as evidence unless the interrogation has been electronically recorded. The bill should gain support in light of a court decision that granted a new trial to a mentally disabled man whose unrecorded confession became the most powerful evidence in a murder prosecution that lacked physical evidence tying the man to the crime.

In the 1992 trial, there was no expert witness to explain the manipulative methods that detectives use to wheedle confessions. [Richard] Lapointe's attorneys were overly confident that the jurors would acquit after seeing him on the witness stand revealing his vulnerability to suggestion and his child-like desire to please authority figures.

TalkLeft wrote about the Lapointe case here. [more ...]

After seven years, the U.S. has agreed to release Yemeni Doctor Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi from Guantanamo Bay. A petition that circulated by his supporters on the internet described Dr. Batarfi this way:

Dr Batarfi is a 37 year old Yemeni orthopaedic surgeon currently held in Guantanamo Bay whose only crime would appear to be trying to treat civilian casualties in a war zone.

After his post-graduate studies in Pakistan, and inspired by the Afghan trauma victims he had dealt with, he decided to work for a non-governmental organisation to renovate a hospital in Kabul in spring 2001. With the chaos after the onset of the Afghan conflict in late 2001, he was "sold" to the US military by the Northern Alliance.

Why now? [More...]

Dancing With the Stars and 24 are on tonight.

If you're looking for something more topical, check out PBS's "expose" on Sheriff Joe Arapio. It aired Friday night and is now available for instant viewing on your computer.

One of the most controversial figures in the illegal immigration debate is Joe Arpaio, the longtime sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County, whose aggressive hard line on local crime has received national attention. But has Sheriff Arpaio, who's made the most of federally-granted authority to enforce immigration laws, crossed the line when it comes to serving and protecting his community? Some critics have accused him of racial profiling.

It's a "look at what Sheriff Arpaio was — and wasn't — doing in the name of law enforcement." I haven't seen it yet, but PBS says most of the view reaction to the show was negative.

What are you watching tonight?

DNC Chair and VA. Gov. Tim Kaine may lose some support with his signing today of legislation approving "Choose Life" license plates in Virginia.

[H]is decision could echo among women's activists who are among the most powerful financial supporters of the party.

“It is surprising that Governor Kaine would do this, but it’s all the more surprising that he would do it as chair of the DNC,” said Paulette McElwain, the president of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood.

Gov. Kaine also made this promise today: [More...]

I will bore you to tears, but this time using Robert Kuttner:

At a recent conference of the New America Foundation, economist and Obama adviser Laura Tyson, an in exchange with me, defended the administration's approach on the premise that there was no way that Congress would legislate the one to two trillion dollars in public funds that will be needed to make this rescue work. So, in Tyson's view, there was no alternative other than having Treasury contrive its own plan, using the Fed as an all purpose source of unlegislated financing.

[More...]

Here's an open thread for topics unrelated to the auto industry.

The nursing home killings in North Carolina are so sad. So are the stories of some of the residents:

[Jesse] Musser had lived at Pinelake for only six weeks, said his son-in-law, Jim Foster, 47, of Aberdeen. He said the man had Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and was blind, deaf and confined to a wheelchair. Foster said the family was now trying to figure out how to tell Musser's wife, who has dementia and lives at the same facility, that her husband is dead.

"She was upset that they didn't bring him to see her yesterday," Foster said. "I don't know how we're going to break it to her. You got a clue?"

What news are you following today?

Jed Lewison creates a straw man, acting as if the complaint about the Obama auto industry plan is that Rick Wagoner got the boot. No one cares about Rick Wagoner. The issue is about how Wall Street has gotten a free ride while President Obama says this about the auto industry stakeholders:

It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require creditors to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts. Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to once more invest in a revitalized auto industry.

President Obama has said nothing like that about Wall Street. THAT is the issue. The auto industry plan is not the problem. The free, no strings bailouts to Wall Street are the problem.

Speaking for me only

An acupuncture program in Baltimore jails has been helping 700 inmates a year curb drug addiction:

Modern science has not found solid evidence that it works. Nonetheless, the inmates claim that with acupuncture, all they crave are the meditative moments it brings. They say it soothes them and helps clear their cluttered minds to find the strength to confront their addiction.

District Judge Jamey Hueston thinks every addict should try it....Acupuncture is the key element of the Addicts Changing Together Substance Abuse Program, administered by the drug court. Beginning for women in 1993 and for men three years later, the program steers nonviolent offenders to a rigorous 45-day, behind-bars regimen in lieu of a longer prison term.

How it works: [More...]

Jake DeSantis told us what a great job he did at AIG. Apparently, there is some evidence to doubt that. Felix Salmon writes:

Tyler Durden has a scary post up, connecting banks' profitability in January and February to the fact that those were the months when AIG Financial Products was unwinding an enormous number of its contracts en masse. These trades, initiated by AIGFP, were allegedly enormously profitable for the biggest banks in the CDS market[.]

[More . . .]

A question for Brad DeLong and other defenders of the Geithner Plan - any plans to ask this - "We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to revive our economy, or do we want to punish the [auto industry]?”

Why is Wall Street immune to "sacrifice?" Why do Wall Street creditors not have to "recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts[?]"

I repeat again, I do not criticize President Obama's auto industry plan. I do vehemently criticize his free lunch Geithner Plan for Wall Street.

Speaking for me only

President Obama's statement on auto industry bailouts:

What we are asking [from the auto industry] is difficult. It will require hard choices by companies. It will require unions and workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more. It will require creditors to recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts. Only then can we ask American taxpayers who have already put up so much of their hard-earned money to once more invest in a revitalized auto industry. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) I missed President Obama's speech demanding "painful concessions" from Wall Street. I missed President Obama's condition for Wall Street bailouts that "creditors [must] recognize that they cannot hold out for the prospect of endless government bailouts." Why is President Obama being so easy on Wall Street?

Speaking for me only

I have no idea what is stopping them. but some bankers want to give the TARP money back:

There's a growing sense among some bankers that Troubled Asset Relief Program known as "TARP" has become toxic. As a result, they want to bail out of the bank bailout program. . . . [Some] bank executives complain the Treasury's program to stabilize banks during these turbulent times is actually weighing down their potential for growth.

[More....]