The Supreme Court today paved the way for more death row inmates to challenge execution by lethal injection.

In an unanimous decision, the court allowed those condemned to die to make last-minute claims that the chemicals used are too painful _ and therefore amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment.

Via ScotusBlog:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that death row inmates seeking to challenge the lethal injection method of execution may pursue the issue as a civil rights claim, a broader option than federal habeas. The ruling came in Hill v. McDonough (05-8794). While not ruling itself on the constitutionality of that execution procedure, the Court said that inmates who contend that the three-drug protocol most commonly used causes unnecessary pain and suffering may go forward with an Eighth Amendment claim under the 1867 civil rights statute, so-called Section 1983.

Durham County DA Mike Nifong won the Democratic Primary but a write-in candidate has emerged.

A Durham lawyer and county commissioner is considering a write-in election campaign to try and unseat District Attorney Mike Nifong, the prosecutor overseeing the investigation of a rape accusation involving three members of the Duke University lacrosse team.....Commissioner Lewis Cheek said he has been recruited to challenge Nifong.

Also, the New York Times has a detailed article on the Duke case and Nifong today.

It seems the Pentagon is interfering with the Guantanamo detainees' ability to send and receive legal mail, including mail to their lawyers and Congress.

The rules guiding attorney/client correspondence at Guantánamo are frustratingly vague, lawyers for the detainees say, and the processing delays are maddening. Mail routinely arrives six months after it's been sent, if it arrives at all. "For months I sent him letters and he sent me letters and they were all just impounded," Hunt says. "Now, I think my letters get through but they take their sweet time about it."

The ostensible reason for the backlog is security. "The attorney/client communications go to a secure facility, which happens to be here in Washington," Hunt says. "And they can't leave there until the government clears it and says it's not sensitive and not classified."

The lawyers sit in a room to read the letters and then have to give them back. They can't disclose the contents of the letters.

We got quite a few visitors this weekend from far right weblogs critical of my Zarqawi and Guantanamo coverage. Commenters from these sites have come over here on the attack. They insult, call other commenters and liberals names and post multiple trashy comments with the intent of dominating the discussion. They also have riled up some of TalkLeft's regular ommenters who have begun to respond in kind. I don't have the time or the interest in playing traffic cop.

Deleting individual comments takes too long. What I've done is delete all comments for Sunday (and some from Saturday) -- both those of the unwelcome visitors and the TL commenters who stepped over the line. The most insulting and chattering of the righties have been banned.

Memo to all commenters: Keep it civil and lose the hostility and the name-calling. This is my site, not yours and it's going to be run on my terms, not yours. And don't lecture me on the First Amendment. I'm not the government.

The U.S. Military runs another delay ruse by us. Just this morning, the New York Times reported:

With rumors circulating in the Iraqi news media that Mr. Zarqawi had begun to run from the house as the first bomb struck, American officials said Saturday that two military pathologists had arrived in Iraq to perform an autopsy on his body to determine the precise cause of his death. The results from the autopsy, and Mr. Zarqawi's precise location at the time of the airstrike, will be disclosed soon, an American military official said.

The autopsy is now complete but the military is not releasing it yet.

"The autopsy is completed. However, we are not releasing results yet," Maj. William Willhoite told The Associated Press. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said officials were awaiting the results of a DNA test.

Why do they need to wait for the DNA test, which will take 2 to 3 days, when Gen. Casey said on Fox News today they are 100% sure the dead man was al-Zarqawi.

We have a 100 percent match on the fingerprints, and we have a good match on scars and tattoos on the body.

There will be a status conference Monday (pfd) in the Scooter Libby trial.

On a related note, in addition to partially granting and denying Libby's motion to compel discovery on June 2, the Court issued an order on classified information. It ruled that by June 9, the Government must turn over substitutes of these classified documents:

(1) The government shall provide to the defense by June 9, 2006, the proposed substitution recounting Valerie Plame Wilson's employment history with the Central Intelligence Agency from January 1, 2002, and thereafter.

(2) The government shall provide to the defense by June 9, 2006, the proposed substitution discussing potential damage (if any) caused by the alleged disclosure
of Valerie Plame Wilson's affiliation with the Central Intelligence Agency.

(3) The government shall, as requested, provide to the defense by June 9, 2006, the true names of three individuals whose identities were redacted from classified documents previously made available to the defense, and shall identify for the
defense the specific documents and locations within those documents where those
names should be inserted.

The Saudis have released the names of two of the Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide yesterday. They are Manie bin Shaman bin Turki Al-Habardi Al-Otaibi and Yasser Talal Abdullah Yahya Al-Zahrani.

Al-Zahrani was seized and detained when he was 17 years old.

Today, a lawyer for the Saudi nationals imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay said he held United States authorities responsible for the deaths of the two Saudi prisoners. "The detainees' death reveals the mistreatment at Guantánamo and the extent human rights are breached," the lawyer, Katib al-Shimary, said in an interview with the satellite television network Al Arabiya, and monitored by Reuters.

Markos of Daily Kos was on Meet the Press today (transcript here) discussingYearly Kos which took place this weekend in Las Vegas. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Among other topics, Markos discusses why we are opposed to Joe Lieberman. It's not just because he supports the war. It's because he undermines the Democratic party. Even Hillary Clinton, who as of now clearly is not our favorite, doesn't do that. He also said that if Lieberman wins the primary, the net rooters will support him.

Markos agreed with Russert that "the blogosphere has become to liberal activists what talk radio is to conservative activists."

by TChris

The first entry in a two part series takes a look at the controversial convictions of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the killings that spawned Carter's convictions, as well as a Dylan song and a movie.

In his decision, [federal District Judge H. Lee] Sarokin uses a phrase that still rankles those on the law enforcement side of the case: "...the petitioners' convictions were predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure...."

The three Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide did so by hanging themselves with bedsheets in their cells. The AP reports:

Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes, the commander of the detention center said yesterday. ....Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found dead shortly after midnight yesterday in separate cells, said the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive them, but they failed.

"They hung themselves with fabricated nooses made out of clothes and bed sheets," Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris told reporters from the U.S. base in southeastern Cuba.

All three left suicide notes. From now on, detainees will have sheets issued to them when they go to bed at night, and they will be removed in the morning. How does this prevent them from hanging themselves after lights-out? This is a band-aid, like putting a piece of tape over a hole in a flat tire, not a solution.

The New York Times tracks the ever-changing details of al-Zarqawi's assassination.

Zarqawi, two men, two women and a young female child were killed.

At a briefing in Baghdad on Saturday, the American command's chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, reversed an earlier announcement he had made and confirmed that one of the dead was a small girl, age 5 or 6.

The general said three of the victims were men, including Mr. Zarqawi, and two were women. The general said he had no information to confirm or deny Iraqi news reports that had suggested that one of the women was Mr. Zarqawi's wife, and the girl his child. Hints of their presence, or perhaps of the presence of former tenants, were also scattered through the ruins: a rose-patterned dress, a pair of women's underwear, a leopard-print night gown, a child's shoe.

If Bush and Rumsfeld were hoping for a bump from al-Zarqawi's assassination, I hope this gives people a reality check. Three detainees at Guantanamo have committed suicide.

Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found "unresponsive and not breathing in their cells" early Saturday, according to a statement from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive the prisoners, but failed.

There will be a Pentagon briefing later this afternoon. The Navy confirms the death were suicides but says an investigation has been launched.