by TChris

Orlando Bosquette didn't bust out of prison to chase after a one armed man, but he played the role of The Fugitive for about a decade after he was sentenced to serve 65 years for a rape he didn't commit. Bosquette was captured in 1995, ten years after his escape, but by that time, DNA technology had improved and (with the help of Nina Morrison of New York's Innocence Project) Bosquette was able to have the rape evidence tested. Based on the results, the chief prosecutor for the area that includes the Florida Keys agrees that Bosquette is innocent, and has moved to vacate Bosquette's conviction.

Unfortunately, Bosquette's freedom won't be easily restored. Bosquette borrowed a number of identities during his fugitive years and admitted to crimes that others had committed to protect his true identity. Immigration authorities are holding those admissions against Bosquette, and he faces possible deportation.

by TChris

Among a dozen criminal court judges in New Orleans, one so far has had the courage to stand up for the Constitution. Speedy trials are impossible in a city that can't get lawyers to indigent defendants, leaving more than a thousand jail inmates with no trial date, no lawyer, and no immediate hope of having their day in court. The presumption of innocence is a hollow promise to those who are jailed indefinitely as they wait for the system to fulfill its obligation to provide them with counsel.

Judge Arthur Hunter recognizes that enough is enough.

And so Judge Hunter, 46, a former New Orleans police officer, is moving to let some of the defendants without lawyers out of jail. He has suspended prosecutions in most cases involving public defenders. And, alone among a dozen criminal court judges, he has granted a petition to free a prisoner facing serious charges without counsel, and is considering others.

by TChris

Electronic information identifying every veteran discharged since 1975 has been stolen. If you're in that group, you should be aware of what was taken.

The data included names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth for the military veterans and some spouses, the department said, although there had as yet been no indication it had been used for identity theft.

The data was stolen from the residence of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee who violated a Department policy by bringing the information home.

I don't know what it is about Tuesdays that make me unavailable to blog. It's usually work, but why Tuesdays? It needn't matter to you, as I put up the open thread with no subject limitations. So, go for it, whats' on your mind?

Durham County DA Mike Nifong has hinted for over a month that a toxicology report may show the accuser in the Duke Lacrosse players' case ingested a date-rape type drug.

When the case first broke in the press, Prosecutor Mike Nifong, a white
man who is running for election in a racially mixed county, hinted to
Newsweek that blood and urine tests of the woman would reveal the presence
of a date- rape drug.

Last week, the DA turned over more than 1,200 pages of discovery. Guess what? No toxicology report was included.

Unbelievable.

U.S. warplanes hunting Taliban fighters bombed a religious school and mud-brick homes in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing dozens of suspected militants and 17 civilians in one of the deadliest strikes since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Pickup trucks ferried wounded villagers to a hospital in nearby Kandahar city. One woman, cradling her injured baby, recounted seeing "dead people everywhere" after the nighttime attack.

Most of the civilians killed were women and children.

Arianna's there, and she says so.

....even with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Penelope Cruz, Jamie Foxx, and Halle Berry here for the film festival, the hottest star in town is Al Gore. In Cannes for the European premiere of his powerful global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore has been surrounded by adoring crowds and deluged with interview requests. He told me that he gave 23 back-to-back-to-back interviews on Sunday, Hollywood junket-style (all on only one hour's sleep), and had another 23 scheduled for Monday.

Even though Gore has said he's not running:

MSNBC reporter David Shuster said on Hardball tonight. Crooks and Liars has the video:

Rove's legal team and former prosecutors tracking the investigation expect Patrick Fitzgerald to announce a decision at any time.

Rove's legal team tells me differently. Rove spokesman Mark Corallo told me a few minutes ago that as they have been saying for weeks, the timing is still unknown and there is nothing new to suggest it will be tomorrow or even this week. In fact, "we have no expectation on timing anymore. "

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, earlier today confirmed to me that "there has never been any discussion of any plea under any circumstances whatsoever." He added, "as a defense lawyer, you'll understand that if a prosecutor hasn't figured out whether or not he thinks a charge is appropriate, plea discussions are a bit premature."

Wired Magazine today published the documents of whistleblower Mark Klein, the chief witness for EFF in its suit against AT&T for furnishing customer records to the NSA.

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released. Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein -- information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker has a new column today on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

"This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order," a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration's goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. "The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence," the former official said.

The Cato Institute has published a report, Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush. You can read it online or they will mail you a free copy. My copy came in the mail last week, and I highly recommend it. It's eminently readable, in the format of a magazine. It addresses everything from the torture memos to searches and seizures, from wiretapping to habeas corpus.

Here's the conclusion:

by TChris

The latest numbers in Prison Nation reveal a reliance on incarceration that continues unabated.

Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

As always, black men are disproportionately incarcerated. As usual, red states lead the way.

In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.