by TChris

The winner of the 2006 American Judicature Society's Herbert Harley Award is Bryan Stevenson.

John Carroll, dean of the Cumberland School of Law, nominated Stevenson for the award. "His efforts have brought reform in the case law, reforms in the criminal justice system in this state and have saved countless lives," he said in a press release. He said Stevenson and his colleagues have helped get 20 Alabama prisoners off death row.

by TChris

Thanks to Adam Liptak for calling attention to an underreported story and an underappreciated problem.

Almost every encounter with the criminal justice system these days can give rise to a fee. There are application fees and co-payments for public defenders. Sentences include court costs, restitution and contributions to various funds. In Washington State, people convicted of certain crimes are also charged $100 so their DNA can be put in a database. ...

The sums raised by these ever-mounting fees are intended to help offset some of the enormous costs of operating the criminal justice system. But even relatively small fees -- $40 per session, say, for a court-ordered anger management class or $15 for a drug test -- can have devastating consequences for people who emerge from prison with no money, credit or prospects, and who live in fear of being sent back for failing to pay.

Governments increasingly balance their budgets by imposing "user fees" on the individuals it drags into the court system. Those individuals are disproportionately poor, and it isn't unusual for them to sit jail time in lieu of paying fines and court costs. Liberty should not depend on wealth, and we shouldn't impose hidden taxes on the people who can least afford to pay them.

by TChris

Voting machines were in the news today as state and local governments scramble to prepare for elections. Fox News sounds curiously optimistic even as it reports widespread failures to comply with deadlines mandated by the Help America Vote Act.

Diebold scores in San Joaquin and at least 17 other California counties (more here and here):

"It's horrifying. It's staggeringly inappropriate," said Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, a Washington state nonprofit group that monitors election processes. "They've certified something that's illegal on its face."

Diebold scores in Florida:

Do you care that the Volusia County Council is being forced, because of illegal acts by the Department of State, to settle for a voting system that computer scientists have called unfit to use in any election?

by TChris

The president had it right before he became president, when (in a debate with Al Gore) he criticized the use of troops "for what's called nation building." Here's what the president's exercise in nation building has wrought (choose your headline):

• Civil War Imminent in Iraq
• Iraq: On the Brink of Civil War?
• Iraq slips towards civil war after attack on Shia shrine
• Shrine Attack Brings Civil War Warning
• Iraq spirals toward civil conflict after Shiite shrine is destroyed

etc.

Juan Cole (not a headline, just a fact): "The threat of terrorism and attacks on Americans just went way up."

[Update: The permalink and comments to this post are off for some reason. Just so you know if you get a blank screen.]

by TChris

Donald Rumsfeld is an expert at disaster creation. Why would the president want to put him in charge of disaster relief?

A White House assessment of the sluggish federal reaction to Hurricane Katrina concludes the Pentagon should oversee future catastrophe responses but does not recommend that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff be fired, officials said Wednesday. ... [T]he document - which a congressional aide said approaches 200 pages - proposes sweeping changes to federal response plans. These include making the military the lead agency to coordinate immediate relief when state and local resources are overwhelmed, one official said.

FEMA would continue to handle lesser disasters, thus dividing disaster management into two competing turfs. Can you imagine Rumsfeld and Chertoff arguing with each other -- as victims drown -- about which agency should be in charge of the latest hurricane response?

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported here, a videotape captured a police officer's shooting of Elio Carrion as the unarmed Carrion, an Air Force policeman who recently returned from Iraq, tried to comply with the officer's orders. Carl Jeffers writes about the follow up -- or lack thereof -- in cases like Carrion's.

The Carrion family is outraged that Officer Webb himself has not been arrested and criminally prosecuted for his actions. As for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's department, they have accorded Webb the same prerogatives that are always accorded police officers in these situations - and that's the first problem I have with this event. I never agree with any of these prerogatives. Officer Webb has been placed on paid administrative leave, and he was given the standard 48 to sometimes 72 hours to relax, collect himself, and get his story together for his written report. And when there is a video tape involved, the Department spokesmen and top officers immediately hold press conferences to assert that the officer was acting fully within Department guidelines, was responding to an immediate threat, and then warn that what we see on the tape doesn't show the entire picture and cannot be relied on to portray the actual events. BULL! ...

by TChris

A lengthy report entitled America for Sale: The Cost of Republican Corruption (pdf), prepared by House Rules Committee member Louise Slaughter and the Committee's Democratic staff, assesses the consequences of the cozy relationships that Republicans have formed with lobbyists.

Raw Story fills in the blanks:

The report delivers a smackdown on major Democratic campaign themes while delicately omitting names: "a corrupt politician who lives on a yacht" (Duke Cunningham, (R-CA), who resigned), "three mysterious Russian industrialists who laundered $1 million to a prominent political leader" (Tom DeLay (R-TX) and "a radical religious anti-gambling activist on the take from the gaming industry" (Ralph Reed).

by TChris

This shouldn't be surprising, given the president's refusal to pick up a newspaper:

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday. ...

While Bush has adamantly defended the deal, the White House acknowledged that he did not know about it until recently. "He became aware of it over the last several days," McClellan said.

by TChris

After the president inspected swithgrass samples at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory yesterday, he "picked up a bottle of clear-colored ethanol and smelled it." No word on whether the president then downed it like a shot of Jagermeister, but ethanol ingestion might explain the "mixed signals" that his administration was sending prior to his visit.

Two weeks ago, 32 workers, including eight researchers, were laid off at the lab. Then, over the weekend, just before Bush's planned visit, the government restored the jobs.

by TChris

The South Dakota legislature is poised to pass "the most sweeping [abortion] ban approved by any state in more than a decade." The law would plainly be unconstitutional in light of Roe v. Wade, but the law's supporters hope to provoke a court fight that would give the Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn Roe.

State Rep. Roger Hunt is already counting Justice Alito as a vote against the right to choose abortion, and he seems hopeful that Justice Stevens, now 85, will soon be off the bench, giving the president another appointment opportunity.

Drink a toast tonight to the good health of Justice Stevens.

by TChris

UPDATE: This article suggests that prison personnel who have been administering lethal injections are dispensing controlled substances without being licensed to do so. The Justice Department complained about licensed physicians in Oregon dispensing drugs (pursuant to state law) to help terminally ill patients who want to end their lives. Why isn't Justice even more outraged about prison employees administering controlled substances who aren't licensed to dispense drugs?
...
original post:

The court order requiring a medical professional to help in the execution of Michael Morales sparked a debate, noted here, about the appropriate role of physicians in bringing about the death of a person who doesn't want to die. The California Medical Association doesn't want doctors to be put in that position. It will ask the state legislature to prohibit the Department of Corrections from asking doctors to participate in executions.

by TChris

In this 2003 post, TalkLeft described the Houston Crime Lab as being "in shambles." Houston's mayor and police chief called for a moratorium on executions where guilt was supported by the crime lab's evidence. This post and this one, both from 2003, explored the scandal in more detail.

So what's been done to review convictions that have been called into question by the crime lab's malfeasance? Not enough.

A series of investigations of the Houston police crime lab has uncovered dozens of faulty tests, but the findings have freed just two wrongly convicted men in three years. ... "There needs to be some mechanism to giving those individuals the proper legal representation they deserve," said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, board chairman for the New York-based Innocence Project and a member of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.