by TChris

With two defense lawyers murdered and another wounded, the team defending Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants asked for another continuance of Hussein's trial, which sputtered to a brief start today before being adjourned to December 5.

Hussein complained about walking up four flights of stairs in shackles (repairing the elevator is still on the Iraqi government's "to do" list) before, with characteristic bravado, he challenged the judge to do his job more forcefully.

Fitzgerald is interested in Luskin and Novak's conversations from May, 2004 forward. What happened in May, 2004? On May 21, 2004 Matt Cooper was subpoenaed . The next day Time said it would fight the subpoena. This is the subpoena that was directed to a certain official who later was revealed to be Scooter Libby.

...prosecutors asked Time a week ago to cooperate but the magazine declined to do so....Fitzgerald wants to question Cooper about a story that appeared in Time on July 21, 2003, and another that ran on Time's Web site on July 17.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals decison (pdf) upholding the subpoena contains these dates:

On May 21, 2004, a grand jury subpoena was issued to appellant Matthew Cooper, seeking testimony and documents related to two specific articles dated July 17, 2003, and July 21, 2003, to which Cooper had contributed. Cooper refused to comply with the subpoena, even after the Special Counsel offered to narrow its scope to cover only conversations between Cooper and a specific individual identified by the Special Counsel. Instead, Cooper moved to quash the subpoena on June 3, 2004. On July 6, 2004, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied Cooper’s motion in open court, and confirmed the denial with reasoning set forth in a written order issued on July 20, 2004.

Jane and Reddhed at FiredogLake provide some intriguing theories on why Patrick Fitzgerald has subpoenaed Time correspondent Viveca Novak.

Reddhed writes that Fitzgerald may be trying to pierce Rove's attorney-client relationship with Luskin through statements Luskin made to Novak with Rove's consent.

Jane recaps some theories provided by their readers: Luskin may have been using Novak to pass information to Cooper in an attempt to influence his testimony; and this one:

On Meet the Press Sunday, two Washington Post reporters acknowledged being baffled and embarassed by reporter Bob Woodward's actions in failing to disclose his involvement in the Valerie Plame leak investigation to his editor for more than two years.

Arianna takes Russert to task for following the standard playbook and failing to follow through on the bigger issue:

It was a great opportunity for Tim to look at the broken conventions regarding confidential sources and the broken trust between the public and the press.

But instead, Tim went right back to the old playbook and the old problem: "Every source I believe is going to want complete assurance that if I give you this information, will you refuse to testify even if it means going to prison." Stunning though it may seem, Russert really believes that the main problem raised by Judy Miller's and Bob Woodward's roles in Plamegate is: how does the press repair the damage done between journalists and anonymous sources?

The critical question, Arianna says, is under what conditions should the press guarantee anonymity?

Singapore's Chief executioner and hangman Darshan Singh has been fired. TalkLeft profiled hangman Singh here, noting that he has hanged 850 people in his 43 years as Singapore's hangman.

Unfortunately, it will not help Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian of Vietnamese descent who is set to be hanged on December 2 for an offense involving 400 grams of heroin. Singapore is importing a new hangman within days.

Singapore's execution statistics are abominable.

Singapore has one of the world's toughest drug laws. Laws enacted in 1975 stipulate death by hanging for anyone aged 18 or over convicted of carrying more than 15 grams (0.5 ounce) of heroin, 30 grams (1.1 ounce) of cocaine, 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of cannabis or 250 grams (8.8 ounces) of methamphetamines.

Amnesty International said in a 2004 report that about 420 people had been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, giving the city-state of 4.2 million people the highest execution rate in the world relative to population.

Update: Australian Prime Minister John Howard says his fifth and final meeting with Singapore officials to spare Nguyen's life or agree to have his case transferred to the International Criminal Court has failed. Nguyen is to be hanged on Friday.

Bump and Update: The Time Magazine article reporting Viveca Novak has been subpoenaed is here. She is not, by the way, related to Robert Novak.

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Original Post

Time Reporter Viveca Novak has been subpoenaed to the grand jury investigating the leak of the indentity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald is interested in her testimony about conversations she had with Rove lawyer Robert Luskin beginning in May, 2004.

Novak, part of a team tracking the CIA case for Time, has written or contributed to articles quoting Luskin that characterized the nature of what was said between Rove and Matthew Cooper, the first Time reporter who testified in the case in July.

The article takes this as a sign that Fitzgerald is still considering charges against Rove. Looking through some past Time articles written by Novak, I found some interesting tidbits in the July 25 Time article, co-authored by Ms. Novak:

by Last Night in Little Rock

I-40 Exit 125 @ US65, Conway AR: Exxon, Mobil, Shell, and Phillips 66: $1.849, and they've been that low since Wednesday.

That's slightly more than half the $3.599 I paid over Labor Day weekend. Crude oil was $56.34 last week, down from a high of $70.85 August 30.

Thanks to Berkeley law professior Liu Goodwin for pointing out in an LA Times op-ed that there are issues besides abortion that are cause for concern over Judge Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court -- particularly his past rulings in death penalty cases.

Capital cases make up a substantial portion of the Supreme Court's docket each year. From 2000 to 2005, the court decided only three cases involving abortion but more than three dozen cases involving the death penalty. In this area, the Supreme Court often serves not only in its typical role of deciding unsettled questions of broadly applicable law but also as a court of last resort to correct errors and prevent injustice in individual cases.

Goodwin reviews Alito's record in capital cases:

What difference did the Iraq war make in terms of human rights advancements? None, according to former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday. "People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told British newspaper The Observer.

"We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi in an apparent reference to the discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured. "A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations."

This is scary stuff. From Walter Pincus at the Washington Post:

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

Bump and Update: I'll be arguing to save Tookie's life on Los Angeles KKLA radio station (99.5 FM)tonight at 9:00 pm PT. You can listen live online here. It's a Christian radio network -- you would think that if they really believed in choosing life, they would oppose the death penalty, but apparently the show's host, who I'll be sparring with, does not.

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A positive sign today for Stanley "Tookie" Williams -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering his clemency petition and will meet with Tookie's lawyers on December 8, five days before his scheduled execution.

by TChris

This sums up nicely the Bush administration's policy regarding the detention of those it suspects of terrorism:

"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

In the wake of the Padilla flip-flop, Adam Liptak explores the secret (or absent) standards the Bush administration uses to designate detainees as enemy combatants rather than criminal defendants. The prospect of indefinite detention as an enemy combatant is so frightening that it might induce someone in Padilla's shoes to plead guilty to a serious criminal charge with the hope of remaining under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.