by TChris

The Washington Post uses the tragedy of Lena Baker's execution to argue that courts and juries cannot be entrusted with the power to take a life:

It is tempting to believe that these tragedies don't happen anymore, that the death penalty now is more protective of innocent life. ...

Yet injustice is a resilient pestilence that -- like drug-resistant bacteria -- has myriad ways of defeating the best human attempts to eliminate it. And Americans who believe the death penalty is foolproof are simply kidding themselves. DNA testing has caused many people to be freed from death row, illustrating the fallibility of even modern trials. And recently prosecutors in St. Louis reopened the case of a man executed by the state of Missouri back in 1995 -- no longer being convinced that the state had killed the right person. As long as the death penalty persists, cases like Ms. Baker's -- where recompense is impossible -- are inevitable.

Schappelle Corby is about to get some company. 24 year old Australian model Michelle Leslie was arrested Saturday night in Bali after police searched her handbag and found two ecstasy pills. She faces 15 years in prison. No bail is allowed.

Pictures of Michelle and the pills are here.

Update: Constitution delayed.

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Original Post:

ABC News in Australia is reporting the Kurds and Shiites have agreed on a draft of a Constitution and will present it regardless of whether the Sunnis agree.

"An agreement between the Shiites and the Kurds (the two main parliamentary blocs) have been reached... God willing, the draft will be presented in the Parliament today," Shiite negotiator Jawad al-Maliki said.

Although the agreement appears to have been thrashed out over the heads of the Sunnis, the Kurds and Shiites have enough seats in Parliament - 215 out of 275 - between them to have the constitution approved with a majority.

More from the Guardian here. Garance at Tapped writes:

by TChris

To satisfy themselves that the Taser is a safe device to use against individuals who aren't engaged in life-threatening behavior, the police occasionally shoot a volunteer officer with a Taser. The officer rarely volunteers a second time.

In fact, injuries during Taser training have produced litigation against Taser International, including this recent case:

The suit by [Jacob] Herring, chief of police in Hallsville, Mo., says he suffered at least two strokes, loss and impairment of his vision and hearing, neurological damage, a head injury and "significant cardiac damage" after being shocked by a Taser M26 during a class on April 20, 2004.

Taser acknowledges that it has been sued 14 times since 2003 by officers who say they were injured in training.

John at Crooks and Liars says he was completely drained after the finale of HBO's Six Feet Under last night. Me too. I had been dreading the end of the series. I was very happy with last night's show, particularly with the way they tied up so many of the subplots and then gave us the futures of the characters. I won't go into detail, for those who haven't seen it, but if you did see it, tell us what you thought in the comments. [Note to those who do intend to view it: don't read the comments.]

I don't think I missed a single episode in its five year run (thanks to the episodes being replayed during the week and tivo.) It had one lackluster season - last year's - but Sunday nights just won't be the same without it. And now we have to wait until March, 2006 for the return of the Sopranos.

by TChris

There is finally some positive news to report in our prison nation:

Death rates from suicide, homicide and AIDS all dropped by double digits in 2002, the latest year for which data is available, the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported Sunday.

Credit is due to prisoner advocates who force the government to obey the Constitution.

[A]dvocacy groups have become much more aggressive in filing lawsuits to improve conditions behind bars, said Kara Gotsch, public policy coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

It's events like this that make me wonder whether this country has gone completely mad in its perverse love affair with law and order. Read what happened at a rave concert in Utah as told by a Daily Kos diarist who was on stage playing in the band when it happened- "Helicopters, assault rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers.... why? Was that really necessary?" He says the event was entirely legal and every permit had been obtained.

And if you have a blog, please publicize the Utah event. When the cops start acting like terrorists to attack our kids, it's time to say enough.

Some snippets:

by TChris

Justice Stevens, speaking in Chicago, called attention to the “pro-death bias” of juries and judges who decide whether to punish a crime with death:

Most judges who preside at capital trials are elected, creating a "subtle bias in favor of death" -- since it's hard to face reelection having given a break to a killer. The jury selection process does the same. Prosecutors question jurors at length about their willingness to impose death; this creates an imbalance in juries, when prosecutors strike those with anxiety about capital punishment, and it creates an atmosphere “in which jurors are likely to assume that their primary task is to determine the penalty for a presumptively guilty defendant.”

Those same concerns are echoed in this TalkLeft post.

Death penalty juries rarely reflect the larger community because courts exclude potential jurors who don’t believe that death is an appropriate sanction in any case. As TalkLeft argued here, juries should be “life qualified,” not “death qualified.” Better yet, it's time to end our reliance on death as an acceptable punishment.

Beginning today in the San Francisco Chronicle, actor Sean Penn chronicles his June trip to Iran. It's really good. Beginning with the pilot's pre-landing announcement:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very important announcement to make. For all our female passengers, by decree of the government of Iran, all female visitors are required to keep their heads covered. In your own interest, therefore, we ask you to put on a scarf before leaving the aircraft in Tehran. Thank you." With that, women clamored for the lavatory. One at a time as they exited, hundreds of years of transformation had occurred. All of these modern women, who would've looked quite at home dancing in a Paris nightclub, were now covered head to toe in black chadors, makeup scrubbed from their faces, cleavages and midriffs a memory.

Penn also describes a prayer service he went to - attended by 10,000 - the leader had the crowd chanting, "Death to Israel, Death to America."

It's a very grim portrait, but one you should take the time to read.

Proving once again, you are never too old to rock and roll. I can't wait for Thanksgiving night when they'll be in Denver.

Fort Collins, Colorado, July, 1978

Boston, 2005

Bump and Update: More details from Saturday night's blastoff. The New York Times reports:

Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, whose early history was entwined with Mr. Thompson's emerging career, said that Mr. Thompson was "the DNA of Rolling Stone" and called him "one of the greatest writers of the 20th century." ... Mr. Wenner recalled his drug-crazed exploits with Mr. Thompson but spoke of his feelings as well, saying at one point that he had been jealous of how close Mr. Depp had become to Mr. Thompson. "Now those days are gone," Mr. Wenner said. "Once I had Hunter all to myself, and now I don't have him at all. And none of us do."

....Mr. Thompson's fans were kept at bay, as were most of the news media, and guests were barred from bringing cellphones, cameras and recording devices. Orange cones marking a tow-away zone extended for three miles beyond Mr. Thompson's home off a narrow strip of rural roadway. Black-clad security guards, aided by a dozen county sheriff's deputies, patrolled the 40-acre property, which Mr. Thompson bought in 1968 for $50,000 and is now worth millions.

by TChris

In this year's Miller-El decision, the Supreme Court found that Dallas County had impermissibly excluded blacks from Miller-El's jury. The district attorney for Dallas County assured everyone that if such racial exclusion had ever been a part of the prosecution's jury selection strategy, those practices were no longer tolerated.

And now for the truth, as uncovered by the Dallas Morning News:

Prosecutors excluded eligible blacks from juries at more than twice the rate they rejected eligible whites, The Dallas Morning News found. In fact, being black was the most important personal trait affecting which jurors prosecutors rejected, according to the newspaper's statistical analysis.