by TChris

Definition of "lunatic fringe": a group so far to the right that it considers John Roberts too liberal to sit on the Supreme Court.

A conservative group in Virginia said Tuesday it would oppose Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ confirmation because of his work helping overturn a Colorado referendum on gays. The stance by Public Advocate of the United States, which describes itself as a pro-family organization, puts it in opposition to conservative groups that have endorsed Roberts.

The group’s president, Eugene Delgaudio, last year criticized Vice President Cheney (another left wing radical) for suggesting that the concept of freedom extends to gays.

by TChris

Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to a highly publicized 25 years, but Ebbers didn’t act alone. As usual, those who played the government’s game by agreeing to assist its prosecution of Ebbers did much better.

Last week, Betty Vinson, a former WorldCom accounting official who said she pulled some numbers "out of the air" when she helped fudge company books, was sentenced to five months in prison. Another former accounting official, Troy Normand, was sentenced to three years of probation after a federal prosecutor said his role in the fraud was less than Vinson's.

Today, Buford "Buddy" Yates, the former director of general accounting, was sentenced to a year and a day. Although the judge called Yates “perhaps the least useful” of all the cooperators, she nonetheless rewarded him with a sentence that seems insignificant in comparison to the sentence imposed on Ebbers.

Is Ebbers really 25 times more culpable than WorldCom’s director of general accounting? As TalkLeft suggested here, a quarter century “is a ridiculous sentence for a non-violent crime.” That fact becomes even more obvious as the other actors in the WorldCom scheme are sentenced.

by TChris

Update: Attacks on the Supreme Court by politicians who disagree with the Court's rulings threaten the Court's independence, Justice Breyer said today. If Arlen Specter wants to use the Roberts' nomination to send the Court a message, it seems Justice Breyer is taking the opportunity to send a message on behalf of "seven or eight or nine members of the Supreme Court." The message, in essence: leave us alone.

*****
Original post:

It’s funny that a Republican senator would accuse conservative Supreme Court justices of judicial activism, but Arlen Specter, previewing some of the questions he intends to pose to John Roberts, seems to have done just that.

by TChris

Even new prosecutors quickly learn the basic rules, making it difficult to understand why a seasoned prosecutor would have told the jury in Keith Beaulieu’s trial that he "wouldn't have put these people on the stand if they weren't telling the truth." Lawyers can’t vouch for the credibility of witnesses, and the result of Connecticut prosecutor Mark Hurley’s misconduct is a new trial for Bealieu.

At Bealieu’s bond hearing, however, Hurley asked the court to increase Beaulieu’s bail from the $50,000 that had been set prior to the first trial to $500,000. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to be vindictive after their misbehavior leads to a reversal. Did Hurley engage in misconduct again? Hurley claimed higher bail was justified because a kidnapping charge was added to Bealieu’s case after his first bond hearing, but $50,000 proved to be adequate to secure Bealieu’s appearance on the same kidnapping charge at his first trial.

"That's vindictive," [defense attorney John] Williams said of the prosecutor's high bond request. "We all know he's [Hurley] the reason the conviction was reversed."

Hurley objected to the comment and said Williams was making things personal. "I'm not going to make this personal," Hurley said in court. "I'm taking the high road."

Asking for excessive bail after getting caught breaking the rules hardly seems like “the high road.” Fortunately for Bealieu, the judge set bail at $75,000, permitting Bealieu to leave prison (for the first time in three years) while he awaits his new trial.

by TChris

The meth crisis, like every other drug crisis since Reefer Madness, is a myth. John Tierney argues that law enforcement agencies and the politicians who fund them need to get their priorities straight:

Like addicts desperate for a high, [law-enforcement officials and politicians who lead the war against drugs] declared meth the new crack, which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs to OxyContin). With the help of the press, they're once again frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives and their families.

The failed drug war policy, recycled for each new "drug du jour," leads to absurd results:

by TChris

Lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan have asked the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling from the D.C. Circuit that permits Hamdan to be tried before a military tribunal. Terming the decision (in which Judge Roberts joined) “extreme,” Hamdan’s lawyers accuse the circuit panel of disregarding established law.

"Its decision vests the president with the ability to circumvent the federal courts and time-tested limits on the executive," wrote Neal K. Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University who represents Mr. Hamdan. "No decision, by any court, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has gone this far."

The Hamdan decision is frighteningly deferential to the executive branch of government. The court held that Hamdan has no right to enforce the Geneva Conventions in court, and that, in any event, “the 1949 Convention does not apply to al Qaeda and its members.” Hamdan denies membership in al Qaeda, but the court left that determination up to the president.

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman fired eight courthouse security deputies yesterday as a result of the internal investigation into the March 11 courthouse shooting that left three dead, including Judge Rowland Barnes, at the courthouse and a fourth the next day as reported here.

Those fired included the major in charge of courthouse security. There were 13 people subjected to 14 disclinary actions.

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

Speaking to the ABA this weekend, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens spoke of "serious flaws" in the death penalty as reported by Gina Holland of the Associated Press.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens steered the debate over President George W. Bush's nominee to a new subject: capital punishment, sharply condemning the country's death penalty system.

The Court has been closely divided in death row cases, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor often in the middle.

Stevens' remarks were not prepared and were motivated by the ever increasing number of exonerations of the actually innocent from Death Row.

by TChris

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a student from Qatar, was arrested in the US in December 2001. Shortly before his trial was to begin in 2003, the Bush administration declared him an enemy combatant. He has been detained without trial ever since at a naval brig in Charleston. Yesterday, he filed a lawsuit challenging the conditions of his confinement. (An earlier challenge to the fact of his detention is pending.)

The prisoner maintains that he has been regularly denied access to basic necessities like a toothbrush, toilet paper, adequate bedding, and medical and psychological care. He has been confined in isolation in a dark 6-by-9-foot cell round the clock, his suit says, except for brief periods of outside recreation three times a week when he is deemed to be in compliance with jail rules.

Military jailers have also subjected him to extreme cold, used the roar of a loud fan nearby to "harass and torment him" and denied him access to any books, newspapers, radio, television or religious material except for the Koran, he says.

Marri also contends that jailers have treated the Koran disrespectfully and that he’s been denied access to his wife and children. He complains of abusive interrogation techniques, including threats to send him to a country where he “would be tortured and sodomized and where his wife would be raped in front of him.”

I have an unpleasant day ahead, with no time for blogging.

A graveside funeral for my first federal drug client from 1976 with whom I've remained in contact (he was 62, had a stroke and died on Friday), followed by client visits at the jail, followed by court and a fourth attempt at bail for a client in a current drug case (bail was granted by the federal magistrate, overuled by the District Court Judge, his denial of bail was affirmed by the Tenth Circuit, and it's now back in front of the same District Court Judge.) And how kharmic is this: the judge in my bail case today was the prosecutor in the 1976 case against my client whose funeral I'm attending. How times change, and how they remain the same. Definitely one for the memoirs I probably will never write.

Anyway, I'm counting on readers (although TChris or Last Night in Little Rock might be around, so check back) to take over for the day. I'll be back tonight.

Patrick Fitzgerald's four year term as U.S. attorney in Illinois is set to expire in October. Some have wondered whether Bush would replace him. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, speaking at the American Bar Association Meeting in Chicago today, tried to lay such doubts to rest.

US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald got a vote of confidence from his boss Monday. There had been speculation Fitzgerald's aggressive investigations in Chicago and Washington might have angered important people and that Fitzgerald might not get reappointed.

The US attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez made it clear in Chicago Monday that a controversial and high-visibility justice department subordinate, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, will probably be reappointed by President Bush when his four-year term expires in October.

I've been tracking potential criminal exposure in RoveGate, but there's more to the story, particularly for those interested in the media aspect. Follow the links:

• Digby
• Fire Dog Lake
• The Next Hurrah

And don't forget Arianna, who's been on this aspect for a while.