Michael Anthony Williams left prison in Louisiana yesterday after serving 24 years for a rape that DNA tests show he didn't commit. He has been in jail since the age of 16. Now 40, where does he go? There was no tearful and joyful family waiting at the jail for him to come out. He left with Vanessa Plotkin, his Innocence Project attorney. [TChris provided excellent analysis of the case here.]

His first act beyond the electronic gates and razor wire Friday morning wasn't a lavish meal or a tearful reunion with family and friends. Instead, it was a drive to a white stucco building -- blue paint peeling from the trim -- at Laurel and North 18th streets near downtown Baton Rouge, where the 40-year-old quietly got his first apartment.

"It needs a little cleaning," he said of his new home. "It's definitely better than a prison cell."

Williams had been sentenced to life without parole. There had been no physicial evidence linking him to the crime. He wrote to Barry Scheck and Cardozo's Innocence Project, and they accepted the case.

Update: How he was caught:

During the night, Nichols approached a woman as she was entering her suburban Atlanta apartment and introduced himself as a wanted man, authorities said. "It's my understanding that he had told her, 'If you do what I say, I won't kill you,"' Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan said.

The woman either escaped or was allowed to leave and called 911. A SWAT team gathered outside and Nichols turned himself in after watching the manhunt on television, Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters said.

"He literally waved a white flag or a T-shirt and came out to our folks," Walters said.

Original Post:

Two former New York detectives who were charged yesterday with carrying out Mafia hits years ago have been denied bond at a detention hearing in Las Vegas, where they currently reside. Both are related to former members of the Lucchese

U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence R. Leavitt said Louis Eppolito and his former partner, Stephen Caracappa, would pose a serious threat if granted bail. The pair, who were arrested Wednesday night at a Las Vegas restaurant, will be transferred to New York; their arraignments have yet to be scheduled.

Eppolito and Caracappa are each charged with eight murders, two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, drug distribution and money laundering, and could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Defense lawyers said the men were highly respected officers. They retired and moved to Las Vegas more than ten years ago and now live across the street from each other.

Caracappa's lawyer David Chesnoff read several letters from former New York Police Department colleagues who urged the judge to grant Caracappa's release. "It seems incredible to me that those people who placed (Caracappa) in a position of trust for all those years are now relying on the words of informants," Chesnoff said.

David Lane, Ward Churchill's attorney, said tonight that while C.U. and Churchill were able to agree on the amount of money for a buyout, other conditions have stalled the talks. The news article says that word of a plagerism investigation by Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia nine years ago made the C.U. Regents want more time to consider the buyout. Churchill denies the plagerism charge and says it was based upon one footnote in a work he assembled, that the inclusion of the footnote was inadvertant and that he did not take credit for the work.

Local Denver news is reporting the amount agreed upon was between $300,000 and $400,000. Lane says if C.U. doesn't want to settle, fine, Churchill will continue teaching. If he's fired, there will be a lawsuit.

TalkLeft wrote its 10,000th post today. Thanks to Mike Ditto for spotting it. And thanks to our hosting company for keeping them all accessible.

Update: 9:30 pm CNN confirms green Honda has been found in a parking garage.

Bump and Update: It was very interesting to see active Judges on cable talk shows tonight. Usually, Judges avoid television like the plague. Hardball was particularly interesting. Chris Matthews was itching for one of his Judge guests to rant against out of control defendants, and it didn't happen. All were reflective and out to keep the calm. This was an aberration. A one in a thousand occurrance. No one could imagine it becoming routine. Chris tries again with his next queue of guests--former New York sex crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein and FBI profiler Cliff Van Zandt-- again excitedly reciting the details of the rape the suspected killer allegedly committed--and how he had a weapon in his shoe yesterday. (Chris didn't mention this was the second trial for the suspect. Last week, a jury heard the case and deadlocked--no finding of guilt.) I changed the channel, so I can't tell you if Fairstein ran with the hysteria.

Also, only one tv report I've heard has mentioned that the overpowered deputy who was killed was a female. And why was only one deputy escorting the prisoner?

Former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told investigators that one of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was 11 years old.

Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison's youngest inmates. One boy "looked like he was 8-years-old," Karpinski said.

"He told me he was almost 12," Karpinski said. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."

[link via Suburban Guerilla.]

The transcript of the interview was among the documents released yesterday pursuant to the FOIA request by the ACLU. While the Pentagon says no juveniles were abused, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary, including:

by TChris

The House of Representatives is unable to conduct ethics investigations of its members -- a result certain to delight some Republican representatives, but one that should be disturbing to the public.

The 10-member ethics committee -- five Democrats and five Republicans -- deadlocked late on Thursday on a vote to adopt new Republican rules that would make it tougher to launch an ethics investigation. A majority is needed to adopt the rules.

The full House approved the revision in January "after Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas was admonished by the ethics panel on three separate matters in 2004." The change would require a majority of the committee to vote in favor of an investigation, permitting an ethics complaint to die if the committee votes along party lines. Republicans, concerned that more ethics complaints might be made against DeLay, have worked to assure that impropriety goes uninvestigated.

A judge today ordered three websites to comply with a subpoena by Apple Computer and turn over information about their confidential sources in the Think Secret case.

"Unlike the whistleblower who discloses a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or the government employee who reveals mismanagement or worse by our public officials, (the enthusiast sites) are doing nothing more than feeding the public's insatiable desire for information," Kleinberg wrote.

In the ruling, the judge largely brushed off the question of whether the publishers were journalists and therefore protected from facing contempt charges for refusing to divulge sources under California's shield law. "Defining what is a 'journalist' has become more complicated as the variety of media has expanded," he said. "But even if the movants are journalists, this is not the equivalent of a free pass."

April 10, columnist Frank Rich will return to the op-ed pages of the New York Times:

In a surprise announcement, The New York Times said today that Frank Rich, associate editor and Sunday Arts & Leisure columnist, will be returning to the op-ed pages as a columnist on April 10.

"We're thrilled to welcome back Frank, whose distinct writing style and broad range of experience as a theater critic and observer of art, entertainment and politics, will be a great asset to the expanded Sunday Op-Ed," said Gail Collins, editorial page editor, in a statement. "Our new, two-page Op-Ed section in the Sunday paper will give our readers what they have been requesting: more opinion pieces.

That's excellent news, we always read Frank Rich. So does Avedon Carol of <a href="Sideshow and TBogg.

NORML has released Crimes of Indiscretion, a report on marijauna arrests in the U.S. between 1995 and 2002. The full report can be downloaded here. (pdf)

This report comprehensively demonstrates much of what is not commonly known regarding who uses marijuana in the U.S., who gets arrested for it, at what age citizens are arrested on marijuana charges and how much are the general fiscal costs of maintaining marijuana prohibition.

Despite total US marijuana arrests increasing 165% during the 1990s, from 287,850 in 1991 to 755,000 in 2003, this enhanced enforcement has not produced intended results, and in some cases, it has produced opposite, unintended consequences. Upon review of the available data, it is clear that increased arrest rates are not associated with reduced marijuana use, reduced marijuana availability, a reduction in the number of new users, reduced treatment admissions, reduced emergency room mentions, any reduction in marijuana potency, or any increases in the price of marijuana.

Ward Churchill's lawyer has confirmed that there will be a final buyout agreement between the embattled Professor and the University of Colorado by the end of the weekend. The money has been agreed upon, a few terms still need to be hashed out.