by TChris

Judges who impose sentences should be dispassionate and impartial. Sentences are imposed by judges, rather than victims, because a judge who has no personal stake in the outcome is presumed to be motivated by reason, not by a personal desire for vengeance.

According to a Colorado appellate court, Judge Edward Colt crossed the line when he reflected on the crime's impact on his own life while sentencing Terry Lynn Barton to 12 years in prison for starting a wildfire in 2002.

[The court held that Judge Colt] had the "appearance of prejudice" when he spoke of spending a night in a hotel to escape the smoke and fire, helping dispense food to residents displaced by the blaze, and helping a court clerk and personal friend evacuate her home during the fire.

The appellate court said that a term of two to six years would have been appropriate. It ordered a new sentencing hearing before a different judge.

by TChris

Judges who feel a need use their judicial office to promote the Ten Commandments should take a refresher course in constitutional law, focusing particularly on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It doesn't matter that Judge Ashley McKathan of Alabama has received nothing but supportive calls and messages since he wore a robe in his courtroom with the Ten Commandments embroidered on his chest. The Bill of Rights does not give way to popular opinion; it protects everyone from the government's endorsement of religion. Judges, of all people, should understand that simple concept.

While Judge McKathan is pleased at the attention he's received, others who enter his court aren't as happy.

"I objected to the robe because the news media attracted by it has been a distraction in this case," [Attorney Riley] Powell said Wednesday. "Even though the judge warned them not to read papers or listen to the news media, this morning at least half had seen the news and read accounts of the issue -- it was on Rick and Bubba's radio show this morning and on 'Paul Harvey.' Some had even been called by the media."

Jurors are supposed to base their decisions on the law as explained in jury instructions, not on their own interpretations of the Ten Commandments. But when the Commandments are displayed on the judge's chest, will the jury understand the difference?

Let's hope that creative lawyers obtain a reversal of every conviction before Judge McKathan on the ground that improper jury instructions were written on the judge's robe. Maybe that will teach the judge to honor the Constitution he swore to uphold.

by TChris

William Kristol recently noticed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hasn't done his job all that well, leading him to conclude that American soldiers "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have." Other Republicans are starting to sing the same tune.

Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Armed Services Committee, commented yesterday that her peers are voicing "increasing concerns about the secretary's leadership of the war, the repeated failures to predict the strengths of the insurgency, the lack of essential safety equipment for our troops, the reluctance to expand the number of troops."

The sharp comments by Ms. Collins, together with other recent statements Senator John McCain of Arizona, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led American forces in the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and, after his retirement, twice campaigned for President Bush, suggested that the ground might well be shifting a bit under Mr. Rumsfeld.

Will the ground shift sufficiently to swallow him up?

by TChris

The Missile Defense Agency has spent more than $80 billion since 1985 in its effort to develop a missle defense system. That's a lot of money for a system that doesn't work. The good news for defense contractors is that the administration plans to spend another $50 billion over the next five years.

In the latest test of a missile interceptor, conducted yesterday, the launching system shut down for unknown reasons. This follows a 2002 test in which the interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket, causing it to miss its target by hundreds of miles.

A Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who has been critical of the program, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the latest setback might make lawmakers wonder whether money for the Pentagon might be better spent elsewhere, particularly in light of the mounting costs of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Republican supporters won't let failure deter their desire to throw more tax dollars at their pals in the defense industry. And while President Bush pledged in December 2002 (after the last failure) that the system would be operational by September 2004, the latest failure will only motivate the administration to set another unrealistic target date for its scaled-down version of Star Wars.

Nashville criminal defense attorney E.E. "Bo Edwards" passed away yesterday at age 61. Bo was the immediate past President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)and a very kind man. He will be missed.

Bo worked tirelessly for reform of our civil asset forfeiture laws. I had the privilege of working with him when I served as Secretary and Treasurer of NACDL.

He spent the last few years on dialysis, hoping for a kidney transplant. Yet he traveled to every NACDL board meeting and gave the organization every bit of his attention.

R.I.P. Bo, and know that there are thousands of defense lawyers thinking of you tonight.

Anti-Polygraph.Org has the details, the documents and commentary about the Navy's use of a dubious polygraph to end an inquiry into the alleged murder of three Iraqi prisoners:

According to documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act, investigators of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) relied on a "passing" polygraph result to terminate an investigation into the alleged execution of three Iraqi prisoners of war in April 2003, even though the polygrapher suspected that the examinee was using polygraph countermeasures.

The LA Times has an editorial on the cost to taxpayers of the Scott Peterson verdict, that includes information on the millions the state will spend because he was sentenced to death instead of life.

Notwithstanding the whooping cheers from the Redwood City crowd at the news of his death sentence, Scott Peterson is unlikely to die by lethal injection soon, if ever. Meanwhile, Monday's feel-good moment will cost Californians millions more than the price of locking Peterson away for life with no possibility of parole.

The latest in the "give them an inch" department....Evangelical Christians, still high on their newfound power at the polls which they've been told was a big factor in Bush's re-election, now want to push the envelope by foisting their religion on the rest of us. They are starting with a nudge--Christmas--who would object to "Merry Christmas?" But it's just the opening of the door.

In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add "Merry Christmas" to the red-lighted "Season's Greetings" sign on the main government building and is selling yard signs that read, "We believe in God. Merry Christmas." And a Raleigh, N.C., church recently paid $7,600 for a full-page newspaper ad urging Christians to spend their money only with merchants who include the greeting "Merry Christmas" in ads and displays.

"There is a revival taking place in our nation that is causing Christian and right-minded people to say, 'Wait a minute. We've gone too far,'" says the Rev. Patrick Wooden Sr., pastor of the Raleigh church. "We're not going to allow the country to continue this downward spiral to the left."

Where does it lead?

The truth comes out now. President Bush and the Republicans's plans to revamp social security by allowing privatization can only be accomplished by a reduction in benefits to tomorrow's retirees:

Some of the Republican proposals would raise the age when people can start to receive benefits. Others would reduce payments to beneficiaries to account for longer life expectancies. Still others would reduce payments to married couples and scale back the annual increases that are made to keep pace with inflation.

But the biggest single idea is included in the plan the White House most often points to, abandoning the practice of setting benefits as a share of people's pre-retirement earnings. Analysts affiliated with both political parties say that that one change could save more than $10 trillion over the next 75 years, more than enough to wipe out Social Security's projected shortfall. People retiring today or even in the next 10 years would feel almost no impact.

But in decades to come, analysts say, many people would see sharper drops in their incomes when they retired. And because benefits would not keep up with wages, many retirees could feel steadily poorer compared with neighbors who still work.

How much more will it cost the country when the last of the baby boomers need food stamps and medicaid as well as medicare because of reduced social security benefits? How about just giving us back dollar for dollar what we put in since age 16 and we'll take care of ourselves, thank you. What a rip off.

Human Rights Watch lawyer and Findlaw Columnist Joanne Mariner, along with two others, snuck into Darfur last July to witness first-hand the atrocities. She provides this report :

It was late July, and we had snuck into what the rebel groups that control the area like to call “liberated territory.” But the barren and depopulated landscape we saw before us suggested defeat rather than victory. It took a few hours of driving before we came upon people: a weary group, mostly women, with babies on their backs and random household goods on their heads, making the long trek toward Chad and safety.

...Over the past year and a half, since the Sudanese government and allied militia began their scorched earth campaign against the black African population of Darfur, more than 1.5 million civilians have fled their villages.

The Sudan Government is supporting the ethnic militias:

Human Rights Watch reports that the Pentagon recently acknowledged a total of 8 prisoner deaths in Afghanistan.

It’s time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” said Brad Adams, Asia division director for Human Rights Watch. “The United States has to get serious about prosecuting people implicated in prisoner deaths and mistreatment.”

Can it get any worse? Documents obtained by the ACLU show that U.S. Marines conducted mock executions of juveniles in Iraq:

Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy medic they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday.

The latest revelations of prisoner abuse, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the government, involved previously unknown incidents in which 11 Marines were punished for abusing detainees.

"A few bad apples" gets less credible every day. The Pentagon needs to be held accountable for this disgrace.