by TChris

Busting down a door is much more exciting than knocking and waiting for an answer, but unless the police have a good reason not to knock, the Fourth Amendment requires officers executing a search warrant to "knock and announce" their presence and to give the occupant a reasonable time to answer. What amount of time is "reasonable" is often a hotly contested question, but a judge in Maricopa County, Arizona held that six seconds wasn't enough.

Describing a drug raid on a Hell's Angels clubhouse as an "attack," the judge criticized the aggressive police practices used during the search.

Agents knocked at the door and waited just six seconds for Michael Wayne Coffelt to answer. When he didn't, they used a diversionary grenade and broke a window in the back of the house.

Although Coffelt then came to the door armed with a gun, the judge noted that it is reasonable for a person who has just been attacked with a grenade to arm himself.

Is this a travesty akin to the Tuskeegee experiments? The BBC reports on Guinea Pig Kids in New York. The show first aired on November 30. If there's a re-run, and you get BBC on cable, definitely tune in:

Vulnerable children in some of New York's poorest districts are being forced to take part in HIV drug trials....During a nine month investigation, the BBC has uncovered the disturbing truth about the way authorities in New York City are conducting the fight against Aids.

HIV positive children - some only a few months old - are enrolled in toxic experiments without the consent of guardians or relatives. In some cases where parents have refused to give children their medication, they have been placed in care.

The medication, according to some doctors, is potentially lethal for the children:

On Tuesday, 300 cities joined with Rome, Italy to say "no" to the death penalty. The chain of public events worldwide, "Cities for Life -- Cities Against the Death Penalty," was promoted by the lay Community of Sant'Egidio.

The Rome-based Catholic group has long focused part of its international involvement on the struggle against the death penalty. Sant'Egidio is also promoting the "Appeal for a Universal Moratorium," which has obtained some 5 million adherents in 150 countries, giving rise to an interreligious front against capital punishment.

In 2002, Sant'Egidio launched the first International Day of Cities Against the Death Penalty, on Nov. 30 of that year. [We wrote about the 2003 event here.] The date was chosen as a reminder of the first abolition of capital punishment in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany on Nov. 30, 1786.

Among the cities supporting the campaign against the death penalty are Amsterdam, New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Hiroshima and Paris. Here is the photo gallery of the events.

by TChris

Concluding that the indictment of four police officers who arrested more than 20 people on bogus drug charges resulted from "a failure of management supervision," the Dallas Police Department decided to demote two highly ranked managers.

This all had to do with the city's fake-drugs scandal of 2001, in which police and prosecutors were found sending innocent people to prison on counterfeit drug evidence. Assistant police Chief Dora Saucedo-Falls, who was the department's highest-ranking Hispanic, had responsibility for narcotics as well as other divisions during the time of the fake-drugs scandal. Chief David Kunkle demoted her last week to lieutenant and moved her to communications.

Deputy Chief John Martinez, who reported to Saucedo-Falls, had immediate responsibility for narcotics. Martinez came to that post after the fake-drugs scandal was already under way. He retired last week rather than accept a demotion.

This is what happened:

by TChris

Jim Taricani has likely been spared a contempt sentence for his failure to identify the person who gave him a videotape that captured a public official accepting a bribe. The journalist was to appear in court next week to be sentenced for his refusal to obey an order to reveal his source, but the source has outed himself, obviating the need for Taricani's information.

Special Prosecutor Marc DeSisto said Joseph Bevilacqua, a Rhode Island defense attorney, voluntarily identified himself last week as the source of the videotape.

by TChris

TalkLeft reported yesterday that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to recommend a stay of execution for Frances Newton to permit reexamination of the shaky evidence that supports her guilt. Today, hours before Newton was scheduled to die, Gov. Rick Perry granted the stay.

Newton's supporters charge she was the victim of poor work done by the Houston Police Department crime laboratory, which has been plagued by scandals in the past few years.

The stay will permit testing of residue on a dress that police viewed as proof that Newton had fired a weapon. Newton maintains that the residue is nitrate from fertilizer.

by TChris

James Tobin, President Bush's former New England campaign chairman, has been indicted for participating in a scheme to jam telephone lines used by Democrats in a "get-out-the-vote" drive on Election Day 2002.

In 2002, six phone lines run by the Democrats and the Manchester firefighters union were tied up for 11/2 hours by 800 computer-generated hang-up calls. Federal prosecutors said Tobin and other Republicans had hired a company to make the calls to disrupt the organizations' get-out-the-vote efforts.

This summer, the former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party "admitted paying $15,600 to a Virginia telemarketing company that hired another business to make the calls." Some are questioning why the Justice Department waited until now to indict Tobin.

"I think it's unfortunate the Justice Department delayed, for whatever reasons that it did, until after the election," state Democratic chairwoman Kathy Sullivan said. "I hope this was not delayed for political reasons."

by TChris

More soldiers will be heading to Iraq and others will stay longer than they might have wished, as the military announced plans to increase troop strength in response to the security needs attending January's elections.

The increase, which will raise American troop strength in Iraq to about 150,000 - the highest level since the war began in March 2003 - will be accomplished by extending the combat tours of about 10,400 troops already in Iraq and sending an additional 1,500 soldiers to Iraq from their stateside posts.

The tour for members of the First Cavalry Division's Second Brigade is being extended for the second time.

by TChris

The Ohio Supreme Court today reversed the conviction and death sentence imposed upon Terrell Yarbrough, ruling that he could not be prosecuted in Ohio for murders that occurred in Pennsylvania. The court had harsh words for the players in the case who evidently overlooked the jurisdictional issue.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Thomas Moyer criticized prosecutors, defense attorneys and the trial judge for not recognizing the murder case shouldn't have been brought in Ohio. "One would expect that those charged with the responsibility of participating in the prosecution of a defendant who is subject to the ultimate penalty would exercise more diligence," Moyer said.

Yarbrough is alleged to have kidnapped and robbed two people in their Ohio apartment, and to have killed them in Pennsylvania, twelve miles away.

by TChris

Even states that aggressively prosecute pot smokers agree that California is entitled to try its own approach -- permitting patients to use medicinal marijuana, at least where the weed doesn't travel in interstate commerce -- without federal interference. It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will agree (TalkLeft's coverage of the issue, argued in Ashcroft v. Raich, is collected here), but Jonathan Adler today takes a serious look at the federalism concerns underlying California's struggle to chart its own course on this divisive issue.

by TChris

November was a deadly month for U.S. troops in Iraq.

At least 135 combat deaths were reported in Iraq between 10 a.m. New York time on Oct. 29 and the same time on Nov. 30, according to the casualty toll posted on the Department of Defense Web site. That surpasses the toll from April this year, when 131 soldiers, Marines and other military personnel were killed between March 31 and April 30, the Web site showed.

The death toll for U.S. military members in Iraq is now 1,254. More than 16,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq.

The Washington Post has obtained a non-published report of an investigation by retired Col. Stewart Harrington. The upshot: Task Force 121 was abusing Iraqi detainees and the Government knew it early on.

A confidential report to Army generals in Iraq in December 2003 warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees, a finding delivered more than a month before Army investigators received the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison that touched off investigations into prisoner mistreatment.

Herrington's findings are the latest in a series of confidential reports to come to light about detainee abuse in Iraq. Until now, U.S. military officials have characterized the problem as one largely confined to the military prison at Abu Ghraib -- a situation they first learned about in January 2004. But Herrington's report shows that U.S. military leaders in Iraq were told of such allegations even before then, and that problems were not restricted to Abu Ghraib. Herrington, a veteran of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam, warned that such harsh tactics could imperil U.S. efforts to quell the Iraqi insurgency -- a prediction echoed months later by a military report and other reviews of the war effort.

Time for Rumsfeld to go? Where does the buck stop, if not with him?