by TChris

Bunnatine Greenhouse will not go gently into retirement -- much to the displeasure of the Army Corps of Engineers. Greenhouse is the Corps' contracting director, and she continues to criticize the network of "good ole boys" who funneled government funds to Halliburton to repair oil fields in Iraq, bypassing procedures that require competitive bidding.

With the bluntness and rectitude that has angered some of her superiors, she explained why she was not taking the vested retirement her commander had pointedly dangled. "When our officers don't understand that a decision is giving one company an exceptional advantage," she said, "when they don't understand that a decision doesn't protect the public trust, then it's my job to make them understand it."

In addition to questioning the $7 billion contract to repair oil fields, Greenhouse expressed displeasure that the Corps went behind her back to approve the inflated prices a Halliburton subsidiary charged for fuel that was transported to Iraq. She also questioned the extension of an expiring Halliburton contract in the Balkans, at a cost of $165 million.

Remember Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield was detained for two weeks when the FBI claimed his fingerprint was on a bag linked to the Madrid train bombings? Remember when the FBI said they had received information from Spanish officials that led them to conclude Mayfield's fingerprint was a match? And then when it turned out they were wrong, they tried to blame it on the quality of the image received from the Spanish authorities?

Not true. A new report by independent forensic experts who investigated the debacle finds that FBI agents made up the claim.

Chicago Tribune investigative reporters Maurice Possley and Flynn McRoberts write:

Top FBI fingerprint examiners gave in to peer pressure when they rushed to link an Oregon lawyer to a terrorist attack in Madrid this year, according to a panel of forensic experts convened to explain the highest-profile mistake in the history of modern fingerprint comparison. The finding contradicts the initial explanation given by the FBI, which had blamed the quality of a digital fingerprint image sent by Spanish police in the wake of the March 11 train bombings that killed 191 people.

Instead, the panel found that human error, defensiveness and a failure to follow some fundamental scientific practices, such as proper peer review, led to four of the nation's top fingerprint experts wrongly tying Brandon Mayfield, a Portland-area lawyer and a Muslim, to the bombings. Spanish national police later matched the print to an Algerian man.

....Despite earlier FBI attempts to blame the quality of the fingerprint image--a digital representation e-mailed to the U.S. by Spanish authorities--the report states that "all of the committee members agree that the quality of the images that were used to make the erroneous identification was not a factor."

The report was undertaken at the request of the FBI. An isolated instance? Probably not.

by TChris

A criminal justice system that desparately needs reform will be under the microscope Tuesday as experts converge in Detroit to discuss "responses to urban violence, including the roles of law enforcement and community involvement, education, the economy and the politics of justice reform." Panels will mix liberals and conservatives "to explore ways to fix a U.S. justice system that relies on imprisoning more and more people."

Georgetown Law Professor, civil liberties expert and Ashcroft critic David Cole compares Ascroft and Gonzales in the new edition of Newsweek. First, his assessment of Ashcroft.

I think his legacy is going to be as one of the worst attorney generals we’ve ever had, not only in terms of the constitutional freedoms this country stands for but also in terms of national security.

Cole is not optimistic about Gonzales. He raises Gonzales' reference to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" and his refusal to apply its protections to Guantanamo Detainees. He adds:

We also know from a New York Times account of the debates that surrounded the development of the military tribunal policy down in Guantanamo that in those debates John Ashcroft was actually the voice of reason and Alberto Gonzales was lined up with the most extreme right-wing voices arguing that there should be virtually no rights to the people who are being tried—in some cases for the death penalty.

Cole doesn't predict how the Senate will vote on Gonzales' confirmation. But he says his record, particularly on the torture issue and the Guantanamo detainees, should give Senators pause.

Update: Joe Conasen has this analysis of Gonzales at Salon. Chris Brauchli adds his thoughts in Re-writing the Geneva Convention.

Bump and Update: If you see 60 Minutes, let us know what you thought of CIA Agent Michael Scheuer's allegations about Osama.

**************************
On 60 Minutes Sunday evening: C.I.A. Agent Michael Scheuer, author of "Imperial Hubris," written under the pseudonym Anonymous,who resigned this week to get around an agency imposed gag order.

Scherer was the head of the CIA unit assigned to track Osama bin Laden. Now he's talking. He says Osama received permission from a sheik to use a nuclear weapon against the U.S.

"[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik...a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans," says Scheuer. "[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans."

Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by some Muslims for the Sept. 11 attack because he killed so many people without enough warning and before offering to help convert them to Islam. But now, bin Laden has addressed the American people and given fair warning.

"Their intention is to end the war as soon as they can, and to ratchet up the pain for the Americans until we get out of their region," says Scheuer. "If they acquire the weapon, they will use it, whether it's chemical, biological or some sort of nuclear weapon."

On why we haven't caught bin Laden, Scheuer blames former CIA Director George Tenet:

In September, we wrote about a report by the Death Penalty Information Center that found death penalty sentences in the U.S. had fallen for the fourth straight year. (Report here, pdf) Now, the Department of Justice has issued its own statistics, with the same findings. The Justice Department reports finds that death penalty sentences are at the lowest rate in 30 years. The statistics were compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Death penalty opponents say the report shows how wary the public is of executions, heightened by concerns about whether the punishment is administered fairly and publicity about those wrongly convicted.

....Opponents also point to other possible reasons, including continuing fallout from Supreme Court decisions requiring that juries be told that life in prison without parole is an alternative to death.

47 states now offer a lwop (life without parole) option. In 1993 only 3 states provided the option.

Despite the good news of a reduction, there is a long way to go. In 2003, there were 144 persons sentenced to death in 25 states. Currently, there are 3,374 prisoners on death row in the U.S. 65 were executed in 2003. Texas again topped the charts at 24, with Oklahoma and North Carolina on its heels. No other state executed more than three prisoners. 38 states and the federal system still allow the death penalty. When the number gets reduced to zero, that's the time to cheer.

Some more stats from the report:

The Senate reconvenes Tuesday for its lame-duck session. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who is pro-choice, is up for the Chair positon on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Senate may decide to give outgoing Chair Orrin Hatch a two-year waiver so he can stay on as Chair.

Right-wing extremists oppose him. What do you think, will he get the job? Will his ghost from the past (the confirmation hearing of Robert Bork) cost him now? What does his defeat mean for Roe v. Wade?

Specter's defeat could mean abortion rights opponents are one seat away from victory on the Supreme Court. The Boston Globe takes a look at what would happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned.

With Roe in the judicial dustbin, arguments against abortion could no longer be couched in the language of state's rights and judicial activism that Bush used on the campaign trail. In all likelihood, the party would have to make good on the commitment, enshrined in its platform, to outlaw abortion.

by TChris

Life has not been good for Kevin Baruxes.

Baruxes was three weeks past his 18th birthday when he was arrested. Now he's 26 and he's got two scars from a prison knife attack that almost killed him and a seven-year gap in his life story that's impossible to replace and almost as hard to explain.

Baruxes was charged with sexually assaulting Cortni Mahaffy, and because a hate crime enhancer was added, the jury was allowed to hear about Baruxes' obnoxiously racist opinions. The jury didn't believe Baruxes' mother, who testified that he was at home when the attack allegedly occurred.

Now, it seems, the attack never happened. The first of a two-part story reporting Baruxes' exoneration appears today. It's a story that has become common.

Wrongful convictions in America's courts are no longer surprising. Rarely a month goes by without one surfacing; in California alone, there have been at least 200 in the last 15 years, according to a recent San Francisco magazine report.

In August we wrote of newly exonerated Wilton Dedge, freed from prison after serving 22 years for a rape he didn't commit. The St. Petersburg Times today reports on his case from beginning to end, and on his life since his release. Dedge just turned 43. He tries not to be bitter:

Dedge says he's trying not to focus on how wrong the justice system treated him. Like his parents, he believes it best to live in the moment.

"I don't want to have a bad attitude. It's there in the back of my mind, but I don't want to dwell on it right now. I'm having too much fun with new things. "I'm very, very disappointed. There's anger there. But I can't dwell on anger or I'll mess up my life. I'm trying to enjoy things instead of dwelling on anger."

His lawyers have enough bitterness for both of them. One of them, Milton Hirsch of Miami, calls the prosecutors' actions in Dedge's case, "moronic," "monstrous, shameful" and "Orwellian."

"When Wilton got out, he was pleased and forward-looking and capable of not dwelling on the bitterness of the past. But when it occurs to me that some prosecutors got up the next day and put on their pants and go to work and prosecute the next Wilton Dedge defendant with no consequences and no change in the criminal justice system, I can't get past that."

What is the likeihood that Bush will succeed in packing our courts with right-wing ideologues? Jeffrey Rosen in the New York Times and Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle provide some illumination.

Human rights groups charge that the U.S. soldiers may have committed a war crime this past Thursday by forcing fleeing civilians to return to Fallujah:

Citing several articles of the Geneva Conventions, the experts said recognized laws of war require military forces to protect civilians as refugees and forbid returning them to a combat zone.

"This is highly problematical conduct in terms of exposing people to grave danger by returning them to an area where fighting is going on," said Jordan Paust, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former Army prosecutor. James Ross, senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, said, "If that's what happened, it would be a war crime."

Here's what happened:

A stream of refugees, about 300 men, women and children, were detained by American soldiers as they left southern Falluja by car and on foot. The women and children were allowed to proceed. The men were tested for any residues left by the handling of explosives. All tested negative, but they were sent back.

Via Uggabugger, found at Atrios:

Now that Alberto "The Geneva Convention is obsolete" Gonzales is slated to become the head of the Department of Justice, we can look forward to a new attitude - and a new seal:

Translation: The ends justify the means (Other Latin expression pages are here and here.)