by TChris

Last month, TalkLeft pointed to editorials calling upon the military to apologize to Captain James Yee for its misguided effort to prove that he's a spy. After initially accusing Yee of espionage and then charging him with (among other things) mishandling classified material, the military eventually dropped all criminal charges while convicting Yee of administrative offenses for marital infidelity and storing pornography on a government computer. Yee was reprimanded for those alleged offenses.

Those convictions have been overturned.

The appellate decision by Army Gen. James Hill, the Southern Command chief who oversees U.S. military operations at Guantanamo, wipes the slate clean for Capt. James Yee, who had been assigned to minister to prisoners at the base in Cuba.

Yee's civilian lawyer, Eugene Fidell, called the proceedings "a hoax by any standard." He said he could not prepare a defense because the Army did not disclose the evidence against Yee until 11 minutes before Yee's hearing began.

The military still has not apologized to Yee, but the reprimand will be removed from his service record.

by TChris

Current Attorney General John Ashcroft and former AG Janet Reno have very different understandings of the law.

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said Wednesday that nothing prevented the sharing of FBI intelligence with criminal investigators working on counterterrorism, contradicting statements made a day earlier by current Attorney General John Ashcroft.

That isn't Reno's only disagreement with Ashcroft.

She also addressed Ashcroft's statements blaming her for issuing "draconian" guidelines in 1995 that he said made sharing information even more difficult. "It was not really restrictions," Reno said. "It was exactly the opposite situation." She said her guidelines required the FBI to contact investigators and discuss cases.

The Arab tv network Al Jazeera broadcast a report Wednesday that it has a video showing the killing of one of four Italian hostages being held by militants in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera told The Associated Press that the footage shows the four sitting on the ground, holding up their passports and surrounded by armed men. The satellite station said the tape showed the death of one of the hostages, but did not broadcast it to "protect the audience's feelings." ...The tape was accompanied by a statement, from a previously unknown group called the Green Battalion, which threatened to "kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met."

Al Jazeera's report is here.

by TChris

William Bennette joined the Secret Service in 1999 after retiring from the New York Police Department. He received a commendation for rescue work on Sept. 11, 2001. But Bennette falsely claimed that five Secret Services vehicles were destroyed on 9/11, when he actually gave three of the cars to his wife and daughter after forging signatures of agency managers to transfer the titles. The other two cars were found at an auto repair shop in Queens.

Bennette entered not guilty pleas yesterday to charges of theft of government property. Bennette's lawyer, "rather than proclaiming his client's innocence, indicated that psychological effects from 9/11 might have caused his behavior."

by TChris

It is all too rare for an appellate court to overturn a conviction on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Appellate judges normally defer to a jury's assessment of the evidence, even when the evidence is so skinny that reasonable minds would doubt the defendant's guilt.

Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the money laundering conviction of realtor Michael Carucci, who was accused of helping Stephen Flemmi hide profits from criminal enterprises by buying a condo and equipment for a laundromat. There wasn't much doubt that Carucci helped Flemmi buy the property (as a realtor, that was his job) but the court considered the evidence "too thin" to prove that the money used to purchase the property came from gambling, extortion, or drug trafficking.

"The court of appeals decided today that it wasn't enough for the government to prove that a businessman had the misfortune of having a criminal as his client," said Martin Weinberg, Carucci's lawyer.

Carucci had been convicted of four additional money laundry counts that the district judge overturned. He was acquitted of 94 other counts. The court of appeals' ruling gives Carucci a complete victory, so he will serve no part of the ten month sentence that had been imposed.

by TChris

A federal court stayed the execution of Michael Rosales in Texas just hours before he was scheduled to die. Lawyers for Rosales argue that he is mentally retarded and cannot be executed under a recent Supreme Court ruling holding unconstitutional the execution of severely retarded defendants. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sent Rosales' case back to a district court where the issue of Rosales' retardation can be more fully explored.

Rosales would have been the ninth person executed in Texas this year.

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported in March, Scott Peterson's lawyer received a tip that a potential juror in Peterson's trial was pretending to be open-minded while telling others outside the courtroom that she thought Peterson was "guilty as hell" and that she would lie to get on the jury so that Peterson would "get what was due to him."

"She said that she was trying as hard as she could to pass the test and not appear biased," said the tipster, whose name was redacted from [a signed declaration in] the court file. "She also said she would try to become 'in charge,' which I interpreted as being the foreperson of the jury."

The tipster also said the woman had spoken of Peterson's attorney [Mark Geragos], who is also representing Michael Jackson in his child-molestation case, saying, "Anyone who defends a wife-killer and a child molester deserves to lose."

Ouch! Not only does she think Peterson is guilty despite hearing not a word of testimony, she thinks Peterson deserves to lose because her lawyer defends other presumptively innocent clients.

Although the woman denied making the statements, prosecutors conducted an investigation and ultimately agreed that she should not be allowed to serve as a juror. The judge dismissed the woman on Tuesday. Geragos has suggested that prosecutors should consider charging the woman with perjury, but "San Mateo District Attorney Jim Fox said Tuesday his office was not pursuing the case and noted that during his 21-year tenure, a juror had never faced perjury charges." So committing perjury for the purpose of assisting the state in securing convictions isn't a crime worth pursuing?

by TChris

Joseph Paulus, once known as an aggressive, "law and order" prosecutor in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, has been charged in federal court with taking almost two dozen bribes during his days as a district attorney. Paulus allegedly made a deal with a local defense attorney to split the attorney's fees in exchange for lenient treatment of the attorney's clients. The defense attorney worked for Paulus as an assistant DA before entering private practice.

Paulus is also charged with tax evasion. But his wrongdoing didn't end with accepting bribes and failing to report them on his 1040.

Paulus' successor, fellow Republican Bill Lennon, said he was "extremely disappointed" the federal case focused on bribery, which he said was the "tip of the iceberg" when it came to Paulus's 14 years as district attorney from 1988 to 2002.

Lennon wants the state to investigate reports that "Paulus lied to police, judges, victims and other attorneys in his zeal to win cases and generate headlines." Paulus aspired to an appointment as U.S. attorney in 2001, and apparently believed that winning the favorable headlines that come from winning convictions was more important than justice or the constitutional right to a fair trial.

Senator John Edwards has issued a press release calling for the creation of a new homeland intelligence agency, one with civil liberties safeguards. The objective: to root out terrorist cells in the U.S.

“What we need is a domestic intelligence agency that is focused on fighting terrorism here at home and having a watchdog in place to make sure our freedoms are protected,” said Senator Edwards, who last year introduced legislation to overhaul how terrorists are tracked within the United States .

President Bush, whose administration has until now resisted reforms at the FBI, told reporters on Monday, “Now may be a time to revamp and reform our intelligence services.” Said Senator Edwards, “The president has finally come around to the idea that we need serious structural reform, and this is a structural problem. We have a law enforcement agency trying to do something that they are not suited to do, which is domestic intelligence.”

Senator Edwards on February 13, 2003 proposed legislation to create a Homeland Intelligence Agency to replace FBI units that failed to uncover the plot to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The new agency would focus on intelligence, not law enforcement, so it could do a better job tracking terrorist operatives in this country, improve coordination with local law enforcement and other federal agencies, and protect civil liberties.

We'd like to hear more about the civil liberties protections envisioned for the new agency. We're not jumping aboard this train, at least not yet.

The 60th Session of the UN Human Rights Commission is meeting in Geneva. A network of over 100 U.S. rights groups will address the Commission on US "anti-terror" violations.

The Network will be holding a panel discussion regarding violations by the US on the pretext of "national security" on Wednesday, 14 April, with speakers from the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Muslim Civil Rights Center and Amnesty International.

From their media release today, received by email:

As hundreds continue to languish in a US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay and in prisons around the US - with no idea of when they may be tried or released - members of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) planned today to urge members of the UN Commission on Human Rights, currently meeting in Geneva, to focus their attention on human rights violations conducted by the US in the name of "security" and the "war on terror" and to establish a special mechanism to monitor such violations.

The Guardian reports that the U.S. has dropped its demand for the turnover of those responsible for the death and mutilation of the four Americans that sparked the "onslaught." The source of the news is Mohammed Ubayd al-Kubaisi, the dean of Islamic studies at Baghdad University and the vice-president of the Association of Muslim Scholars. He was among a group of five who met with local leaders in Fallujah this past weekend.

Their mission had the approval of the US authorities, who declared a ceasefire at the weekend and allowed the convoy of negotiators through their checkpoints....Professor Kubaisi said local leaders were demanding an American withdrawal from all the roads into town, the restoration of basic services including water and electricity, and the repair of the main hospital which the marines occupied. In return, local Iraqi police would handle security.

The Guardian also quotes a U.S. official's statement yesterday:

What did you all think of President Bush's press conference tonight? Did he win any of you over? Here's an open thread to discuss it.

Update: David Sirota, writer for The Progress Report at the Center for American Progress, posts claims vs. facts of the press conference over at his personal blog.

Update: John Kerry posted this response over at his weblog:

“Tonight, the President had the opportunity to tell the American people what steps he was going to take to stabilize the situation in Iraq. Unfortunately, he offered no specific plan whatsoever. Rather, the President made it clear that he intends to stubbornly cling to the same policy that has led to a greater risk to American troops and a steadily higher cost to the American taxpayer.