On April 23, the Senate will consider the proposed Victims' Rights Amendment (VRA) to the U.S. Constitution (S. J. Res. 1). Below is the text of the action alert we received from National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Legislative Director Kyle O'Dowd.

Action Requested: Contact your Senators and urge them to oppose this dangerous measure. Encourage your local prosecutors to do the same. Remember that many Senators will soon be arriving in their home states for spring recess (which lasts until April 16), and face-to-face meetings may be possible. Contact information for Members of Congress is available at here.

Background: The Victims’ Rights Amendment was approved 10-8 by the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 4, 2003. On the House side, the Constitution Subcommittee held a hearing regarding the VRA on September 30, 2003. The latest version of the proposed Victims’ Rights Amendment would give victims of violent crimes : (1) the right to notice of proceedings involving the alleged crime and of prisoner release or escape; (2) the right not to be excluded from proceedings involving the alleged crime and, with respect to certain proceedings, the right to be heard; and (3) the right to "adjudicative decisions" that consider the victim's safety, interest in avoiding delay, and claim to restitution.

The VRA’s sweeping, unfunded mandates would diminish the constitutional rights of accused persons and wreak havoc on our criminal justice system. Specifically --

by TChris

Forced by public criticism to flip-flop its position about Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission, the Bush administration allowed her to testify, no doubt hoping that Rice would reassure the public that the administration did everything right and has nothing to hide. If that was the plan, it didn't work. According to a CBS poll:

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s public testimony at the Sept. 11 Commission hearings may have improved her own image with the public, but most Americans still believe that the Bush administration could have done more to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, was not paying enough attention to the issue before Sept. 11 and is still hiding something about what they knew.

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported yesterday, U.S. Marshals guarding Justice Scalia confronted journalists who were recording his speeches to school audiences on Wednesday. Accounts of those confontations are conflicting.

Journalists report that, at a speech Justice Scalia gave to high school students in Hattiesburg, Deputy U.S. Marshal Melanie Rube demanded that they erase their recordings.

After Associated Press reporter Denise Grones balked, the marshal took her digital recorder and erased its contents -- after Grones explained how the machine worked. The marshal also asked Hattiesburg American reporter Antoinette Konz to hand over a cassette tape and returned it, erased, after the event.

Rube won't comment, but Nehemiah Flowers, the United States marshal in Jackson, Miss., said "that Deputy Rube ... asked politely if they would erase the tape." Flowers denied that the request was "coercive." Seizing the recorder and erasing the tape despite a reporter's objection seems coercive, notwithstanding Flowers' spin.

But did Rube act on her own, or at the direction of Justice Scalia? According to Flowers, Rube was "following the court's orders." But David Turner, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, said "Justice Scalia did not instruct the deputy to take that action." Seems the Marshals are having a problem getting on the same page.

The Marshals may also have a problem explaining how their interference with a free press is justified.

"The seizure and destruction of a reporter's tape recordings is remarkable, and I think it would be difficult to find any law that would justify it," said Luther T. Munford, a First Amendment expert at Phelps Dunbar, a law firm in Jackson.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press protested the seizure yesterday in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft. The letter noted that the deputy's action appeared to violate a 1980 federal law prohibiting most seizures of journalists' resource materials.

by TChris

Federal oversight of internal investigations of misconduct by the New Jersey state police, implemented in 1999 after the state admitted that troopers engaged in racial profiling to make traffic stops, will end in response to a joint request made by the U.S. Justice Department and the state attorney general's office. Those agencies say that an internal affairs unit is doing an admirable job of handling complaints against officers and no longer needs oversight. Monitoring of other functions of the state police would continue under the judge's order.

Critics, including State Senator Nia Gill, complain that they weren't given notice of the proposal to end the monitoring and didn't have a chance to respond. Sen. Gill believes that all concerned parties should be heard before the judge decides whether to end the monitoring.

Minority leaders and civil rights groups plan to challenge the ruling, saying the consent decree that mandated the overall monitoring should not be lifted piecemeal. They also claim that questions remain about whether the internal affairs unit has truly reformed its practices.

by TChris

A Sheriff's deputy in Pasco County, Florida arrested a nine year old girl after he found a rabbit in her home that she took from a neighbor. Presumably concerned about "officer safety," the deputy handcuffed the girl, then transported her in his squad car to the police department for questioning.

A Sheriff's spokesperson claimed that the deputy had no choice but to act after the neighbor reported the crime. A local public defender disagrees that an arrest was required, explaining that the deputy could have referred charges to the state's attorney without taking the girl into custody.

The sheriff's department asserts that these heavy-handed tactics teach children to respect the law. Perhaps the girl will learn not to confuse her neighbor's rabbit with the Easter bunny, but there is little to respect in the deputy's actions.

"I think this is a little unusual to say the very least," Cecka Green of Voices for Florida's Children said. "To treat children as hardened criminals, when back in the old days that may have just been seen as mischief that could have been handled by the parents, can contribute to some problems with our kids in this society."

The lesson that is likely to stick with the little girl? The deputy who arrested her was a jerk.

"He put one handcuff on me really tight," she said Thursday. In the patrol car, "He just stared at me in the mirror."

Condi Rice is so five minutes ago. As we write this, the news is coming in fast and furious from Iraq:

In an ominous turn, kidnappers seized 13 foreign hostages and threatened to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw its troops.....TV pictures aired in the Middle East by the Al-Jazeera satellite network and rebroadcast during prime time in Japan showed the three Japanese hostages - two aid workers and a journalist - wide-eyed and moaning in terror as their black-clad captors held knives to their throats, shouting God is Great in Arabic.

Two Arab aid workers from Jerusalem - one who had once lived in Georgia - were abducted in a separate incident, and a Syrian-born Canadian humanitarian aid worker for the International Rescue Committee was taken hostage Wednesday by a local militia in Najaf. Eight South Korean Christian missionaries were seized by gunmen outside Baghdad. Seven were freed after one of them escaped, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said.

The radical Shi'ite Militia has seized control of two cities in the south:

In the south, the al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia had full control in the cities of Kut and Kufa and in the central part of Najaf. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets.

The U.S. death toll is at 40 for this week alone, six in the past 48 hours. Friday is the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Al Jazeera's headline story: Fierce Falluja fighting recalls Vietnam.

No, it's not a joke. President Bush actually declared today, April 8, National D.A.R.E. Day 2004:

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 8, 2004, as National D.A.R.E. Day.

Drug War Rant provides some appropriate reading to accompany your celebration.

Someone must have hijacked Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly blog today, because we can't believe Kevin would say this:

I'd like to see videotaping required for all police interviews, and in return I'd suggest that the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination be discarded. If police interviews are all recorded and trials are all held in public, it's not at all clear to me what value the 5th Amendment right to silence has anymore....with Star Chambers a thing of the past and videotaping preventing coerced confessions, I really do wonder if the self-incrimination clause of the 5th Amendment has enough value left to make it worth the problems it causes. I suspect it doesn't.

Where's the Kevin we thought we knew? [hat tip to Kikuchiyo News]

Update: Nick at DeNovo offers some analysis.

The second to last episode of The Apprentice is on tonight. Take the test, figure out which one of the Apprentice candidates is most like you. We're Bill:

What is Bill's definition of "success"? If I can lead a happy life, touch the lives of others in a positive way, win the respect of those that I care about … and make a few million along the way then I have been successful.

After the show, head on over to Oliver Willis' Apprentice blog for comment. Oliver reports, by the way, that he is Katrina.

The Religion of Jesus Church and TheTHC Ministry have sued Attorney General John Ashcroft and the DEA seeking to prevent the arrest of those who use marijuana for religious and medicinal purposes.

A Complaint for injunctive relief was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, D.E.A. Administrator Karen Tandy, and local U.S. District Attorney Ed Kubo by religious and medicinal consumers of cannabis. The suit seeks to enjoin the Federal government from arresting and prosecuting those residents of Hawaii whose religions and religious beliefs require the consumption of cannabis (the herb governments derogatorily label as “marijuana”).

The lawsuit also seeks protection from federal prosecution for those citizens of Hawaii who cultivate, consume and/or distribute cannabis legally pursuant to legislatively enacted Department of Public Safety Narcotics Enforcement Division guidelines and valid patient/caregiver registration certificates.

THC says they believe they will prevail based upon the recent 9th Circuit case of Raich v. Ashcroft.

The Plaintiffs also rely upon the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act to secure their definitive right to free exercise of religion. That Act was recently used to prevent the federal government from prosecuting a New Mexico based, Brazilian Uniao Do Vegetal themed religion for their importation and distribution of Ayahoasca, a hallucinogenic-laced tea from the Brazilian rainforest.

The lawyer for the Plaintiff adds:

After being fined $495k by the FCC, Clear Channel today dropped Howard Stern's show from its radio stations. Here is Howard's response:

"This is not a surprise. This is a follow up to the McCarthy type "witch hunt" of the administration and the activities of this group of presidential appointees in the FCC, led by "Colin Powell Jr." and his band of players....It is pretty shocking that governmental interference into our rights and free speech takes place in the U.S. It's hard to reconcile this with the "land of the free" and the "home of the brave". I'm sure what's next is the removal of "dirty pictures" like the 20th century German exhibit in a New York City Museum and the erotic literature in our libraries; they too will fall into their category of "evil" as well.

by TChris

Two Cubans who fled to the United States never lost their faith in the American way of life, even after they were charged with assault as a result of a confrontation with the Coast Guard. Their faith has been rewarded, as a federal jury today found them not guilty. After the trial, the jury foreman shook their hands and welcomed them to America.