Amnesty International representatives paid a visit to Kenny Richey, the Scottish citizen who has been on Ohio's death row for the past 17 years. They say he is "treated like a rabid animal."

Richey is living in “inhuman, barbaric, macabre and degrading” conditions in Mansfield Correctional Institute, according to Scottish LibDem MP Alistair Carmichael and the head of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, both of whom visited him on Thursday.

Richey, 39, was cuffed, with the manacles locked to a waist-chain, during the visit. His ankles were shackled and he was tethered to the floor. Allen said Richey was “treated like a rabid animal”. He receives little or no medical or dental care and, according to Carmichael, had been forced to improvise a false tooth using part of a plastic fork.

“Death row is horrific,” said Carmichael. “The brutality is inescapable. As a student I worked on a pig farm. Kenny was tethered like the sows we kept locked in sheds. We abolished that as it was inhuman. I saw him and thought that they do to him what we don’t let farmers do to animals.

Then they met "Death Row Barb."

“The most surreal moment was when we walked on to death row and a warden introduced us to the death row secretary – a woman in her 60s. He said ‘this is death row Barb’. The staff are totally desensitised.’’

Amnesty describes Richey’s case as “one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever seen”.

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TalkLeft is now restored. It took almost 24 hours. We caused the meltdown late last night when we tried to back up all the files. We exceeded our site limit (500 mg.) and it corrupted the MT database.

Thank goodness for our hosting company, Hosting Matters. Starting early this morning, they began restoring the files--they had to create an entirely new database and then import each of our 5,000 plus entries --everytime there was a hyphen in an entry or a comment, they had to do it manually. They just finished. We can't thank them, and Stacy in particular, enough. If you are considering hosting companies, we can't recommend them highly enough.

There may be 20 or so entries of the 5,000 that didn't make the cross-over. If you come across a post that doesn't open, please let us know which one so we can restore it.

We'll resume in the morning. What a long day!

Update: Comments should be working now.

What's the real deal with the U.S. Government and Haiti? We've met Ira Kurzman and he is beyond well-regarded as just about the most knowledgeable lawyer out there on immigration issues. Cursor reports,

Ira Kurzman, a U.S. lawyer for the Haitian government, tells "Democracy Now!" that anti-government paramilitary forces in Haiti are "armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States," and that "some kind of theater of the absurd" is being played out involving "opposition" leaders such as Andy Apaid (a U.S. citizen) and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Kurzman also rejects bribery accusations aimed at Aristide by "one of Haiti's most flamboyant drug traffickers," as "just another piece of the effort to politically assassinate President Aristide before the U.S.-directed military coup physically eliminates him."

Update: Haiti descends into anarchy.

Update: Jeanne at Body and Soul has a list of recommended reads on Haiti.

From a Department of Justice press release today:

Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard of the District of Columbia announced today that Narissa Smalls, a legal technician in FBI Headquarters, was sentenced to 12 months in prison today on charges stemming from her unlawful access of the FBI’s Automated Case Support (ACS) computer system.

Smalls, sentenced this afternoon by U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler of the District of Columbia, pleaded guilty to the felony charges in December 2003 and resigned from the FBI as part of her plea agreement.

Smalls was assigned to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act Unit in FBI Headquarters, and her duties included searching ACS for information in response to FOIA requests and for other administrative purposes. Smalls admitted that between September 2002 and November 2002, she conducted several searches in ACS for information regarding individuals who were subjects of ongoing drug investigations in the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In one instance, she printed out the information and took it to her residence. Smalls admitted she then shared the results of her ACS searches with individuals who were associated with the subjects of the FBI’s drug investigations.

Great news for Martha! The Judge has thrown out the securities fraud charge against her.

The charge accused Stewart of deceiving investors in her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, by lying about her sale of ImClone Systems stock. "Here, the evidence and inferences the government presents are simply too weak to support a finding beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal intent," the judge wrote.

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum left intact four other charges against the celebrity homemaker - conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and two counts of lying to investigators.

The Judge did not dismiss any counts against co-defendant Bacnovic. Closing arguments will be Monday. The Judge's 23 page ruling should be available here soon.

Morley Safer reports on 60 Minutes this Sunday on how interrogators can convince innocent people to make a false confession. Here's an e-mail we got about it:

The long-awaited 60 Minutes Story on False Confessions, featuring the cases of two individuals who falsely confessed, is set to air this Sunday night (unless Janet Jackson bares her breast, Martha Stewart is convicted, the Oscars are stolen again, or some other story preempts the show....)

The two false confessions featured are those of Abdullah Higazy, an Egyptian student studying abroad, who was coerced by the FBI into making an inculpatory statement (he claimed he owned a pilot's radio which the FBI believed was involved in the WTC bombings), and Jorge Hernandez, an 18 year old Palo Alto high school student who was coerced into confessing to a rape of an elderly woman . Both young men will describe the pressure which was brought to bear on them by interrogators and should explain why they felt they had no choice but to cave into the pressure.

Higazy was cleared when the radio he claimed was his was actually claimed by an American commercial airline pilot (oops!) and Hernandez, whose admission was captured on tape (though the interrogation was not), was cleared when DNA testing excluded him as the source of the semen. Should make for interesting primetime t.v. -- a nice pre-Oscar warmup.

Over objections by the prosecution, the Judge in Terry Nichols' state trial will allow death row inmate David Hammer to testify at Nichols' trial. The prosecutors argued Hammer is not a credible witness:

Hammer spent time with McVeigh on federal death row before McVeigh was executed in 2001. Hammer claims McVeigh gave him the identities of coconspirators including John Doe 2, a mystery man some claim to have seen with McVeigh on the day of the bombing, defense attorney Mark Earnest said.

Nichols' attorneys contend Nichols was set up by unknown coconspirators involved with McVeigh in the plot to bomb the building. Hammer's testimony was bitterly opposed by prosecutors, who described Hammer as "one of the least credible sources ever to serve time" in an Oklahoma prison. Assistant District Attorney Lou Keel said Hammer once threatened to kill him and a judge and blow up the Oklahoma County Courthouse.

Hammer is on federal death row for the 1996 murder of his cellmate, Andrew Marti, at the Allenwood Federal Penitentiary outside Williamsport, Pa.

Hammer has co-written a book with another death row inmate about what McVeigh allegedly told him, due out this month. It's titled "Secrets Worth Dying For" and is described as containing "details of being on death row with Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy James McVeigh and revelations about others involved in the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City."

David Paul Hammer #24507-077 is on Death Row in Terre Haute, Indiana. His execution is now scheduled for June, 2004. Mr. Hammer's website is here. The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty offers free websites to death row prisoners.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has taken a lot of heat for going on a duck-hunting trip as the guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, flying on Air Force Two, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear VP Cheney's appeal in which he is trying to keep details of his national energy policy task force a secret.

Now The Los Angeles Times reports that Scalia has another questionable hunting trip in his past:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the guest of a Kansas law school two years ago and went pheasant hunting on a trip arranged by the school's dean, all within weeks of hearing two cases in which the dean was a lead attorney. The cases involved issues of public policy important to Kansas officials. Accompanying Scalia on the November 2001 hunting trip were the Kansas governor and the recently retired state Senate president, who flew with Scalia to the hunting camp aboard a state plane.

Two weeks before the trip, University of Kansas School of Law Dean Stephen R. McAllister, along with the state's attorney general, had appeared before the Supreme Court to defend a Kansas law to confine sex offenders after they complete their prison terms. Two weeks after the trip, the dean was before the high court to lead the state's defense of a Kansas prison program for treating sex criminals.

Scalia later sided with Kansas in both cases.

Sean-Paul of Agonist has seen Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ movie. He compares it to Reservoir Dogs and is sorry he went. He hated it, and tells why.

For more on how the movie is a shameful travesty of violence and anti-semitism, we recommend Leon Wieseltier's The Worship of Blood at TNR. In a nutshell,

It is a repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film, and it leaves you with the feeling that the man who made it hates life.

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The Dreyfuss Report asks:

The Bush administration told us that Iraq was a major threat to the United States, and they got it wrong: no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to Al Qaeda. Maybe they were just wrong, maybe they lied—but no threat. Could they be wrong about terrorism too? Could they be exaggerating the threat to the United States from terrorism? Is it possible that the Bush administration wants to scare American voters into staying with President Bush in 2004 by hyping the threat of terrorism?

Here's a snippet of the answer:

The reality is that since 9/11, there has been no terrorism in the United States at all. None. Not a single American has even been punched in the face by an angry Islamic militant, as far as I know, since then. If there is this global enemy with vast powers out to get us, where is it? Why hasn’t it attacked us? It’s certainly not because our highly competent Department of Homeland Security is doing its job so efficiently.

In the debate Thursday night, presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edwards expressed differing views on the death penalty:

Confronted with a question about a child killer, Kerry said his instinct ``is to want to strangle that person with my own hands.'' But the Massachusetts senator, a former prosecutor, quickly added that he favors the death penalty only for cases of terrorism.

Edwards, a Southern-bred politician, differed, saying there are other crimes that ``deserve the ultimate punishment.'' He cited as an example the killers of James Byrd, a black man who was dragged to death from a pickup truck in 1998 in Texas.

There's more, as we reported here:

John Kerry supports a moratorium on the death penalty at the federal level due to the number of persons on death row who have been found to be factually innocent of their crimes. John Edwards does not.

On a related note, the candidates also differ on medical marijuana. The Marijuana Policy Project gives an "F" grade to John Edwards in its Voter's Guide:

Edwards has publicly stated that he thinks it would be "irresponsible" to end the Justice Department's policy of arresting patients and caregivers who defy federal law. Edwards gets an "F" grade for refusing to pledge an end to these cruel and heartless raids on medical marijuana patients who are complying with state law.... Edwards has not taken any action to protect medical marijuana patients. He has neither cosponsored nor voted on legislation specifically addressing medical marijuana.

John Kerry gets an A-:

Atrios is profiled in a news article--we learn a lot about him, but of course, not his name.

At the bar of Marathon on the Square, a quiet man in a gray turtleneck sweater sips a martini. It's the night of the Iowa caucuses, and a gaggle of Philly media and political types is watching the returns on a large TV screen. By Philadelphia standards, it's a solid B-list party -- reporters, mayoral spinners, admen. But the most powerful person in the room may be the man in the turtleneck sweater. And no one knows who the hell he is.

....So here's what I can tell you about Atrios. He's a college-educated white man of average height and build. He looks about 30, maybe 35. He lives in Center City Philadelphia with his wife (no kids), and he works in the suburbs. Atrios describes his parents as "idiosyncratic socialists," and smiles. None of this is really surprising, given the smart chunklets of anti-GOP rhetoric that Atrios uploads to his site several times a day.