A new report by the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty shows that 41% of people in Illinois now oppose the death penalty.

The report also says two-thirds of voters would be either more likely to support their legislator or have no objection if he or she voted to abolish the death penalty. According to the report, of the 39 capital cases resolved in Illinois in 2003, only two resulted in a death sentence. Neither of those sentences was issued in Cook County. Additionally, four of the five juries who considered the death penalty in 2003 rejected it.

...The report also pointed to the disproportionate number of minorities facing possible death sentences in Cook County. Of the 175 pending capital cases the coalition identified, 74 percent of the defendants are black and 15 percent are Latino. Meanwhile, both death sentences handed down in the state in 2003 involved crimes against white victims.

Illinois spent $32 million in 2003 trying capital cases.

[Executive director of the coalition, Jane] Bohman said the cost of trying capital cases, combined with the shrinking number of death sentences due to skepticism about wrongful convictions and the lack of a foolproof system for convicting criminals, means the use of the death penalty in Illinois cannot be justified. "Our state can no longer be haunted by the specter of execution of an innocent person," Bohman said.

You can access the report here.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow sums it up just right:

From all appearances, Hutton just refused to accept what the BBC said and accepted whatever Blair said instead, regardless of the fact that it's as plain as the nose on my face that the BBC was right and you'd have to be completely incompetent to believe that stupid "45 minutes" claim. So the head of the BBC fell on his sword, and everyone is supposed to pretend that Blair wasn't full of it. Please.

There was a stand-off at San Francisco General Hospital yesterday, as a doctor refused a police request to search a female suspect's private body parts for cocaine.

San Francisco has had some touchy police standoffs -- but nothing quite like the 10-hour showdown that came to a head in the San Francisco General emergency room between cops, doctors and a female drug suspect who refused to surrender several rocks of crack cocaine she was concealing in her very private parts.

Before it was all over, a doctor was herself being threatened with arrest -- and the head of the city's Health Department was on his way down to do the search himself.

The police obtained a "body cavity" search warrant. The doctor refused to perform it, stating it wasn't a medical emergency.

Daily Kos reports that the Dean campaign has undergone a major shakeup. Joe Trippi is out as Campaign Manager--Roy Neel is taking his place. Neel is Al Gore's former chief of staff.

What do you think? Is it too late?

Update: Oliver at Liquid List has this analysis, which we pretty much agree with as to Dean. We're not ready to count Clark out yet, although like Oliver, we're hoping Edwards gets a bump from South Carolina.

Keeping with our theme of how we are failing our youth a little longer, a new report on the California Youth Authority says the state is failing to provide adequate mental health care in the juvenile penal system:

Juvenile convicts suffering mental illnesses are often over-medicated and improperly punished and cared for by inadequately trained clinicians who tend to intervene only when crisis strikes, a state-funded report on the California Youth Authority concludes.

The report, obtained by The Times on Tuesday, described a patchwork state system of care that is inconsistent from facility to facility. It cited a failure to track the effects of mind-altering drugs and an over-reliance on punishment — segregation in a wire-mesh cage, for example — for youths who need therapy instead.

The report was conducted as part of a class-action lawsuit filed by wards, as young convicts are called, alleging unconstitutional conditions within the Youth Authority, once a national model for rehabilitation of wayward juveniles. Its authors, experts on psychiatry and corrections, were jointly approved by lawyers for the wards and the state, which paid for the review.

Two teens who shared a cell hung themselves with sheets last week at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility near Sacramento.

These suicides put a human face on the tragedy of what happens when we do not pay attention to the mental health needs of incarcerated teenagers," said Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), chairwoman of an oversight committee on corrections. "The Youth Authority has a crisis in its health-care delivery, especially when it comes to meeting mental health needs."

Update: The AP has this report.

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Arizona is coming under fire as a result of new report by the Justice Department faulting juvenile facilities over suicides:

In an investigation spurred by three suicides at Arizona juvenile corrections facilities, the U.S. Department of Justice has found numerous civil rights violations that affect the well-being of youths in the state's care.

A lack of suicide prevention, inadequate mental health care, medical care and special education services and instances of sexual and physical abuse are among the findings in the 39-page report expected to be released by the federal agency today.

The report documents widespread mismanagement and communication failures in the department, which may have contributed to the suicides. It also points to abuse by juveniles or staff members in which appropriate investigations and disciplinary actions were not taken.

Disappointing news....Gary Hart is unlikely to run for the Senate. The only reason given is financial. This isn't official as Hart himself has not commented.

Run, Gary, Run.

At their judicial conference Tuesday, 9th Circuit Judges blasted the Feeney Amendment included in the PROTECT Act that limits judicial discretion in sentencing:

The opposition was voiced during a two-day meeting of the 15 chief district judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit that concluded here Tuesday. Judge John Coughenour of Seattle said the group had ``virtual unanimity'' in its disdain for the law, which compels judges to strictly follow sentencing guidelines and orders that reports be sent to Congress on anyone who deviates from them.

The change, which was supported by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was part of an anti-crime bill signed by President Bush last year. The Justice Department made no attempt to consult with judges, Coughenour said, and ignored a commission created by Congress to make sentencing recommendations.

....The 9th Circuit includes federal courts in Hawaii, Arizona, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, as well as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

The PROTECT act is bad and needs to be repealed. Ashcroft needs to go. Boot Bush.

Professor and blogger Mark A.R. Kleiman sees this as a negative, but we applaud it.

The Justice Department has decided to stop testing new jail inmates for drug use.

It was a social science project begun by former Attorney General Edwin Meese under President Reagan.

The program, the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program, or ADAM, tests newly arrested criminals entering jail for narcotics violations in 35 cities. Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, in the Reagan administration, started it in 1986.

Cops and "criminal justice experts" (we put that in quotes because in our experience the term means one with a law enforcement leaning-- for some reason we rarely if ever hear criminal defense lawyers referred to as "justice experts") want to keep the program and argue that it's a useful tool in the drug war.

"This is a real loss," said Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is editor of The Drug Policy Analysis Bulletin. "Closing down ADAM indicates a complete lack of seriousness about getting a handle on the drug abuse problem in this country."

We think it's a privacy invasion to the inmates. They committed a crime, they go in to do their time. Why should the Government be entitled to their bodily fluids? Sorry, but we don't think a social studies project is a good enough reason.

Law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts criticized ending the program, saying it was ....widely credited for tracking the rise and fall of the crack epidemic and detecting the beginning of the methamphetamine epidemic on the West Coast.

The Justice Department cites a lack of funding for cutting the program. The "criminal justice experts" think the Office of National Drug Control Policy should have lobbied Congress harder for more money.

Why is the Government spending so much money --$23 million--on social science projects and surveys instead of on providing treatment and alternatives to prison for drug users? Why are inmates being forced to be statistical guinea pigs?

And if you believe this, we have a bridge to sell you.

In a "rousing defense" Tuesday during opening arguments, Robert Morvillo, Martha Stewart's defense attorney lashed out at the Government charging they were overzealous prosecutors who made the erroneous assumption that Martha lied when she had intended to get rid of her shares all along.

Attorney Robert Morvillo offered a rousing defense of Martha Stewart Tuesday, telling a jury she had no motive to lie to investigators probing the reasons why she sold her stock in ImClone Systems Inc.

In an opening statement that sounded like a closing argument, Morvillo said his client was the victim of overzealous prosecutors who assumed Stewart lied when she said she planned to sell the shares all along. Intent on making a case against Stewart, he said, prosecutors chose to believe only that she sold the stock because she knew ImClone founder and family friend Samuel Waksal was unloading millions of his own family's shares in the company.

"This case is brought to you by the U.S. Department of Justice, headed by John Ashcroft," Morvillo said as he prowled in front of the jury box and ridiculed Congress for leaking erroneous information about Stewart and her co-defendant and former broker, Peter Bacanovic.

"Same government," Morvillo said, who at points slammed his open palm on the bar in front of the jury box for emphasis. "Leak it on one side, prosecute on the other. Same system. I think George Orwell was 20 years too early."

While other news stories are leading today with "Proseuction Says Martha Lied", we're rooting for Martha so don't expect to see those articles here, unless we decide to deride them. We'll be concentrating on the defense.

The ACLU has filed its first complaint with the UN alleging that 9/11 suspects have been mistreated:

In the complaint, filed on behalf of 13 people arrested under federal authority shortly after the attacks, the ACLU asked the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to declare the treatment towards the immigrants to be "arbitrary" and the U.S. policies to be a violation of international law.

.....The ACLU is alleging that of the more than 750 immigrants detained mainly on immigration law violations within the first year after the attacks, many were not immediately told of the charges they faced, were denied access to attorneys and were not given "meaningful judicial review of their confinement."

From the ACLU press release:

We are filing this complaint before the United Nations to ensure that U.S. policies and practices reflect not just domestic constitutional standards, but accepted international human rights principles regarding liberty and its deprivations," said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU, at the Geneva press briefing.

"With today's action, we are sending a strong message of solidarity to advocates in other countries who have decried the impact of U.S. policies on the human rights of their citizens," Romero added. "The ACLU will go where it must to seek justice for the men who were unfairly detained and deported by the U.S. government after September 11."

You can read the complaint here.