We wrote yesterday about the Supreme Court's decision to reconsider the juvenile death penalty. The ruling could affect 26 on death row in Texas. Can you imagine? Texas has 26 persons on death row who were under 18 at the time of their crimes? Shameful.

More analysis of the implication of the Court's review of the issue is here and here.

This is truly a bad idea. In an effort to rein in liberal professors at Colorado colleges and universities, a conservative legislator will introduce an Academic Bill of Rights this week.

The proposed academic bill of rights is aimed at protecting conservative students who say they are targets of harassment and discrimination by left-leaning faculty because of their political beliefs.

Student leaders at the University of Colorado at Boulder reacted with fear. This whole bill is scary to me," said Sergio Gonzales, one of three student body leaders. Gonzales said the measure could affect what is taught in the classroom and the type of outside speakers invited to address students.

"Having the legislature say that controversial material not covered in the course syllabus should not be introduced is extremely dangerous. Higher education is meant to expand people's minds and challenge their ways of thinking," Gonzales said. "This isn't K-12. We're talking about adults who go to college who should be talking about controversial topics. Besides, who is to decide what is controversial?"

....Ryan Miccio, head of legislative affairs for the Associated Students of Colorado State University in Fort Collins,...said he is worried. "I would be concerned about any legislation that could potentially alter university curriculum, and it sounds like this could," Miccio said.

Rumblings about the bill, to be introduced Wednesday, made the news in September. Denver Post columnist Diane Carman called it " another goofy lesson in politics." Jesse Walker at Reason had this to say. [links to September articles via Walter in Denver .] RMPN says "Not So Fast."

[comments now closed]

Colorado has become the first state in the nation to impose term limits on elected prosecutors. 13 of Colorado's elected District Attorneys will be leaving office in January, 2005 after a ruling yesterday by the Colorado Supreme Court upholding results of a 2002 election referendum that rejected prosecutors' requests to be excluded from a 1994 state Constitutional Amendment limiting all "non-judicial" officeholders to two terms in office.

We voted against the referendum. Colorado, particularly the Denver area, has some excellent, career prosecutors, most notably in our view, Bill Ritter in Denver, Bob Grant in Adams and Jim Thomas in Jefferson County. Unlike the federal prosecutor's office, where the President appoints U.S. Attorneys from his political party after being elected, the office has never been a political one in the sense of Democrat vs. Republican. We sense that will change.

On election night in 2002, we were at Tom Strickland's headquarters watching the results. Bill Ritter was standing next to us when the first results came in on the referendum and it looked bad. It was like being at a funeral, we offered our condolences, and although Ritter expressed mild optimism that the Court would reverse it, we could see he was reading the writing on the wall. We know he'll land with his feet up, and probably get a job making a lot more money, but we also know his heart is in public service and think that the public is the loser with this decision.

Bump and Update: The voting won't go on much longer, so if you haven't voted on your favorite blogs, please take a minute now.

Update: We don't stand a chance in the best blog category, so no need to vote for us there. There's an outside chance for best single issue and best expert. You can vote at the site or by sending an email. Email Mary Beth or Email Dwight.

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Bump and Update: If you haven't voted, please do. In all the categories.

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The 2003 Koufax Awards. Made possible by Wampum Blog--Dwight Meredith and Mary Beth Williams. The semi-finalists have been winnowed down. The finalists have been announced. Thanks to your votes, TalkLeft is a finalist for three awards:

• Best Blog
• Best Single Issues Blog: Criminal Law Issues
• Best Expert Blog: Expertise in Criminal Law

Last year TalkLeft won for Best Single Issue blog. The competition is fiercer this year, with so many great blogs nominated. But that's the category we'd most like to win again. We hope you'll take a minute and go over and vote for your favorites in all the categories.

You can vote by leaving a comment at the above award category links--or by sending an email. Email Mary Beth or Email Dwight.

A huge thanks to Dwight and Mary Beth for devoting so many hours to make this project come together once again. Truly, it's an honor just to be nominated when all of the nominated blogs are winners.

Update: The links to the site and comments where you vote seem to be loading very slowly--probably due to the response. We suggest voting by e-mail.

CrimeLynx is still down, so our newsfeed cannot appear as it usually does on the left side of TalkLeft. We'll put it here instead:

Tuesday January 27, 2004

Primary Day Arrives in New Hampshire
CNN

Citing Free Speech, Judge Voids Part of Antiterror Act
New York Times

Limbaugh's Lawyer: Pill Use Not Extraordinary
Miami Herald

Charge Is Seen Against Officer in Roof Killing
New York Times

U.S. to Start Airline Background Checks
Associated Press

Lionel Tate Freed from Prison
Palm Beach Post

Working Women Dominate Martha Stewart's Jury
New York Times

Supreme Court to Revisit Juvenile Execution Issue
Legal Times

Former U.S. Judges Enter Fray Over Guantanamo Detentions
New Jersey Law Journal

Chief Justice Balks at Ethical Questions
Associated Press

Granted Asylum, Nun Held in Va. Jail
Washington Post

Consultant Works His Magic on Kerry
Washington Post

Free Heroin May Be Coming to Canada
Edmonton Journal

Opinion

Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes announced Monday he will seek an Indictment against the police officer who killed unarmed 19 year old Timothy Stansbury this weekend. The officer is white and Mr. Stansbury was black.

The teenager, Timothy Stansbury Jr., 19, had no weapons, and witnesses have said that no words were exchanged before the officer, Richard S. Neri Jr., fired his gun. Officer Neri has made statements suggesting he was startled to see Mr. Stansbury as the officer and his partner opened the roof door on a routine patrol of the Louis Armstrong Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to a person who was briefed about his account.

DA Hynes said he would seek a charge of criminally negligent homicide, and perhaps the more serious one of second-degree manslaughter.

Criminally negligent homicide is a Class E felony in which the guilty party need not be aware of the potential risk of his actions. It carries a maximum sentence of four years. The more serious charge being weighed, second-degree manslaughter, is a Class C felony in which the guilty party is aware of the risk but recklessly disregards it. It carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.

The officer's lawyer says he may have his client testify before the grand jury. Investigators speculate the officer was startled and pulled the trigger by accident.

Still, several police officials said that officers were trained to keep their finger away from the trigger, even if their gun is drawn.

Then there's that familiar blue wall of silence:

One senior investigator said Officer Neri's partner has told investigators that at the critical moments of the shooting, his view of Officer Neri was blocked.

You Go, Roy!

Rush Limbaugh's attorney went on the offensive Monday:

Rush Limbaugh's attorney mounted an offensive Monday, accusing Palm Beach County prosecutors of smear tactics and likening his client to any ordinary American with chronic pain.

''This nation is full of people who take medication every day and will do so for the rest of their lives,'' said Roy Black, speaking in a news conference in Miami.

Discussing the prescription-drug abuse allegations in unprecedented detail, Black reasoned that the quantity of medicine Limbaugh is accused of ingesting -- 1,800 pills in 210 days -- works out to roughly 8.5 pills a day, ``certainly not an outrageous amount.''

The State prosecutor's office released confidential plea negotiation documents pursuant to a public records request by the conservative Landmark Legal Foundation, headed up by the ultra-conservative Mark Levin. (We used to debate Levin on cable during the Clinton impeachment days. We find his views insufferable.)

Michael Edmondson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County state attorney, said prosecutors were confident they'd done the right thing. Prosecutors consulted the Attorney General's Office and the Florida Bar in response to the Jan. 15 public records request by the Landmark Legal Foundation, which sought all available documents in the case. They concluded the state public records law required releasing the plea dealings, even though doing so violates ethical rules for lawyers.

'The way the Florida public records law works is, anything that is not specifically exempted under the law is permitted,'' Edmondson said. State law trumps any ethical concerns, he said.

But he offered nothing in writing to back up that account. And Limbaugh's legal team produced documents Monday that seemed to contradict it.

No matter how you feel about Rush, Roy is right. And we're kind of curious as to why Landmark is going after Rush--it's like eating one's own.

Our hearty congratulations to New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg who got married this weekend at the age of 81.

I was quite surprised to learn in reading the article that the new Mrs. Lautenberg is Bonnie S. Englebardt who is "in her 50's." I spent a week at a health spa with Bonnie, and her mother and sister Carol, in the early 1980's. I saw her a few times after, and remember when her husband Hank died of an unexpected heart attack at the young age of 40. I remember Bonnie's mother being appalled at my career, particularly my defense of persons accused of drug crimes. She thought drug dealers deserved the death penalty. I stayed good friends with Bonnie's sister Carol for a number of years, but lost touch a long time ago.

Bonnie was pretty, vivacious and fun.

Mr. Lautenberg, back at work in his Newark office on Monday, recalled in an interview that he and Ms. Englebardt first met in the late 80's when she traveled to Washington with a citizens group to lobby members of the Senate for support for Israel. She followed up that visit with a thank-you card and a note telling the senator that she was recently widowed and asking if he knew of any "interesting'' men who might be nice dinner dates.

"I put that card in my pocket, and about five months later, I called her,'' he recalled. "We went out, and I don't know whether she found me interesting, but here we are 16 years later.''

I'm glad for the newly married couple and wish them much happiness.

As we opined yesterday, professional women are a good bet for Martha Stewart jurors. Her jury was finalized yesterday and consists of 8 women and 4 men.

The jury is weighted toward working women — a pharmacist, a woman who belongs to an organization of art directors, one who travels a lot for business, another whose best friend used to work at Merrill Lynch, and a fifth who works at a law firm.

The men on the jury are for the most part, non-blue collar:

At least three of the four men in the pool also seem savvy about financial matters. One owns shares in Merrill Lynch, for example. Another complained that the Enron scandal hurt the value of his mutual funds (and said that he plays poker with people who work on Wall Street). A third used to work for a brokerage firm as a computer technician.

There are additional dynamics at play here:

But everyone involved in this case has paid careful attention to the atmospherics, and to the sexual politics of putting a powerful woman on trial for a corporate crime. It is unlikely to be an accident that both the judge and the chief prosecutor, Karen Patton Seymour, are women. All of the defense lawyers are men, as is Ms. Stewart's co-defendant and former stockbroker, Peter E. Bacanovic.

We can't help but remember the movie Working Girl with Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith. Sigourneys would be far better than Melanies on the jury. Looks like the defense succeeded.

Of course, jury selection is an art, not a science. It will be interesting to see how the trial unfolds and whether the defense jury consultants earned their fee.

Update: Another description of Martha's jurors:

A minister who counsels married couples, a computer technician and a pharmacist born in Uganda were among the 12 jurors chosen on Monday to decide whether Martha Stewart committed stock fraud....a translator; a woman who recently sued her dry cleaner for damages over an antique dress; an events planner whose husband knows high-profile technology analyst Mary Meeker; and a man who blames the Enron scandal for losses in his mutual fund.

Opening statements are Tuesday --the Government will launch its attack.

Our sister site, Crimelynx is down today and for part of tomorrow while the hosting company does something or other to the servers. We purposefully use different hosting companies for CrimeLynx and TalkLeft so they can't both go down at once. Many TalkLeft images and our Newsfeed on the left side of the site are stored over on CrimeLynx to conserve bandwidth on TalkLeft. So, until CrimeLynx is restored, there will be no newsfeed, and if you hit on blank images from older posts, you know why.

True Story:

David Dean Davidson, 52, and Cynthia Barcelo Blake, 53, grew marijuana on their own property for their own use. They had a doctor's recommendation to take marijuana for their illnesses. Yet they were arrested, and Tehama County prosecutor Lynn Strom pursued a case against them for six months. Then, in the courtroom, she suddenly dropped the charges.

Thinking the case was dismissed, the couple's lawyers were lured into the judge's chambers. While the lawyers were absent, the feds swarmed into the courtroom and arrested Davidson and Blake on federal charges. The lawyers were deprived of the opportunity to advise their clients of their rights. If convicted, the couple now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

You can read more here.

Strom "knew she couldn't win," defense attorney Tony Serra said. "So, she concocted this terrible, illegal, underhanded scheme to separate David and Cindy from their attorneys and transition them into federal jurisdiction, where she knows that medical necessity is not a defense."

The good news today keeps on coming as a Federal Judge rules the Patriot Act provision criminalizing the provision of providing material support to terrorist organizations unconstitutional.

A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.

The ruling marks the first court decision to declare a part of the post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism statute unconstitutional, said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued the case on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project.

In a ruling handed down late Friday and made available Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

Here is the full text of the opinion (pdf).

Update: We wrote about the lawsuit in August here. The Judge based her decision today on First Amendment free speech grounds: