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:

Lionel at 13
Lionel today

Could there be any more good news today? Lionel Tate has been freed from prison at the age of 16--after serving three years of a life sentence in Florida for killing a playmate.

You can find a recap of the case here.

This calls for a major celebration! The Supreme Court today reaffirmed the requirement of Miranda rights. The case is Fellers v. United States, 02-6320.

The full opinion in html is here. It was authored by Justice O'Connor.

Update: Lawyer jlk points out in an email that "Fellers is a Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel case a la Massiah, with all due respect to Ms. Holland (wire reporters are always on the tightest deadlines). If Fellers had been a Miranda case, Scalia would have dissented." We haven't had a chance to read the case yet, but we'll report back later. Feel free to put your analysis in the comments section.

From the Court's syllabus:

Don't miss this moving column on the Marcus Dixon case in the Houston Chronicle by Marian Wright Edelman, President and founder of the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., titled Echoes of old South in teen's legal lynching.

Update: This just in from someone familiar with the case and players:

A new study in Florida shows that whites are more likely to be offered plea bargains than African-Americans.

White criminal offenders in Florida are nearly 50 percent more likely than blacks to get a ''withhold of adjudication,'' a plea deal that blocks their felony convictions even though they plead to the crime. White Hispanics are 31 percent more likely than blacks to get a withhold.

The disparity in outcomes has cost thousands of black offenders their civil rights, including the right to vote, serve on juries, hold public office, own a firearm. And the convictions carry an economic penalty: Felons can't be hired for many government jobs, and they can't apply for some student loans.

There are differing views on why the disparity exists. Reasons aren't the issue.

A Georgia defendant, Willie James Hall, set to be executed tomorrow is asking the court to change his sentence from death to life.

Update: Willie James Hall got his commutation today. He will not be killed tomorrow.

One day before Willie James Hall was scheduled to die by lethal injection, the death sentence of the 47-year-old convicted murderer was commuted to life in prison without parole.

On Monday, six of the jurors offered sworn statements to the parole board that they would have given Hall life without parole if that sentence had been an option at his trial, said Heather Hedrick, a spokeswoman for the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan also told parole board members Monday during a two-hour clemency hearing that he was comfortable with a sentence of life without parole. The parole board also noted that Hall had excellent behavior in prison and no criminal record before the murder.

On a related note, an inmate in Chicago who was 14 at the time of his crime is seeking clemency:

The evidence that convicted Johnny Lee Savory of a Peoria double murder and sent him to prison in 1977, at the age of 14, has been debated ever since. Even the higher courts that have reviewed his case can't agree.

The Illinois Supreme Court, for instance, has said the physical evidence against Savory is weak and almost irrelevant compared with strong testimony from acquaintances who say Savory confided key details of the crime to them.

Savory is seeking DNA testing. His lawyers say it could prove his innocence. The state is objecting. Check out this comment by the prosecutor:

"Most prosecutors have been down this tired old road so many times that it has well-worn treads in it," he said. "The defense constantly takes their cup and scrapes it across the cage. They say: `Mr. Lyons, why won't you do this? Why won't you do this testing?' But even if we have testing in this, it wouldn't tell us anything. It would just be one more item. ... In this case it's not a pivotal issue." (emphasis our's).

What a great way to begin the week! The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty.

The justices agreed to return to the juvenile death penalty question after the Missouri Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to execute those who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crime.

The state's top court based its reasoning partly on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2002 that a national consensus had emerged to declare unconstitutional executions of criminals who are mentally retarded. In 1988, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the executions of offenders age 15 or younger at the time of their crimes.

But the next year the high court ruled that state executions of those who commit their crimes at age 16 or 17 do not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

It's time for this barbaric practice to go.

Update: The Virginia Assembly will also revisit the death penalty, including the issue of juvenile death penalties.

Martha Stewart's jury has been selected. There are eight women and four men. Among the alternates, four men and two women. Who's likely to convict Martha and who's likely to acquit? Here's our analysis:

A Juror likely to convict Martha:

Blue-collar worker from a working-class neighborhood with a young family. Someone with strong moral, religious or politically conservative views. One who is angered by the idea of a rich person buying her way out of trouble.

People who are very frugal, concerned about money and who are not financial risk takers. Somebody who has had bad investment experience, somebody who has been burned, somebody who thinks that corporate executives get away with murder.

A juror likely to acquit Martha

Canada is planning on providing free heroin to its addicts. A fix or folly?

Canada plans to follow the lead of other countries and start giving free heroin to the most desperate addicts. While the experiment seems outrageous to some, it actually revives a very old medical practice that met its demise early last century when law enforcement wrestled the issue of drugs away from doctors.

Link via Drug War Rant.