Former Ill. Governor George Ryan was at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this weekend to promote the film Deadline, directed by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, a chronicle of the demise of the capital punishment system in Illinois.

"Deadline," directed by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, follows the turbulent debate that erupted when Northwestern University journalism students showed that innocent men had been condemned to death row. Thirteen men were eventually found to have been wrongly convicted and Ryan, a Republican and supporter of the death penalty, declared a moratorium on capital punishment in the state.

Ryan, his wife and three former death row inmates were expected to attend a launch party Sunday night for the film, a contender in the Park City festival's documentary competition. The film mixes interviews with Ryan and other figures in the legal debate with archival footage.

Death row inmates interviewed in the documentary include Gabriel Solache, a Mexican national who speaks no English, yet was convicted of murder and kidnapping based on an alleged English-language confession; Robbie Jones, who was the youngest man on death row at 19; and Grayland Johnson, who claimed to have been tortured into a false confession. Ryan commuted the sentences of all three to life in prison without parole.

Just over 24 hours to go to Iowa results. It's a horse race. It's exciting. Follow the storm with your favorite candidate. Here's how as to our favorite top three, in alphabetical order:

BloggerStorm (Howard Dean) (P.S. Great to see Judy Dean campaigning beside her husband today. She's lively and has a smile that doesn't stop. We'd like to see more of her.)

John Edwards Campaign Blog

John Kerry Campaign Blog

Kicking Ass is the offical blog of the DNC

Get real time Iowa results here.

For the best analysis, there's no beating Daily Kos. Get the latest news here.

Here's Wesley Clark's blog--he's not in Iowa, but campaigning like crazy in New Hampshire. George McGovern showed up to endorse him today at a pancake breakfast.

And some good news--the latest CBS/New York Times poll shows Bush's support among independents is slipping.

President Bush is bragging about his human rights record, telling the New Yorker,

No President has ever done more for human rights than I have.

Billmon has the details of other President's bragging rights in this area. [New Yorker link via Hamster.]

China's Civil Rights and Justice System is poised to become better, fairer and less lethal than Texas:

The Chinese government is planning to implement judicial reforms that could sharply reduce its use of the death penalty and is debating new legislation to abolish the power of police to send people to labor camps without trial, according to Chinese legal scholars who have participated in the deliberations.

The moves would weaken two of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's most notorious instruments of state power and begin to address longstanding international criticism of China's justice system. More people are executed in China than in the rest of the world combined, and police order tens of thousands every year to undergo what the party calls "reeducation through labor."

The government has not announced a final decision on the measures, and the scholars said many conservative police and provincial officials were resisting the changes. But they said that key bureaucracies, including the courts, the Justice Ministry and the legislature, had backed the measures. For the first time in years, they said, the momentum appears to be with advocates of judicial reform.

Yale Law prof Jack Balkin of Balkinization has a great top ten list of Bush's reasons for going to Mars. Here's a few, go on over and read the rest. [link via Poor Man.]

7. Martian officials have repeatedly refused to respond when Bush accused them of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

6. Paul Wolfowitz theorizes that bringing democracy to Mars will have domino effect throughout Solar System!

5. President thinks it would be really cool to dress up in space suit and shout "Mission Accomplished!"

And our personal favorite:

3. Ashcroft suggests Mars is great place to hold enemy combatants.

Excellent article today in the Los Angeles Times questioning Congress' over-federalizaton of common crimes in recent years (free subscription required):

Robbers, pimps, wife-beaters, deadbeat dads and carjackers all have been targeted by Congress. These offenses could be prosecuted locally. The federal government has broadly extended its power in recent decades to fight common crimes, from murder to unpaid child support, and critics say needless federal prosecutions waste money, jeopardize civil rights and divert law enforcement from true national threats.

Such cases "clog the federal courts and utilize very limited federal resources in matters that are being prosecuted very well by local authorities," said former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who chaired a 1998 study sponsored by the American Bar Assn.

....Many other common crimes once handled by states — including rape, drug trafficking and murder — have also come under federal authority over the years. Congress has created so many national crimes in so many sections of legal code that no one has an exact count. There are about 3,500, according to legal surveys. More than 45% have come onto the books since 1970, around when President Nixon declared the first national war on crime.

An earlier, no-subscription version of the article is available here.

Last week we were quite disturbed by reading about an Ohio man who screamed his innocence and physically struggled with guards as he was dragged to the execution chamber where he was injected with lethal drugs and killed. The execution made an impact on the nation, which is undergoing a shift in its attitudes on capital punishment. The Ohio Mansfield News Journal today has this editiorial on the disturbing nature of the execution, offering possible explanations to these questions:

Why are so many people disturbed that a man who was about to enter the death chamber for execution didn't want to die? Why were people surprised and bothered when Lewis Williams Jr. struggled with prison personnel on the way to the room where he was killed by lethal injection?

The editorial notes:

What is more surprising is that more inmates haven't fought back to prevent their execution. People normally don't want to die and try to stop it....It reminded people of just how ugly it is to execute another person. Even those who favor the death penalty prefer to think of it as a quiet, humane event. Calmness somehow makes us feel better about what we are doing.

Some friends and family members of murder victims may enjoy seeing pain and terror on the face of the condemned killer. But we suspect even a good portion of these folks don't want to know the execution got messy. Another factor that probably makes people uncomfortable with the kind of struggle that took place last week is a nagging doubt about the guilt of the person executed. Was he unable to come to grips with his death because he knew he was innocent?

Williams proclaimed his innocence until the end. That certainly doesn't mean he was innocent. But that proclamation and his struggle have probably made some people wonder who wouldn't have been concerned otherwise....Lethal injection was adopted in Ohio and other states to make execution more humane for those being killed. It certainly also helped people feel better about their involvement in what is still an act of violence.

[comments now closed]

The Iowa race is not only up for grabs, it looks like an upset may be in the works. Did Dean peak too soon?

John Kerry and John Edwards were bunched in the lead with Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt still within striking distance, according to a new copyright Iowa Poll published in The Des Moines Register just one day before Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses.

Twenty-six percent of the 606 Iowans polled Tuesday through Friday supported Kerry as their first choice for the Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards, who was in single digits in an Iowa Poll taken two months ago, was the first choice among 23% of the respondents, for his highest finish in any media poll so far.

Twenty percent of the respondents named Dean as their first choice, while 18% picked Gephardt.

Kevin at Lean Left predicts Kerry will win. Several Daily Kos contributors are providing continual updates and analysis of the polling numbers. Bush Wars tells us what the Dems should have learned from Iowa.

Via Atrios, here is where you can get the Iowa results in real time

Northwest Airlines has admitted participating in a clandestine goverment program and providing data on more than 10 million passengers.

Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret U.S. government air-security project soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, raising more concerns among some privacy advocates about the airlines' use of confidential customer data.

This is very sad. A 78 year old former FBI agent recently charged in a 20 plus year old murder case died while awaiting a psychological evaluation by the court to see if he was fit to stand trial.

A retired FBI agent accused of helping his former mob informants arrange the murder of a Tulsa businessman died a week after he was extradited to Oklahoma to face charges, a hospital spokeswoman said Saturday.

H. Paul Rico, 78, died late Friday, a few hours after a Tulsa County judge put the murder case on hold pending a psychological evaluation to determine if Rico was competent to stand trial.

His family said he had congestive heart failure and had lost 53 pounds since his arrest Oct. 9 in Florida, where he had been living.

....During his arraignment Wednesday, conducted by video feed from the Tulsa County jail, Rico sat in a wheelchair and occasionally moaned but said nothing. His attorney, Garvin Isaacs, at one point interrupted the judge, saying: "I am telling you this man is sick, extremely sick." He requested an emergency medical furlough, saying his client was ailing and needed help; the judge ordered the psychological evaluation.

Isaacs said during that hearing that Rico, who had a pacemaker, was disoriented after being beaten Dec. 5 by an unknown assailant in the Miami-Dade County Jail, but that he had recovered his mental competency and "wants a jury trial to clear his name."

Prosecutors offered this handy excuse:

Bump and Update: Latest news on the case is here and here. It's even news in Australia [via How Appealing].

Peter Goldberger, the ever modest defense attorney, writes in to say:

At least equal credit for this success should go to the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Court Division, Defender Association of Philadelphia, my fabulous co-counsel, led by Michael Wiseman and including Christina Swarns, who recently left Philadelphia for NYC to head the criminal justice programs of the NAACP Legal Defense and Eduction Fund (once headed by Thurgood Marshall).

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Original Post 1/17 12:06 am:

At about 12:30 pm Friday, 1/16/04, Nicholas Yarris, age 42, walked out of the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, PA, to the arms of his parents, after 22 years on Pennsylvania's death row. DNA testing in the spring of 2003 confirmed that he was wrongly convicted. Pa murder and rape charges were dropped in September. In December the local DA's office conceded that there was insufficient evidence to support a retrial.

This week, the Orange County, Florida DA's office conceded that the 30 year sentence for robbery he picked up while briefly on escape status in 1985 should be reduced to 7 years, long since served. A Florida judge order the Florida sentence reduced yesterday and agreed that he need not be extradited from Pennsylvania to Florida to effectuate that reduction. After some last minute paperwork frustration due to slow-moving bureaucracy in the Florida Dept of Corrections, he went free at midday Friday.

Once again, kudos to Peter Goldberger of Ardmore, PA, who represented the indigent Mr. Yarris for the past ten years. For more on the case, see our coverage here.