Salim Gherebi is a detainee at Guantanamo. Last month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case involving his brother that courts can consider petitions filed by detainees because the United States ''possesses and exercises all the attributes of sovereignty'' on the base. Salim has now brought his own lawsuit against President Bush and other federal officials, seeking $1.1 billion in damages for violating his consitutional rights. He is represented by Stephen Yagman of Los Angeles.

Since the 9th Circuit decision conflicts with a D.C. appeals court decision ruling the opposite way, the issue may well hit the Supreme Court. If it turns out Guantanamo detainees can sue, perhaps Mr. Gherebi has a case.

For those of you going through withdrawal since the Texas Department of Criminal Justice pulled its list of death row inmates' last meal requests from its website, you'll soon be in luck. Coming soon to a bookstore near you, is Meals to Die For, by the former prison chef at Huntsville (LA Times, free subscription required):

Before it was discontinued, the Texas list of last meals provided fascinating if macabre reading. In fact, Brian Price, who prepared 220 final meals in the Huntsville, Texas, prison kitchen while an inmate himself before he was paroled last year, has written a book featuring recipes for some of those last bites before oblivion. "Meals to Die For," scheduled for publication next month, will have 42 recipes, including those with such jarring names as "post-mortem potato soup," "Uh-oh I'm dead meat loaf" and "rice rigor mortis."

"Meals to Die For" will be published by Paige Corp. of San Antonio, whose president, Frank Wesch, is Price's nephew. The 504-page book will contain Price's personal recollections of the execution day for each of the 220 killers whose last meals he cooked, as well as his accounts of the cases that led to 42 of the executions.

Carol Mosely Braun will drop out of the presidential race and back Howard Dean. Kind of a non-event in our minds, since Braun's campaign never registered with the public --but some may find it newsworthy.

The Toronto Star justly takes new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to task for his kow-towing to Bush in the wake of the Maher Arar affair:

When he became prime minister, he vowed, a Maher Arar scenario — where a Canadian citizen changing planes in New York was arrested, detained by U.S. authorities and deported to Syria to be tortured for a year — would never happen again.

"It's very, very important that the Canadian passport be respected and that effectively, Canadian citizens when they find themselves in this kind of difficulty, that if they're going to be sent home, they should be sent home to Canada," Martin said six weeks ago.

He called it "simply unacceptable" that the U.S. would deport a Canadian citizen to a third country and hinted broadly that if the Americans didn't come around, the Canadian government might have to rethink the practice of sharing security information with Washington.

Martin and Bush met yesterday in Mexico. Martin came away with far less than an agreement. He got bupkis-- a letter containing zero assurances:

A Pentagon official says there have been 21 suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq. 18 were in the army and the other three were in the navy and marine corps.

A total of 496 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the war began last March, 343 of them in combat and 153 in non-hostile incidents ranging from accidents to suicide, according to the Pentagon.

The 21 suicides represent nearly 14 percent of non-hostile deaths reported by the military, an increase over the proportion of 11 percent as of three months ago when the suicide number totaled 13....nearly 400 troops had been evacuated from Iraq for stress-related problems. The United States has about 123,000 troops in Iraq.

Assistant Defense Secretary for Health Affairs Dr. William Winkenwerder told the media that the military is taking steps to prevent suicides, including establishing a toll free hotline and increasing the availability of military psychiatric specialists in Iraq.

We can't help but remember one soldier who didn't receive help when he complained about being over-stressed--instead he was sent home and charged with a military crime:

Georg-Andreas Pogany is the special forces soldier who was sent home from Iraq and charged with cowardice after asking to speak a counselor when images of a body blown apart kept resurfacing in his mind to the point where he thought he was having a nervous breakdown. The charge has been reduced to derelection of duty.

Read Pogany's recollection of events, as reported in the Denver Post:

John Kerry just rose quite a few notches in our estimation--he supports a mortorium on the federal death penalty.

Sen. John Kerry: "I oppose the death penalty other than in cases of real international and domestic terrorism. We know we have put innocent people to death; 111 innocent people have already been released from death row. As president, I'll enforce the law but I'll also have a national moratorium on federal executions until we use DNA evidence to make sure those on death row are guilty."

All of the Democratic candidates responded to a question by the Associated Press, "Do you support the death penalty."

Former CFO of Enron, Andrew Fastow, pleaded guilty today and agreed to a ten year sentence and the forfeiture of over $20 million. He also agreed to cooperate with the Government in its continuing investigation of others, presumably Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay.

Those close to the case expect Skilling will be charged soon and that Lay will be under great scrutiny.

Lea Fastow is set to plead guilty this afternoon. Andrew will to stay free on bail and not begin his sentence until after he he has finished his cooperation--probably months from now. Amazing what benefits you can get when you agree to cooperate.

Only one Enron exec is now in jail--Ben Glisan Jr. is doing five years after pleading guilty without a plea bargain and refusing to cooperate.

Update: Andrew Fastow's plea agreement is here (pdf).

Update: We have read the plea agreement and it is one of the toughest ones we've ever seen. There is no right of appeal provided he gets no more than ten years; He can't ask for a sentence less than ten years; He can't collaterally attack the sentence; The Government will not ask for a (rule 35) sentence reconsideration based on Enron-related cooperation; the conditions of cooperation are onerous. If either he or his wife don't fulfill their ends of the bargain, both deals are off. We can only imagine what Mr. Fastow's guidelines would have been had he been convicted at trial in order for him to accept this plea--as one of our commenters point out, it had to be life or close to it. The only concession (other than time) he got appears to be the guarantee that he doesn't begin his sentence until his wife finishes her's.

The brief of the Guantanamo detainees in the Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush is available online here. (pdf) The question presented is "Whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba?" [link via How Appealing]

Update: From UPI:

The 30-page brief pulls no punches in its criticism of the legal issues surrounding the more than 600 detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, ostensibly outside the reach of civilian courts. "If there is no right to civilian review, the government is free to conduct sham trials and condemn to death those who do nothing more than pray to Allah," the brief states.

If the Bush administration's treatment of the prisoners is not challenged by the Supreme Court "the government is free to label virtually any person on the globe an enemy alien and deprive recourse to the civilian court."

This is an awful story, be forewarned:

A convicted killer, struggling with guards and pleading for his life until the last moment, was executed today for killing a woman during a robbery 11 years ago. Lewis Williams continued to profess his innocence even as he was carried into the death chamber in Ohio by four guards.

“I’m not guilty. I’m not guilty. God, please help me,” Williams said as he was strapped to the execution table to face death by lethal injection. He continued to cry out as his mother, Bonnie Williams, sobbed in a room separated by windows from the death chamber.

He kept pleading even in his final official statement, given at 10:07am . “God, please help me. God, please hear my cry,” Williams said. Williams continued to cry out even after warden James Haviland pulled the microphone away. Williams continued yelling until 10:08am when he abruptly stopped speaking. His chest rose and fell a couple of times.

Haviland ordered the curtains drawn at 10:14am for the coroner to determine that Williams was dead. Williams, 45, was executed for shooting a 76-year-old woman in the face in a 1983 robbery. He was the first Ohio inmate whose mental retardation claim was rejected to be executed. For the first time, witnesses, including Williams’ mother, watched members of the execution team insert the needles that delivered the lethal drugs.

A new defense filing (pdf) in the Kobe Bryant case says that Kobe's accuser is bi-polar and the jury needs to know this:

Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depressive illness. It is characterized by movement between extremes, such as euphoria and depression, and can be a serious and disabling mental illness.

The documents say the accuser's medical and mental history may demonstrate her "motive, scheme, plan and modus operandi for falsely accusing Mr. Bryant of sexual assault" and should also be considered as a jury determines her credibility.

How so?

Former death row prisoner Nick Yarris will be released from prison within days. He is the first Pennyslvania inmate to be cleared by DNA evidence. He spent over half of his 42 years awaiting execution.

Congratulations are due to Peter Goldberger of Ardmore, PA who represented Yarris for the past ten years. Peter is a regular reader of TalkLeft.

[Ed. Mr. Yarris' name is Nick Yarris, not James Yarris as we originally posted. We've corrected it, thanks to Mr. Goldberger's comment.]

The Colorado Supreme Court will hear oral argument Thursday in the Lisl Auman case. From a press release received today:

In a case that could set national precedent for felony murder, the Colorado Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case of Lisl Auman who is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“Nothing less than the future of American jurisprudence is at stake in Lisl’s case because our system has never before knowingly punished someone for a crime they had no intention or desire to commit,” said Gerald Goldstein, former President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Lisl was in police custody at the time of the crime. We write more about her case today over at the new group blog American Street . Visit Lisl's website for more details. Her case is one of a grave injustice. We hope the oral arguments go well.