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.

The New York Times today has this portrait of one federal judge's frustration and struggle with an unjust mandatory minimum sentence in a particular case. The Judge did not speak to the press--the reporter put the story together from pleadings and transcripts. It aptly describes what Congress has done to our federal sentencing system: it has removed sentencing decisions from experienced judges appointed by the president and turned them over to prosecutors.

The defendant's crime was grave: Using the screen name BigThing, he sent thousands of images of child pornography to people who answered his advertisement in an Internet chat room. And a federal judge responded with a heavy sentence, 10 years in prison. But even as he handed down the penalty, Judge Gerard E. Lynch angrily denounced his own decision.

"This is without question the worst case of my judicial career," he said. The "unjust and harmful" sentence, he added, "has the potential to do disastrous damage to someone who himself is not much more than a child."

A word about Judge Gerard Lynch. He is hardly a left-wing jurist-- he served as Chief of the Criminal Division in the Southern District of New York and, we are told, is probably as respected as anyone in the New York legal community for his intelligence and judgment. He tried to talk some sense into the prosecutors, they wouldn't listen. He ruled that the jury would be instructed that the teen would receive a mandatory ten year sentence if convicted. The prosecution appealed the ruling before trial and won. The case went to trial. The teen was convicted and Judge Lynch, as required, sentenced him to ten years. Judge Lynch also noted that had the teen's crime been having sex with a 12 year old, as opposed to swapping downloaded child porn images, he would only have faced a five year sentence.

We received this by email, we don't know the source, but it made us laugh, so we're reprinting it:

At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, setsquare, sliderule, and calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney general John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like "x" and "y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns", but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country."

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared. When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

There is an excellent column in the Chicago Sun Times today addressing the injustice of sentences handed out to small time drug offenders in comparison to sentences meted out to Enron-type offenders . Where's the justice?

...criminals in the Enron case won't spend a fraction of the time behind bars that judges order most drug offenders to spend. Some people would argue there are actually two justice systems: one for them and one for us. Certainly, white collar criminals are dealt with less harshly compared to non-violent drug offenders.

Look at the prison time most drug offenders face. Some of them have been sentenced to life terms, even though they haven't committed a heinous crime or murdered anyone.

'60 Minutes' last week featured a segment on mandatory minimum sentences in drug cases.

What passes for a drug king in 99 percent of the cases is nothing more than a young man who can't even afford a lawyer when he's hauled into court," Judge Patrick Murphy told correspondent Ed Bradley. "I've seen very few drug kings."

We've been on the road again today, this time to Canon City to visit a client at the state penitentiary. A two and a half hour drive each way with great mountain views and no traffic. The prison staff couldn't have been more accomodating and the bathrooms were spotless. With cloudless skies and daytime temperatures in 40's to 50's since the weekend when we left in the opposite direction for Vail and Eagle, we are once again reminded that it's a privilege to live in Colorado.

We've missed blogging at our usual pace the past few days, but we'll be catching up quickly.

Rush Limbaugh's medical records will stay sealed pending further review by the Court. The ACLU will be allowed to join the case.

An appeals court on Tuesday ordered prosecutors to turn Rush Limbaugh's medical records over to the courts and keep them sealed until further review. The court also ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union can join the conservative talk show host in fighting to keep the documents private, creating an unlikely alliance in the case.

Limbaugh's attorneys argue that the seizure violated Limbaugh's privacy and that the investigation was politically motivated. No criminal charges have been filed against Limbaugh. The ACLU joined the case Monday in support of the claim that Limbaugh's constitutional right to privacy has been violated.

Differences have been worked out and both Andrew and Lea Fastow are expected to plead guilty Wednesday in Enron cases. Mrs. Fastow's original deal called for a five month prison sentence, followed by five months of house arrest, but the Judge said he would not agree to be bound by that amount of time without first reviewing a pre-sentence report.

It appears Lea Fastow has now agreed to go ahead and submit to the pre-sentence report and hope Hittner decides to sentence her as the government and her attorneys agreed. Lawyers in the case have indicated the likely range of punishment for her one tax offense would be 10 months to 16 months in prison. Andrew Fastow's deal is for a 10-year prison term.

In another blow to personal freedom the high court held today (6-3 opinion by Beyer) that the police may use random roadblocks to seek information regarding recent specific crimes. The case is Illiniois v. Lidster, the opinion is here. Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.

The police had set up a highway checkpoint (roadblock) to try and obtain information about a hit and run resulting in a death a week earlier. The checkpoint was in the same location and at about the same time as the earlier incident. Police stopped each approaching vehicle, asked if the occupants knew anything about the hit and run and passed out a flyer with contact information. Lister swerved while approaching and the officer smelled alcohol. Following filed sobriety tests Lister was arrested for driving under the influence.

In Indianapolis v. Edmond, the Supreme Court held that absent special circumstances, the Fourth Amendment prohibits police from stopping people at a checkpoint set up primarily for general “crime control” purposes unless they have individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. The Court distinguished that opinion today, holding that

Specifically, the checkpoint in Edmond was designed to ferret out drug crimes committed by the motorists themselves. Here, the stop’s primary law enforcement purpose was not to determine whether a vehicle’s occupants were committing a crime, but to ask the occupants, as members of the public, for help in providing information about a crime in all likelihood committed by others.

Perhaps of most concern is the “reasonableness factor” the court uses. The Court said:

Update: Our apologies to all. We forgot to include the link to the article quoted from below. We were offline all day and just received an email telling us about it. The article is in today's Miami Business Review and it's called Not Taken On Faith.

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Are you thinking of applying to become a judge in Florida? Get ready for questions like these:

• "Will you be able to balance your duties as a single mother of twins with your duties as a Broward judge?"

Applicants have also been asked:

• Whether they are active in their church.

• Whether the candidate is a "God-fearing person."

• How they feel about the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 ruling striking down a Texas law criminalizing homosexual activity.

• How they would feel about having the Ten Commandments posted in their courtroom.

All of the members of the Judicial Nominating Commission were appointed by Jeb Bush.