There is so much news the last two days but we've been in court and drafting complex motions that are due tomorrow in one of our cases. So between that and our wrist issues, we've been down to short bursts of posts without much analysis. We hope to get back on top of it (and read the 300 plus daily comments posted to this site, and your emails) over the weekend. Thanks to those of you emailing us stuff we'd otherwise miss, and extra special thanks for those hitting our tip jar--it's much appreciated at this time of year.

Back soon.....

As anticipated, the Santa Barbara District Attorney's Office filed criminal charges of child molestation today against Michael Jackson. Jackson's lawyer, Michael Jackson, said he will fight these charges "with every fiber of his being." We believe it. We hope he prevails.

nine-count felony complaint charged Jackson with seven counts alleging lewd or lascivious acts upon a child under 14 and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent. The molestation charges each carry between three and eight years in prison.

No specific details of the alleged acts were included in the complaint, which repeatedly stated they were committed "with the intent of arousing, appealing to, and gratifying the lust, passions, and sexual desires" of Jackson and the child. The complaint further alleged that Jackson had "substantial sexual conduct" with the child in February and March.

Malvo Found Guilty of Capital Murder....the jury will now have to decide life or death.

Update: If Malvo is sentenced to death, he will be the youngest death row inmate in the country.

Inspector General Glenn Fine released a 43 page report today on the mistreatment of prisoners arrested after 9/11 and held at a federal jail in Brooklyn. He recommended disciplinary action be taken against ten prison employees:

Foreigners held at a federal prison in Brooklyn after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks suffered verbal and physical abuse, with officers slamming them against the wall and twisting their arms and hands, the U.S. Justice Department's inspector general said on Thursday. Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a 47-page report that officers also stepped on the leg-restraint chains of the detainees and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time.

Videotapes showed that prison staff members slammed and pressed detainees against the wall by their heads or necks. The officers denied that it ever occurred, the report said. Videotapes also confirmed that officers placed detainees against an American flag T-shirt with the phrase "These colors don't run" on it, which was taped to the wall in the area where detainees first arrived, according to the report.

The Bush Administration took it on the chin in two rulings today--the Jose Padilla case described in the post below, and in the 9th Circuit where the Court ruled terror suspects must be provided lawyers:

The San Francisco appeals court, ruling Thursday on a petition from a relative of a Libyan the U.S. military captured in Afghanistan, said the Bush administration's indefinite detention of the men runs contrary to American ideals.

"Even in times of national emergency - indeed, particularly in such times - it is the obligation of the Judicial Branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the Executive Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the majority.

"We cannot simply accept the government's position," Reinhardt continued, "that the Executive Branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel, regardless of the length or manner of their confinement."

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stunning decision in the case of so-called "Dirty Bomb Suspect" Jose Padilla, who, although an American citizen, has been held by the Bush Administration (Department of Defense) for two years without charges and without access to counsel. The Court ordered Padilla to be released within 30 days:

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb" plot suspect in civilian courts. The White House said the government would seek a stay.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

The former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam was arrested in May 2002 Chicago's O'Hare airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

The Court said that Padilla could be moved to a civilian court if criminal charges are brought against him--and that he could be held as a material witness in a grand jury proceeding. But not as an enemy combatent:

As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," the court said.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress," it added.

We share the reaction of these civil libertaries experts:

We reported Tuesday that Attorney General John Ashcroft was rebuked by a federal judge in Detroit for violating a gag order in a terrorism case. The LA Times reports that Ashcroft apologized to the Court.

In a Nov. 26 letter to the court that [Judge] Rosen unsealed Tuesday, Ashcroft said his remarks were "entirely inadvertent," and said he didn't intend to disregard the order or to disrupt the court proceedings.

"I regret making these statements," the attorney general wrote. "I made a mistake in making statements that could have been considered by the court to be a breach of the court's order. And for that I apologize to the court and counsel."

Legal ethics specialists said they could not recall a time when a sitting attorney general was the recipient of professional discipline by a court. "It is extremely unusual for an attorney general to breach an order, and extremely unusual to apologize for it," said Deborah Rhode, a professor of law at Stanford Law School. "It is unusual for this attorney general to apologize for anything connected with national security."

You can read the Judge's Order here (pdf file).

Next Tuesday on Bravo:

[Via VodkaPundit]

One member of the Iraqi Governing Council is calling for a life sentence for Saddam:

A senior Iraqi Governing Council member, Jalal Talabani, yesterday urged fellow Iraqis to reject President Bush's suggestion that Saddam Hussein should face the death penalty for his crimes.

"I want Saddam put in jail for life," Mr. Talabani said in an interview. "I want him to suffer daily as he realizes how his people hate him. Let him see how we build a new Iraq free from his evil grip."

The Iraqi Kurdish leader, who called Saddam's capture "the beginning of the end of terrorism inside Iraq," has been a leading opponent of Saddam and has jointly run a U.S.-protected ministate in northern Iraq since 1991.

Matt Yglesias reports that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has removed its postings of death row inmates last meals from its website. As Matt says, it was the ultimate in morbid voyeurism.

Democratic contender Wesley Clark said today that he supports a trial in Iraq and the death penalty for Saddam Hussein.

The retired general said in prepared remarks in Concord he would urge that an Iraq tribunal make execution a possibility for the deposed Iraqi dictator.

‘‘I believe that the death penalty should be applied to war criminals, those who've used chemical weapons, and those responsible for genocide," he said. ‘‘And as I believe the proceedings will show, Saddam is responsible for every single one of these heinous crimes and deserves the ultimate punishment."

In other Wesley Clark news, he received the endorsement of Madonna today.

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The jury retired for the day without a verdict in the trial of accused sniper John Lee Malvo. But they did have questions. While you can never predict what a jury is going to do, from the sound of this one, we'd say an insanity verdict is a definite possibility:

The jury also asked for help with the definition it was given of malice, a necessary element to a murder conviction. Jurors had trouble with the instruction that an act is malicious only when "the mind of the actor is under control of reason."