Conservative legal affairs writer Stuart Taylor joins the chorus of those criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft for his unfair tactics in the Zacarias Moussaoui case:

But Attorney General John Ashcroft seems so eager to kill the man that he would shoot a hole in the Constitution to get him. Ashcroft wants to put Moussaoui on trial for the capital crime of complicity in the 9/11 plot, without letting his lawyers take the testimony of three captured Qaeda leaders who may have told interrogators that Moussaoui did not participate in it. That's the watered-down notion of justice that an Ashcroft subordinate urged a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to endorse on December 3.

How will Ashcroft explain this? The convictions of the defendants in the Detroit terror trial held earlier this year are in jeopardy. The Justice Department admits it withheld potentially exculpatory evidence--

The evidence includes a letter from an imprisoned drug gang leader who alleges the government's key witness confided he made up some of his story. The December 2001 letter, which could have been used by defense lawyers to challenge the prosecution witness during the trial this spring, wasn't turned over until a couple of weeks ago. The defendants are now asking that their convictions be overturned, and the judge has scheduled an emergency hearing Friday to demand an explanation from the government.

Under the Supreme Court's Brady v. Maryland ruling, prosecutors are obligated to turn over all evidence that can be used to impeach the testimony of prosecution witnesses or to prove innocence.

The lead prosecutor, Richard Covertino, and another AUSA in the case have been replaced. Covertino's lawyer, former AUSA William Sullivan, acknowledges that his client intentionally withheld the letter.

The defense in the trial of accused sniper John Lee Malvo presented a psychiatrist today who testified Malvo was insane at the time of the sniper shootings:

Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo "displayed a pathological loyalty" to John Allen Muhammad and was so brainwashed by him that he no longer knew right from wrong, a defense psychiatrist testified Wednesday.

Malvo "was merged with Mr. Muhammad," Diane Schetky said at Malvo's capital murder trial. "He was acting as his proxy ... He was like a puppet in his hands." Asked by defense lawyer Craig Cooley if Malvo was able to distinquish right from wrong - the legal standard for insanity in Virginia - Schetky said, "I believe he was not."

Update: A second psychiatrist testified for the defense today, offering the opinion that Malvo "was unable to distinguish between right and wrong and unable to resist the impulse to commit these offenses."

The psychiatrists and a forensic psychologist who testified earlier all agree that Malvo suffers from a a dissociative disorder which one of the psychiatrists defined as "a loss of identity combined with psychological numbness, 'caused by the coercive persuasion' of Muhammad.

Malvo is expected to rest his case after the prosecution finishes cross-examining the second psychiatrist tomorrow.

Lionel at Trial, Age 14

Some great justice news today:A Florida appeals court ordered a new trial for Lionel Tate--the youngest person ever sentenced to a life term for murder. Lionel was 12 when he killed a playmate. He claimed at trial they were just wrestling.

Appellate judges ordered a new trial Wednesday for a teenager serving a life sentence for killing a 6-year-old playmate, raising questions about whether child murderers are competent to be tried as adults and locked away with no hope of parole.

The judges at the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that Lionel Tate's first-degree murder conviction and life sentence should be reversed because Tate's competency should have been evaluated before the trial. The boy's lawyers had claimed he was imitating pro wrestlers when he killed Tiffany Eunick in July 1999.

Tate's family turned down a plea bargain before the trial that would have given him a three-year sentence.

Details of the case and sentence are here and here. The text of the decision is here.

Lionel Today

This could be major:

Later this week, a key member of Congress will issue an all-points call for intelligence analysts to blow the whistle on President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others in the Bush administration who may have distorted, exaggerated, manipulated or lied about intelligence on Iraq in the run up to war.

By creating a "tip line" on his official Web site, Democratic congressman from California Henry Waxman is encouraging current and former U.S. national security officials to come forward and disclose how the administration played with intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. A ranking member on the House Committee on Government Reform, Rep. Waxman is making it possible for officials to go on the record or remain anonymous, according to one of his aides.

Deborah Perlstein directs the U.S. Law and Security Program for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and is editor of "Assessing the New Normal," a book on liberty and security in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks. She has an excellent commentary today in the International Herald Tribune, Detained at the Whim of the President. She correctly observes that we shouldn't be fooled by the Administration's recent release of some of the Guantanamo detainees--or its decision to allow Yaser Hamdi limited access to counsel. While these are welcome measures, they are part of a "broader strategy" aimed at keeping the Supreme Court off the Administration's back so it can continue its secret and arbitrary policies on enemy combatants.

These steps are welcome. But they should be understood as part of a broader strategy. The announcement on Guantánamo comes just weeks after the Supreme Court decided to review a lower court holding that the federal courts had no jurisdiction to evaluate the legality of the Guantánamo detentions. And the decision to allow Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced on the day final briefs were due to the Supreme Court, which is now deciding whether to take the case. It is difficult to see the timing as coincidental. For the past two years, the Bush administration - far more so than previous "wartime" executives - has been very effective at keeping the courts out of the business of checking executive power.

In the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has established a set of extra-legal structures designed to bypass the federal judiciary. It has maintained that those detained by the United States outside U.S. borders - at Guantánamo and elsewhere - are beyond the jurisdictional reach of the U.S. courts altogether. Individuals subject to military commission proceedings - which two years after their announced creation have yet to begin - are to have their fate decided by military personnel who report only to the president.

Melanie Sloan, writing for Buzzflash, wants to know Whatever Happened to the Plame Investigation? We haven't heard an official word about it since Sept. 29th.

Why has the investigation stalled? Is it because the Department of Justice, just as suspected by the Democrats all along, isn't serious about prosecuting the leaker? Is it because George Bush has swept the matter under the carpet? Where are the Congressional hearings that were so common during the Clinton administration? Can anyone seriously doubt if the same events had transpired during the Clinton years there would have been day after day, and month after month of hearings with Congressional leaders clamoring for an independent counsel, with the result that one would have been appointed?

Good questions, all. The inquiry does seem to have been swept under the carpet.

Ever wonder what Michael Jackson would look like today if he hadn't had plastic surgery? Take a Look. [link via Victory Briefs]

Canadian Maher Arar describes his torture at the hands of Syrians after being deported there by the U.S. following his seizure at JFK while changing planes in Delivered Into Hell by U.S. War on Terror in today's LA Times. It's a must read. It begins:

I recently spent 10 1/2 months in a grave-sized cell in Syria, unsure why I was there, unsure how to get out. Fear paralyzed my wits when I needed them most. I was beaten and I was tortured and I was constantly scared. Every day I worried that I would never be released, that I would disappear into that concrete grave forever.

Why was I being held? I still don't really know. I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I am a Syrian-born Canadian. A father and a husband. A telecommunications engineer. I have never been in trouble with the police and have always been a good citizen.

My ordeal began on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, when my flight back from a family vacation in Tunisia stopped over in New York and American immigration officials pulled me aside to answer a few questions.

[link via Arthur at Light of Reason]

Two new articles catch up on the Tommy Chong case. An LA Weekly article delves into the wierdness of the case in Chong Family Values. Sounds like an Ashcroft-driven affair all the way through.

According to [defense lawyer Stanford] Levenson, the deal he struck with the prosecutors allowed them to prosecute Tommy Chong and Chong Glass (effectively shutting it down), in exchange for leaving wife Shelby, who had signed the family’s loan checks, and [child] Paris alone. Tommy cooperated with the government and was the first of Operation Pipe Dreams’ defendants to plead guilty. But while the feds told Levenson they were not necessarily seeking jail time, their legal body language said otherwise.

City Beat analyzes the case and interviews Chong at the Taft Correctional Institution where he is serving his nine month sentence.

Bush Wars sums up the reactions to Gore's endorsement of Dean. The consensus seems to be that Dean has the nomination locked up. A few, like Mark Klieman and Kevin at Lean Left disagree. Josh Marshall thinks it helps Dean, but really helps Clark.

Drug War Rant has a terrific long quote from a 1996 article late Sen. Paul Simon co-wrote with Dave Koppel for the National Law Journal on the foolhardiness of mandatory minimum sentences and incarcerating non-violent offenders.

Jay and Jane of the Daily Rant have renamed their blog "Classless Warfare" and moved it here.

James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review got mugged the other night. He's okay though.

Ezra at Pandagon reviews last night's Democratic debate and says it was the worst ever.

Off the Kuff has an interview with Richard Morrison, who may challenge Tom Delay for his Texas seat.

Billmon at Whiskey Bar gives his take on the Guardian article positing that Osama bin Laden is winning the terror war.

Sean Paul at Agonist is taking nominations for a book club he's starting.

Patriot Watch informs about a new Government project called US-Visit, which will "replace a patchwork of disparate immigration databases and paper-based files and will require that almost all visitors be digitally fingerprinted and photographed."

Behind the Homefront has a link to a Navy memo by a a Deputy Assistant JAG (Judge Advocate General) about the effect of the Patriot Act on FISA searches and surveillance procedures.

Avedon Carol at Sideshow links to this article by a disabled Vietnam-era vet who recently visited a Minneapolis V.A. hospital and discovered, when Bush came on the tv, that many fellow vets oppose the Bush administration's war in Iraq.

Oliver Willis is running a poll on who Dean will choose for his VP candidate. Easy choice for us, if we're limited to the current crop of candidates: Clark or Edwards. Graham would be a big mistake. We think an equally intriguing poll would be to name Clark's first cabinet picks for Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. Now there's where we think you'll be able to trace the choices to favors owed and repaid.

OK, then, we're signing off. If we're not back tomorrow, please read the blogs above and Jeanne at Body and Soul who picked up and expanded upon our post about John Lennon's soul transfer 23 years ago and SK Bubba and Sisyphus Shrugged who were kind enough to mention the same John Lennon post and run with it.

The hearings against Army Chaplain James Yee hit a stall Tuesday when prosecutors announced they were unsure the papers Yee carried were classified.

Yee was initially stopped by Customs, thought to be a spy and thrown in the navy brig where he was held in solitary for over two months while the Government investigated the documents in his briefcase.

After concluding its investigation, the Government announced it was not filing spy charges against Yee after all, only charges of mishandling classified data, adultery and possession of pornography on his government computer. The Government learned about the adultery and pornography during a review of the documents seized from Yee at the time of his arrest.

Eugene R. Fidell, Captain Yee's civilian defense lawyer, called it disgraceful that his client had been kept in the brig for 76 days for possessing materials that the government still had not determined were classified. Mr. Fidell also said the military should be embarrassed to have tried to proceed with a criminal hearing on the charges without the determination.

Major Sikes [Yee's Military counsel] said he hoped the military would decide to drop the case. He said he believed that the military was pressing ahead as part of an unwise effort to save face over its initial miscalculation.

The Government now says it will conduct a thorough investigation into whether the documents Yee carried at the time of his arrest were classified. The hearing that began Monday will resume January 19.

Shoddy is probably an understatement in describing the Government's handling of Yee's investigation and prosecution.

Update: The Christian Science Monitor examines why the Army's case is falling apart: