A federal Magistrate Judge has disclosed that key documents in the Al-Arian terrorism case in Florida were improperly shredded by court clerks:

Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is in jail on charges of funneling money and support from Chicago and Florida to the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad.

U.S. Magistrate Thomas McCoun III said in a letter to Al-Arian's lawyers that search warrants used in 1995 in his case were shredded by mistake, casting doubt on the admissibility of some government evidence.

Investigators used the warrants to raid Al-Arian's home, his university office and a think tank with which he was associated. The absence of the court documents could prevent the U.S. government from using as evidence in court the materials they seized from the 1995 search, Linda Moreno, one of Al-Arian's lawyers, said yesterday.

How could this have happened?

In a letter sent Friday from McCoun, a federal magistrate in Tampa, Fla., to Al-Arian's lawyers, who had requested the court documents, McCoun wrote:

"My deputy reports that these original court files no longer exist. ... Clerks in the Tampa division began shredding magistrate judge files more than five years old. ... This shredding included sealed files kept in the court's vault."

Investigators said "volumes" of documents and other materials had been seized from Al-Arian in 1995. Here's more from Al-Arian's attorney on the import of the document destruction:

Bump and Update: Gavin Newsom won the Mayor's race in San Francisco. But Matt Gonzalez made a great showing, losing by only 5 points. See below for vote numbers as they came in:

With 100% of the vote in:

GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 118,651 52.57%
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 107,030 47.43%

Actually, Gonzalez did incredibly well considering that Newsom spent $4 million on the campaign, outspending Gonzalez by 10 to 1. And that Bill Clinton came to town yesterday to stump for Newsom.

****************
original post 8:06 pm

Official results for the San Francisco Mayor's race between Democrat Gavin Newsom and Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez (see Left vs. Left) will be available here beginning at 8:00 pm PST.

Results in the District Attorneys' race will also be posted on the site.

Update: 97% of the vote in,
GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 115,859 52.41
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 105,223 47.59

Update: 9:00 pm results with 86% of the vote counted:

Did Howard Dean make another gaffe today in the e-mail he sent out to supporters announcing Al Gore's support? Here's the line at issue:

And I look forward to January 20th, 2005, when we follow the example of another great Tennessean, Andrew Jackson -- we will throw open the doors to the White House and let the American people back in.

Andrew Jackson, a great Tennessean? Not according to J. M. Branum, a law student and Kucinich supporter who authors the JMBZine blog:

No, Andrew Jackson was not a great Tennessean, but rather was a very dangerous man who did some horrible things in our history. My own ancestors (the Cherokee) were sent on the genocidal "Trail of Tears" by Jackson, despite the fact that the Cherokee had won their case in the US Supreme Court. Jackson defied the rule of law and prevailed in doing so. Those who suffered were the thousands of American Indians who died during the removals to Indian Territory in the west.

Jackson is no hero in my book and I'm disappointed that Dean thinks he is worthy of praise.

President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Here's more on the Trail of Tears.

Here's a short paragraph from an 1830 Jackson speech on the Act:

Judge Terry Ruckriegle made the right ruling today in the Kobe Bryant case. He denied a prosecution request to have both parties file all motions pertaining to evidence in the case under seal. We wrote a few weeks ago when the DA filed the motion,

The prosecution is seeking to have all future pleadings in the case that refer to evidence in the case filed under seal. This is wrong, and there is a much fairer way to accomplish the goal. Each side should file two versions of any pleading containing information that shoud not be made public--one of which is the entire pleading, filed under seal, and the other is a redacted version for the public, with just the sensitive material deleted and so noted. This was done in the Oklahoma bombing trials and it worked well.

To seal all evidentiary pleadings in their entirety is contrary to the public's right to know and the First Amendment.

That's exactly what the Judge ordered today:

...Judge Terry Ruckriegle said, attorneys in the case can file motions about Bryant and his accuser that leave sensitive details to be filed separately under seal. The judge urged attorneys to make sealed filings "sparingly and wisely" and he chided the prosecution for citing "no legal authority" to seal all details of evidence.

In other Kobe news, the defense filed a motion today asking the Court to order the DA to investigate whether any "hangman t-shirts" were ordered by the Sheriff's department, and if so, how many. Kobe attorney Pamela Mackey stated in the motion that the Sheriff's office refused to supply the information to the defense, and that the information is relevant to show the bias of the investigating agencies. She also stated that the t-shirts had been described as "racist and 'invocative of Klan lynching and wholly inappropriate in modern society."

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) has agreed to sponsor a federal bill, LERA, that would substantially increase good time for federal prisoners. His office sent out this progress report today, which we received from the Federal Prison Policy Project with permission to reprint:

Mr. Scott has agreed to develop and introduce a bill based on the concepts in what is referred to as LERA (Literacy, Education and Rehabilitation Act). This bill would establish a good conduct credit system in the federal prison system which would provide for credit classifications of 15 days for every 30 days served for exemplary performance, 10 for 30 for satisfactory performance, 5 for 30 for marginal performance in programs or work assignments, with no credits while in disciplinary or segregation status. Sentences would be reduced by the number of credit days accumulated.

The bill is currently being drafted by the office that does legislative drafts for the Congress and we are likely to have a draft completed by the second week in December. Sometime around the first of the year, the bill will be circulated to House Member offices to offer them an opportunity to cosponsor it. The bill will likely be filed sometime in late January or early February after Members return for the 2nd Session of this Congress.

[comments now closed]

A Colorado judge has ordered the return of marijuana, paraphernalia and a grow light to a medical marijuana patient. The items were seized during a search by a federal-state drug task force and criminal charges were dismissed. The defendant filed for the return of the seized property, and following a hearing yesterday, the Judge ruled in his favor:

Under a Colorado law that voters approved in 2000, people suffering from debilitating medical conditions, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, and chronic severe pain, are allowed to grow and smoke marijuana. Colorado is one of eight states that allows medicinal marijuana use. Nord, who has battled kidney cancer, diabetes, a lung disease, and other illnesses, is listed with the state's Medical Marijuana Registry program.

But according to federal laws, none of that matters; marijuana is an illegal drug for everyone.

Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark said today in New Hampshire that he has not ruled out Hillary Clinton as a VP candidate.

We don't think it will happen. Hillary has repeatedly said she will serve out her six year Senate term.

Meanwhile, Clark has picked up an endorsement from Kris Kristofferson, who sent the campaign an e-mail saying:

"Just when the world is being dragged into the death spiral of an unending cycle of violence by a vision-less, coldblooded collection of think-tank warriors goose-stepping their way into the new millennium with a stunning lack of respect for human rights, the environment, or international law, along comes a man with the proven credentials of intelligence, integrity, and courage singularly equipped by his spirit and experience to lead us out of this mess. Don't listen to what the lying liars say about him; listen to what he says. Wesley Clark is a prayer answered."

Former Illinois Senator Paul Simon has died. He was 75.

Sen. Simon went into the hospital Thursday for a single bypass operation and died yesterday after the surgery. Right before he went into the hospital, he had been scheduled to endorse Howard Dean. Due to shortness of breath, he couldn't make the appearance and instead went into the hospital. Once there he called reporters and made the endorsement from his hospital bed.

Sen. Simon was a long-time death penalty opponent and served as Co-chair of the Illinois commission appointed by Gov. George Ryan to look into the state's capital punishment system.

Simon... said that the commission is likely to be unable to give Gov. Ryan an "iron-clad guarantee" that, even with extensive legal reforms, no innocent person would be convicted of a capital crime. He has said that it is possible that the commission will conclude that there is no way to salvage the death penalty.

R.I.P.

Update: Drug War Rant has a long quote from a 1996 article Sen. Simon co-wrote with Dave Koppel for National Law Journal on the Drug War. Here's a snippet, but go over and read the whole thing:

A grand jury in Rhode Island has completed its investigation into last February's night club fire in which 100 people died as a result of pyrotechnics used by a band during a show. Indictments charging involuntary manslaughter were returned against the owners of the nightclub and the band's tour manager.

This just in via email from the National Coaliton to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP):

A Pennsylvania man today became the 112th person to be freed from death row because of factual innocence after prosecutors announced they are dropping charges against him.

Nicholas James Yarris, 41, has spent 21 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. He is Pennsylvania's fifth exoneree and the 10th of this year. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the ten people who have been freed from death row due to actual innocence in 2003 ties a record set in 1987, when ten people also were exonerated.

"The death penalty in America is not merely flawed; it is broken and beyond repair," said Brian Roberts, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "For every eight people that have been executed in this country during the past three decades, one person has been found to be actually innocent. The 112 people found to be innocent were not released due to what some might call a legal technicality - flawed jury instruction, for example - but because they actually did not do the crime."

In other death penalty news, on his last day in office, Kentucky Governor Paul Patton commuted the death penalty sentence of Kevin Stanford who was 17 at the time of his crime.

Update: Nicholas Yarris' attorney and frequent TalkLeft commenter Peter Goldberger, has represented Mr. Yarris in his bid for freedom for the past ten years. He sends in this link, and adds, "Neither the DA nor the judge offered even a kind word, much less an apology to Nick."

Smoking Gun has a confidential Los Angeles Department of Children & Family Services memorandum detailing the Los Angeles child welfare agency's February 2003 investigation into sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson by the cancer-stricken accuser who is now the purported victim in the forthcoming criminal case. The report concludes the charges are unfounded. Details here.

A confidential investigation by Los Angeles police and child welfare officials concluded earlier this year that allegations Michael Jackson sexually abused a cancer-stricken boy were "unfounded," according to an internal government memo obtained by The Smoking Gun.

The probe's findings were based, in large part, on interviews with the alleged victim, his two siblings, and the boy's mother. According to the memo, when the child was questioned in February by a social worker assigned to the Sensitive Case Unit of L.A.'s Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS), he "denied any form of sexual abuse" by Jackson and said that he never "slept in the same bed as the entertainer." While not specifically named in the DCFS memo, the 45-year-old Jackson is referred to repeatedly as "the entertainer."

The report says the probe began with a call from a school official to an abuse hotline after the airing of the 20/20 documentary in February. [link via Drudge]

Update: News coverage: Here and here.

If you need a laugh today, Atrios supplies it. The background is here. [link to background via Poor Man, who is often very funny]