Abuse and mistreatment of juveniles in Texas detention facilities and half-way houses has doubled in the past five years.

Last year, the Texas Youth Commission received 1,458 allegations of abuse and mistreatment and determined that 535 cases were valid. That compared with 260 confirmed cases out of 693 allegations in 1998.

Almost half of the 5,200 juvenile detainees are mentally ill. Eight years ago, the number was only 27%.

Handling young people with mental illness, experts say, requires different skills from those needed for other minors convicted of delinquent behavior. They worry that most juvenile corrections officers don't have the experience and training to deal with mentally ill youths. There are no national standards for housing mentally ill juvenile offenders or for the staffing and training to handle them.

"I've talked to detention officers all over this state, and they say, `Give me a gangbanger any day of the week,' " said Frank Birchak, supervising attorney for the University of Houston Law School juvenile defense clinic. "They are much easier to deal with, easier to control."

Many juvenile corrections officers are just a few years out of high school, earning a typical starting salary of $20k a year. The turnover rate of staff is 33%, in part caused by a staff injury rate of 54%. One facility's superintendant said, ""We're doing the best we can with what we've got."

Sorry, but that's not good enough. This broken system needs to change.

Spaniards have raised $150,000 to pay for the Death Row appeal of Florida prisoner Pablo Ibar, who was convicted in 1994 of a triple homicide.

As Ibar's case reaches the Florida Supreme Court next month, eight Spanish senators will visit Ibar on Death Row and then watch his lawyer argue in Tallahassee. Spanish citizens have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for Florida Death Row defenses, including $150,000 for Ibar's appeal. Florida has become the focus of their passionate opposition to the death penalty.

The fervor of Spanish opposition, and the whole of Europe, is in stark contrast to the American point of view -- where politicians often consider opposition to capital punishment a career-killer. The European Union won't grant membership to countries that execute prisoners.

''It's considered an accomplishment of a higher degree of civilization,'' said Joaquin Roy, a Barcelona native who directs the University of Miami's European Union Center.... If Ibar loses his appeals, Spanish officials will refocus their efforts on Jeb Bush. ''The governor will always listen to input from people he meets as he travels around the state or overseas,'' said spokeswoman Alia Faraj. ``But as governor of Florida, he has the constitutional duty to uphold the laws of our state.''

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports on how the Justice Department is using a Patriot Act provision that allows it to obtain financial records of suspected terrorists or money launderers in non-terror cases:

In effect, the Patriot Act allows the Feds to search every financial institution in the country for the records of anybody they have suspicions about -- the very definition, critics say, of a fishing expedition. Law enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a "hit" -- evidence that the person has an account -- the financial institution is slapped with a subpoena for the person's records.

....It's the Patriot Act's money-laundering language that has allowed the Feds
to stretch the way the law can be used. Essentially, money laundering is an effort to disguise illicit profits. But it's such a broad statute that prosecutors can use it in the pursuit of more than 200 different federal crimes, Isikoff reports. Treasury Department figures reviewed by Newsweek show that this year the Feds have used the Patriot Act to conduct searches on 962 suspects, yielding "hits" on 6,397 financial records. Of those, two thirds (4,261) were in money-laundering cases with no terror connection. Among the agencies making requests, Newsweek has learned, were the IRS (which investigates tax fraud), the Postal Service (postal fraud) and the Secret Service counterfeiting). One request came from the Agriculture Department -- a case that apparently involved food stamp fraud.

Tim O'Reilly informs his readers that "Dennis Kucinich has outfoxed Diebold by putting some of some of the more egregious Diebold memos up on his part of the House of Representative web site . Let's see Diebold serve the House with a DMCA letter."

Kucinich has written a letter to the House Judiciary Committee leaders demanding a hearing on Diebold abuses. [links via What Really Happened.]

California will be the first state to require a paper trail as evidence in electronic voting. This should be no-brainer in every state. Unfortunately, the requirement in California won't go into effect until 2006. Lucky Bush?

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 and Pogany will stand trial. He faces a six month sentence and a dishonorable discharge if convicted.

Today's Denver Post has a long feature on Pogany, including his version of what happened. Pogany was interviewed in his lawyer's office.

Georg-Andreas Pogany's eyes honed in on the white body bag near the door. Inside was the mangled corpse of an Iraqi man, a hole where his chest should have been. Pogany, a 32-year-old staff sergeant attached to the elite Special Forces, said he stuffed the image to the back of his mind, unfazed.

A few hours later, the image came back with a vengeance. Pogany said he couldn't breathe. His body shook. He vomited again and again. As morning dawned on Sept. 29, Pogany said he thought he was headed for a nervous breakdown. He asked his commander for help.

"Get your head out of your (expletive)," Pogany recalled the commander saying.

Post columnist Jim Spencer provides his views on Pogany:

This doesn't sound fair to us. Canadian counter-terrorism expert David Hudak was tried in New Mexico on 9 federal charges relating to a training program he ran in Roswell, NM, and he was acquitted. His bond had been set at $10,000. Now the Bureau of Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) has moved to revoke that bond and have him held without bond. U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo is asking for an explanation:

"I find preliminarily that there is evidence of arbitrary behavior on the part of this federal agency," Armijo said of Homeland Security, as represented by Justice Department lawyers.

So far, the only explanation that has been forthcoming from ICE is that Hudak's visa is expired. Hudak's lawyers say the bond revocation is a vindictive action in retaliation for his acquittal. Hudak has been in custody for more than a year.

Newsweek's new issue includes " From Moonwalk to Perp Walk with more details about the parents of the 12 year old cancer survivor who is accusing Michael Jackson.

[attorney for the child's father] Rick Halpern further alleges that the mother has coached the children in the past to make untrue statements in legal cases, once in a slip-and-fall suit against a chain store, and later during her acrimonious divorce battle, which began in 2001.

The mother, who has been in seclusion with her children, couldn't be reached for comment. But the father has his own credibility problems. In 2001, he pleaded no contest to a charge of wife-beating and was sentenced to attend domestic-violence counseling. The following year, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of willful cruelty to a child in an incident involving his daughter. In a court filing seeking a restraining order against him, the mother claimed that "instances of violence in our marriage were a daily occurrence."

For more on the child and his parents, see our post from last evening here, quoting an assortment of news articles.

Update: Elizabeth Taylor released a statement Sunday affirming her belief in Michael's innocence:

Actress Elizabeth Taylor says she believes pop star and good friend Michael Jackson is "absolutely innocent" of child molestation charges and will be "vindicated." In a statement on Sunday, Taylor also criticized the press for behaving "abominably" toward the self-styled King of Pop, who was arrested this week on suspicion of sexually abusing a young boy. "Their whole reaction is that he is guilty. I thought the law was 'innocent until proven guilty.' I know he is innocent and I hope they all eat crow," Taylor said of the press.

The Modesto Bee has a detailed recap of the Scott Peterson preliminary hearing. Given the paucity of direct evidence presented at the hearing, the question arises, was the prosecution holding back or is that all they have? Our views are among those included in the article:

"His behavior and words (since Dec. 24) don't make him a murderer," said Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney in Denver..... "Mark Geragos' strategy at the prelim was to rebut every piece of information capable of more than one interpretation," Merritt said, "and he did a very effective job at it."

"There is no murder weapon, no cause of death, no crime scene. What do they have?" Merritt said. "There is no evidence even of a struggle, let alone a murder."

....[defense attorney Bernie] Grimm and Merritt said if they were in Geragos' shoes, they would push for a speedy trial when Peterson is arraigned again Dec. 3 on the upheld charges.

As to the low threshold of proof necessary to establish "probable cause," Mark Geragos says, "I like to jokingly say it's, 'Is my client breathing?'"

Martin Bashir's documentary about Michael Jackson aired in February, 2003. The current charges pertain to Jackson's relationship with a 12 year old cancer survivor--which was well documented in the movie--and also was the subject of intense media criticism afterwards. [All articles available on Lexis.com]

People Magazine, 2/24/03:

So why did Jackson agree to let British journalist Martin Bashir trail him around for eight months? "I think Michael just kind of trusted him," says a Jackson-camp insider. Now Jackson, 44, is fighting back. In an effort to counter Bashir and his Granada TV production company, he sold FOX TV hours of his own footage with Bashir and his sleepover pal Gavin Arvizo, a 12-year-old cancer survivor, for $ 5 million. He will help craft it into a two-hour special to air Feb. 20. He also has filed complaints with two British media watchdog groups charging that Bashir breached codes of conduct by showing footage of his three children--Prince Michael I, 6, Paris Michael, 4, and 11-month-old Prince Michael II--and by interviewing Arvizo without the consent of the boy's parents. In addition, a source close to Jackson says, "legal action against [Bashir and Granada] has not been ruled out."

Of course, neither has legal action against Jackson. His blithe talk of hosting juveniles in his bedroom revived discussion of the 1993 case and prompted the Smoking Gun Web site to post court documents from that time....In a letter calling upon Santa Barbara D.A. Tom Sneddon to investigate the pop star's more recent contact with minors, A. Sidney Johnson III, president of Prevent Child Abuse America, the nation's largest such organization, wrote, "Michael Jackson has raised enough red flags for us to be concerned about protecting the welfare of children he comes in contact with, including his own." Sneddon put out word that his office's criminal investigation of Jackson is "open but inactive," just as it was at the time Jackson settled the '93 civil case .... Sneddon also encouraged anyone who felt victimized to come forward.

Meanwhile, Arvizo's divorced parents used the British tabloids to air their differences, both personal and philosophical. "Michael has pet names for all of my children, and Gavin even calls him Daddy," said mom Janet Ventura-Arvizo, 34, who was once so poor that she temporarily lived in a horse stable with her children. "He is the father they never had." She said Gavin and siblings Star, 11, and Davelin, 16, "are hoping to spend a lot more time with him in the future." Dad David, 37, countered that Janet, a former waitress, "sees prestige for herself from the connection." He said that while Jackson "has been very generous to the kids, [he] should not be sharing a room with them."

Signaling a welcome break from the rigid policies of former California Governor Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger has granted parole to an inmate convicted of murder--heeding the recommendation of the parole board. Gray Davis was almost unilaterally intransigent in his refusal to consider parole for convicted killers.

The governor's actions may be the first steps in crafting his policy on crime and punishment. During the campaign, he said virtually nothing about the criminal justice system, disclosing only that he supported the death penalty.

A spokesperson for Schwarzenegger gave a general outline of the governor's approach to parole cases. "Gov. Schwarzenegger intends to let the Board of Prison Terms do its job,'' said Vincent Sollitto. "Only when he has a strong conviction that a clear error has been made does he intend to review the granting or denial of parole.''

Gray Davis unjustly converted almost every sentence of life with parole into life without parole--disregarding the Parole Board's recommendations.

Last year the Parole Board, hardly a conservative group, granted parole to 140 inmates. Davis vetoed all but two. "When a judge issues a sentence that includes the words "with possibility of parole," it reflects our society's belief that a small number of criminals can be rehabilitated, as well as our constitutional right to a fair and impartial hearing."

The FBI is returning to tactics used during the days of J. Edgar Hoover. According to an FBI memo sent to local law enforcement agencies last month, the F.B.I. is investigating anti-war protest movements and protesters:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

Is this supposed to reassure us?

F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.

It doesn't.

Music producer Phil Spector pleaded not guilty to a murder charge yesterday. His case has not garnered the attention that Michael Jackson's has, but it promises to be an interesting one. Spector is accused of shooting a woman to death at his home. He says the woman shot herself. After a nine month investigation, the Sheriff's department decided it was a murder.

His media-savvy celebrity attorney, Robert Shapiro, who defended O.J. Simpson against a charge of murdering his ex-wife and her lover, said Spector was innocent and said he was gathering a forensic team to prove it.

``We have assembled a team of scientific experts, which is among the most respected and prestigious in the world,'' he said in a statement. ``Based on this team's findings of this horrible human event, any jury will conclude that Phil Spector is not guilty. We will prevail.''

It's interesting that so many of the current crop of high profile criminal cases are in California--Scott Peterson, Robert Blake, Michael Jackson, Phil Spector. Forensics are likely to play a major role in the Peterson, Blake and Spector cases, which significantly ups the costs. Given the state's budget woes, we wonder how it will be able to pay for so many expensive prosecutions in one year.