Pacific Views does a great job of summing up the Saturday blogs.

Despite the Republicans' grandstanding and public relations campaign to stage a 50 + hour debate-athon in the Senate over the Dems blocking some of the more objectionable Bush nominees for lifetime judicial appointments, they failed. Miserably.

The Republicans failed to get the votes they needed to overcome the opposition to Janice Rogers Brown, Carolyn Kuhl and Priscilla Owen.

The three votes followed the Senate's longest nonstop debate since a 57-hour, 24-minute marathon in 1988 over campaign legislation. ....Republicans, who hold a narrow majority, decided to hold the debate after criticism from conservative activists they were not doing enough to take on Democrats.

Democrats said they had simply exercised a constitutional right to "advise and consent" to stop Bush from packing the courts with what they called right-wing ideologues who could not be trusted to uphold civil rights, abortion rights, worker rights and environmental protections. They also noted they had joined Republicans in confirming 168 of Bush's other judicial nominees, to reduce the vacancy rate on the federal bench to less than 5 percent, its lowest level in more than a decade.

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Dick DeGuerin and Mike Ramsey, the team of Texas lawyers that obtained an acquittal for NY real estate heir Robert Durst this week, are profiled in the Houston Chronicle. Here's what they say about the availablity of legal fees in the case:

Neither DeGuerin nor Ramsey, however, downplay the role that money in general and Durst's millions in particular play in mounting a good defense. In the days following the Durst decision, there were howls of outrage on local radio talk shows and in New York tabloids that Durst escaped punishment with his wallet.

"I recognize that the general public thinks that justice is for sale and that the general public looks on criminal defense attorneys as being slightly better than street sweepers," DeGuerin said. "It's a shame that they think that way. We did get adequately compensated and the only advantage it gave us was that we were able to level the playing field with the state, which has unlimited resources."

Ramsey was more blunt. "In this case there was plenty of money. It wasn't a problem," he said. "The inevitable conclusion is that if a case is properly funded you can prepare better. You can hire the proper staff, you can hire investigators, you can better prepare for what amounts to a Broadway production."

Rather than resenting the rich for being able to afford an effective defense, why don't we insist that our Government provide the same resources to indigent defendants?

We're watching Jessica Lynch on David Letterman. Apparently, she's been on all the morning shows this week. But we don't get a chance to watch those, so we'll just report on her Letterman appearance.

Not surpisingly, she got a standing ovation.

We were struck by how pretty she is. Much prettier than in her pictures. She kind of reminded us of that "Breck Girl" for those of you old enough to remember those ads.

She talked about her home town, Palestine , West Virginia. It has 900 people. Despite its small size, she was surprised and pleased by its residents rallying around her because she never even thought half the people would know who she was--she thought they might know her family, but not her. We don't really understand that, since she grew up there, but that's what she said.

Asked about her injuries, she said she's recovering from a spinal injury and her left foot has no feeling. She has lots of rods and screw holding her feet and legs together. She said the the doctors in the Iraqi hospital didn't save her life, but they helped save it. The difference was lost on us, but she wanted to make that point.

Jury Consultant Bob Hirschhorn said today that he was a part of the Robert Durst defense jury selection effort and that the defense utilized a shadow jury during the trial. The shadow jury came back with a "not guilty" after only one hour of deliberation--four days before the real jury did.

Shadow juries and mock juries are incredible assets to a defense team. They are also very expensive. In indigent defense cases, we can't think of any judge that has authorized the use of either.

We've sat through a few mock juries before our trials....we watched via a one way glass mirror as the jurors discuss the evidence in the case and our intended defense. They are a valuable tool in aiding the defense in determining whether a specific defense will gain traction or whether they need to change horses.

Bob Hirschhorn is one of the country's top trial consultants. He worked with Mike Tigar in selecting the federal jury in the Terry Nichols case. That jury came back with a life verdict instead of death.

We wish all our clients could afford trial consultants.

From the NACDP:

The Texas Defender Service and the Equal Justice Center released their second report last week on the state's implementation of the Fair Defense Act, passed by the Legislature in 2001. The act was designed to strengthen the state's tarnished criminal justice system by strengthening the requirements for fair and prompt assignment of qualified defense counsel to poor criminal defendants in capital cases.

But according to the report, two years after passing the act, the state still has more work to do to achieve those goals. Among the findings: None of the state's nine administrative judicial regions have "performance standards" to evaluate which attorneys are qualified for death penalty appointments; many counties have yet to ensure that defendants have prompt access to an attorney; and many counties have yet to allot enough money to pay for defense investigators and experts.

Read the whole story here.

John Kerry becomes the second Democrat to announce he will forego federal funds for his campaign. Kerry will spend his own money and take out a loan.

Kerry's decision to skip the $18.7 million in public money comes despite a slowdown in his fund raising after a promising start, and the acknowledgment by his campaign that he cannot tap wife Teresa Heinz Kerry's multimillion-dollar Heinz food fortune for the race.

Under campaign laws, Kerry can take out loans on the full value of property he owns, and on half the value of property he co-owns. His wife can co-sign loans if the bank requires, but she cannot pay them back. She is limited to the same $2,000 limit all individual donors face.

Howard Dean made the same announcement last week. Wesley Clark says he will accept federal funds. The other candidates also will accept federal funding, including Dick Gephardt, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman.

We see a big difference between Dean and Kerry in that Dean has been a very successful fundraiser to date, while Kerry has not been. As DHinMI over at Daily Kos says,

...unlike Dean, whose decision appears based on his ability to raise money, Kerry's decision appears based on his desperate need to spend money in Iowa and New Hampshire if his campaign is expected to survive past the New Hampshire primary.

[Ed. grammatical errors corrected.]

Judge Brinkema warned Zacarias Moussaoui last week to shape up and stop filing derogatory motions or he'd lose the right to represent himself. Today she made good on the threat and reappointed Moussaoui's standby lawyers to represent him. Moussaoui's latest motions were over the top for what a lawyer might file, the Judge said. Those motions have not been made public, but here's what he filed last week:

Moussaoui said he wants "anthrax for Jew sympathiser only," called Attorney General John Ashcroft "the Democratic Jerk" and referred to Brinkema as "Leonie you Despotically Judge." Moussaoui, an acknowledged Osama bin Laden loyalist, is charged with participating in a broad conspiracy with the Sept. 11 hijackers to commit terrorism against the United States.

Moussaoui has excellent standby counsel. This is much better for him.

From now on, Brinkema said Friday, she will accept only pleadings submitted by the lawyers, while any motion submitted by Moussaoui "will simply be received for archival purposes." She said Moussaoui had 10 days to file a written notice of appeal.

We're on the road today, off to Washington for a board meeting of the ABA's Criminal Justice Section Council. There are a lot of important issues on the six page agenda, but the ones we're most interested in are the recommendations of the Innocence Committee to ensure the integrity of the criminal justice system, and recommendations on the Victory Act and SAFE Act.

This is not a group where defense lawyers are preaching to the choir. It is roughly equally composed of prosecutors, defense counsel, judges and law professors.

We'll have our computer for light blogging over the weekend, but we won't be back at full speed until Sunday night. Please enjoy the great sites listed on the right, feel free to toss us a tip through the paypal or amazon links at the left and have a great weekend.

Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini reports on the generosity of inmates in that state.

... At about the same time that the good-hearted football fans at Sun Devil stadium were drunkenly depositing Iraqi dinar and Monopoly money into collection buckets, a group of inmates at the women's prison in Perryville decided to take up an actual collection for cancer research.

Just about 800 inmates participated, collecting what officials estimate to be about $13,000. These are convicted criminals who make about 50 cents an hour doing prison labor. Their average donation was $16 per person, or five times the average of those attending the football game.

And that's just a portion of inmate generosity. According to Virginia Strankman, who coordinates charitable giving for the Department of Corrections, the state's prison population has donated more than $38,000 so far this year. And that doesn't include the as yet undetermined totals from two prison complexes.

The fate of accused sniper suspect John Muhammad is now in the hands of the jury. His lawyers argued reasonable doubt today, but given the amount of circumstantial evidence against him, and the Judge's ruling that the terrorism charge supports the death penalty regardless of whether the state proved Muhammad pulled the trigger, the outcome of the guilt-innocence phase of the trial is fairly predictable. If a guilty verdict comes in, the case will move to the sentencing trial, in which the prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Muhammad.

This new report, Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Virginia on the unfairness of the Virginia death penalty system, and the need for sweeping reforms, should give everyone great pause.

According to the study, prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent counsel, combined with arbitrary restrictions on presenting evidence and fixing trial mistakes, have created a flawed system that can convict innocent people and deprive others of a fair hearing.

"In Virginia, whether or not you are sentenced to death has little to do with the crime, and everything to do with your race, where you live, and who prosecutes your case," said John Whitehead, Executive Director of the Rutherford Institute. "This is in direct contradiction to America’s fundamental faith in ‘blind’ justice."

It troubles us that Attorney General John Ashcroft hand-picked Virginia over Maryland and other jurisdictions as the venue for the first trial for Muhammad and Malvo. He picked Virginia because a jury in that state was most likely to sentence the pair to death, in complete disregard of the unfairness of the death penalty system in the state. As we opined here almost exactly one year ago,

Justice occurs when we provide the accused with a fair trial, competent counsel and strict adherence to their consitutional rights. Injustice occurs when we allow passion and prejudice to override the guarantees of fairness our system provides to even the worst offender among us.

John Ashcroft is not running the Department of Justice but a Department of Injustice.

A new Inspector General's report is due shortly:

The Justice Department inspector general reported yesterday examples of inappropriate sexual behavior and racial comments by senior FBI managers, saying the cases reinforced earlier findings that the FBI has repeatedly let senior managers get away with egregious conduct while meting out harsher punishment to lower-level employees for similar behavior.

....the findings come on the heels of a broader report by Fine in November 2002 that found a strong perception among FBI employees that a double standard of discipline exists within the agency. As a result of these and other concerns, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III earlier this year commissioned an independent review of the Office of Professional Responsibility, which conducts internal FBI investigations. A report from the panel is expected soon.