The Judge in the Scott Peterson case today issued this order prohibiting television coverage of his preliminary hearing. We think it's the correct decision. Hearsay is allowed at preliminary hearings, which is not allowed at trial. Evidence is admitted at prelims that later may be determined to have been illegally obtained or to be irrelevant and therefore barred from the trial. Once the public and potential jury pool has heard the inadmissible evidence, how do can you unring the bell? In our view, the unfair prejudice to the defendant outweighs any right of the public to view the proceeding in their living rooms.

Here's a news article on the ruling. We find it interesting that only the prosecution objected to the cameras. Mark Geragos, Peterson's media savvy attorney, had asked for the prelim to be closed to the media and public. But once the judge ruled against him on that motion, he said he didn't object to televising the hearing, because it would provide a more accurate depiction than second hand news reports. He has a point, which is one of the reasons we always say, the defendant's postion should be the guiding light in deciding whether to admit cameras in the courtroom. Trials should not be televised to the general public over a defendant's objections. The Sixth Amendment guarantee of a fair trial applies to the accused. Particularly in a death case, that right should trump any first amendment right of the public to watch the proceedings at home.

Amnesty International has released a new report, Threat of a Bad Example detailing claims of dozens of former Guantanamo prisoners that they were abused by the U.S. Military:

The report, "Threat of a Bad Example," concludes that conditions at the bases may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses -- or release them.

In the report, one Afghan detainee, Alif Khan, recalled being given two injections, producing "a kind of unconsciousness," for his transfer from Bagram. Another, Sayed Abassin, said that while at Bagram, he was awakened by guards, denied adequate food and forced to stand or kneel for hours. A third man, Muhammad Naim Farooq, said fellow detainees at Guantanamo had wept because of pain from handcuffs. He also said that two men who had attempted suicide were punished with solitary confinement.

"These interviews with former prisoners are damning and add to the poor record of the Bush administration with regard to human rights over the past 23 months," said Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International USA.

Amnesty's press release is here.

The St. Petersberg Times takes the Tampa police force to task for driving around in cars seized from drug dealers and other offenders:

It is disappointing that neither Tampa's mayor nor police chief recognize how unbecoming it is for police brass to drive confiscated cars. The purpose of property seizure laws is to strip criminals of their illegal gains; they're not intended to be a honey pot so the chief and his staff can tool around in luxury cars.

When police agencies benefit directly from the properties they seize, it doesn't pass the smell test. There's a conflict of interest. When the fruits of the seizure can be used to buy new high tech equipment and other perks for the police, the temptation is just too great to seize the cash by breaking the rules.

Columnist Robyn Blummer also criticizes the practice :

Civil asset forfeiture is the most infamous game in law enforcement. While in its pure form, seizing the luxury cars, boats, homes and cash of drug dealers can be a useful tool in taking profit out of crime, in the real world far too many police and sheriffs offices use it to finance and enrich their operations, leading to startling abuses.

Blummer also touts our favorite investigative series on law enforcement abuses in forfeiture cases--one by Karen Dillon that appeared in the Kansas City Star in 2000, and yes, it's still on line.

The Rolling Stones for the first time are allowing their songs to be legally downloaded from the Internet.

Partnering with the Rhapsody Service and Best Buy, listeners are now only a click away from over 560 tracks by the rock n' roll history makers.

Each song costs 79 cents, which figures out to a reasonable $9.48 per 12 songs. Some of the Stones' older tracks, however, are available for listening only.

We kind of like the older stuff the best, but still, this is a great deal. You can access Rhapsody and the Stones' musice at listen.com

A federal judge in California says he will rule Wednesday on whether to delay the recall election due to the ACLU lawsuit challenging the punch card voting machines in six LA Counties. Here is the text of the ACLU lawsuit .

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, seeks to delay the election until the six urban counties that use punch-card ballots - including Los Angeles - replace the voting machines. If upheld, the suit would move the recall to a March ballot, when the presidential primary is scheduled to take place.

Without the order, "the election could be nothing more than a sham, given the universal recognition that punch-card machines are failed voting mechanisms," wrote Mark D. Rosenbaum, legal director for the ACLU.

During a two-hour hearing today, Wilson listened to arguments from both sides and said that he would return with a decision by midweek, the Associated Press reported.

This ought to make admissions applications soar next year:

The University of Colorado topped the list of party schools in the nation...according to the latest Princeton Review's survey. The "Best 351 Colleges" survey is based on responses from more than 100,000 students at U.S. campuses.

....Despite a six-year effort to curb binge drinking at the University of Colorado, the school ranked third in widespread use of marijuana, fourth in the prevalence of hard liquor consumption and 11th in the prevalence of beer usage, Princeton Review reported in its 2004 findings. CU also ranked first among schools where students study the least.

The English version of Arab newspaper Dar Al Hayat says a communique has been received from Al Qaeda (the Abu Fahes Al Masri Brigade) claiming responsibility for last week's power outage in the U.S.

The communiqué attributed to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the power blackout that happened in the U.S. last Thursday, saying that the brigades of Abu Fahes Al Masri had hit two main power plants supplying the East of the U.S., as well as major industrial cities in the U.S. and Canada, "its ally in the war against Islam (New York and Toronto) and their neighbors."

The communiqué assured that the operation "was carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden to hit the pillars of the U.S. economy," as "a realization of bin Laden's promise to offer the Iraqi people a present."

The statement, which Al-Hayat obtained from the website of the International Islamic Media Center, didn't specify the way the alleged sabotage was carried out. The communiqué read: "let the criminal Bush and his gang know that the punishment is the result of the action, the soldiers of God cut the power on these cities, they darkened the lives of the Americans as these criminals blackened the lives of the Muslim people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Americans lived a black day they will never forget. They lived a day of terror and fear… a state of chaos and confusion where looting and pillaging rampaged the cities, just like the capital of the caliphate Baghdad, and Afghanistan and Palestine were. Let the American people take a sip from the same glass."

There's more.

We've completed our blog move to another hosting company's servers. The site is working well and much faster. We've also got court in the mountains today, so we won't be back here until tonight. Feel free to read our weekend posts --and the great sites on the right. If you get a cached page from the old site, just clear your browser and the new page should come up.

Update: Three days later, we're thrilled with our new hosting company.

The 3rd edition of AntiPolygraph.org's free e-book, The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, is now on-line and may be downloaded as a 1 mb PDF file.

This new, revised and expanded edition includes updated chapters on polygraph validity, policy, and procedure.

Also of possible interest is news that the American Polygraph Association's annual seminar held earlier this month featured a presentation on how a polygraph operator can rig the "test" when he "knows" the subject is guilty:

California defense attorney Barry Tarlow, whom we consider to be one of the deans of criminal defense, has written an op-ed in Sunday's Los Angeles Times titled Rape Suspects' Uphill Road. Using the Kobe Bryant case as an illustration, Tarlow explains why rape defendants are at an unfair disadvantage due to public policy considerations that have resulted in rape shield laws:

We are about to witness the imbalance of these rules in the case of Los Angeles Laker star Kobe Bryant in Eagle, Colo. Colorado has a stringent rape shield law. Evidence about an alleged victim's reputation or sexual conduct with others is presumed to be "irrelevant," and the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that this "generally renders a victim's sexual history inadmissible."

....For Bryant, who has been charged with sexual assault, this is likely to mean that much of his intimate sexual history will now become "fair game." Like our country's last president, Bryant has made a humiliating public admission that he committed adultery. The prosecution's task, however, is not to prove that sexual contact occurred, but that it occurred without the alleged victim's consent.

....Although the defense might also be interested in investigating whether the alleged victim has previously engaged in similar sexual behavior, it would have an uphill battle to get such evidence in front of the jury. The same goes for evidence of sexual aggressiveness. Any evidence of it in his past may be admissible; in hers, that's not likely.

Here's the latest report from the Justice Department, Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974 -2001, released this afternoon.

The report discloses that more than 5.6 million, about 1 in 37 adults, have served time in state or federal prison. This appears to include only prisons and not local jails, which would make the number of persons who have been incarcerated much higher.

More than 5.6 million adult U.S. residents were serving time or had previously served time in a state or federal prison as of the end of 2001, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The extent of prison experience, as estimated for the first time, shows that 1 in 37 adults living in the U.S. on December 31, 2001 had been confined in prison at some time during his or her life. At the end of 2001, there were 1,319,000 adults in prison and an estimated 4,299,000 adults who were former prisoners.

The increase in the number of inmates between 1974 and 2001 is 3.8 million. Again, the total of persons serving time in prison in this period is 5.6 million. Here's a portion of the racial and gender breakdown:

At the end of 2001, about 16.6 percent of adult black males were current or former inmates, compared to 7.7 percent of Hispanic males and 2.6 percent of white males. Among black males 35 to 44 years of age, 22 percent were current or former prisoners, compared to 10 percent of Hispanic males and 3.5 percent of white males in the same age group.

Here is the story behind the study that exposed the flaws in Diebold's electronic voting machines. It all started with a website....