The Rocky Mountain News reports on the reports by ESPN and Fox that a bellman drove Kobe Bryant's accuser home after the attack. But another witness has previously claimed the accuser told him she drove home alone. Just goes to show the only evidence that counts is that which comes from inside the courtroom....

Nonetheless, we'll be debating the case tonight and tomorrow night on MSNBC's Dan Abrams Report, 9pm EST.

The First Amendment is in more trouble than we thought. Political prosecutions, on the other hand, are alive and well in the U.S. This really happened today:

A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson sentenced Sherman Austin to more than the prosecutor had recommended under a plea bargain.

Austin, 20, pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives.... Austin admitted posting links about bombs to enable people to build and use them during demonstrations against interstate and foreign trade. He told FBI agents he wanted the Web site to teach people about police brutality.

The article continues:

Austin was arrested with other protesters at the World Economic Forum in New York in February 2002 on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. While in New York, federal charges were handed down in California.

Austin said he took a plea bargain because he feared his case was eligible for a terrorism enhancement, which could have added 20 years to his sentence. The plea deal had called for him to serve four months.

Update: Instapundit has lots more, including the charge against Austin and the elements necessary to prove it. He also discusses prosecutors' conduct in bargaining terror-related cases.

Naturally, we're in favor of this. And we point out that the young Dean was not given preferential treatment. Almost all first-time non-violent juvenile offenders are offered diversion, so they won't have a permanent record from a single mistake.

The 17-year-old son of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean agreed Tuesday to participate in a court diversion program for allegedly being the getaway driver while four friends tried to steal beer from a country club.

Paul Dean appeared at Vermont District Court with his father and mother, Dr. Judith Dean, and met with a court official. ...The program allows first-time and low-risk offenders to resolve their charges without appearing before a judge. In a few weeks, the younger Dean is to appear before a community board that will determine his punishment, which could include community service, writing a letter of apology or making restitution.

Howard Dean on the dispo:

''I think this is a good outcome for Paul and for his friends, and that's what the program is designed for."

[comments now closed]

Do you know someone who can't get financial aid for college due to a drug conviction? The John W. Perry Fund is awarding scholarships to help.

Federal law provides:

Section 484, subsection r of the Higher Education Act of 1998 (HEA) delays or denies federal student financial aid eligibility to applicants with any misdemeanor or felony drug conviction. Applicants with a single possession conviction lose eligibility for one year from conviction date; those with a second possession conviction or one sales conviction lose eligibility for two years; and three possession convictions or two sales convictions cost an applicant eligibility indefinitely.

Students enrolling in an approved drug treatment program can regain eligibility upon completing it. However, the measure neither provides funds for these generally expensive programs, nor distinguishes between mere use and true substance abuse. Would-be students who merely experimented with marijuana, for example, might be unable to find a program willing to accept them; or instead, might take up scarce slots needed by actual addicts seeking help.

The application process is fully explained on the site. Here are some details:

Howard Dean on Larry King Live last night, in response to a caller (via Lexis):

KING: Santa Cruz, California, hello.

CALLER: Hi Governor Dean. My question to you is, given your medical background and your view on states rights, in your opinion, what should the federal government do about medical marijuana?

DEAN: I don't think they should throw people in jail in California, but I think do think -- here's what I think. I think the process by which medical marijuana is being legalized is the wrong process. I don't like it when politicians interfere in medicine. It's why I am very pro-choice. Because I don't think that is the government's business. So what I will do as president is, I will acquire the FDA within first 12 months to evaluate marijuana and see if it is, in fact, a decent medicine or not. If it is, for what purposes -- for certain purposes, and I suspect it will be for cancer patients and HIV/AIDS patients. And it should be allowed for that. But I suspect it will not be allowed for things like glaucoma. But we have to do the FDA studies. I think marijuana should be treated like every other drug in the process and there shouldn't be a special process which is based on politics to legalize it.

Boston Globe Columnist Cathy Young expounds on rape-shield laws today, and is one of the first we've seen in recent weeks to outline issues of fairness to the accused.

After providing concrete examples, she concludes, justly in our view:

Many feminist groups fiercely resist any weakening of rape shield laws, including a recent New Jersey Supreme Court ruling which allows evidence of past sexual contact between the accuser and the accused to be used at trial.

Yet feminism should be about equal justice, not just the advantage of women. Women who come forward with charges of rape should not be treated as liars or sluts, but neither should they be given automatic credibility. Being sexually assaulted is a terrible ordeal - but so is being falsely accused.

We don't like this one bit. New York is going to spend $350,000.00 to test DNA in unsolved rape cases. It's called the John Doe Indictment Project. We call it another way to get around the statute of limitations in rape cases. We'd much rather the money went to test DNA in cases of inmates languishing in prisons who have non-frivilous claims of innocence.

Other objections:

...The New York Civil Liberties Union raised questions about the practice in a memorandum opposing proposed legislation that would have changed New York State law to explicitly allow such indictments. The indictments could violate the due process rights of those accused of crimes, according to the undated memorandum, which appears on the group's Web site, because after the passage of a significant amount of time, an innocent person accused of a crime may be unable to remember what he or she was doing on a specific day, and alibi witnesses also may not remember, may move away or may die.

That's right. Memory weakens over time. Witnesses disappear. DNA doesn't tell you if the sex was consensual or not. It only tells you who was involved. Meanwhile, DNA has proven that 133 people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. There are likely thousands more of them in our jails. Let's do their testing first.

Update: Here's the latest, the Indictments are coming.

We are as yet uncommitted in the Democratic race for the Presidential nomination. But if we were advising Howard Dean's campaign, we'd tell them to hire Toby Sackton, blogger at Let It Begin Here. Toby's imagery is unbeatable. He'd make a great speech writer. Here's a sample of his latest post championing Dean and arguing that Dean will make it to the top:

Kerry represents a boil on Bush’s left shoulder. Dean represents a full-fledged tackle that will cut him off at the knees.

The other democrats are mostly media midgets compared to Bush, who is carefully staged so as to appear like the wizard of Oz, even though it is a little frightened man behind the curtain. Most of the democrats are afraid to pull back the curtain, afraid that the big bad Bush will get them, that his brown shirts will attack them. Dean, like Dorothy, is fearless today, not 30 years ago in Vietnam. That is why he is the Democrat with the best chance to win.

We're not agreeing with Toby--or disagreeing. The only candidate we have a disagreement with so far is Lieberman, who blasted left-leaning candidates Tuesday. We think by the time the election comes around, the voters will want a clear, well-delineated alternative to Bush, not a Bush-Lite like Lieberman or some of the others, and that means one willing to take a left turn.

Update: This Washington Times commentary by Tod Lindberg notes that public opinion is liberalizing towards the death penalty and social justice issues. The candidates should follow suit.

The California Supreme Court has okayed adoptions by gay couples:

Second-parent adoptions, widely used by same-sex couples to form families, were declared legal Monday by the California Supreme Court.

The 6-1 ruling legitimizes as many as 20,000 adoptions that had been placed in limbo by a lower court decision and brings California in line with 21 other states that have validated second-parent adoptions.

"Our explicitly recognizing their validity will prevent uncertainty, conflict and protracted litigation in this area, all of which plainly are harmful to children caught in the middle," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for the court.

Our view: It's the right thing to do.

This is too much... if this is what the Judge in question said, he should be sent packing permanently. Of course, he's entitled to an investigation -let's hope there is a tape or other record of the proceeding:

An immigration judge was placed on administrative leave Monday after complaints that he made jokes about Tarzan to a woman who had been raped and tortured in her native Uganda.

The woman, whose first name is Jane, went before Judge Thomas Ragno in June, seeking political asylum in the United States because her husband was killed and she was beaten, raped and tortured in her homeland.

"Jane, come here. Me Tarzan!" Ragno said, according to the woman's physician, Dr. Sondra Crosby, who attended the June 20 deportation hearing to testify about the woman's injuries.

"It was disrespectful and insulting, and in my mind it was racist to have a white judge making Tarzan comments to a black woman," Crosby said.

Dr. Crosby filed a complaint about the judge and he was put on administrative leave. She says while she was in the courtroom,

...Ragno also listed to a weather forecast on his speaker phone and discussed his search for a new condominium.

Ragno has been a judge for 30 years. Maybe it's time for judicial term limits. Seems like there's some burnout going on.

Update: Thanks to the e-mailer who let us know we forgot the link, and sent in this similar article with more details about this judge's behavior in other cases. We've now inserted the link to the article we quoted in the post.

Say hello to the The American Constitution Society Weblog. The ACS is a new organization that just had its first convention in Washington.

Started in 1999 under another name, the Constitution Society says it's trying to raise an army to challenge what it calls the dominance of conservative thought over U.S. courthouse decisions.

What the liberals need, founders argue, is a network for progressive law students, professors, lawyers and policymakers to battle -- and outthink -- the political right. They want to counter the passion and power of the Federalist Society, a two-decades-old group with 25,000 members, many of them with influential jobs in the Bush administration and on his list of nominees for the federal bench.

The work, they told convention participants over and over, could range from organizing to block Bush judicial nominees to writing law review articles. The goal, organizers say, is to ensure U.S. courts observe legal decisions that protect individuals' rights to a safe workplace and a fair trial, and freedom from abuse and discrimination.

Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno were in attendance. Bookmark the blog and support the ACS any way you can. We need them to fight the right and win for all of us.

We also thank them for linking to TalkLeft.

A few weeks ago we told you about a prosecutor in North Carolina who is claiming meth is a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction' and prosecuting drug offenders under the state anti-terrorism laws. One of our complaints was:

This is nothing but a desperate attempt by frustrated law enforcement officials to fit a square peg in a round hole. No one supports meth labs, but if the North Carolina drug laws aren't sufficiently punitive for prosecutors and cops, they should take it to the legislature and pass a stricter law, rather than stretching an existing law past its common meaning and intended use.

Instapundit writes about it today, saying the prosecutor should be fired. Volokh Conspiracy has this to say about it:

I generally support many of the recent anti-terrorism laws, but one serious argument against them has always been that they won't be limited to terrorism, but will apply in situations whether the extra penalties or lowered protections that the anti-terrorism law provides are unjustified. This seems like an excellent example of this tendency; and it should also remind us more generally to be cautious when we hear assurances (even sincere assurances) that some broadly written law won't really be interpreted literally: In our fairly decentralized systems, local officials (or, for civil statutes, plaintiffs and their lawyers) often have ample incentive to push the envelope.

Glad to see Glenn and Eugene are on our side on this one!