Check out these costs of medical care in prison. For states looking to cut costs, medical reprieves are the way to go.

Georgia: The state Board of Pardons and Paroles has the authority to release seriously ill prison inmates under the medical reprieve program. Some key facts about the program:

Number of inmates out on medical reprieve: 54

Crimes committed by those on reprieve:

• Drug violations: 16
• Murder: 6
• Armed Robbery: 5
• Burglary: 5
• Robbery: 4
• Voluntary manslaughter: 3
• Aggravated assault: 3
• Arson: 2
• Child Molestation: 2
• Theft by Taking: 2
• Other: 6

The following costs and medical conditions reflect the 10 most expensive in 2002 among individual inmates in the Georgia prison system. The inmates' names were withheld.

• $450,839: Respiratory failure
• $340,423: Lupus, diabetes, renal failure
• $259,450: AIDS, pneumonia
• $172,470: Stroke
• $159,989: Rectal prolapse, surgery
• $153,342: Peritonitis, acute renal failure
• $149,679: Bladder cancer
• $130,529: Cirrhosis of liver
• $131,844: Lung cancer
• $118,888: Aortic aneurysm

Source: State Department of Corrections, state Board of Pardons and Paroles

Did you know that it's the Republicans who are leading the charge for the reform of drug laws?

The reason Republicans are taking the lead on drug policy reform is not just because it saves money, although it does. It is because putting appropriate, carefully selected offenders into treatment instead of incarceration gets both tough and smart on crime. If they can do it in Texas, we can do it in Maryland.

And we should be able to do it in the rest of the country. Where are the Democrats, other than Sharpton and Kucinich on this?

Don't miss William Raspberry today on Bush's Homeland Security Sales Pitch .

Here's an example of anti-terrorism and Patriot Act-style powers spreading to non-terrorist crimes: Prosecutors in North Carolina have used the state's "weapons of mass destruction" statute to charge a suspected crystal meth lab owner. Monkey Media Report has the details, including this quote from the District Attorney:

"Not only is the drug methamphetamine in itself a threat to both society and those using it, but the toxic compounds and deadly gases created as side products are also real threats. I feel that, as a prosecutor, I have to address this. Something has to be done to protect society." Another North Carolina district attorney already is following suit.

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.

The law defines nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction as, in part, 'any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury and ... is or contains toxic or poisonous chemicals or their immediate precursors.'

'It seems to me to be a real stretch of the imagination, that this would be covered under the antiterrorism law,' said Wallace Harrelson, the public defender in Guilford County. 'It seems to me that the antiterrorism law was designed with a specific purpose in mind, to prosecute people who are threatening to hurt the safety of the general public.'

Harrelson and others also said that they doubted whether a judge would allow prosecution under the law for drug-related activity that does not terrorize the public.

While we have no knowledge of the composition of the North Carolina legislature, we found this excuse for the legislature's failure to act pretty unbelievable:

'I've probably got eight or 10 bills before the legislature,' Keith said. 'It is extremely difficult, with all the defense attorneys in the General Assembly, to get tougher bills passed when they also have to vote on prisons.' (emphasis supplied.)

If criminal defense attorneys had that much clout in North Carolina, surely there wouldn't be a prison overcrowding problem.

Findlaw columnist Joanne Mariner raises an intriguing issue about the future of the Zacarias Moussaoui proceedings. If his federal case is dismissed due to the Government's refusal to comply with a court order directing it to make Ramzi Binalshibh available for an interview, he is likely to have his case transferred to a military tribunal.

Moussaoui is a french citizen. The French oppose the death penalty. When Britain complained about two of its citizens being tried by American military tribunals, Bush backed down and ordered proceedings stayed while he reconsiders. But Britain was our ally in the Iraq war. France is not. Do you think Bush will accord French citizens the same respect?

While the decision to reconsider the proceedings is good news for the British and Australians, its message to the rest of the world is provocatively clear. Military commissions are not fit for our own people; they may not be suitable for our close allies; but they're good enough for everybody else.

...To the extent that a defendant's nationality now determines the quality of justice due him, Moussaoui - citizen of a country that, notoriously, did not support the U.S. war on Iraq - loses out.

But in making this choice, the Administration should be aware of its ultimate consequences. If Moussaoui, without having had access to potentially exculpatory testimony, were to be sentenced to death by a military tribunal, France would not be alone in condemning the United States. The entire world would condemn the proceedings, and rightly so.

Very rightly so, thanks, Joanne.

Here we go again. First we had the Inspector General's report criticizing the military's treatment of detainees. Now there is a new Inspector General report scheduled for release this week documenting accusations of official abuse in carrying out the Patriot Act:

A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

The inspector general's report, which was presented to Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations under the 2001 law.

The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten.

....The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers. The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security.

Michigan Congressman John Conyers had this response to the report:

This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the Justice Department's disregard of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Conyers said in a statement. "I commend the inspector general for having the courage and independence to highlight the degree to which the administration's war on terror has misfired and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terror whatsoever."

We wrote last week about a Vermont newspaper editorial critical of Howard Dean's view of indigent defense and criminal defendants while he was Governor of Vermont. We were hoping he would address this on his blog and debunk the charge. We haven't seen any response. But we did receive this from a lawyer whose integrity we trust and who was a former public defender in Vermont.

I was a public defender in Vermont during part of Dean's tenure. He was openly hostile to the defense function. He once addressed a meeting of defense attorneys by stating that "my job is to make your job as difficult as possible." He is a man of his word, at least on this campaign promise. He did not want to fund public defense.

To his credit he appointed Robert Appel to the post of Defender General (Public Defender in charge of the state system.) Then he refused to reappoint Appel apparently because Robert was most effective on the shoestring budget he was given.

Dean, despite his present self proclaimed environmental advocate status, was fairly hostile to environmental concerns while Governor. Dean repeatedly appointed pro business, non environmentally sensitive people to the Environmental Board. In Dean's logic, any business that would provide a half dozen minimal wage jobs could do what they wanted to the environment. When I returned to New Jersey, I could observe that the only real difference between N.J. and VT environmentally (at least under Dean) was that VT had 7.5 million less residents.

Of course in a battle between Dean and Bush ....

When I asked this attorney if I could print his comments, he agreed, but asked to be referred to simply as a "former Vermont public defender." We are honoring his request. In his reply, he added,

Inasmuch as I fear Bush more than I distrust Dean, I would still probably vote for Dean if it came to a showdown. By the way, [one of my clients was accused] of arson murder. When my statewide boss said he didn't have the money for experts, I moved to dismiss arguing that it matters little which arm of the state was denying my client due process and effective assistance. The trial court ordered the experts, my boss appealed. The VT supremes ordered my boss to give me what I needed and to essentially rob peter to pay paul with his budget. My client was acquitted after an hour and one half of deliberation.

We are not trying to diss Dr. Dean. If he gets the nomination, he'll be our new best friend and we'll actively seek his election. But indigent defense is an issue near and dear to us, and we'd like to know if he thinks the criticism leveled at him is unfair, or if he thinks it was fair at the time but he's had a change of heart, or if it was fair then and remains fair today.

Instapundit responds to our response to his MSNBC column with advice for the Democrats in which he suggested Democrats could gain younger voters by lowering the legal drinking age. We agreed, and suggested another means of garnering votes would be for the Democrats to move to restore voting rights to felons in states that have disenfranchised them. He picks up where we left off:

I have an elaboration on that: don't have so many felonies. The justification for depriving felons of civil rights, like voting or owning guns, was originally that felonies were such serious crimes that the felon's life was ordinarily forfeit anyway. But now felonies are designated very promiscuously -- downloading files from the Internet? Filling in a pothole in your driveway that turns out to be a "wetland?"

Those things shouldn't be felonies. To my mind, imposing civil rights deprivations for such minor, mala prohibita matters is a due process violation. Adopt that approach, and you don't have to worry about felons being deprived of voting rights unless they're murderers, robbers, rapists, etc. You know: real criminals.

We agree with Glenn completely about reducing the number of felonies. It's a great idea and one that would solve a lot of problems in the justice system. But, we still think, whatever the crime, if they've done the time, they should get their right to vote back. And a very large portion of them would vote Democratic.

Excellent article about race and death penalty-qualified juries in today's New York Times, Facing a Jury of (Some of) One's Peers. We learned a new phrase from it--"bleaching of the jury"--

About the death penalty trial Ashcroft is forcing in Puerto Rico, 2 significant facts:

1. People who are not fluent in English are excluded from serving on federal juries/ In Puerto Rico, this means 1/2 to 2/3 of the country's residents are ineligible to serve.

2. Since capital jurors must be "death qualified", or willing to impose the death penalty in an appropriate case, death penalty opponents are not allowed to serve. Puerto Rico doesn't have a death penalty, it's against the Consitution there. At least another 11 to 17% of residents will be disqualified on this ground.

So what's wrong with death-qualified juries?

The case of Turkman v. Ashcroft should be getting more attention. It involves a class action lawsuit against many federal officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, over the mistreatment of post-9/11 detainees in Brooklyn. The suit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights , a group promoting "creative lawyering for social justice." Here are the basics:

CCR filed a class-action lawsuit in United States District Court in Brooklyn against a wide range of defendants including Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller, over the imprisonment and harsh treatment of the non-citizen immigrants jailed after the Sept. 11 attacks. The lawsuit alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution and international human rights and treaty law. The suit charges that the U.S. government used ethnic and religious profiling with respect to the round-up and detention of hundreds of people.

Plaintiffs are muslim from Pakistan and Turkey. Although the government never asserted that there was evidence that any of the plaintiffs had links to terrorist groups and never charged them with commission of any crime, they were detained for over six months in tiny, windowless cells and were beaten and abused, solely because of their country of origin and their faith. Despite the fact that the plaintiffs were neither accused nor convicted of any criminal offense, they have nonetheless been subject to the severest degrading conditions, including being subjected to body cavity strip-searches and manacled and shackled whenever they were taken from their cells. The suit alleges that the government made efforts to keep the plaintiffs from being able to practice their religion during their detention.

After the suit was filed, the Inspector General released its 198 page report on the treatment and mistreatment of the detainees in area prisons. The CCR has amended it's complaint, and the Justice Department is putting up a fight.

Chisum Lee, of the Village Voice, has the latest details and thinks this this case could bring Ashcroft's day of reckoning.

The military has confirmed it is investigating 7 soldier suicides that have occurred between the period of one week before the Iraq war began in March through the present time. All were deployed for the war. Five were in the army and one or two were in the Marines.

...the Army and the Marines have stressed suicide prevention in the past year after increases in suicides that may have been at least partially attributable to lengthy deployments and other strains following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.

Overall, the military has not released an official count of possible suicides under investigation, and the total could be higher than seven, given a number of unexplained deaths included in the Pentagon's casualty statistics. The military has reported nine cases of accidental death that could include suicides, most of which were from "noncombat weapons discharges." In 12 other cases, the cause of death has been officially listed as "other" and described only as "noncombat injuries."

Don't miss the concurring opinion of Judge Bright in United States v. Flores, decided by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on July 18, 2003. Disseminate it widely. While the court approved an upward departure, Judge Bright wrote separately about judicial discretion, and about the unfairness of the sentencing guidelines. He concluded with a plea to his colleagues:

I want to conclude by making a plea to the district judges of this country who feel that they should have some say and some discretion in sentencing. Let your opinions disclose your views about the injustice in the sentencing decision or decisions you are obligated to impose by Congressional mandate and/or the Sentencing Guidelines.

Let me say further that judges generally do not object to appropriate guidelines for sentencing decisions but the time has come for major reform in the system. I say in this concurring opinion, as I have said in other sentencing opinions that I have written, "Is anyone out there listening?" United States v. Alatorre , 207 F.3d 1078, 1080 (8th Cir. 2000) (Bright, J., concurring)."

(Received via e-mail from Neal Sonnett, Esq., Miami)