Justice Sandra O'Connor said this morning in a television interview that she expects to remain on the Supreme Court for the next term.

The Florida Commission on Capital Cases issued a study last year that listed 23 inmates on death row in Florida who were wrongfully convicted. One more died while on death row who likely was innocent. And one was released shortly after the study was finished. That makes for 25 wrongfully convicted persons on Florida's Death Row, according to authorities.

Four of the cases reflect men who authorities later believed were innocent. Smith died in 2000 before DNA evidence could exonerate him of the 1985 sexual assault and death of an 8-year-old Miami girl. Freddie Lee and Wilbur Pitts were pardoned by Gov. Reuben Askew in 1975. Gov. Bob Martinez pardoned James Richardson in 1989 after Janet Reno, then a special prosecutor, determined evidence was suppressed, witnesses lied and another suspect wasn't investigated.

The remaining 20 cases were sent back to trial courts, seven because of evidence issues, seven because of witness issues and six for issues involving court officials, according to the study.

In those cases, eight were dropped or dismissed for a variety of reasons: witness recanted; prosecutors did not want to subject witnesses to further trials; witness had died; evidence was lost or missing. Ten inmates were either acquitted at retrial or by the courts. Two pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

This companion article lists the 25 inmate with a short paragraph on why each was released.

How many more are unjustly on Death Row? It's time for a moratorium --we hope one of the leading Democratic candidates will call for it. Here's a chart showing where each stands on the issue. Of them, John Kerry has the most progressive position.

Kerry: Opposes capital punishment, except for terrorists. Believes that the system is flawed so long as innocents are in danger of being executed.

Considering the candidates widely considered to be least likely to win:

Kucinich: Opposes death penalty because it's morally wrong and racially biased.
Sharpton: Opposes the death penalty.

And then there's Bush:

"I was the governor of a state that had a death penalty and, as far as I was concerned, I reviewed every case and I was confident that every person that had been put to death received full rights and was guilty of the crime charged." (Bush press conference, May 11, 2001)

Bump and Update: We wrote this on Friday, but since many readers don't read the Sunday magazine until Sunday, we are bumping it up.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine has another fascinating examination of the death penalty called In the Face of Death, by Alex Kotlowitz. It examines 12 pro-death jurors in a gruesome murder case who found the defendant guilty but voted for life over death.

Whether someone lives or dies is the ultimate of Solomonic decisions, and 33 of 38 death-penalty states entrust it to a jury rather than to a judge. What happens when 12 people who support the death penalty face it up close?

Over the past few years, detective work and advances in DNA technology have uncovered a frighteningly high number of wrongfully convicted, especially on death row. But there may be another, albeit quieter, revolution taking place, out of view, in jury rooms. The number of death sentences handed down has dropped precipitously, from a modern-day peak of 319 in 1996 to 229 in 2000, and then to 155 in 2001. And a study released just last month reported that in 15 of the last 16 federal capital trials, jurors chose life sentences over death.

The article examines the trend, concluding:

There are two factors, however, that more than anything else may help explain the decline in death-penalty sentences. One is the increasing availability of life without parole as an option, which all but three death-penalty states now offer. In polls, three-fourths of Americans say they believe in the death penalty. But when asked whether they'd support capital punishment if life without parole was an option, the number is reduced to half.

The other contributor, perhaps tougher to measure, is a development over the last decade: an increasing number of defense attorneys have become more skilled and resourceful in persuading jurors that the lives of their clients are worth saving.

The article also explores the use of "mitigation specialists," whom no capital lawyer worth his or her salt would be caught dead without:

Via Kevin Drum of Calpundit, we came across the Select Your Candidate Quiz. It asks your position on a bunch of issues, then tells you which presidential candidate most matches them. We chose to have it consider only those who have declared themselves candidates and are still in the race.

Here were our top results:

1. Kucinich, Cong. Dennis, OH - Democrat (91%)
2. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (79%)
3. Gephardt, Cong. Dick, MO - Democrat (75%)
4. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (74%)

Gephardt surprised us, as we have had nothing good to say about him. Edwards was number 6 on the list, also surprising, since we assumed we had more in common with him. The bottom Democrat on our list was Bob Graham. After Graham, came Bush and Lyndon LaRouche.

For each possible candidate, the site presents his or her views on a variety of issues. We were impressed with the positions of Wesley Clark, and we hope that he enters the race:

"One of the things about the war on terror that I am disturbed about is that we've essentially suspended habeas corpus, which is something that's only been done once in American history and then only for a very brief period. When I go back and think about the atmosphere in which the PATRIOT Act was passed, it begs for a reconsideration and review. And it should be done.

Clark also favors abortion rights and affirmative action. He opposes the trade embargo with Cuba. On the war on terror and war in Iraq:

The Bush administration's mistake in Iraq, says Clark, is one of priorities. "They picked war over law. They picked a unilateralist approach over a multilateral approach. They picked conventional forces over special-operations forces. And they picked Saddam Hussein as a target over Osama bin Laden." Clark worries that the Iraq policy is fatally flawed because it's likely to create new recruits for America's main enemy -- the Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

On the one hand, we say Draft Clark for 2004. On the other hand, like Kevin, we want a candidate who can win against Bush, and we are prepared to compromise, somewhat. If only we knew who that might be....

LA Weekly has a series of articles this week on Bush and Ashcroft and their attempted hijacking of our civil liberties. Bruce Shapiro writes The War on Due Process--about how Bushcroft, with the power of the Patriot Act, is trying to conquer the legal system.

John Powers writes Taking Liberties, about which of our rights are being threatened, and how to take them back. Jeffrey Anderson writes on how Homeland Security has turned El Centro’s detention center into purgatory for immigrants.

Christine Pelisek writes about library monitors. She does double duty with The Incredible Shrinking Liberties List.

Other featured articles address the Supreme Court sodomy case, here and here, and the death penalty reversal based on ineffective assistance of counsel.

Talk about a jam packed issue, don't miss this one.

Amnesty International has issued this press release , calling President Bush's decision to designate six unidentified detainees for trial by military tribunal, "another retrograde step for human rights" in the terror war.

Among its criticisms of the tribunal process are these (direct quotes):

• The Military Order is discriminatory. US nationals will not be tried by military commission, even if accused of the same offence as a foreign national. Under the Order, selected foreign nationals will receive second-class justice, in violation of international law which prohibits discriminatory treatment, including on the basis of nationality.

• The commissions would allow a lower standard of evidence than is admissible in the ordinary courts, including hearsay evidence. The Pentagon guidelines for the operation of the commissions do not expressly exclude statements extracted under coercive methods.

• The military commissions would entirely lack independence from the executive. The President has given himself or Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld (who last week appointed his Deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to this role) the power to name who will be tried by the commissions, to appoint or to remove the members of those commissions, to pick the panel that will review convictions and sentences, and to make the final decision in any case.

• In violation of international law, there will be no right of appeal to an independent and impartial court established by law. Instead, there would be a review by a three-member panel appointed by the Deputy Secretary of Defence.

Daniel Precht, a defense lawyer for one of the defendants in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial, has written a book about the experience, to be published in September. Precht spares no one in the book, including himself, in his portrayal of the trial as one filled with error and prejudice. Precht is now an Assistant Dean at the University of Michigan Law School. He says that had he stayed practicing in New York, he could never have written this book.

One example of Precht's criticism of the trial, the Judge and himself:

Mr. Precht, then with the Federal Defender Division of the Legal Aid Society, accuses the judge, Kevin T. Duffy of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, of lacking impartiality and of essentially convicting his client before the trial ended.

Mr. Precht describes one incident in which Judge Duffy summoned him and his co-counsel, John J. Byrnes, into his chambers and told them that two of Mr. Salameh's co-defendants had met privately with the prosecution before trial in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate guilty pleas. One defendant implicated Mr. Precht's client, the judge said. "I think your client will be convicted," Mr. Precht quotes the judge as saying. "I'm fairly certain he did it."

He considered asking Judge Duffy to disqualify himself, but did not out of fear that the request would only antagonize the judge further. "This was a terrible mistake," Mr. Precht writes. "My handling of this episode is my biggest regret."

Mr. Precht said yesterday that although the jury ultimately convicted his client, he believes the judge was biased throughout the trial, as evidenced by rulings and jury instructions that favored the government, and, in Mr. Precht's view, influenced the verdict.

Here's one more allegation of prejudice described in the book:

Mr. Precht also describes the judge and smiling prosecutors entering the courtroom together before the verdict was announced, leading him to believe that the judge had privately shared the verdict with them, and congratulated them. "Duffy was treating the prosecutors as conquering heroes," Mr. Precht writes. Prosecutors deny the met with the Judge, saying they only shared a hallway with his chambers.

Welcome back to Media Horse. They've got some great stuff up, as always. Instapundit is back and posting after his week of scuba-diving in the Grand Caymans.

Atrios and Matt Yglesias are still in Europe (not together) and contributing occasional posts. Lisa English of Ruminate This will be back next week, after a long and probably not-much-fun house move.

Turns out cocaine and coca leaves have been getting a bum rap. A Peru firm, National Coca Co., exports coca leaves and says if the U.S. allows Coca Cola to use the leaf, it should allow it for other uses.

ENACO, as [the company] is known for its Spanish acronym, is the Peruvian government's official buyer and merchandiser of coca leaves and one of only two companies in the world to produce refined cocaine for medical uses.

We have used coca in this country for 4,000 years. It is not a drug, but because of the negative image associated with one product it is considered evil,'' [General Manager] Hinostroza said in a recent interview. ``We are ready to export and have our products already in English for the U.S. market. We just have to get this prohibition lifted.''

What's good about coca?

Peasant farmers in the high Andes traditionally chew coca as a nutritional supplement and energy booster and use it in religious and fortune-telling rituals. Besides cocaine, which is one of 14 alkaloids in the leaf, coca has a long list of vitamins and minerals. Medically, cocaine is used as an anaesthetic in eye surgery.

Who can get some?

Cocaine, coca leaves and teas are all available for sale on ENACO's website. But there are strict controls on the cocaine, which ENACO sells for $1,000 a pound but which would bring about $50,000 on the illegal market. ''Purchase of cocaine has to be approved by drug-enforcement agencies in the importing country. We are very careful with the lab and with the exports,'' Hinostroza said.

A New Jersey multinational company, Stepan Co., also produces cocaine --from coca leaves it purchases from ENACO. Stepan has a special license from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration allowing it to import coca leaves. The company says it uses the leaves to make cocaine for ocular surgery. ENCAO says it does more, and wants a piece of the action.

[comments now closed]

Who knew? Dell Computers has been using prison labor in its recycling program. Now, follwoing complaints by environmental advocates, the company has promised to stop.

Dell, the world's largest seller of PC's, said it had canceled its contract with Unicor, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that employs prisoners for electronics recycling and other industries.

Last week, an environmental group in California released a report criticizing Dell's reliance on prison labor. The group, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, said in its report that inmates who work at the prison recycling operation were not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act and were paid from 20 cents to $1.26 an hour.

The organization's report, entitled "Corporate Strategies for Electronics Recycling: A Tale of Two Systems," commended Hewlett-Packard for using "state of the art" practices in cooperation with the commercial recycling industry.

While promising to halt the use of prison labor, Dell still defends it:

The company said that prisoners involved in the work program, which is entirely voluntary, have a far lower rate of recidivism.

That's the best they can offer as an excuse for paying $.20 an hour?

Update: The Rocky Mountain News carries an editorial Saturday, Don't Scrimp on Prison Labor. It has nothing to do with Dell, but with the Colorado legislature's budget-cutting move of reducing prisoner wages from $.85 a day to $.60 a day for jobs such as cooking, sewing uniforms, and building furniture. As a result, the inmate-cooks at the Sterling Correctional Center staged a walkout. They were punished with solitary confinement, where they remain.

A new website, in association with the MIT Technology Lab will keep tabs on government. The program, aptly called the Government Information Awareness Program (GIA), debuts today. You can access its website here.

Its creators hope it will become a Google of government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of information to help citizens track their leaders as effectively as their leaders track them.

GIA hopes to create an enormous but self-sustaining community where users do the work of keeping it running and credible. Its creators at Media Lab -- a research center whose eclectic projects bridge technology, the arts and media -- view the project not just as a way to pool the collective wisdom of government watchdogs but also as a tool to counter new government technologies that are consolidating information about citizens.

Many in blogtopia (yes, Skippy coined that phrase) are talking about the life sentence imposed on an Oklahoma man for spitting on a police officer. See, Eugene at Volokh Conspiracy, Ken Hammers at CrimLaw and Matt Rustler at Stop the Bleating.

All three have updated (although happily not entirely disavowed) their original criticism of the sentence, having learned that the offender had prior convictions for rape and burglary, and bit the officer when spitting on him. They point out that the life sentence was allowed by the state's repeat offender laws. Allowed, yes. Required, no. We'd point out there's a big difference.

This Houston Chronicle article makes it clear that it was not a mandatory repeat offender sentence, but rather, one imposed by the Judge, who followed the jury's recommendation, made after 15 minutes of deliberation, despite the prosecutor's and defense attorney's requests for a lesser sentence:

Creek County Associate District Judge April Sellers White followed the recommendation of a jury for the maximum sentence against John C. Marquez under a law that makes it a felony to place bodily fluids on law enforcement officers. White rejected a prosecution request for a 25-year prison term and a defense request for a four-year term.

Yes, biting and spitting is bad. But both the officer and defendant were tested for communicable diseases after the incident and both tested negative. Also, according to the officer's testimony, the biting occurred while the officer was physically attempting to restrain the defendant from spitting a second time. Thus, it was a defensive gesture.

The sentence is excessive, and we are offended that a judge would give credence to a jury who voted for life in prison after 15 minutes of deliberation given the facts of this case--especially when the lawyers on both sides asked for a lesser sentence.

Even though this isn't a three-strikes sentence, we will take this opportunity to direct interested persons to Families to Amend California's Three-Strikes, which is filled with horror stories of inmates receiving undeserved life sentences.