A Mexican Judge has determined that sufficient evidence exists against our favorite bounty hunter, Duane "Dog" Chapman, and his brother and his son, to make them stand trial in Mexico on charges of unlawful detention and deprivation of freedom. The sentence, if convicted, could be anywhere from probation to four years.

TV Producer Jeff Sells and actor Boris Krutonog, who were with Dog when he grabbed Luster, were ordered released and should be home tomorrow.

Dog held a press conference in Mexico today, saying he was glad he caught Luster but sorry he had gone about it the wrong way. He also thanked the Mexican authorities for treating him with respect.

Fox's Rita Cosby said on The Factor tonight that a plea deal had been in the works whereby Dog, his brother and his son would get a six month suspended sentence--but after that was worked out the case got re-assigned to a new judge and now it's up in the air. Negotiotions have been going on nonstop, Cosby said.

The reason for the new judge is that now that probable cause has been found, the case is being moved to Guadalajara, which if we remember correctly, is the capital of the state of Jalisco, in which Puerta Vallarta is also located. Guadalajara is not on the ocean, and is 215 miles from Puerto Vallarta.

We predict Dog will be home shortly. Luster, meanwhile, is in solitary.

An explanation of Mexican extradition policy is here. The reason the feds were able to get Luster back to the U.S. so quickly is that he was deported, rather than extradited. Luster entered the country with a false name, which was a deportable offense. To extradite Luster, the feds would have had to comply with the lengthy extradition process under the 1980 Treaty with Mexico, and it would have taken much longer.

Update: We're scheduled to discuss Dog's situation on Court TV's Catherine Crier's show around 5:30 ET Friday. A reporter in Puerto Vallarta will also be on.

Thinking of going to London or France? Get ready. They may be looking at your underpants.

Presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich has introduced a bill to abolish the federal death penalty. It is H. R. 2574, and you can read the text of it on Thomas, the Federal Legislation Server, by typing its number in the search box. Here's the gist:

PROHIBITION ON IMPOSITION OF DEATH SENTENCE.

(a) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person may be sentenced to death or put to death on or after the date of enactment of this Act for any violation of Federal law.(b) PERSONS SENTENCED BEFORE DATE OF ENACTMENT- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person sentenced to death before the date of enactment of this Act for any violation of Federal law shall serve a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Co-sponsors of the bill include:

From Phoenix criminal defense attorney Nicholas Hentoff:

The Lawrence v. Texas decision on gay sex has important implications for Federal privacy challenges to enforcement of Federal laws to prosecute medical marijuana users.

bq. The majority in Lawrence cited the "emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex."

bq. The same rationale can be applied to medical mariuana and makes the state by state fight to pass medical marijuana laws all the more important in blocking Ashcroft from subverting the State's rights to regulate medical marijuana use by their citizens. [ reprinted with permission.]

Hmmm.....the possibilities seem endless. Prostitution in the privacy of one's hotel room?

Update: A commenter just pointed out the court stressed the decision was applicable to non-commercial sex. Ok, that's today. But we can still see the rationale being applied to prostitution in the future. If the sex act occurs in the privacy of one's rented quarters, whose business is it if a gold bracelet or currency is the quid pro quo?

Update: The link to Mr. Hentoff's website now works. Our error, sorry.

Chante Mallard, who hit a man while driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, who was impaled in her windshield and left to die, was found guilty of murder today by a Texas jury, which deliberated under one hour. The jury will now consider what her sentence should be. In Texas, juries can determine sentences. Think of it as the punishment phase of a capital case, where after finding guilt, a second trial begins to determine if the defendant should live or die. Only in this case, the jury will be deciding between life in prison or a lesser term of years.

We've read and heard a lot of criticism of the defense team in the past day--suggestions that they should have put Mallard on the witness stand in the guilt phase or called more witnesses. (The defense called one witness, an expert, and then rested.) We disagree. The defense, correctly believing that the facts of the case were so ugly that their client would undoubtedly be convicted, has saved her testimony and their witnesses for the punishment phase.

The jury can sentence Mallard to between 2 and 10 years for the evidence tampering charge she pleaded guilty to last week. It can sentence her up to life on the murder charge. We think the defense will put on some strong mitigation evidence and persuade the jurors not to give this young woman life in prison.

We're scheduled to debate the trial issues and defense strategy with Marcia Clark on Hannity and Colmes around 9:30 EST tonight.

G.I. Killed, 8 Injured in One of Three Attacks in Iraq

There's been a similar headline every day for weeks--maybe months. Have we all just become so accustomed to news of death that we don't bother to protest? Daily Kos has been providing outstanding coverage of the post-war deaths of our troops--his latest is here. We hope you'll go over there and read and then get mad. Read Skippy on the subject too.

Today, Arkansas, tomorrow the country?

Troopers' Flashflights Have a Nose for Alcohol

The next time an Arkansas state trooper stops a vehicle and points a flashlight inside, he may be doing more than illuminating the interior. He could be testing the air inside for proof that the driver has been drinking alcohol, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

The motorist would not even know it, which is causing some civil liberties advocates to question whether the practice violates the constitutional right against "unreasonable searches." Now 118 of the 320 state troopers are carrying "The Sniffer" flashlight, which conceals a "passive alcohol sensor" and alerts officers to alcohol in the air inside a vehicle. A row of tiny lights on the device will glow green, yellow or red depending on the amount alcohol detected. Officers can use that information as probable cause to conduct more field sobriety tests and make arrests.

Troopers have been carrying the $683 illuminators — paid for with a federal grant — for almost three months. At least a couple dozen arrests have been made after The Sniffer picked up traces of alcohol. The law enforcement agency is among hundreds in more than 40 states that use the technology, said Jarel Kelsey of PAS Systems International of Fredericksburg, Va., which markets the flashlights.

We've known in the U.S. for a long time that dog alerts on money are meaningless because almost all currency contains traces of cocaine.

Now, a new study by German scientists has revealed that cocaine is found on nearly all euro notes.

Prof Fritz Sögel and a team from the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg studied 700 euro notes from across the euro zone between January 2002 - the month the notes were launched - and last August.

Three per cent were found to be contaminated with an average of 0.4 microgrammes of cocaine particles, just days after the euro's launch, and this figure soared to 90 per cent in seven months.

The most highly contaminated notes, in the first study of its kind on euro notes, originated from Spain.

Bump and Update: The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a death row inmate.

The Supreme Court sided with a convicted killer in an important test of legal standards for death penalty cases, ruling Thursday that inexperienced lawyers failed their client at trial. The court, by a vote of 7 to 2, threw out the death sentence of Kevin Wiggins, a borderline retarded man convicted of drowning an elderly Maryland woman who employed him as a handyman.

Bump and Update:The Supreme Court has dismissed the Nike free speech appeal.

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed on Thursday on technical grounds a Nike Inc. appeal on whether it can be sued for false advertising over a publicity campaign to defend itself against accusations that Asian sweatshops made its footwear. The high court, on the last day of its term, said the free-speech appeal was dismissed without reaching the merits of the dispute. The ruling means the lawsuit against Nike, the world's largest maker of athletic shoes, can go forward.

In another ruling, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the government cannot retroactively erase statutes of limitations, a defeat for prosecutors trying to pursue priests accused of long-ago sex abuse.

On a 5-4 vote, the justices struck down a California law that allowed prosecutions for old sex crimes. It was challenged by a 72-year-old man accused of molesting his daughters when they were children. The case was closely watched because of sex abuse problems in the Roman Catholic church, but it also has implications for terrorism and other crimes.

Update: The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas has struckdown the Texas law prohibiting consensual homosexual sodomy. The justices held that the law was an unconstitutional privacy invasion and violated due process.

From How Appealing:

Lawrence v. Texas (syllabus here; majority opinion here; opinion concurring in the judgment here; dissenting opinion here; additional dissenting opinion here;

From a Press Release from People for the American Way:

"The Supreme Court has recognized what most Americans regard as common sense - the government has no place regulating private sexual behavior between consenting adults. And the Court has recognized as law what most Americans see as basic fairness: being gay should not mean being a second-class citizen. This decision has not eliminated all the barriers to full equality for gay Americans, but it takes a major step towards dismantling those barriers."

**************

Today will be a big day for Supreme Court news. Decisions are expected in the Texas sodomy and Nike cases. There could be an announcement regarding retirement of one of the Justices. Be sure to check in with Howard Bashman of How Appealing and ScotusBlog for the latest news.

On a related topic, Eric at IsThatLegal has some sharp criticism for Justice O'Connor's extra-judicial comments on the affirmative action ruling made in a post-decision interview.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed the Government's appeal of the Moussaoui trial court judge's order allowing him to interview alleged al Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., threw out the appeal on a technicality. It ruled that the Justice Department was premature in appealing the trial judge's order allowing Moussaoui to question Sept. 11 organizer Ramzi Binalshibh through a remote video hookup.

The appellate judges said U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema's order "clearly is not a final one," because Moussaoui has yet to stand trial. The judges said that appeals courts have jurisdiction only to hear appeals from final orders.

Our take: Get ready for the Government to dismiss the federal action and declare Moussaoui an enemy combatant, move him into military custody, and subject him to interrogation before providing him with a military tribunal trial at which the Government will be seeking the death penalty.

On another matter, our hosting company went down this morning for about an hour and we just got back up. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Update: The Moussaoui decision is here.

Inspector General Glenn Fine announced that his office will conduct an internal affairs-disciplinary type investigation into the treatment of detained immigrants in Brooklyn after 9/11.

The inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, briefed lawmakers on a highly critical report delivered by his office earlier this month on the treatment of Sept. 11 detainees, and said that investigators had "serious concerns" about a pattern of verbal and physical abuse faced by 84 illegal immigrants at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Investigators found that some guards slammed inmates against walls, dragged them by their arms, stepped on the chains between their ankle cuffs and made slurs and threats like "you will feel pain" and "you're going to die here," Mr. Fine told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ashcroft and the Justice Department refused to bring criminal charges against the guards. Bureau of Prison officials are still trying to justify the treatment of the detainees, saying any instances of misconduct were isolated. Even Orrin Hatch was upset at the treatment:

"Neither the fact that the department was operating under unprecedented trying conditions nor the fact that the 9/11 detainees were in our country illegally justifies entirely the way in which some of the detainees were treated," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. (Clue for Mr. Hatch: Drop the word "entirely"--there is no justification period.)

On the other side, was Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "who warned against exaggerating the inspector general's findings and placing overly burdensome restrictions on law enforcement." (Schumer recently suggested Arlen Specter be considered for the Supreme Court. Schumer is one of the most law and order Democrats out there.)

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)had the correct analysis--he labeled the conduct disclosed by the Inspector General's report an "abuse of power" by the Justice Department.

The Center for Public Integrity today has released a report showing a pattern of misconduct by local prosecutors nationwide.

The report is called "Harmful Error," a play on the term "Harmless Error" used by appellate courts when they find that prosecutorial misconduct occurs, but does not prejudice the defendant so acutely that the guilty verdict must be reversed.

"This is the most extensive investigation into prosecutorial conduct that has ever been carried out in this country," said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center. "The findings in this report will be discussed in legal circles for years to come."

Judges have ruled in at least 2017 cases out of over 11,000 cases reviewed from 1970 through mid-2003 that prosecutors' behavior inside or outside the courtroom prejudiced juries or judges against the defendant. As a result, the judges reversed a guilty verdict, ordered a new trial, or took other actions to correct a wrong. The report also documents cases in which prosecutorial misconduct has played a role in convicting innocent women and men.