Scott Peterson appeared in court today in civilian clothes to hear his lawyer, Mark Geragos, argue to keep the search warrants and affidavits sealed in his case.

He argued that Peterson's defense could be harmed if details of what he called a "voodoo-type" investigation were made public. The court set another hearing on the issue for June 3.

Geragos told the media after the hearing that he was not going for just a reasonable doubt defense, but one which would prove that Scott is factually innocent. He also said the defense wants to find the true murderer(s).

The BBC reports that the Bush Administration is changing its tune on how it will discover Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Before, the Administration claimed its interrogation of high level Iraqi Administration officials would reveal the location of the weapons. That didn't pan out, despite interrogations of 18 Senior Iraqi officials.

US officials now say they believe it may be lower-level informants, rather than leaders, who reveal details of Iraq's alleged weapons programmes.

Note: the main focus of the article is the capture of Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, dubbed by the press "Mrs. Anthrax."

Following Secretary of State Colin Powell's call to move up the release of prisoners at Guantanamo, Defense officials announced today that two dozen will be released. The officials deny that Powell's request had an impact on the release decision.

The Senate released transcripts today from closed-door meetings between Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and nearly 500 witnesses occurring fifty years ago.

"No one McCarthy summoned ever went to jail -- even the few who were convicted of contempt later won on appeal. But his probes ruined lives and destroyed careers and livelihoods, with his unproven hints of communist taint."

Excerpts from the transcripts are available here.

Harvard Law School celebrates its 50th year of admitting women with a three day program, featuring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Attorney General Janet Reno.

We begin our 30th year of practicing law today--we have no idea where the time went. It really flew.

Our law school class had some 200 students, 11 of whom were women. Women now make up 50% or more of law school classes around the country.

We'd like to see more women criminal defense lawyers in private practice--this field remains very much male-dominated.

To get a real inside glimpse of the hurdles women defense lawyers face -- and the degree of determination needed to suceed, we highly recommend defense lawyer-turned Court TV anchor Rikki Klieman's new book, Fairy Tales Can Come True : How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny which debuts May 8--

Buy the Book Today!

We describe the book on CrimeLynx as "a riveting, brutally honest memoir by celebrated criminal trial attorney and Court TV Anchor Rikki Klieman, in which she details not only her triumphs as a pioneer in the male-dominated arena of criminal defense, but the price she paid for success-- and the toll it took on her personal life and physical health. The book becomes filled with spirit and joy, however, as Rikki describes falling in love in middle age and learning that she can have it all."

The Supreme Court today threw out a murder conviction where the police obtained a confession following an illegal arrest. The case is Kaupp v. Texas and you can read the full opinion here. The state had claimed the defendant was merely being detained, not arrested. The Court found otherwise.

Even “an initially consensual encounter . . . can be transformed into a seizure or detention within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.” (“[A]t some point in the investigative process, police procedures can qualitatively and quantitatively be so intrusive with respect to a suspect’s freedom of movement and privacy interests as to trigger the full protection of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments”). It cannot seriously be suggested that when the detectives began to question Kaupp, a reasonable person in his situation would have thought he was sitting in the interview room as a matter of choice, free to change his mind and go home to bed.

Nat Hentoff charges Ashcroft with muzzling his prosecutors when it comes to speaking with members of Congress or their aides.

The Justice Department's Office of Legislative Affairs has, by order of the attorney general, instructed all members of the Justice Department to inform that office "ahead of time and as soon as possible" before they participate in any briefings on Capitol Hill or engage in "substantive conversations" with members of Congress or their staff on Capitol Hill.

Every Justice Department employee is to be tracked to make sure — said the directive — "that the Department speaks with one voice on Capitol Hill. ... Please let us know when you receive a phone call from, or plan to place a call, to House and Senate staff and members of Congress."

"Moreover," the memorandum adds, "in almost all cases ... we will accompany you to briefings." (In Iraq, before the war, this form of government supervision was exercised by "minders.")

Here is Republican Senator Charles Grassley's reaction:

Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, called the directive "an attempt to muzzle whistleblowers," saying, on Fox News, that "we are all working for the American people to have maximum communication among the branches of government. This is an attempt to control information. We want to make sure that what we pass in Congress works the way we wanted it to, and that the money is spent the way we intended. We need a maximum flow of information to make the separation of powers work."

Grassley and Sen. Patrick Leahy are leading the charge to reject Ashcroft's secrecy and muzzling. Whistleblowers need protection and the FBI needs reform. Congress has to be allowed access to information detailing the Justice Department's use of its new and expanded powers. We have a right to know that these powers are being used as Congress intended when initially granting them--and that Ashcroft is not exceeding his rule-making authority.

In 2002, there were 1,359 wiretap applications made to state and federal judges in non-terrorism cases . All but one were approved. In fact, it was the only wiretap application rejected in the last four years.

Over the past 11 years, out of over 13,000 wiretap applications, only four were rejected.

An average of 403 conversations are intercepted on each wiretap. Wiretaps are good for 30 days, after which 30 day extensions can be granted. The longest running federal wiretap ran one year, having been extended 11 times. One New York state wiretap ran over two years. 77% of the taps were for cell phones and pagers.

Not surprisingly, Ashcroft had a better year with his secret FISA Court wiretap applications. All 1,228 applications were granted.

Trial begins Monday in Miami for Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, reputedly the biggest Colombian Druglord Extradited since 1977.

Our pals Roy Black and Howard Srebnick are defending Ochoa. Security is so tight that "that the anonymous jurors will be driven back and forth to court in vans with tinted windows to protect their identities."

Ochoa served five years in a Colombian prison in the 1990s for helping pioneer drug smuggling by air. Under the extradition treaty, the United States cannot try him for any of his cartel activities, including his alleged role in the 1986 hit on drug pilot and informant Barry Seal.

The case against him is built instead on allegations he got back into the cocaine business by joining up with a longtime friend and former cartel lieutenant, Alejandro Bernal Madrigal, in an operation that smuggled as much as 30 tons of the drug into this country per month.

Ochoa has denied returning to the cocaine business, proclaiming at the time of his 1999 arrest that he would be "stupid" to get into drugs again. Before his extradition, he erected billboards in Bogota and Medellin declaring: "Yesterday I made a mistake. Today I am innocent."

The case is largely dependent upon testimony of drug dealers who made a deal with the government to testify against Ochoa in exchange for leniency in their own cases.

For Law Day, the National Law Journal publishes its list of judges around the country who are alleged to have acted injudiciuously or incomprehensibly.

At the board meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) in New York this weekend, we were fortunate to be able to hear accounts of the Moussaoui, Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Lynne Stewart cases from their lawyers, two of whom flew to New York just to provide us with historical details of the cases, status updates, and details of unjust Government's conduct.

Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-Mass) also flew up to New York to receive our Champion of Justice award for his tireless work on the Innocence Protection Act. This is the second time in a month we have listened to Congressman Delahunt (we met with him in Washington in March as part of an NACDL legislative delegation which we wrote about here.) We are very impressed with Delahunt--he is a former elected District Attorney who truly cares about justice--from the Innocence Protection Act, to exposing proseuctorial and FBI misconduct and supporting grand jury reform, to upholding our civil liberties and opposing the Patriot Act.

This first hand account of our Patriot Act at work by Jason Halperin was in the Friday L.A. Times--it's a must read (and reprinted by Common Dreams so you don't need an L.A. Times password:)

Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl, police officers kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU, a perfectly legal one, thanks to the Patriot Act.

It happened to two roomates, both U.S. Citizens, during a routine dinner out at an Indian Restaurant in Times Square.