MADD won't be happy with this decision, but it makes sense to us: A jury has acquitted a Woodstock woman of driving under the influence of alcohol after the defense established, through the testimony of forensic chemist James Woodford, that the DUI test was gender biased .

The jury in Lisa Bufton's drunken driving case acquitted her last month after her attorney argued the breath analysis instrument used by Georgia law enforcement personnel gives falsely high readings when used on women. The Cherokee County jurors said the Intoxilyzer 5000 should be "further evaluated for gender bias."

NORML says "hogwash" to the new British Medical Journal "Scare Mongering" Editorial alleging that pot contributes to 30,000 deaths per year in the U.K.

London, United Kingdom: NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre criticized an editorial published today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) hypothesizing that marijuana smoking may be responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths a year in the UK, primarily due to heart and respiratory illnesses.

"This editorial is scare mongering at its worst," said St. Pierre. "The authors of this editorial admit they have no scientific evidence to back up their claims. By far the greatest danger to health posed by the use of marijuana stems from a criminal arrest and conviction."

Although the editorial's authors acknowledge that there is a "dearth of epidemiological evidence" demonstrating pot's health hazards, and that case-controlled studies regarding marijuana's impact on health are rare, they still contend that marijuana poses a serious physical and mental health hazard. "One could calculate that if cigarettes cause an annual excess of 120,000 deaths among 13 million smokers (in the United Kingdom), the corresponding figures for deaths among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000, assuming equality of effect," they opined.

Authors' extrapolations did not account for the fact that average tobacco smokers consume far more tobacco over the course of their lifetimes than marijuana smokers consume cannabis.

A previous large-scale population study of marijuana use and mortality conducted by Kaiser Permanente and published in the American Journal of Public Health found that marijuana use, even long-term, "showed little if any effect ... on non-AIDS mortality in men and on total mortality in women." In addition, a 1999 report by the US National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine concluded, "There is no conclusive evidence that marijuanacauses cancer in humans, including cancers usually related to tobacco use."

A pair of editorials published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, reached a similar conclusion, finding: "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. S It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat S than alcohol or tobacco."

For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of The NORML Foundation at (202) 483-8751.

Zacarias Moussaoui wants John Ashcroft to take a quiz:

Zacarias Moussaoui wants Attorney General John Ashcroft to answer a multiple choice quiz about the government's theory of his role as a terrorist conspirator. Several of 17 handwritten pleadings released Thursday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema have a version of the quiz, which asks Ashcroft to check one of four boxes.

The choices are:

20th hijacker.
5th plane pilot missing in action.
I, Ashcroft don't know.
Let's kill him anyway.

Other handwritten pleadings of Moussaoui have him predicting he will win the case and be able to leave the U.S.-

Referring to defense lawyer Frank Dunham, Moussaoui said, "No doubt that Dunham will go crazy when I, Zacarias Moussaoui, will leave the United Satan on a 747-400 1st class. Non-smoking. No drink. No women."

In another motion, he challenged President Bush to "stop playing chicken and ... come out and fight hand-to-hand combat with knife if he want to kill me."

Moussaoui said he would call experts during the penalty phase of his case to show the United States has a history of "dirty foreign policy."

But Moussaoui said he has tried without success to obtain tapes from the History Channel "to deepen my understanding on the average American mind (if they have any)."

If Moussaoui is correct and walks after being tried in federal court, we think he ought to have his own cable show, broadcast from Europe, with Comical Ali as his "Ed McMahon" sidekick. Between the two of them.....

From Behind the Homefront:

GOVERNMENT USING "SLEIGHT OF HAND" TO CLOSE MOUSSAOUI PROCEEDINGS. Eleven media organizations organizations contend the government is using "sleight of hand" to keep proceedings secret in a dispute over terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui's access to an al-Qaida prisoner. The brief filed Tuesday in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by the group, which includes the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, contends the public's right to attend hearings and view the court record is not eliminated by a law guiding use of classified information in court proceedings.

Seven Enron executives, including the wife of former CFO Andrew Fastow have surrendered to authorities to face federal charges.

The wife of Enron Corp.'s former chief financial officer Andrew Fastow and six former executives of the fallen company's defunct broadband unit surrendered to federal authorities early Thursday.

Lea Fastow, 41, a former Enron assistant treasurer, walked into the Internal Revenue Service office in Houston shortly after daybreak accompanied by an attorney.

At the same time, the six men were surrendering at an FBI office in Houston. They included the former co-chief executive officers of Enron Broadband Services, Ken Rice and Joe Hirko; Kevin Hannon, EBS chief operating officer; Dan Boyle, vice president; Ben Glisan, treasurer; and F. Scott Yeager, another executive.

At least the feds avoided the temptation of public arrests. But they won't be able to resist parading them in handcuffs for a mini perp walk when they appear in court today on the charges.

A lawyer for Dan Boyle, one of the execs, said today, ""Prosecuting this guy is like prosecuting a piano player in a whorehouse."

Mrs. Fastow's lawyers are expected to assert that she is being used as a pawn to make her husband agree to cooperate against his higher-ups, Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Her husband was indicted previously on 78 counts of fraud.

Full Enron coverage since 2001 is available from the Houston Chronicle.

James Smith, the FBI agent who had a long term romantic affair with Katrina Leung while he was her "handler" is being afforded limited immunity from proseuction. First, he gets bond and she doesn't. Now he gets limited immunity. We think this supports Leung's lawyers' contention that Smith is receiving preferential treatment.

Ms. Leung's lawyers, Janet Levine and John Vandevelde, said prosecutors' willingness to negotiate a deal demonstrated that they were treating Ms. Leung "more severely" than the retired agent. "Katrina had a few pages of outdated, useless papers that Smith brought to her house in the first place, and she voluntarily let the F.B.I. have them without asking for immunity," the lawyers said in a statement. "He was released the day of his arrest by agreement with the government. She is in jail because the government fought her release. There seems to be a double standard being used."

The Prime Minister of Canada Wednesday said that the country is ready to decriminalize possession of marijuana:

We will soon introduce legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana," he told a Liberal party fundraiser. ...."Some might have a criminal record that will be a shadow over his (her) life for years to come," the Prime Minister said. That makes decriminalization important so "young people do not have unnecessary criminal records for the rest of their lives."

[thanks to Manish of Damn Foreigner for the link]

Larry King Wednesday: Scott Petserson's father took on Nancy Grace, front and center. Mr. Peterson stated what so many of us watching the show the last month have noticed--Nancy's continuous demonization of Scott Peterson seems to have a personal aspect to it. Someone needed to call her on the carpet over her comments, her facial expressions and her inappropriate and complete disregard of the presumption of innocence, and Mr. Peterson, in a calm and measured tone, did a great job.

Scott Peterson likely will have a new lawyer tomorrow--Mark Geragos, who previously represented Winona Ryder and Susan MacDougal. Mark also is a constant staple on Larry King's show. We hear it's a done deal.

We will be on the road today, en route to New York and the spring meeting and continuing legal education seminar of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

If you are a defense lawyer or law student and want to attend, registration is accepted at the door. It's being held at the New York Marriott Marquis. The program is "Trial Techiniques and Stategies: From the Masters." We're speaking Friday at 8:00 am. Our talk is titled "Oh, the Places You'll Go: Using the Internet for Legal Research and Investigation" and is based on our sister site, CrimeLynx, which we created in 1996 to bring criminal defense practitioners the best, not the most, of the law-related sites on the web.

Lynne Stewart and her attorney, renowned criminal defense attorney Michael Tigar (lead attorney for Terry Nichols in the OKC bombing case, former Dean of the University of Texas Law School, now Dean of American University Law School) will speak on "Claiming Justice for Your Client."

Gerry Goldstein of San Antonio, Past President of NACDL, and one of the highest ranked speakers in the nation, will speak on "The Legacy of 9/11: Giving Up Freedom to Protect Our Freedom."

Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree will speak on "Trickle Down: How the Supreme Court Impacts Our Work in Defending Our Clients." Renowned New York defense lawyer Benjamin Braufman (Sean Puffy Combs acquittal) will speak on "Summations That Beat All." Miami defense giant Albert Krieger (John Gotti's trial lawyer) will talk on "Story Telling From the Master."

Our favorite will probably be the panel Rikki Klieman is leading on "Must the Lawyer Broach Cooperation With the Client?" Rikki is one of the preeminent women defense lawyers in the country from Boston, who for the past several years has been an anchor at Court TV as well as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Law School. She is leaving Court TV in June to move to LA to be with her husband, Bill Bratton, who became Los Angeles Police Chief last October (she has commuted every weekend since.) Her book, sure to be a best seller, "When Fairy Tales Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny," published by Judith Ragen books, will hit the stores May 8. We're in the process of writing a book review on her excellent memoir, and will be appearing as a guest on her Court TV show Thursday, May 1 at 1:00 p.m.

There are many more speakers and programs, and the NACDL board of directors meeting, open to the public, is on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. These meetings are filled with lively debate, sometimes friendly, sometimes not so friendly, proving that even defense attorneys are not always of the same mind. But the entire four days, being surrounded by other defenders we know and trust, who work in the trenches at home like we do (the bowels of the courtrooms aand jails) results in all of us having our batteries re-charged so that when we return home, it's with that fighting spirit.

On a more personal level, we will be moving "Talkleft, Jr." from his dorm at NYU to his first apartment in New York, as he completes his final exams for graduation and waits on pins and needles to see if he is accepted into law school for the fall. He has decided that he wants to be a public defender. If he doesn't get in, his fallback plan is his music (he plays lead guitar.) And to get a job. So if you know an employer who could use his kind of skills, let us know. He is one terrific kid. He was a member of the McVeigh defense team his junior year in high school and caught the bug. He spent this, his senior year at NYU, interning at Barry Scheck's Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School, and the bug grew into a frog and he now has the passion.

It will be a busy few days, but we will be blogging throughout, so please stop by TalkLeft for updates, and if you have the time and an interest in criminal defense, stop by the Marriott Marquis.

Supporters rallied at the Portland courthouse Tuesday to show support for Mike Hawash, charged in the Oregon terror case. You can read the federal complaint against him here.

Hawash appeared in court Tuesday and the judge scheduled a preliminary hearing or arraignment for Monday, May 6. If the grand jury returns an indictment before then (and it is expected to Friday,) there will be no preliminary hearing as the grand jury will have already made the probable cause determination. Monday's hearing will then be an arraignment, where Hawash pleads not guilty to the charges.

A detention hearing is also scheduled for Monday, at which time the Government will argue that bail should not be set for Hawash and he should be detained pending trial. The Government will argue he is a flight risk and/or a danger to the community. One secret bail hearing was held while Hawash was being detained as a material witness, and the Judge sided with the Government.

Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times recaps the case thus far. CNN has this report.

Mike's friends issued this statement on their support site, Free Mike Hawash.org. Bloggers covering the Hawash case include Tristero, One True B!x and Reach M High Cowboy.

If you are new to the case, our coverage since the beginning is here.

Legislators in Alabama aren't too bright. On Tuesday, they voted against a bill legalizing sex toys. What's dumb about that? Read on.

The Alabama House voted against a bill Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state's obscenity law. ....

A federal district judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional. The first ruling was overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the second ruling has been appealed to the appeals court.

....The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Rogers, D-Birmingham, said because of the court ruling, the obscenity law is unenforceable as long as it contains the ban on sex toys....With little serious discussion, the House voted 37-28 to leave the sex toys ban in state law, leaving Rogers standing at the microphone shaking his head.

``What you just did is make our obscenity law illegal. You voted for obscenity,'' Rogers shouted at lawmakers.

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We're blogged out for the day, we probably have 15 entries and it's lunchtime and we have work to do, so we leave you with a little humor via these images.