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.
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.
San Francisco police officers improperly searched two girls last year and violated the rights of a 14-year-old boy they arrested, according to departmental charges that could cost five officers their jobs. The internal charges -- signed this month by Acting Chief Alex Fagan -- stem from a confrontation between police and three youths in Hunters Point that outraged the city's African American community.
"One more appeals court vacancy has been filled with a judge who can spend the rest of his life trying to turn back the clock on Americans' rights, liberties, and legal protections," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. "Today the Senate failed in its obligation to protect Americans from a federal judiciary dominated by right-wing ideologues. But senators will have many more opportunities to take a stand, because the Bush administration continues to nominate judges who are not committed to preserving the protections of our Constitution."Senator Edward Kennedy said Monday, "Jeff Sutton "has been the most visible advocate in the right-wing movement to weaken the basic civil rights that have bought our country closer to equal opportunity for all citizens."
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A final vote is scheduled Tuesday in the Senate over Bush judicial nominee Jeffrey Sutton, whom many decry as a judicial activist. However, Ted Kennedy is quoted as saying that he thinks the vote will go Sutton's way, so it's probably a done deal.
For more on Sutton and objections to him, visit PFAW and ADAWatch.
Lynne Stewart is a guinea pig--a chance for the Bush administration to see how far it can push its evisceration of the Bill of Rights. The attack on attorney representation is only one of a staggering number of its post-9/11 assaults on the Constitution, but it's one of the most important. Invariably, the least sympathetic among us--the accused terrorists and the radical lawyers--are the first to lose basic rights. The rest of us follow.Ashcroft is dictating that the Government can pry into the attorney-client privilege all it wants. While this is bad for lawyers, it's worse for clients. First comes the inch-- Lynne Stewart, then comes the mile--the rest of us.
On October 31, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an emergency regulation, 66 Fed. Reg. 55062, allowing the monitoring of attorney-client conversations when the Attorney General has "reasonable suspicion" to "believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of violence or terrorism." The order recognizes that these communications would "traditionally be covered by the attorney-client privilege." 28 C.F.R. § 501.3(d).
Here are the reasons why defense lawyers and others consider this regulation to be unconstitutional and ethically improper.
President Bush Monday named 15 more nominees to fill judicial vacancies. Feminists are blasting Bush's choices of women nominees, saying they are "nothing but Scalia in a skirt."
Visit People for the American Way for more on the judicial nominees, and Civil Rights.Org for a primer on how our civil rights and constitutional freedoms are at risk due to Bush's court-packing scheme.
A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a law requiring that legal immigrants who commit certain crimes in this country be detained in prison while awaiting deportation hearings.By a 5-4 vote, the high court sided with the U.S. Justice Department and rejected a constitutional challenge to a 1996 law that provides for mandatory detention of criminal immigrants while authorities attempt to deport them.
"We hold that Congress, justifiably concerned that deportable criminal aliens who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for their removal hearings in large numbers, may require that (such) persons ... be detained," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority in the 20-page opinion .
Federal and state courts authorized a total of 1,358 wiretap applications, down 9 percent from the 1,491 applications in 2001. ........Wiretaps were most frequently authorized to investigate violations of drug and gambling laws....Of the wiretaps authorized in 2002, 77 percent (1,052 wiretaps) cited drug offenses as the most serious offense under investigation.[link via Paper Chase]
Some more commentary on Rick Santorum and his comments on homosexuality:
Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker, Dog Bites Man.
Cathy Young in the Boston Globe, Santorum's Odious Comparisons. [Links via SCOTUSblog]
Mark Mumford in the San Francisco Chronicle: Sex Tips From Rick Santorum in which the noxiously homophobic Republican senator answers your naughty e-mail
Cluster bombs are large weapons that contain dozens and often hundreds of smaller submunitions. They come in over 200 models and can be delivered from the air or the ground, releasing "bomblets" or "grenades" respectively.Because of the wide dispersal pattern of their bomblets, cluster munitions can destroy broad, relatively "soft" targets, such as airfields and surface-to-air missile sites. They are also effective against targets that move or do not have a precise location, such as enemy troops or vehicles.
...It is precisely the qualities that make cluster bombs militarily desirable that make them so dangerous to civilians.
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