More on Justice in Tulia: See, Justice in a Small Town in today's Texas Lawyer:

It took a dozen lawyers and more than $1 million in donated fees, but last week a cadre of Texas, New York and Washington, D.C., defense lawyers may have extracted a bit of justice for 38 defendants in Tulia, Texas, who the lawyers say were wrongly convicted in a sweeping drug bust four years ago. Last week the prosecution and the defense agreed to stipulate that the police officer involved in the arrests was not credible.

Why did the lawyers volunteer? Here's the story as to one of them, Jeff Blackburn, a sole practitioner from Amarillo, Texas. By January of this year, Jeff had spent more than 2,000 hours and about $39,000 of his own money on the case.

The number of persons imprisoned in the U.S. now exceeds two million, according to the latest Justice Department statistics.

The Sentencing Project has the details.

Prisons and jails held one out of every 142 U.S. residents. The prison and jail population, long the world's largest, has almost doubled since 1990.

....There were 2,019,234 people in prisons or jails at the end of June 2002, according to the report. About two-thirds of the total were in state and federal prisons, and the rest were in local jails.

"The relentless increases in prison and jail populations can best be explained as the legacy of an entrenched infrastructure of punishment that has been embedded in the criminal justice system over the last 30 years," said Malcolm Young, the group's executive director.

In the 12 months that ended June 30, the jail population went up by 34,235 inmates, a 5.4 percent rise and the largest increase since 1997, according to the report. State prisons added 12,440 inmates, a 1 percent increase, while the federal prison system grew by 8,042 inmates, a 5.7 percent increase.

Among the other findings of the report:

• A total of 7,248 jailed inmates and 3,055 state prisoners were younger than 18.

• The federal government's prison system had the largest number of inmates at 161,681, followed by California with 160,315 prisoners and Texas with 158,131 inmates.

• Twenty states experienced an inmate population increase of 5 percent or more during the 12-month period.

• Female prisoners totaled 96,099 at the end of June, accounting for 6.7 percent of all inmates. There's more.

The rate of incarceration in the United States, 702 inmates per 100,000 residents, continues to be the highest in the world. Among black males 25 to 29, 12.9% were in prison or jail. Overall, 4.8% of black males were in prison or jails, compared to 1.7% of Hispanics and 0.6% of whites. Black women in prisons and jails continue to outnumber their white (5 times as many) and Hispanic (more than twice as many) counterparts.

This is America--land of the free?

The Supreme Court Monday upheld a state ban on cross-burning.

A divided Supreme Court upheld a state ban on cross burning, ruling Monday that the history of racial intimidation attached to this symbol outweighs the free speech protection of Ku Klux Klansmen or others who might it. A burning cross is an instrument of terror, and government should have the power to stamp out or punish its use, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote.

SCOTUS has the details and links.

Another example of the end of due process as we know it. Bail was denied in a secret hearing for Mike Hawash who is being held as a material witness in Oregon.

Hawash, a software engineer and American citizen, has been held since March 20. Our prior coverage is here and here.

The records of the searches of his home and office are sealed. His name has been removed from the list of prisoners at FCI Sheridan, where he has been held. His lawyers are gagged.

Josh Kardon, chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been attempting to obtain information about Hawash. Here's what he has been told: Hawash is not at Guantanamo, he has a lawyer who was allowed to appear at his bail hearing, his wife and kids have visited him. The Government will not confirm that Hawash is being held as a material witness.

Sources say Hawash's arrest is related to the pending case against the "Oregon Six." Prosecutors have said they will seek a superseding Indictment in the case--adding new charges and possibly new defendants. In responding to Senator Wyden's inquiry, the U.S. Attorney wrote:

There are several contingencies which may accelerate the rate at which additional information will be publicly available. My best estimate is that we will be able to comment further by early May, but please understand that is an estimate."

It sounds to us like Hawash is being told that if he tells the Government the truth--the truth according to the Government, of course--he may be allowed to avoid being charged in the new Oregon Indictment. If he doesn't, he will find himself as a defendant instead of a witness. Some choice. Particularly if, as was the case with Susan McDougal, his version of the truth is different than the one the Government wants to hear.

The Dixie Chicks top the Billboard Chart of the top 20 country albums for this week (April 12). [link via Media Horse].

Al Jazeera's english version of its website is back up.

The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson was accompanying a convoy of US special forces and Kurdish fighters when it came under attack from an American warplane, killing at least ten, including some American soldiers. Simpson was wounded by shrapnal, but kept reporting live by satellite phone. You can view the video/audio of his report here.

"Well it's a bit of a disaster... I was in a convoy of eight or 10 cars in northern Iraq coming up to a place that has just recently been captured. American special forces in a truck - two trucks I think - beside them, plus a very senior figure ..."[brother of Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party]

Simpson to US soldier: "Shut up. I'm broadcasting! Oh yes, I'm fine - am I bleeding?"

US soldier: "Yes, you've got a cut."

Simpson: "I thought you were going to stop me. I think I've just got a bit of shrapnel in the leg, that's all. OK, I will - thanks a lot.

"That was one of the American special forces medics - I thought he was going to try to stop me reporting. I've counted 10 or 12 bodies around us. So there are Americans dead. It was an American plane that dropped the bomb right beside us - I saw it land about 10 feet, 12 feet away I think.

This is just a scene from hell here. All the vehicles on fire. There are bodies burning around me, there are bodies lying around, there are bits of bodies on the ground. This is a really bad own goal by the Americans.

"We don't really know how many Americans are dead. There is ammunition exploding in fact from some of these cars. A very senior member of the Kurdish Republic's government who also may have been injured."

TV presenter Maxine Mawhinney: "John, just to recap for the viewers, an American plane dropped a bomb on your convoy of American special forces - many dead, many injured?"

Simpson: "I am sorry to be so excitable. I am bleeding through the ear and everything but that is absolutely the case. I saw this American convoy, and they bombed it.

They hit their own people - they may have hit this Kurdish figure - very senior, and they've killed a lot of ordinary characters, and I am just looking at the bodies now and it is not a very pretty sight."

Later, Simpson filed this report of what happened:

NBC reporter David Bloom died in Iraq Sunday of a pulmonary embolism.

He was 39 years old. We had occasion to work with David several times as a legal analyst for MSNBC in the late 90's. He was a consummate professional and a nice person. How very sad.

The FBI has reached out to muslim clerics and is turning them into informants in its war against terror.

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. and other counterterrorism authorities have pursued a campaign to recruit Muslims like Mr. Konaté as informers. As part of this effort in New York, the agency recently created a "citizen academy," where more than two dozen Muslim clerics and business leaders completed a course of eight evening sessions in January. Although they are not considered full-fledged informers, they have helped the F.B.I. chase down terrorist suspects by posting their pictures in mosques.

Not all of the clerics are eager to participate.

Concerned about implicating innocent people and perhaps alienating the faithful who look to them for counsel, some Muslim clerics say they are also put off by an awareness of the F.B.I.'s history, especially its surveillance of black leaders during the civil rights era. Their mistrust has only deepened since the government made accusations against mosques in the New York City area — notably Al Farooq in Brooklyn, which was said in a federal affidavit last month to have funneled money to Al Qaeda.

There's also a chilling effect on the mosque members.

Already, some mosques in the area say they are noticing a drop in attendance, and some worshipers who still go say they no longer feel at liberty to engage in discussions for fear they are being spied on.

As one iman quoted in the article said, his advice for other imans is, "Be very careful"--about trusting the F.B.I.

The New York Times has an article Sunday, replete with examples, of how the 1996 law making it a crime to provide material support to terrorist groups has become the J ustice Department's new darling in the nursery--its "statute of choice."

In several dozen cases both high profile and little noticed, the law has become the Justice Department's main weapon in pursuing people it contends are linked to terrorists. Part of the appeal for prosecutors is that they do not have to prove that the defendants actually supported terrorist attacks, only that they helped a group tied to terrorism. Civil libertarians and defense lawyers, however, are increasing their criticism of the law and the department's aggressive use of it, saying the prosecutions smack of a McCarthylike notion of guilt by association. Critics say the law is so overly broad that people with no intention of helping terrorists are being prosecuted. Moreover, they accuse authorities of using strong-arm tactics to force pleas.

A Judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has held parts of the law are unconstitutionally broad. It is an issue that likely will reach the Supreme Court.

David Cole, a Georgetown law professor who represents a group challenging the law, argued in a brief in the appeal that the law made it a crime for a Quaker to send a book by Gandhi to a terrorist to persuade him to forgo violence, or for a person to write an op-ed article advocating on behalf of a "banned" group. "This smacks of the cold war era and Communist lists," Mr. Cole said in an interview. "And there's been an extremely broad chilling effect."

The law has been used to obtain convictions against the Buffalo Six and in a North Carolina case. Charges of violating the law are pending against the six defendants in the Portland, Oregon case, attorney Lynne Stewart in New York, and a professor in Tampa, and several others. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told a group of international lawyers the other day that the Court is preparing to hear terrorism cases that will require it to decide whether the Government has gone too far in its war against terror. While the first cases likely will involve the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, closed immigration hearings and the tracking of foreigners, cases involving the material support statute may be next.

We know that terrorism is a problem. We also know we live in a country that wants to protect basic civil liberties," Breyer told the American Society of International Law in Washington. He said courts, including his own, "are fully aware of mistakes that have been made in American history." Among those, he cited the holding of 100,000 Japanese Americans in camps during World War II -- which the Supreme Court upheld in 1944 -- and the punishment of critics of World War I.

We hope the High Court lives up to its responsibility when the time comes to judge these new cases. Articles like these also remind us of how important it is that the Democrats not allow Bush to pack the federal courts with ultra-conservative ideologues and judicial activists.

We want to extend a warm welcome to our international readers. In recent weeks, there has been an increasing number of comments posted on TalkLeft by readers who are from other countries and for whom English is either a second language or one they are struggling to learn.

Writing in a language other than one's own is hard. Some of these commenters have expressed concern that we will think they are dumb because they do not write in fluent English and make spelling and grammar errors.

We appreciate these readers and their comments. We are flattered that they take the time to express their thoughts here. We would ask our U.S. readers (still about 80% of you) not to chide them for their poor grammar or spelling. If you disagree with their ideas, by all means say so, but please don't discourage them from reading or posting comments. Diversity is great.

We have followed the investigation into the death of JonBenet Ramsey since her murder on December 26, 1996. We've provided continuous legal analysis on the case for the cable tv news networks and maintained our own webpages on the case-- JonBenet Ramsey: The Media Unlynch Mob Page and Cases in the News. We have taken the position that the police rushed to judgment in the case and that there is no evidence the Ramseys were involved in JonBenet's death. And that the Boulder police botched the crime scene and were blinded by their belief the Ramseys were guilty, resulting in their failure to look at other possible suspects, which in turn has allowed the real killer to remain free among us, possibly to kill again.

The politics involved in the case have been enormous. It thus gives us great pleasure to report on a 93 page decision by a federal judge in Atlanta this week dismissing a defamation suit against the Ramseys, in which she ruled there was no evidence to suggest the Ramseys killed their daughter and abundant evidence JonBenet was killed by an intruder.

The Judge also sharply criticised the media campaign engaged in by the police and FBI to blame the Ramseys.

Finally, the Judge censured former Boulder Detective Steven Thomas, author of a book theorizing that Patsy Ramsey killed JonBenet and Darnay Hoffman who represented the plaintiff in the case before her. She also praised the efforts of retired homicide detective Lou Smit.

The investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey may be the epitome of "The Politics of Crime." For this reason, we are writing three more detailed posts about the case tonight, immediately following this one.

Our congratulations to the Ramseys and their dedicated attorney, Atlanta libel expert Lin Wood. This has been a long time coming. No one has been as vilified in the court of public opinion as John and Patsy Ramsey. They lost a daughter to a cruel and brutal murderer. They did not deserve to be tried and convicted in the absence of charges and evidence by the media, police and the public.

As we so often say, trials should be conducted in courtrooms, not living rooms.