Thinking of going to law school? US News and World Report's 2004 ranking of the nation's law schools is hot off the press and available free here. [link via Paper Chase]

We are probably on careers today because we are excited for fellow blogger Matt Yglesias who is graduating from Harvard and just landed a job at Tapped's parent company, American Prospect.

Update: Arizona will let the 27 death sentences stand.

The Arizona Supreme Court will review 27 death sentences and decide if re-sentencing is required following last year's Supreme Court decision that juries, not judges, must decide aggravating facts supporting the death penalty.

Arizona has already re-written its capital punishment law. The 27 cases under review involve those in which aggravating factors were found by a judge and not a jury. Prosecutors allege this is "harmless error."

After spending 19 years in prison for 3 rapes, DNA evidence has proven Dennis Maher factually innocent of the crimes. He left jail today.

A man who spent 19 years in prison after three rape victims identified him as their attacker was freed Thursday based on new DNA evidence, but said he doesn't blame the women whose testimony helped put him behind bars.

Dennis Maher, 42, said he had a message for the women after prosecutors dropped the charges at a hearing at Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge: "What happened to you really happened, and I hold no grudges against you."

Maher, a former paratrooper and mechanic in the U.S. Army, said he blamed Lowell police and his former attorney, now deceased, but was too overwhelmed by his newfound freedom to feel any anger about his years of incarceration.

"It's a big change," Maher said during a press conference at the Boston office of his attorneys. "I expected to die in prison ... and now I'm out."

Maher is the 127th inmate to be exonerated and freed through DNA testing. You can read about his case and how he came to be wrongfully convicted here.

There are two Gary Hart meetups tonight, one in Hollywood, CA where Sen. Hart will be present, and one here in Denver at Pablos, 630 E. 6th Ave., Denver, at 8:00 p.m. Details here. This is the first meetup for Hart, all are welcome.

While Sen. Hart has not yet decided whether to run for President (he is now "testing the waters" with speeches around the country,) at least one of his close friends thinks he will run:

FROM THE HART. In private conversations, Gary Hart “sounds pretty certain” he’ll run for President, according to his longtime New Hampshire friend Dan Calegari.

How low can corrections officers get? Read on, from today's Boston Herald:

A mentally retarded black inmate was handcuffed behind his back and forced to eat cake like a dog for the amusement of six white Essex County correction officers, who apparently forgot security cameras were rolling overhead, a source and authorities said.

``They were pushing his face down into the cake, flicking his ears,'' the source said. The source, who has not seen the tape but had its contents relayed to him, charged inmate Arthur Austin was made to kneel on the floor with his arms handcuffed behind his back, while his face was shoved in the cake.

Essex Sheriff Frank Cousins confirmed Austin was handcuffed, but said he was told he was fed from a countertop. ``There is a recording of this incident,'' Cousins, who has not seen the tape, acknowledged yesterday.

The humiliating horseplay, which Cousins said was played out at least two times and possibly three on Sunday, has resulted in Capt. Elaine Bushway and correction officers Jason Copp, Brian Lavoie, Rob Kostin, Joseph Goldstein and Thomas Francesconi being placed on paid administrative leave.

Findlaw Columnist Edward Lazarus argues against the federal sentencing provisions that were made part of the Amber Alert bill passed by the House last week. The provisions would lessen federal judges' discretion in sentencing. He wisely notes that the discretion provided federal judges under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines is already so narrow, Congress shouldn't tinker with it further.

Senate Republicans failed for the fourth time today to limit debate (invoke cloture) on the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Dems are holding the line. The vote was 55 to 44, with 3/5 needed to prevail. Here's the roll call vote. [link via Jurist's Paper Chase.]

Human Rights Watch has an excellent informational page on the international laws pertaining to torture, providing answers to these questions, and more:

What is torture?

What laws prohibit torture?

Do non-citizens in the U.S. have the same right not to be tortured as U.S. citizens?

Can a person be compelled to provide evidence?

Can limited physical force be used during interrogations?

Is the use of "truth serums" permitted?

Are there any situations in which torture is permitted?

Shouldn't torture be permitted if its use will save lives?

Does the U.S. lose valuable information if torture is prohibited?

May the U.S. send detainees to other countries to be questioned?

What are the remedies against torture?

You can read the full text of the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War here.

Are there extra or different protections for women? Law Professor and Findlaw Columnist Anita Ramasastry addresses this timely topic in What Happens When GI Jane is Captured?

Al Jazeera is ceasing its live coverage in Iraq due to the expulsion of one of its reporters.

"Regretting this decision, Al-Jazeera has decided to suspend its live broadcast from Iraq and will only broadcast recorded items received from Iraq," the station announced."

Update: Freed Newsday journalist Matthew McAllester will be on CNN's Larry King Live tonight, 9pm EST. More news on the journalists here and here.

The freed Newsday journalists described their week in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi prison today.

McAllester and Saman both described a nightmarish week in the prison, the largest in the Arab world. They said they were interrogated separately several times by up to 12 Iraqi intelligence officials at once who suspected they were American spies, despite their adamant denials.

"I was accused of being dishonest and my future depended on my becoming honest," McAllester said. The authorities wanted him to "come up with more information spontaneously without being asked."

The two said they were never mistreated or abused physically, although conditions in the prison were harsh. They often heard and felt bombs exploding in and around Baghdad. "At times it was extremely close," Saman said. "The cells would kind of rumble."

Inside the prison was an anti-aircraft battery that frequently was fired. The pair said they could barely sleep. Adding to the tension, they said, was that they often heard the screams of other prisoners being tortured and saw some with their eyes and faces bloodied and swollen. "There were beatings and torture going on outside our cells, in the corridor, literally," McAllester said. Other inmates hobbled around, apparently because the soles of their feet had been burned or otherwise injured.

The two journalists were given meager rations of bananas, boiled eggs, bread and chicken soup. They were issued two blankets each, along with prison uniforms and slippers. They stayed in small, separate cells, unable to talk to each other, in a block that housed suspected spies and U.S. sympathizers.

The pair also described how they were taken into custody.

McAllester and Saman said their odyssey began about 1:30 a.m. March 24. McAllester was about to file a story, and Saman was near the top of the Palestine Hotel taking photographs as U.S. airplanes bombed the capital. When Saman came back down to the room the two Newsday staffers were sharing, two Iraqi intelligence agents were sitting on one of the beds.

"Right away I figured there was something wrong," Saman said.

The two staffers were handcuffed and initially told they were being taken to Syria. Instead, they were taken to the prison, where the interrogations soon started. McAllester said that at one point the authorities wanted him to sign a statement in Arabic, which he refused to do. Instead, he wrote one out in English saying in part that "I was not sent here by the CIA or the Pentagon and I'm not from any mission."

Saman said he was questioned about his job, what he was doing in Iraq, what kind of photos he was taking and if he had any connection with the CIA or the Pentagon. One agent also asked him if he was Jewish. "The main guy was convinced I was Israeli," Saman said. "I had to tell him, 'No, I'm not.'"

Saman was born in Peru, grew up in Spain and moved to the United States when he was 18. One of his grandfathers is Palestinian, and some of Saman's relatives still living in the West Bank also appealed to the Palestinian Authority to intervene on his behalf, Abington and Newsday editors said.

After the initial interrogations, the authorities left the two journalists alone for a few days, they said. Meanwhile, Abington was making contact with Arafat.

Here's more, including the statement by a Palestinian lawmaker that Yasser Arafat helped win the release of the two Newsday journalists through his contacts in Iraq. Newsday provides this account of the many groups who joined forces to win the pair's release.

Assistance came together from sources as wide-ranging as the Palestinian Authority, Roman Catholic Church, Iraqi diplomats and the Red Cross to win the release of two Newsday journalists from a Baghdad prison, the newspaper said yesterday.

The newspaper itself expended huge efforts towards gaining their release. A great job by all.

Matt Welch has an excellent article in today's Alternet about Patriot Act II.

We hope a sleeping Congress doesn't let this one sneak by like it did Patriot Act I, which was passed in haste, without hearings and without adequate time for serious review by Congress. We've believed since news leaked of Patriot Act II that it has been Bush and Ashcroft's intention to wait until we are in the throes of war with Iraq and then push it quickly though a Congress as a necessary measure to fight terrorism, thereby making legislators who oppose it look unpatriotic.

Here are Matt's summary of the provisions, taken from Nat Hentoff's column in the Village Voice a few weeks ago:

Skye News has an interview with an Iraqi pharmacist who treated rescued POW Jessica Lynch at the hospital.

During her stay in the hospital she tearfully kept asking about her boyfriend and family, an Iraqi pharmacist who treated her in hospital said.

"She kept saying she wanted to go home", the pharmacist added.

US media reports said she was found with two broken legs, a broken arm and gunshot wounds when she was rescued in a raid by US special forces on the Saddam Hussein Hospital near Nasiriyah.

The pharmacist who treated Private Lynch at the hospital told Sky News reporter Ross Appleyard that Private Lynch had often been seen crying. She asked about her family and kept asking when the war would finish, the pharmacist added.

He said that no soldiers had visited her and she had been treated well. She was regarded as a patient and not as a prisoner of war, the pharmacist added. He said Private Lynch was "very healthy" and had been treated for an injury to her leg only.

Of course, we don't know if the Iraq pharmacist is on the up and up--or if he's covering for Iraqis. We'd like to believe him, but we're still troubled by reports that the hospital was being used as a headquarters for Iraqi soldiers, that 11 other bodies, including those of two U.S. soldiers, have been recovered, that at least one bloodied female U.S. uniform was found with the American flag and name patch torn off and that a battery charger found inside the hospital may have been used as a torture device. Also, we suspect that if Jessica had been treated well at the hospital, the Pentagon would have said so instead of clamming up on the topic. The Skye article also provides this description of the rescue mission:

The Ba'ath Party headquarters and the building housing Saddam Hussein's loyal Fedayeen fighters were attacked in a diversionary strike, he said.

While the gunfight raged, special forces troops went in and rescued Private Lynch from the hospital.

Appleyard said: "Flares lit up the sky and we heard a great deal of gunfire and explosions. There was a huge gunfight - but it was all a diversionary tactic so special forces could go in and rescue Private Lynch."

We read elsewhere that Jessica's parents will be flying to Germany to meet her since she is being brought there before being flown home. That's good.

Update: Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S. Central Command spokesman: Ammunition, mortars, maps and a terrain model were found at the hospital, along with "other things that made it very clear it was being used as a military command post."

On the other 11 bodies:

"We have reason to believe some of them were Americans," said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, another U.S. Central Command spokesman. He said the military has not confirmed whether they were members of Lynch's unit, the 507th Maintenance Company. "We don't yet know the identity of those people," Thorp said. "And forensics will determine that." Two of the bodies were in a morgue in the hospital, while the nine others were buried outside the building, Brooks said. He said U.S. forces were led to the graves by someone who had been taken into custody.

Here is a photo of interior of hospital where Jessica was kept.

Update: AP reports Pfc. Jessica Lynch arrived at a U.S. air base in southwestern Germany on a C-17 transport plane late Wednesday for treatment at a U.S. military medical center. Her condition was not disclosed, but U.S. officials in Kuwait said she was believed to have broken legs, a broken arm and at least one gunshot wound.