A third defendant in the Buffalo Six alleged "sleeper cell" case pleaded guilty today to providing support to Al Qaeda, which carries a sentence of up to ten years.

The Government has disclosed that all six of the defendants will plead guilty.

Steve Glassroth, Birmingham, AL criminal defense lawyer and NACDL board member has an eloquent and all too true commentary up in the Montgomery Advertiser on The Unrealized Promise of Gideon .

Forty years ago last week, on March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright and announced a principle we all take for granted: that everyone who is accused of a crime is entitled to be represented by a lawyer, even if the accused is too poor to hire one.

No one can seriously question that a fair trial cannot be possible unless a competent lawyer is provided to those who cannot afford one. As the justices said, this "seems an obvious truth." However, decades later Gideon's promise remains largely unkept as we still find that the quality of justice frequently depends on the ability to pay for it.....

While we hear the horror stories of sleeping lawyers, scant attention has been given to the major underlying cause of inadequate representation: lack of resources.

Ninety percent of Americans questioned in a recent poll said that the quality of justice people receive should not be determined by the amount of money they have. That poll also found that Americans want lawyers defending the poor to have salaries, resources and workloads equivalent to those of prosecutors. They want national quality standards for the defense of the poor, much like standards for doctors, architects or teachers.....

The keys to reforming the system for effective representation for those unable to afford lawyers are simple and basic -- things like proper training, resources proportionate to those for the prosecution, adequate payment for lawyers providing services, manageable caseloads and a guarantee of independence so that politicians or judges are unable to arbitrarily reduce lawyers' pay or fire them simply because they are effectively doing their jobs.

To do this will require spending more money, something that is never politically popular. However, failing to take the necessary steps will only further erode public confidence in a system that treats the wealthy and poor differently and can tragically contribute to wrongful convictions.....The time has come to invest in justice for all.

Senator Edward Kennedy writes in the March 24 Legal Times (subscription only) on both the unfulfilled promise of Gideon and the need for the Innocence Protection Act:

There are a myriad of crime-related political and injustice issues related to the War in Iraq. We feel we would be remiss if we didn't cover them. Towards this end, we have teamed up with Warblogs:cc , a one stop source for what we think is the best warblog news and commentary.

This means that what we post on TalkLeft about the War in Iraq, War on Terror, Civil Liberties, individual terror cases and the detainees will automatically appear on Warblogs:cc.

Warblogs:cc is the brainchild of Christopher Allbritton, George Paine, Sean-Paul Kelley and Mike Hudack. It is designed to provide you with a birds-eye, up to the minute view of the War in Iraq, the American government and civil liberties issues in the United States.

We won't be posting here less--we're not doing double duty. But Warblogs.cc provides the advantage of reading these terrific war bloggers, as well as us, all in one place:

— The Agonist

— Back to Iraq

— Warblogging

— Stand Down

— Daily Kos

— Tacitus

We'll continue to provide news and analysis of domestic criminal justice issues, including the death penalty, legislation, Supreme Court cases, wrongful convictions and more as we've always done. These posts will not appear on Warblogs:cc, only here.

TalkLeft has substantially increased in popularity the past few months. We passed 500,000 page views over the weekend and have steadily been receiving 3-5,000 visitors a day. If you appreciate our efforts and can spare a few dollars, please hit one of our donation buttons--it sure will help with the increased costs of bandwidth--and make us feel good. The Amazon (chip in) link is for anonymous donations. The Paypal (make donation) link will let us know who sent the money. Thanks to all of you.

In One Rule for Them , The Guardian's George Monbiot examines the hypocrisy of Rumsfeld's decrying Iraq's non-compliance with the Geneva Convention for American POW's while the U.S. has not afforded such protections to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Here are the violations Monbiot lists with respect to the Guantanamo detainees:

The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72). They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name, rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite": sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

Moniot debunks the Government's theory that the Guantanamo detainees are exempt from POW status.

But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war. Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal".

We've argued these same points many times, most recently here.

Yes, we know the difference according to the Administration between enemy combatants and prisoners of war. The Administration argues that Al Qaeda members don't qualify because they don't have these qualifications: (1) being under a responsible command; (2) having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (3) carrying arms openly; and (4) conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. At times they have included the qualification of wearing a military uniform. Back last February, Bush said the Taliban and Al Qaeda were enemy combatants. After a lot of heat, he revised his position to recognize that Taliban soldiers were entitled to POW protections but not Al Qaeda. This Administration has been making up the rules as it goes along and refuses to concede that enemy combatants are entitled to judicial review of its decision.

"Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention states that if there is "any doubt" as to whether captured combatants should be recognized as POWs, "such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." In other words, if doubt exists, the status of each detainee must be determined individually, not by a blanket decision of the President."

"Even if not technically prisoners of war, al Qaeda and Taliban captives still qualify for "humane treatment" under the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, a resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1988."

We believe in treating all prisoners as human beings and with dignity. As we said here, "If we treat the citizens of other countries this way, why won't these other countries retaliate with similar or harsher treatment when they capture members of our military?" Don't we reap what we sow?

The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow in Lawrence v. Texas, which experts say may be the most important case taken by the case on gay rights in the past 20 years.

The issue is whether Texas can ban same-sex sodomy between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home. Texas will argue its legislature has the authority to ban conduct it considers immoral.

The petitioners will argue that their liberty and privacy interests as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause renders the Texas law illegal.

You can read more about it in today's Texas Lawyer here.

American Lawyer Media today has three articles wrapped into one package addressing legal issues of the Administration's War With Iraq.

"International law experts are questioning the Bush administration's legal justification for entering into the war and examining whether the president can really try Iraqis who destroy their country's oil wells during the fighting. And when it's all over, will the U.N. be able to satisfy the claims for compensation from businesses, governments and individuals damaged by the conflict?"

These are not opinion pieces, they air both sides of the debates, relying on legal scholars and other experts in their analysis.

The LA Times reports that 30 captured prisoners have been flown from Afganistan to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

18 of the original detainees have been sent home. There are now 660 detainees at the Cuban naval base.

No criminal charges have been brought against any of them.

Lisl Auman was in police custody at the time of the crime, yet under the felony-murder rule she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Last summer, she lost her bid to the Colorado Court of Appeals to reverse the conviction. Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari and agreed to hear the case.

The issue before Colorado's high court court will be whether Lisl's arrest by police precluded her liability for felony murder.

Journalist Hunter Thompson took up Lisl's cause during her first appeal, writing about it often in his ESPN column, including here.

The New York Times shares our concerns, expressed in the comments section to this post, over pending federal efforts to pass a bill expanding Amber Alerts:

...If used correctly, such systems seem to be useful tools for law enforcement. But given the very few cases of child abduction and the potential for vigilantism, the systems must be designed to ensure that they do more good than harm.

There is nothing wrong with coordinating information about missing children. But if done badly, there is the potential of promoting vigilantism by seeming to invite help in apprehending a suspected abductor. Also, if the wrong information is put out — an incorrect license plate or a bad physical description — posses of armed citizens could descend on innocent people, with tragic results.

The Senate passed legislation earlier this year to establish a nationwide Amber Alert network and to provide federal grants for, among other things, highway notifications. On a pure cost-benefit basis, the attention and financing do not really seem warranted. There are only about 100 abductions by strangers a year, making it a lesser threat to children than choking or bicycle accidents.

If Amber Alerts are going to become more widespread, law enforcement must be careful to screen out all but the most well-verified cases and to present the information in a way that encourages members of the public to watch for missing children without taking the law into their own hands.

In an unprecedented ruling today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that a May 6 hearing on Zacarias Moussaoui's right to interview Al Qaeda member Ramzi Binlashibh will be closed to the public.

Is such secrecy justified when the Government publicized the case at every turn prior to its determnination that national security concerns were more important?

Larry Ottinger, senior staff attorney for the liberal People for the American Way Foundation, said he found the secrecy "very troubling. An open court system and open hearings are fundamental to the American system of justice," he said.

The trial judge had granted Moussaoui's request to interview Binalshibh because he has a right to exculpatory information, and Binalshibh could refute parts of the Government's case--specifically the allegation that Moussaoui was part of the 9/11 conspiracy. The difference between being a member of Al Qaeda and intending to commit a different terrorist act against the U.S., and intending to participate in 9/11, is significant because it could determine whether Moussaoui, if convicted, gets life or death. Supplying material aid or resources to terrorists does not carry the death penalty. Conspiring to commit the 9/11 attacks does.

It is widely expected that if the Government loses its bid to overturn the trial court's ruling that Moussaoui is entitled to interview Binalshibh, the Government will dismiss the federal case and try him in a military tribunal proceeding.

Moussaoui is the only person in America who has been charged with committing the 9/11 attacks. It is essential that his trial and all proceedings be open to the public. In the event of a guilty verdict, and particulary a death sentence, the American public has to be able to trust in the integrity of the process. As another Judge recently said in a case involving closure of deportation hearings, "Democracy dies behind closed doors."

For more on Moussaoui and the events in his case to date, go here.

Iraq's foreign minister has declared that "the teachings of Islam," and not the Geneva Convention, will be the nation's guidelines in the treatment of coalition POWs.

"First of all, we are committed to the teachings of Islam. We are faithful Muslims. We take care of our prisoners of war in accordance with our teachings of Islam," Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told a BBC radio program. According to an Agence France-Presse report, the foreign minister said, "We are committed first of all to the teachings of Islam, and second we are committed to the conventions of Geneva in dealing with the prisoners of war."

In the wake of the Supreme Court refusal to examine the FISA Review Court's approval of expanded spy powers for Ashcroft, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling upon Congress and the Courts to provide greater oversight.

The ACLU also disclosed today that, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA,) it has received documents establishing that Aschroft is bypassing the courts to exercise his authority to force banks, Internet service providers, telephone companies, and credit agencies to turn over their customers’ records.

You can read about the surveillance in the Post-Patriot Act age and the ACLU's FOIA/Patriot Act lawsuit here..

As to what you can do to stop this unwarranted, ill-advised expansion of spy power without judicial oversight, go here.