From Rev. George:

Many of us took the time to contact legislators for their vote in favor of HB 213. We especially targeted 3 legislators. I really urge everyone to WRITE or FAX those same 3 legislators ( contact all of them plus the sponsor Art Turner but especially these three). I think phone calls may not be appreciated and tie up their lines and take office time. They took the time so maybe so can we. These three ALL demonstrated GREAT courage.

Following the information on the three, I will explain the powerful experience and significance of each. They are:

Rep. Richard Bradley
3520 North Pulaski, Chicago, IL 60641
FAX: 773--794-9450

Rep. Eileen Lyons
1030 S. LaGrange Rd., LaGrange, IL 60525
FAX 708--352-7702

Rep. Mary Kay O'Brien
760 E. Division, Coal City, IL 60416
FAX 815-634-3137

1) BRADLEY: We were never sure how he was going to vote and he was vague just before testimony began. He was called and explained his vote prior to his vote. His brother was killed by a hit and run driver. Before his brother died in the hospital, a friend from his brother's past suddenly showed up. The family was deeply touched. Bradley explained the pain and anger he had--and still has--against the driver. He feels he can't forgive. Because of that experience, he can identify with murder victims and understands their desire for revenge. At his point the tears were coming down Bradleys cheeks. Bradly then explained that the family ( his mother) felt the old friend was "an angel". This was a strong spiritual experience for him, as he explained. Bradly then said something like " since my brother had an angel while he was dying and our family had an angel, then I have to be that angel and vote YES on HB 213.

2)LYONS-- a Catholic Republican. Some of us had REALLY pressured Eileen. She agonized about it. She is pro-life. She beleives in the Catholic "consistent ethic of life" but she maintains her consistuency, even though pro-life, is pro-death penalty, as is her Illinois Republican party. Eileens husband is PRO death penalty. As the hearing proceeded, Eileen was somber, maybe sad.
In explaining her vote she simply said " I am Catholic and beleive in the Catholic pro-life position and believe life is precious from conception to natural death. Therefore, I vote in favor of HB 213".. the tears came. I think she has tears coming down her face for at least 10 minutes. She was the ONLY Republican to vote for HB 213. A very courageous vote.

3)O'Brien: the chair of the committee, a Democrat but for awhile had indicated a reluctance to vote for HB 213. Her district is in favor of the DP. As chairperson, her vote was important. As the FIRST to vote, her YES vote set a tone. She also derserves ALOT of thanks.

So, please take time to thank at least these three, especially those who had contacted them for their vote. please forward this request to those you requested to contact for votes.
Thanks and Peace,
George W.

Rev.Mr.George W. Brooks, Director of Advocacy
Kolbe House
2434 So. California
Chicago, Il. 60608
773-247-0070

This is TalkLeft's 2,000 entry in the nine months we've been posting. We were hoping when the time came we would have something important to write about and we do: This afternoon a panel of the Illinois House voted to abolish the death penalty.

March 6, 2003, 12:01 PM CST

SPRINGFIELD -- An Illinois House committee voted Thursday to abolish the death penalty, raising the stakes in the long debate over how to respond to flaws in the state’s capital punishment system.

A judiciary committee approved the abolition bill 8-4, sending it to the floor for a vote by the full House.

The vote followed dramatic testimony from men who were sentenced to die for crimes they said they did not commit. Aaron Patterson described being given electric shocks and suffocated by Chicago police until he signed a false confession.

Rev. George Brooks, Director of Advocacy for Kolbe House in Chicago, attended the hearing and provides this first hand report:

I just returned from attending these hearings. There was a lot of emotion PRIOR to the testimony. As indicated the testimony, especially of Gary Gauger and Aaron Patterson was VERY emotional. HOWEVER, the some of the voting was the MOST emotional. One legislator detailed in tears about his brother being killed by a hit & run driver, how the person was never caught, how an "old" friend appeared like an "angel"--and he voted YES while in tears, which continued long after the vote. Another legislator voted her conscience, which is contrary to her constituents and to her husband and she was the ONLY Republican to "cross over" ( one voted present, hence 8-4.) She was in tears as she voted, which continued for a long time after the final vote. And those of us present..... highly emotional after the vote.

Update: Rev. George just told us he testified at today's hearing and will have more thoughts later, so check back. (Rev. George communicates via e-mail, neither he nor Kolbe House have a website yet.)

There's more good news in the death penalty area today: In Maryland, a bill to halt the death penalty pending further study passed a procedural hurdle in the state senate and will proceed to a full senate vote. While the bill's ultimate passage is said to be unlikely, it's not over till it's over.

Then there's some bad news: a lawyer and former judges say that in six days, a man will be put to death in Texas who is likely innocent. We know, the public thinks lots of guilty people claim to be innocent, but in this case, look who's backing inmate Delma Banks:

"But in Banks' case, evidence that he was unjustly convicted is compelling enough that former U.S. District Judge and FBI Director William Sessions, joined by two other former federal judges and a former federal prosecutor, has filed court arguments calling Banks' conviction a potential miscarriage of justice and asking that his execution be stopped. All four are considered strong supporters of the death penalty. "The questions presented in Mr. Banks' petition directly implicate the integrity of the administration of the death penalty in this country," the four men argue in a friend of the court brief. "The prosecutors in this case concealed important impeachment material from the defense."

Great news from People For the American Way:

Refusing to cave in to intense pressure from the White House and Republican leaders, Democratic senators rejected an effort to force a vote on the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Estrada has refused to answer many questions about his approach to the Constitution and the White House has refused to release documents that would allow senators to more fully evaluate his fitness for a federal judgeship.

Don't let Bush pack our federal courts with right-wing ideologues. Keep letting your senators know you want them to keep up the fight.

Atrios thinks Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review should run for Senator against Arlen Spector. We do too. Jim's in great form today, go read. And Jim...hopefully you'll never need us, but we're here for you if you do, thanks for the vote of confidence.

Poor Man is back from hiatus and very funny as always.

In upholding 'three strikes' laws the Supreme Court has allowed states to abandon rehabilitation as a sentencing goal.

California law authorizes severe sentences upon a third conviction, even for minor offenses, for persons previously convicted of two or more serious or violent crimes. The law was enacted by 1994 ballot initiative after the kidnap-murder of Polly Klaas, 12, bye Richard Davis.

Dissenter Stephen G. Breyer scoffed at the idea that the Constitution governs disproportionate bail and fines, but not prison terms. He delivered a long and impassioned denunciation of the ruling in the courtroom yesterday for himself and the three others: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, attacked the court's decisions, which he said reinforced "the unhealthy abandonment of rehabilitation" as a criminal justice goal.

"If we are going to discard the hope for rehabilitation, we should do so explicitly and rename every state "Department of Corrections" the "Department of Punishment," said Mr. Goldman, a New York lawyer.

We'll be discussing this on MSNBC at 3:00 pm EST.

The AP is reporting that "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh may have been attacked in prison by a white supremacist inmate. Lindh is at Victorville, in California. The family is gagged, so we are dependent on the Bureau of Prisons for information. Here's what they have had to say so far: "Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Dan Dunne said agency policy prohibits him from commenting on the details of an inmate's confinement."

An unnamed source who works at the prison said "Lindh was placed in the general prison population last month at his attorneys' request and was working as an orderly, cleaning indoors where guards could watch him....The source said Lindh had been in special housing similar to solitary confinement for his protection since Monday."

"The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has confirmed that it is testing a new security program that subjects airline passengers to more stringent screening that involves checking personal financial and other information and assigning a threat level to each passenger."

The program is called Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II). It is at place in three airports. Only Delta airlines is cooperating so far, "but officials expect it to be rolled out to all passengers at Northwest Airlines and other carriers within the next 10 to 16 months."

CAPPS II is drawing fire from civil liberties groups and privacy advocates, who say it will collect an unprecedented amount of data on individuals and give no assurance of accuracy. They also say the plan lacks sufficient controls over who would have access to the information.

"The federal government now has the authority to seize information from wherever they can grab it, whether or not it's accurate, to create a dossier on you," said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. "The TSA claims these records are going to be restricted, but according to these regulations, they're not. They're so open-ended that damn near anybody has access to these records."

The data collected would include bank records, credit reports and some law enforcement data, according to transportation officials.

The system rates passengers' risk potential under a color code. The vast majority of passengers will be rated green and subjected to only the usual checks; those rated yellow will undergo more thorough screening, and those rated red won't be allowed to fly. According to regulations published in the Jan. 15 Federal Register, a government publication, the system went into effect Feb. 24.

So far only Delta Airlines is particpating. Northwest will join in shortly. Mother Jones has more in Terror and Bad Credit.

Dubbed the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II, the program would analyze each passenger's financial records, along with other sources, then assign travelers a color-coded terrorist risk level. Under the system, green means all-clear to fly; yellow means more in-depth screening is needed; red means you're riding Greyhound. Not surprisingly, civil liberties groups are up in arms over the program. ...."'The federal government now has the authority to seize information from wherever they can grab it, whether or not it's accurate, to create a dossier on you,' said Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union. 'The TSA claims these records are going to be restricted, but according to these regulations, they're not. They're so open-ended that damn near anybody has access to these records.'

Jan Glidewell in the St. Petersberg Times says this program is not something to shrug off--and questions its ability to catch terrorists.

In case you weren't listening closely, that "thunk" you just heard was another chunk of your civil rights hitting the floor in the name of homeland security.

I'm talking about CAPPS-II, the second generation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, with which the government now wants to pry into your credit and banking records before deciding whether you can board an airplane.

I guess if you are overdrawn on your checking account or in serious arrears with the Book of the Month Club, you automatically become some sort of a threat.

Now the government plans on snooping through my credit and banking records to see if I am patriotic enough to fly. Guess I'd better juice it up by using my credit cards to buy some of those "America, Love It or Leave It" bumper stickers and making conspicuous contributions to the Republican National Committee. And that's part of what makes all of his silly in a Condition Yellow (if that's what it is today) America.

Is it going to take hijackers long to figure out that they should use something other than their Bank of Baghdad MasterCard to buy tickets?

Update: Boycott Delta

Officials say files and documents on computers and cd-roms seized from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed show that he met with Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan last month.

"There is now no doubt that he is alive and well," a senior Pakistani government official said of bin Laden in an interview. "We have documents that show he is alive and in this region."

.... a second Pakistani official said Mohammed had told his captors during the raid of meeting with bin Laden a month ago at a site that Mohammed refused to specify.

"Praise be to Allah, our sheikh is alive," the official quoted Mohammed as saying. "I met him only one month ago."

.... Material seized in the raid has been shipped in boxes to Washington, where investigators are poring over it. Experts consulting in the case include translators, computer specialists, fingerprint examiners and other scientific analysts.

As to who turned Mohammed into authorites, Pakistani officials had this to say:

A significant detail emerged on Wednesday about events leading to the Rawalpindi raid. The senior Pakistani official suggested that Mohammed was betrayed by someone inside al-Qaida. He also noted the American government's offer of $25 million for information leading to his capture. "I'm not going to tell you how we captured him," the official said, "but Khalid knows who did him in."

Jack Balkin at Balkinization reports on Bush's "Pay-As-You-Go War":

The Bush Administration has been refusing to answer questions about how much the war with Iraq will cost. Outside studies have placed the cost as ranging from anywhere from $50 billion ( cheap, quick victory, short, easy, reconstruction) to more than a trillion dollars (tough, difficult victory, long, difficult reconstruction)....

The White House argues that it shouldn’t have to provide any estimates because the timing and length or war, and the duration and nature of post-war peacekeeping and reconstruction, are currently unknown. Therefore, the President should be allowed to go ahead with the war and Congress will get the bill later, and, of course, it is expected to pay that bill in full....

Our Constitution isn’t perfect, but separation of powers is one of the most important features Americans have for checking potential abuses of authority. Congress should not allow the President to do an end run around our constitutional system by stonewalling on crucial questions of war and peace.

Someone recently old us that in Bush's giant deficit budget, not one penny is earmarked or included for the War in Iraq. Is that true? Where is the money going to come from? We may not be financial whiz kids, but even we know it doesn't grow on trees.

We received this from Appellate Law Whiz Peter Goldberger (Ardmore, PA):

The front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer features a most interesting story about a petition filed in the Supreme Court to reopen a case, decided 50 years ago next week. In US v Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), survivors of three people killed in an Air Force plane crash sued the government. In discovery, they sought access to the report of the Air Force's own investigation into the crash. The government resisted, saying they had a privilege based on military secrecy. The Third Circuit upheld the trial judge's order that the government turn the report over to him to see whether the privilege claim was justified, but the Supreme Court reversed, holding the courts could not even question or examine the military's claim. For lack of this evidence, the case was dismissed.

Recently, a grandaughter of one of the victims discovered a website collection of declassified Air Force accident reports, including the one withheld in 1953. Lo and behold, there was no discussion of any military secrets, but it did show the Air Force had concluded that the plane wasn't safe to fly. In other words, the report had been suppressed to protect the Air Force from embarrassment and liability, not to protect the national security, as the government had falsely claimed to the Supreme Court.

The same big, blue-blood Philadelphia law firm which handled the case 50 years ago, has filed a motion to reopen the case in the Supreme Court on the basis of fraud. We will be interested to see what happens.

Meanwhile, perhaps reading the motion will trigger some skepticism when the Court' examines the Fourth Circuit's recent decision in the Yaser Hamdi habeas case -- which also concluded that the judge could not scrutinize or question a conclusory government affidavit (the "Mobbs declaration") asserting that American citizen Yasser Hamdi (or Jose Padilla) can be labeled an "enemy combatant" and then held incommunicado, without access to counsel, indefinitely without court proceedings.

The Court might also have learned this lesson from the later history of the Korematsu and Hirabayashi travesties of 1943. Those cases upheld the Japanese internment program during WWII, based on affidavits from military officers of Japanese-American saboteurs and secret agents. Those affidavits also were false, and the military's own reports contradicting them were destroyed -- all but one copy, as was revealed years later and discussed in the 9th Cir opinion affirming the grant of Hirabayashi's coram nobis petition: Hirabayashi v. US, 828 F.2d 591 (9th Cir. 1987).

Yet another cautionary tale for our day, we'd say. Who remarked that "In war, truth is the first casualty"? Only a fiercely independent judiciary, prompted by independent defense attorneys, can protect us from law based on lies, maintain civilian control over military power, and keep the win-at-any-cost military mentality, which has nothing but contempt for truth and fairness, from destroying our democracy.

Scotus Blog also reorted on Peter's analysis today.

[comments now closed.]

Mark Fiore has become our favorite animated cartoonist. His newest is a must view --"Execution Alive and Well"

[link via Gideon's Promise]

"GUILDERLAND, N.Y., March 5 - The management at Crossgates Mall Wednesday asked the Guilderland Police Department to drop the trespassing charges against a Selkirk man. This came after about 100 protestors descended on Crossgates Mall that afternoon. Their "Mall Walk for Peace" protested the arrest of 60-year-old Stephen Downs, who was charged with trespassing Monday night when he wouldn't leave the mall after he refused to remove his T-shirt bearing a peace message." [link via Atrios]