Press Release, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, on today's Supreme Court Decisions:

Decisions symptomatic of ill-advised direction of justice system

Today’s Supreme Court decisions feed wrong-headed punitive frenzy

Washington D.C.—In response to two decisions each in cases addressing Megan’s laws and three-strikes laws by the U.S. Supreme Court today, Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, issued the following statement:

“Today’s Supreme Court decisions reinforce the unhealthy abandonment of rehabilitation as a goal of the criminal justice system. By rubber-stamping the harsh dictates of politically-motivated state legislatures, the Court has upheld life punishments, although of different types, for individuals who have successfully completed their prison terms for sex-related crimes, as in the two Megan’s Law cases, or who have been convicted of only relatively minor crimes, as in the three-strikes cases.

“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.’

“A majority of the Supreme Court appears to have forgotten that the Constitution was adopted to protect individuals from the excesses of the state. By its decisions, the Court minimizes the role of the Constitution and indeed its own role as the ultimate protector of our rights.”

Why is this just now coming to light? It screams "torture" at us, but we're willing to hear what Secretary Rumsfeld has to say before we get really angry.

Military coroners have determined that the deaths of two detainees while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan were homicides, CNN has confirmed.

A criminal investigation into the December deaths of the two men is in its final stages, but a U.S. military source said it is not clear whether anyone will be charged. One senior military official said, "This investigation may not go well for us.

The men died shortly after arriving at Bagram air base north of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The first man died December 3 of a pulmonary embolism and the second one December 10 of a heart attack. Autopsies found that "blunt force trauma" was a contributing factor in both cases, military sources said.

U.S. military police run the Bagram detention facility.

Bump: We wrote this at 9:20 Tuesday night, but are bumping it to today since so many of you have written us about it and news keeps developing.

Update Here are the e-mail addresses for the City Managers of Guilderland, NY (the town where the mall is). Tell them what you think.

runionk@townofguilderland.org
guild200@nycap.rr.com

(email addresses courtesy of Mike in the comments section)

Update: Instapundit has lots more, including why he doesn't think there's a first amendment violation here--and tips on how to contact the mall tand stores in it o express your opinions about this.

If we didn't read it on CNN's website, we wouldn't believe it. A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

According to the criminal complaint filed Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private house and that I was acting poorly.

"I told them the analogy was not good and I was then hauled off to night court where I was arraigned after pleading not guilty and released on my own recognizance," Downs told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Kevin at Getting In the Game has more.

Via Instapundit, we find Fight Bombs, Not Bongs

Those who light pot pipes are not our enemies. They are our colleagues, neighbors, friends, and loved ones. In short, they are Americans who should be protected rather than persecuted by federal busybodies who desperately need to focus on first things. John Ashcroft, John Brown, and this country's other drug warlords should ask themselves what would be worse for America's citizens: more bong hits or more body parts.

"The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Wednesday that states may put pictures of convicted sex offenders on the Internet, a victory for states that use the Web to warn of potential predators in neighborhoods. In a separate narrow ruling, the court turned back a challenge from offenders who argued they deserved a chance to prove they aren't dangerous to avoid having their pictures and addresses put on the Internet."

"The decisions came in the Supreme Court's first review of what are known as Megan's laws - and have far-reaching implications because every state and the federal government have sex-offender registry laws."

The cases are Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. John Doe, 01-1231, and Otte v. Doe, 01-729. The opinions are available here.

The Connecticut case (9-0 ruling) leaves open a door for a future challenge as it "did not address the constitutionality of requiring offenders to register without holding separate hearings to determine the risk posed by sex criminals who have completed their prison sentences before putting them in a registry."

We are very disappointed in today's Supreme Court 5-4 ruling upholding California's three-strikes laws under which felons convicted of a minor crime, such as stealing a few videos or food, can be sentenced to life in prison. The majority of the court said this does not violate the 8th Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

"The California law requires a sentence of 25 years to life in prison for any felony conviction if the criminal was previously convicted of two serious or violent felonies. It also permits judges to treat as felonies a third offense that would otherwise be a misdemeanor."

The dissenters were Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The cases are Lockyer v. Andrade, 01-1127, and Ewing v. California, 01-6978.

Leonardo Andrade, who received 50 years in jail as a punishment for stealing $153.00 of videos for his children to watch. Andrade has already served seven years for his shoplifting episode and will be 87 before he is due for release. Here's more on his case and the unfairness of the three-strikes laws.

Since the court has ruled these draconian laws are constitutional, it is up to the state legislature to change them. Efforts are underway. Visit Families to Amend California's Three-Strikes for more, including this latest development.

"After a lengthy and passionate debate, the Assembly Committee on Public Safety passed AB 112 (Goldberg) by a vote of 4-3. AB 112 would require that all strikes be serious or violent in order to subject a defendant to three strikes enhancement. The bill also sets up a process of re-sentencing for those who are currently serving a life sentence for a non-serious and non-violent felony. Channels 3, 10, and 13 covered the hearings. The bill will go next to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations, no hearing date been set in Appropriations."

Some of our prior coverage and objections to three-strike laws are here and here.

Received from People for the American Way:

People For the American Way Foundation Attorneys are Counsel to Plaintiffs in Internet Filtering Case Before Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in a case involving free speech
and Internet censorship in public libraries. Last year, a three-judge federal court ruled unconstitutional the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF) and the law firm of Jenner & Block filed the lawsuit challenging CIPA on behalf of the American Library Association, other library associations, and library patrons.

CIPA, passed by Congress in 2000, would have required public libraries to install computers with filtering software to block access to material in cyberspace deemed to be "harmful to minors." If libraries failed to outfit their computers with the software, they stood to lose federal funding.

The three-judge court, sitting in Philadelphia, unanimously ruled that CIPA would have blocked all library patrons from gaining access via the Internet to an array of material that is protected by the First Amendment. The court also enjoined federal agencies from withholding funds from public libraries that have not installed the software on their computers.

The ACLU also challenged CIPA, and its suit was consolidated with the PFAWF-ALA suit for trial before the three-judge panel. Any appeal of the panel's decision will go straight to the Supreme Court.

From today's Chicago Tribune,

Moving on major anti-crime initiatives, a key Senate committee voted Tuesday to approve sweeping death penalty reforms, mandate taping of interrogations in murder cases and require police to record the race of every driver in traffic stops over the next three years."

In a busy legislative day, the Senate Judiciary Committee also voted to let police stop motorists simply for failing to wear their seat belts and to restrict young teen drivers from getting behind the wheel late at night and with carloads of their friends.

The death penalty reforms represented a major step toward overhauling the state's broken criminal justice system and culled key elements from separate task forces put together by former Gov. George Ryan and Senate Democrats, said Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago).

Gary Hart spoke today in Los Angeles, outlining his plan for investing in America's future.

...he accused the administration of favoring the wealthy and of employing "market radicalism, a form of economic extremism that deceptively uses these tax cuts to shred the social safety net in the name of fiscal stimulation."

...In his prepared remarks, Hart distanced himself from his own party. Democrats, he said, are guilty of "nebulous centrism -- featuring more streetlights and school uniforms -- that too readily devolves into a least-common-denominator outcome."

Hart... called for tax law changes to increase eligibility of earned income and child care credits. "A rich nation can provide health care, high quality education, protection and supervision for every child -- and a civilized nation would do so," Hart said.

Hart ...condemned an "immoral" U.S. energy policy that, he said, relies on foreign oil and on fighting if supplies are threatened. "We are using our military, our sons and daughters lives, as the guarantor of our wasteful lifestyle," he said.

We have to say, once again, that Gary Hart is not only very smart, but he is the only one who comes to the table with defined goals for America at home and abroad. He doesn't generalize or speak in platitudes. He has well-developed and concrete proposals that may just offer us the solutions we need.

We still don't know if he's planning on running for President. But at least read his speeches at Gary Hart News. com and listen to what he has to say. Instead of chasing campaign funding and watching poll numbers, he's been thinking, writing, and presenting original ideas on how to restore America and keep it safe--and free.

The Los Angeles Times Wednesday reports that

"the Justice Department has stepped up use of a secretive process that enables the attorney general to personally authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspected terrorists, spies and other national-security threats without immediate court oversight. Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that he had authorized more than 170 such "emergency" searches since the Sept. 11 attacks-- more than triple the 47 emergency searches that have been authorized by other attorneys general in the last 20 years.

Ashcroft has been accomplishing this by using FISA (The Foreign Intelligence Security Act of 1978) to get the warrants, instead of going through the federal criminal justice system--where a federal judge must find probable cause of criminal activity for a warrant. Aside from the number of secret wiretap and search applications, Ashcroft is pushing the limits of the FISA statute in other ways.

Since Sept. 11, officials have seized on a provision that allows them to launch emergency searches signed only by the attorney general. The department must still convince the FISA court that the search is justified-- but officials have 72 hours from the time the search is launched, and such requests are almost always granted.

We disagree that the Justice Department must convince the FISA Court that the search is justified. All they have to do is submit an application and make the allegation that one of the purposes for which the warrant is sought is intelligence gathering and that it is non-trivial. As Reporter Vanessa Blum wrote in this Legal Times article

In a scathing opinion made public Aug. 22, the FISA court ... ruling points to more than 70 cases in the late 1990s in which FISA judges were misled about coordination between law enforcement and intelligence agents. ...The court has approved approximately 13,000 applications since its inception. And just once, in 1997, the government withdrew a request that the court had found deficient. "

Ashcroft has claimed he has new powers as a result of changes in the Patriot Act, which changes he interprets as providing that applications for FISA surveillance warrants can have criminal investigative rather than intelligence gathering purposes as their principal goal. This interpretation is contrary to the intent of Congress in passing the Patriot Act as we have previously argued in-depth here. More from Reporter Vanessa Blum :

We talked to some Turkish friends today and they say this is right:

[Turkish Parliament member] Ozal and other senior party members urged patience, arguing that the Turkish government could seek another vote in parliament well before U.S. ships now in Turkish waters could reach Kuwait.....

Special elections scheduled for Sunday could also help the measure. [Turkey's Justice and Development Party leader, Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is seeking a vacant parliament seat in that vote, and if he wins, political analysts predict that Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, an ally of Erdogan's, will step aside and let him form a new government. Erdogan was banned from running in the November elections that put his party in power because of a 1998 conviction for reciting a poem with Islamic overtones at a rally. Parliament has since lifted that ban.

If Erdogan becomes prime minister, he could purge the cabinet of several ministers who have opposed the U.S. deployment, an important step because the cabinet's unanimous approval is required to submit a proposal to parliament.

...."The government is not going to let this go down," said Nevzat Yacintas, a Justice and Development Party legislator. "They will do something, I am sure, because the friendship of the United States is very important to us."

According to our friends, Erdogan is a sure bet. They say Abdullah Gul has just been standing in for Erdogan during his "time out" which ends Sunday. One caveat: Our Turkish friends don't speak much English, and we don't speak Turkish. Their six year old bi-lingual child did most of the translating. What we understood from him is that Erdogan was the leader, he said something bad, and got put in "time out", and his friend took over, but his "time out" is up this weekend and he will come back and America will get the support from Turkey it wants. We weren't sure we understood any of it, until we read the Washington Post article quoted above, and then it kind of fell into place. We think. Anyway, it's probably as good a basic "International Relations 101" course as we're likely to get.

Update and Bump:A panel appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued a report recommending a death penalty moratorium in order to study the issue of racial disparity in the application of the punishment.

You can read the report here.

Update: The New York Times reports further, here.