It's time to remind the Washington Press Corps that they're there to do a job, not make best friends with the administration that they're supposed to be covering objectively. We at Take Back The Media urge you to email, fax or phone these correspondents and let them know that their utter lack of hard work is not going unnoticed. Tell them that the way to get information out of Ari is to stand up to him, not to let him obfuscate. Tell them that they're supposed to be covering the White House, not trying to befriend those who work there. Tell them that their journalistic ancestors are watching their actions with horror and disgust.
Attempting to rid the world of terrorism should never justify its use [torture]. As citizens, we should insist that Congress investigate reports of torture and physical abuse by U.S. officials and allies, and we should demand that such practices end immediately. The rule of international law is all that we have to prevent the world from slipping into absolute lawlessness. Without it, brute force and militarism reign supreme. It will indeed be a bitter tragedy if the "war on terrorism" obliterates what remains of the American commitment to the rule of law.
Mr. Gonzales is an assistant professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and editor of the forthcoming book, "Anthropology Goes Public: Cultural Critique of American Empire" (University of Texas Press, 2003).
The Jan. 6 issue of the New Yorker has an article by author and former federal prosecutor Scott Turow titled To Kill or Not to Kill: Coming to Terms with Capital Punishment.
Turow served on Illinois Governor Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment, formed after Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty in January, 2000. The purpose of the commission was to study what went wrong in Illinois and to make specific recommendations about how to fix the state's broken death penalty system. The Commission issued this report, containing 85 specific recommendations. Not one has been adopted by the Illinois legislature, prompting Governor Ryan to consider blanket clemency for all on death row, a decision he is still contemplating in his final weeks of office.
First, Turow explains who served on this Commission: Two sitting prosecutors; two sitting public defenders; a former Chief Judge of the Federal District Court; a former U.S. senator; three women; four members of racial minorities; prominent Democrats and Republicans. Twelve of us were lawyers, nine with experience as defense attorneys and eleven—including William Martin, who won a capital conviction against the mass murderer Richard Speck, in 1967—with prosecutorial backgrounds."
Turow recounts that at the press conference announcing the Commission, the members were asked whether any of them opposed capital punishment. Four people raised their hands, Turow's was not among them.
Turow did not confront the death penalty as a federal prosecutor because during the years he served in that capacity, there was no federal death penalty. It had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1972 and was not re-enacted until 1988, by which time Turow was in private practice.
In 1991, having already published two novels and not hurting for money, Turow could afford to take pro-bono cases, and he did--including an ugly death penalty case.In February, 1983, a ten-year-old girl, Jeanine Nicarico, was abducted from her home in a suburb of Chicago, in DuPage County. Two days later, Jeanine's corpse, clad only in a nightshirt, was found by hikers in a nearby nature preserve. She had been blindfolded, sexually assaulted several times, and then killed by repeated blows to the head.
In 1991, Turow took on the appeal of Alex Hernandez, who had been convicted of the Jeanine Nicarico's murder, along with Rolando Cruz and Stephen Buckley. The investigation into the murder had gone nowhere for over a year, and then, just days before a politically charged election, the three were arrested and charged with the girl's murder. The incumbent in the race lost the election anyway, to a local lawyer named Jim Ryan. You've probably heard of him by now because he has been the Attorney General of Illinois for the past several years and just ran for Illinois Governor and lost. He was also the prosecutor in the third and final trial of Hernandez and Cruz.
Turow reviews the case history, which includes convictions of Cruz and Hernandez, reversals on appeals, retrials and again, convictions. (The state dropped the case against the third defendant.) There was no physical evidence linking Cruz or Hernandez to the crimes. Another rapist named Dugan had confessed to the murder but was disregarded by the prosecutors. Turow entered the case for Hernandez after reading the transcripts, reviewing the evidence and becoming convinced Hernandez was innocent. He won the second appeal for Hernandez, but that wasn't the end of it. Even after Cruz's and Hernandez's second convictions were overturned in the separate appeals that Larry Marshall and I argued, and notwithstanding a series of DNA tests that excluded Cruz and Hernandez as Jeanine Nicarico's sexual assailant, while pointing directly at Dugan, the prosecutors pursued the cases. It was only after Cruz was acquitted in a third trial, late in 1995, that both men were finally freed." That still wasn't the end of the case.A special grand jury was convened after Cruz and Hernandez were freed. Three former prosecutors and four DuPage County police officers were indicted on various counts, including conspiring to obstruct justice. They were tried and—as is often the case when lawenforcement officers are charged with overzealous execution of their duties—acquitted...
Despite DNA tests linking Dugan to the murder, he has never been charged.
Turow uses this case and others as a springboard to discussing the pros and cons of the death penalty, his own turmoil and going back and forth on the issue and why he ultimately concluded, after two years of serving on the Commission, that despite those cases in which it might be appropriate, Illiniois should not have a death penalty.
Turow makes a compelling case, and we encourage you to take the time to read the whole article.
(Link via Hamster.)
Welcome back Media Whores Online --and we thank them for including TalkLeft on their list of recommended blogs.
MWO is the ultimate source for who's using the media to tell the truth and who's using it to spin their own political agenda. We recommend visiting MWO daily, if you aren't doing so already.
An editorial today in the Los Angeles Times gets it exactly right on the Bush Administration's unprecedented and unparalled secrecy in terrorism matters. From When Justice Goes Mute:
"The American people are losing rights and freedoms each time a federal judge sides with the Bush administration's blanket orders to close courtroom doors, silence detainees or withhold evidence from defense lawyers."
"Last week, a three-judge panel added another notch to the president's victory column by ruling that government agents could shut down a U.S.-based Islamic charity and then refuse to give any evidence to defense lawyers -- or the public -- of the group's alleged links to international terrorists."
"The Global Relief Foundation, based in Illinois, is one of the world's largest Islamic charities. The president insists that it was directing contributions to terrorists. In December 2001, U.S. Treasury agents froze its bank accounts and confiscated computers."
"Maybe Global Relief does aid terrorists. Maybe it doesn't, as the organization's lawyers insist. But by letting the government keep secret its evidence, the judges have rendered worthless the group's constitutional due process rights, including the right to contest these allegations. "If there is ... evidence," the charity's lawyer said, "it's evidence I've never seen."
"American citizens should be more than a little alarmed at a lengthening chain of decisions in which judges sanction presidential actions shredding constitutional rights and limiting the openness that democracy needs to function."
There's more, but this is the gist, and it is something more people need to wake up to. We have a President and an Attorney General who are trampling constitutional rights and too few are complaining because it's not happening to them....yet.
(link via Buzzflash)
Joan Didion has been our favorite author since she wrote Play It As It Lays. Since then, we've read everything she's written, before and after. Her newest article Fixed Opinions, or The Hinge of History, taken from a speech she gave in November, 2002, appears in the Jan. 16 issue of the New York Review of Books. It has to do with September 11 and its aftermath, and with the politicizing of the tragedy.
While we will always be partial to Maria and Inez (from Play it as it Lays and Democracy, respectively), we think everything she writes is outstanding, so go over and give her a read.
(link found on Wood s Lot)
Update: Avedon Carol at Sideshow posts a great section of Ms. Dideon's article here.
Hesiod at Counterspin reminds us to go over to MWO and vote for Media Horse of the Year. There is a wide selection. Hesiod votes for Bob Woodward, we're still making up our minds.
Don't miss Jack of the People's Republic of Seabrook on why you should object to DNA dragnets.
"When Lawrence Jacobs walked into the courtroom a few weeks ago, he couldn't believe his eyes. There was a noose swinging from the prosecutor's chest. Mr. Jacobs's son is being tried on capital murder charges. The noose was on a necktie." "Then he saw it again. This time two prosecutors were wearing ghoulish ties, one with a dangling rope, the other with an image of the Grim Reaper. "That's when it really hit me," Mr. Jacobs said. "These guys are out to kill my son. And they're making light of it."The prosecutors said the ties were jokes. Their boss was not amused but took no disciplinary action--just told them to stop wearing them.
"Defense lawyers say the neckties are simply the latest proof of a racially tinged, bloodthirsty culture at the Jefferson district attorney's office, which has put more people on Louisiana's death row in recent years than any other parish."Until recently, the proseutors handed out plaques decorated with hypodermic needles to comemmorate each execution by lethal injection. This proseuctorial disease is not limited to Jefferson Parish.
In East Baton Rouge, 75 miles away, the district attorney celebrates death sentences with office parties, replete with steak and Jim Beam.In Texas, one district attorney formed a "Silver Needle Society" while another one hung a noose over her office door.
In Mississippi, a former assistant attorney general had a toy electric chair on his desk that buzzed.
If we have to have a draft, forget the youth--let's make these southern prosecutors go first.
Holly Burkhalter, Director of Physicians for Human Rights gives three reasons the U.S. should say No to Torture , and concludes:
"Treating captured combatants humanely should not be a difficult task for the United States when it goes to war; it is the bare minimum. To date, the Bush administration has flunked this rudimentary test of military professionalism, and in so doing degraded itself, along with the international law norms it flagrantly violates."
There is a fascinating, long article in the Sunday New York Times on how the jury in the trial of the alleged Al Qaeda members and associates of Osama bin Laden charged with committing the American Embassy bombings in 1998 in East Africa deadlocked on the death penalty decision for both men for whom the government had sought execution.
It may be the most detailed recounting of a jury deliberation process in a death case we've seen. And it is one filled with numerous questionable actions by the jurors. One looked up a complex legal issue on the internet. Two discussed the death penalty with their pastors during the trial. Another was purportedly anti-death penalty from the start but somehow made it through the jury selection process.
The six month long trial took place in Manhattan in 2001, with the deliberations ending just two months before September 11. The jurors deadlocked twice on the death penalty issue, with a final vote of 9 to 3 for death. In federal criminal trials, death sentences must be unanimous. Also, death penalty opponents are not allowed to serve on capital juries--jurors are questioned in detail about their death penalty views during jury selection, a process referred to as "death qualifying the jury"-- and only those who are at least open to the possibility of voting for a death sentence are allowed to serve.
Here's a quote from the article:Interviews with the jurors now show that two of them, concerned about the religious implications of voting for execution, violated the judge's directive by consulting their local pastors during deliberations. Another juror confused the court during jury selection about his willingness to impose a death sentence, and from the early stages of the trial had ruled it out. In the end, his adamant refusal to consider death helped lead to the deadlocks on execution.There's so much more, often told in the voice of the jurors. Really a good read, no matter which side of the death penalty aisle you might be on.Yet another juror said that he was afraid throughout the trial of possible retaliation by Islamic terrorists, and that he, as the lone Jew on the panel, felt especially vulnerable. "Maybe I'm overly fearful," the juror said of his experience, "but these are crazy times we live in." The juror was one of three to vote against the death penalty in both instances.
The details of the jury's deliberations are the result of extensive interviews done over the last year with 9 of the 12 anonymous jurors. All nine spoke on the condition that their anonymity be preserved, and some provided copies of notes they wrote at home.
The revelations about the jury's actions, previously known only among the 12 men and women themselves, come at a moment of intense debate about whether trials in civilian courts are appropriate for deciding the fates of accused terrorists. The Bush administration has argued that military tribunals are a better way to try some international terrorists and to more successfully win death penalties. One administration concern involves a problem that appears to have surfaced in the bombings trial: in terror cases, jurors might feel vulnerable to reprisal, and such fears could influence their actions.
But there is also broader interest in the performance of death penalty juries — the nature of the discussion, the role of personal belief — in part because there have been so many examples of men and women being wrongly convicted, including some who were facing execution. Recently, a judge in Houston said he would allow public television to film deliberations in a death penalty case.
In interviews, some lawyers for the convicted men, while grateful that the lives of their clients were finally spared, said they were troubled to learn that jurors had sought outside advice. All four men are appealing their convictions, but whether the disclosures about the jury's conduct could play a role in those appeals is unclear, the lawyers said. (Both jurors who sought spiritual guidance voted for death.)
....It is impossible to say how unusual the conduct of the bombings jury was. Most accounts of jury deliberations remain secret, or at least untold. And accounts of some juries, often told by jurors themselves, have shown that the process of reaching verdicts can be imperfect, even disturbing.
Ashcroft's goal to clear the immigration appeals board's backlog has resulted in members deciding cases and issuing deportation orders in minutes, a process that is being assailed by critics.
"A Justice Department overhaul of the immigration appeals system, often the last stop for people fighting deportation, has prompted a barrage of unusually fast rulings rendered without explanation -- and an outcry about noncitizens' rights to due process."
The Board of Immigration Appeals hears the cases of foreigners who contend they face torture, death or other "travails" if they are returned to their home country".
The 23 member board reviews the cases of 220 immigration judges around the country. There is a backlog of 56,000 cases, and Ashcroft has decreed it must be current by March 25.
"In turn, immigrants are appealing to the federal court system in unprecedented numbers, creating another backlog, The Times found in a survey of federal appellate courts. "Immigrant advocates say the speedup is the latest in a series of actions compromising the rights of noncitizens in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks."
T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a law professor at Georgetown University and former Immigration and Naturalization Service general counsel said "We are already seeing results: Many, many cases are decided at a speed that makes it impossible to believe they got the scrutiny a person who faces removal from the United States deserves."
"The Justice Department also plans to cut the Board of Immigration Appeals in half -- from 23 members to 11 -- once the backlog is reduced, even though Ashcroft had expanded the board in 2001."
"The pending cutback has focused acute pressure on individual board members to process cases swiftly. Ashcroft has said that productivity -- broadly, the number of rulings each board member makes -- is one of the factors he will consider in determining who stays on the board."
| << Previous 12 | Next 12 >> |
