Law Professor Roger D. Groot, a staunch opponent of capital punishment has joined the defense team of accused juvenile sniper John Lee Malvo.

"Roger D. Groot, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, has been a thorn in the side of prosecutors and prison officials in Virginia for decades....Early in his career as a law professor at Washington and Lee University, he advocated for the rights of inmates and immigrant detainees."

He will be assisted by two students at the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, a student-led legal-aid clinic at the law school.

Groot denounced the death penalty as "something that allows Americans to "destroy our own humanity." He said "I oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and I think it is counterproductive both morally and practically."

"Professor Groot said he became troubled early in his career by how the death penalty was carried out. "I came to understand," he said, "that the death penalty is almost random in terms of who is selected to be tried, depending on race, the views of the local prosecutor or an election campaign."

We can't believe the number of "liberals" touting Rangel's obscene proposal to invoke a mandatory draft as a means of avoiding a war in Iraq--the faulty premise being if you put the sons of the rich at risk, perhaps the rich will come to oppose the war.

With all due respect to our "liberal" friends, this is sophomoric and dangerous to the futures of tens of thousands of American youth. What right do they have to call for the interruption of the lives of these young men who have done nothing to them? Most of these so-called "liberals" are too young to remember Vietnam--too young to remember the agony that every male college student went through the night of the draft lottery--the scenes in virtually every living room of every dorm and apartment from Berkeley to Ann Arbor to Boston and in between--the anguished cries of disbelief and rushed exits from the room when someone's number was called--all for a war that no one wanted to fight and that history now confirms we shouldn't have ever entered--the thousands of dead youths, the thousands of mothers whose boys came home in a box. We're not exaggerating, we were there and we lived it-- the war, the draft and the lottery--two of those we took the LSATs with never made it to law school, their numbers came up high and off they went--hopefully to Canada, but certainly not to the lives they had dreamed of and worked so hard for. When we went to our 20th high school reunion in 1987, the party opened with a a simulcast of a radio show hosted by a well-known disc jockey of that era acknowledging our reunion and reading off the names of the dead from our high school class.

How crass and unfeeling for these "liberals" to wish such a fate on an 18 - 26 year old who has done nothing to deserve it. So what if their parents have money? Is that their fault? How does that devalue their accomplishments and dreams? If these so-called liberals believe the war should be opposed, let them get out in the streets and demonstrate, get their hands dirty, risk an arrest. How how dare they sit on their comfortable rear ends from the distance of a computer screen and call upon others to do what they would never do themselves--forfeit their freedom in the name of a soundbite.

Sorry, but this is despicable. And anything but liberal.

Update: Oliver Willis agrees with us and notes, "A government that compels one to die for a cause one may not believe in is not a free government, and if the government isn't free... it isn't American."

Two reasons why Instapundit is not a Republican.

Outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan will be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. We're thrilled. For the other side and some major grumps about it, see Archpundit and Bloviator.

Ryan was nominated for his "crusade against what is clearly a racist and class-based death penalty system here in Illinois" by Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois law school in Champaign. Since Illinois resumed capital punishment in 1977, 12 people have been executed and 13 other death sentences were overturned. In the 13 cases, evidence showed some of the defendants were innocent; in others, courts ruled that they received unfair trials. Ryan declared a moratorium in 2000 and appointed a commission to study the system, report on what went wrong and make recommendations to restore fairness to the system.

We agree with Boyle that the the "licenses-for-bribes scandal" in Ryan's former secretary of state's office is irrelevant. According to the Nobel Prize website, the prize is awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Law professors are among those who can submit nominations.

Boyle and others who favor Ryan as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate have organized a campaign, including a web site which details the national and international support for Ryan's nomination. For example, this comes from Sissel Egeland in Norway:

"The moratorium has inspired Americans to end the inhuman death penalty system and to join the rest of the world in the care for human rights and justice. A nomination of Governor Ryan for the Nobel Peace Prize will send an important message to the international society that the use of the death penalty shall now be ancient history and unite Europeans and courageous Americans to stand up for ethics and human rights in all international relations."

Professor Boyle noted in the news article above that the "Nobel Peace Prizes generally are given to send a message to a target audience," Boyle said. "We think that giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Governor Ryan would send a very strong message here to the United States of America that the death penalty has to go." We agree.

Regardless of your views about the death penalty, surely we can all agree that its imposition should be fair, just and accurate. It isn't. It isn't fair--it is often imposed in a racially disparate manner or after trials at which unreliable evidence such as false confessions and erroneous eyewitness evidence was presented or at which defendants were represented by grossly incompetent lawyers who failed to protect their rights and secure them a fair trial. It isn't just--we still allow the excecution of the mentally ill and juvenile offenders. It isn't accurate--Since 1973, when the death penalty was reinstated, and August of 2002, 102 inmates in 25 states have been exonerated and released from death row. The average time between being sentenced to death and exoneration has been 8 years.

Fixing the broken death penalty system in the United States (not just Illinois) requires a nationwide commitment. The Innocence Protection Act is a good beginning, but despite over 250 bipartisan sponsors in Congress, a few ultra-right wing Republicans are holding it hostage and refusing to allow its passage.

The findings of the Illinois commission on Capital Punishment, initiated by Governor Ryan in response to the glaring inaccuracies in that state's capital punishment system, provide a well-researched guide for reforms. You can read the report and its 85 proposed recommendations here. The Illinois state legislature has adopted none of the reforms. Blanket clemency is the only fair result. Don't blame the inmates, blame the legislature for refusing to fix a broken system that results in innocent people being sent to death row.

George Ryan is a courageous hero--those who cynically accuse him of grandstanding on the innocence issue to deflect from the license scandal occurring on his watch most likely never have heard him speak in person. We have. We believe his commitment to fixing the broken system in Illinois is genuine and heartfelt--it has altered his life and his beliefs. Remember, Ryan supports the death penalty. His crusade is to make it fairer in its application and to protect the innocent. We doubt Ryan will grant clemency (life sentences) to all on death row in Illinois. We think he should. But even if he only grants clemency to some, he will still have done more for humanity and more in spreading the message this year than anyone else.

For more on the work of the Illinois Commission, we recommend this article by one of its participants. For reasons why blanket clemency would be legally sound, read this letter written by 438 legal scholars.

As Rob Warden, Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University said not long ago, "On trial are not just the people convicted of the murders, but the criminal justice system itself. Beyond the question of guilt or innocence, of course, is the question of proportionality and fairness of the sentencing process."

There will be a Press Conference at the Illinois State Capitol Press Room on Monday, January 6, 2003, at 1 P.M. to announce the Nobel Peace Prize Nomination and Campaign for Governor Ryan. Springfield is the Capital of the State of Illinois.

Don't miss A Look Back at 2003--a Tom Meyer cartoon too large to reprint here, sent to us by Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog.

Wired News reports on the Year in Privacy: Citizens Lose:

"As we reach the end of 2002, the state of important liberties around the world appears to be degenerating rapidly, particularly in the area of privacy concerns."

"If one of Osama bin Laden's goals, as has been reported, was to trigger crackdowns against freedoms by Western governments, he got the ball rolling quite effectively on Sept. 11, 2001."

"The United States now imprisons its own citizens incommunicado, indefinitely and without lawyers or trials, for the duration of what we're told is an essentially permanent state of war."

"In the good old days of the iron curtain, we condemned other countries for such actions, calling them human rights violations. Now some of those same nations are our partners of convenience in the war on terror, and our own government has enthusiastically embraced our former adversaries' old tactics."

Link via Buzzflash

"The Spanish judge who has made a world name for himself fighting terrorism launched a stinging attack on Sunday against US President George W. Bush, saying his government was trampling on the rights of suspects."

"The Bush administration does not recognise the rights of terrorists to defend themselves and has made those rights all but disappear," Baltasar Garzon said in an interview with El Pais newspaper. Garzon, who has fought against Basque separatists in Spain and led international efforts to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for war crimes, said Bush had crushed personal liberties since the September 11 attacks."

"The fight against terrorism since September 11 has increased the risk of a false system of security being put in place to the detriment of freedoms and rights," he said. "The case of terrorists held in Guantanamo (the US base in Cuba), Afghanistan and Pakistan proves that security is trumping every other principle of justice or rights," Garzon said."

Link via Buzzflash.

"President Bush said Tuesday that an attack by Saddam Hussein or a terrorist ally "would cripple our economy," offering new justification for potential war against Iraq even as he said North Korea's nuclear ambitions can be curbed without military conflict."

Sorry, Mr. President, but we think the Republicans and your tax cuts for the rich are to blame for the sorry state of our economy. September 11 may have been a big factor, but we've still seen no evidence that Saddam had a hand in that.

Nor have we seen evidence that Iraq is planning an attack. The only person talking about going to war is you--by launching a pre-emptive strike. Maybe if you spent less time obsessing about Iraq and spent some more time with your economic advisors, or picked new advisors, we could begin the climb-out from the hole we're in.

Oakland, California ushered in the New Year by becoming the 19th city to pass a resolution opposing the USA PATRIOT Act and urging the state’s Members of Congress to actively work for its repeal.

Virginia is to begin collecting DNA samples today from anyone charged with a violent felony, launching the most aggressive effort in the country to catalogue genetic samples of people not yet convicted of crimes.

Under a law passed last year, a saliva or tissue sample is to be taken from anyone arrested and charged with such crimes as murder, rape, assault and burglary. The DNA profiles of those arrested will be entered into the state's DNA database -- along with the profiles of convicted felons -- for comparison with evidence gathered at crime scenes. If the person is acquitted or the charge is dismissed by a judge, the data will be expunged.

This is wrong and should be opposed before it spreads to other states. People who merely have been arrested and charged are not guilty in the eyes of the law. It is a violation of their civil liberties to require them to submit to DNA testing for inclusion in a databank before they have been convicted.

The Virginia law says they can petition the court to delete their DNA sample from the database if they are acquitted or the charge is dismissed. Why should the onus be on them to move for the deletion? How many can afford lawyers to figure out who to petition and how? And what about the cases that don't end with conviction, acquittal or dismissal on the charged count?

"James Connell, a Fairfax defense lawyer, said yesterday that he is concerned that the DNA profiles could remain in the system despite the lack of a conviction.
"There are several ways that a person can go to court and not be convicted but not have a dismissal or an acquittal," Connell said. For example, he said, prosecutors can choose to not pursue a charge. That would not be entered into the computers as a dismissal by a judge."

"Ira Robbins, a criminal law professor at American University, said he predicts a flood of legal challenges to the law. "To collect DNA too early in the process runs afoul of civil liberties in ways that I think are fundamentally unfair," Robbins said. "It makes a lot of sense to expand DNA databanks, but not in this way. We're talking about people who are arrested and not convicted."

The New York Times reports that Democrats are tossing around ideas to help them catch-up in the media game. Top among their priorities is combatting Fox News Channel on tv, and finding a liberal host who can give Rush Limbaugh a run for his money.

"...concerns have taken on a new urgency because of the rise to the top of the cable news ratings by the Fox News Channel, considered by many to have a conservative slant, and the loss of the Senate to the Republicans in November. Some Democrats say the election outcome enhanced the influence of Fox News and personalities like Mr. Limbaugh."

"The efforts among influential Democrats, particularly liberals, range from a grass-roots talent search for progressive radio hosts to the creation of research organizations to provide a Democratic spin for the news media, to nascent discussions by wealthy supporters about starting a cable network with a liberal bent."

We nominate Atrios.

Tom Daschle is very close to throwing his hat in the ring for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"Mr. Daschle is to return to his home in South Dakota this weekend to review his decision one more time with friends and advisers, his associates said. But they said that over the last few days Mr. Daschle has expressed an increasingly strong desire to challenge Mr. Bush and has concluded that he needs to move quickly to catch up with Democratic rivals who have been lining up political supporters and financial backers for months. Mr. Daschle would announce a decision sometime over the next few weeks and immediately begin traveling to primary states, his associates said."

MSNBC is reporting that John Edwards is days away from a decision as well.

And here's a factoid from the MSNBC article: "No Democratic ticket has ever won the White House without a Southerner or a man associated with the South on it. The last three Democratic presidents, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas, have been from the South."