If you are an attorney and concerned about government monitoring of your attorney-client communications, here is a great list of resources on Defending the Attorney-Client Privilege from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). Thanks especially to NACDL director and esteemed Ethics scholar John Wesley Hall of Little Rock, AR.

Our post on MADD seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people--across party lines--we got an email praising our post from Drinking and Driving - National Motorists Association-- check them out, they have a lot to say and some good referral links. Their mission statement begins with:

"The NMA supports drinking and driving regulations based on reasonable standards that differentiate between responsible, reasonable behavior and reckless, dangerous behavior. The NMA does not support "zero tolerance" concepts, nor does it endorse unconstitutional enforcement and judicial procedures that violate motorists' rights."

Instpundit reports on MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) today. We thought we'd contribute a link to this site, DUI Gulag which takes MADD on front and center. From their home page:

"Despite what MADD propaganda would have you believe, in 1996 only .0000143 percent of the American population was killed in so-called "alcohol related" motor vehicle accidents where someone had a blood alcohol content as high as 0.10% . Government statistics indicate that each year more people die as a result of accidental drowning in America than die in low BAC related motor vehicle accidents. A recent study at a major U.S. university found that low BAC drinking drivers pose far less danger to public safety than do non-drinking drivers who have sleep apnea. In fact, your chances of being killed as a direct result of medical malpractice is 28 times higher than your chances of being killed in a motor vehicle accident involving a low BAC driver.

Despite the extremely low statistical threat to public safety posed by low BAC drinking drivers, more than 600,000 low BAC drivers are arrested and convicted for "drunk driving" in America each year.

Once arrested these otherwise law-abiding citizens are subjected to imprisonment; forced to pay huge fines and court costs; forced to pay the costs of probation; suffer unjust property forfeitures; forced to attend political re-education camps; subjected to psychological testing; forced to engage in involuntary forced labor; suffer government sponsored public humiliation; suffer the loss of driving privileges; suffer loss of respect for the courts and their government; suffer the loss of their jobs; their self esteem; and the destruction of their families.

This unfortunate state of affairs has been foisted upon America by an anti-alcohol, political action organization known as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, (MADD)."

Then read about MADD's "Real Political Agenda" and about MADD's Tax Exempt Status.

We're in court for the rest of the day, but we posted up a storm yesterday to give you all plenty of new material. We hope you read our entry on the death of lying lab chemist Fred Zain.

Update: NACDL media director Dan Dodson thinks we've missed the point on Madd and the real consequence/motivation behind the lowering BAC requirements. "The insurance industry likes the high-risk premiums that result--usually about four times regular rates. And no one can afford more than the minimum liability limits, so the victims of DUI convicts' later mistakes, DUI-related or not, have a minimal pool of insurance money for compensation."

We love it! The ACLU's anti-Ashcroft televsion ad. View it here.

(Via Politics in the Zeros)

The Los Angeles Times explains why today's crop of accused corporate executives are finding plea agreements preferable to the risk of going to trial--under the federal sentencing guidelines, they could be facing sentences of thirty years to life if convicted at trial.

"Even though the plea agreements still hold out the prospect of serious jail time, defense attorneys say these kinds of deals are becoming harder to turn down as federal officials, using tough new sentencing rules, threaten targets in corporate scandals with prison terms of 25 years, 30 years or more."

Faced with those kinds of numbers, many choose to plead guilty--even when they are innocent. They just can't take the risk. "Defense attorneys say prosecutors in major corporate corruption cases are proposing plea agreements containing 15-to-20-year sentences in negotiations with top executives who the defense contends never had any intent to commit crimes."

"What worries me is that there will be some white-collar guys who won't plead to an agreement like that, go to trial and get a 30-year sentence they don't deserve," [Washington lawyer Bob] Bennett said. "These draconian sentences heretofore have been reserved for the worst of the worst — drug kingpins and multiple murderers."

Actually, not just drug kingpins face those sentences. We have plenty of low-level clients who face them as well. Even a young, first offender can get 30 years to life under the sentencing guidelines if the offense involves a substantial amount of crack.

Bush and Ashcroft's love affair with building more prisons to house more low-level offenders and maintain our reputation as a Prison Nation will undoubtedly continue for the next two years--and longer if Bush is re-elected. Now that the rich will also fall prey to this Administration's mania, perhaps the wealthy will make substantial funds available to groups like Families Against Mandatory Minimums who have been working tirelessly for years to make the public see the folly of this response to crime.

Christopher H. Pyle teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke and is the author of an op-ed article in the Hartford Courant. He has first hand experience and information about his topic.

Read what he has to say about Poindexter and the Pentagon's proposed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program --the title of his op-ed is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid, of Spying by the U.S. Army. (via Buzzflash).

First, as background:

"This isn’t the first time that the military has slipped the bounds of law to spy on civilians. In the late 1960s, it secretly collected personal information on more than a million law-abiding Americans in a misguided effort to quell anti-war demonstrations, predict riots and discredit protesters. I know because in 1970, as a former captain in Army intelligence, I disclosed the existence of that program."

Here's what Pyle says about Poindexter's plan:

"Under Poindexter’s plan, the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., will use high-powered computers to secretly search the e-mail messages, credit-card purchases, phone records and bank statements of hundreds of thousands of people on the chance that they might be associated with, or sympathetic to, terrorists."

"Much of INSCOM’S information will be sent to the Army’s new Northern Command, which is supposed to provide perimeter security, crowd control and technical assistance to civilian agencies in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Nothing in the Northern Command’s mission requires it to keep dossiers on anti-war demonstrators or Muslim Americans, but the Northern Command expects to receive so many reports on individual terrorists and their sympathizers that it is planning to employ 150 people just to read them."

"The scale of this operation suggests that the Army is not just preparing to clear streets, defuse bombs and provide emergency services. It’s too early to tell how far the Army will actually go with its plans, but it is not too early to start asking questions."

An armed patrol of vigilantes have set out to lower the crime rate in Houston. Two weeks ago they went out looking for gang members. The Houston police department asked them to stop their patrols, and they have temporarily agreed.

We find this group's actions unacceptable - we hope that roaming around public streets in Houston with a gun and with intent to do bodily injury is a crime--and that these vigilantes find themselves in jail.

We have nothing against citizens being armed. We support Colorado's "Make My Day" law which allows a citizen to use deadly force against an intruder in their home. But to let citizens run around the streets with guns in search of members of a particular group they don't like is just pure lawlessness--and anarchy. This is not a Second Amendment issue. Vigilante justice simply has no place in a civilized society.

The New York Times begins a series on 2004 presidential prospects with a profile on John Kerry of Massachussetts. The Times describes Kerry as "a three-term United States senator with a résumé steeped in foreign affairs. He is a decorated Vietnam War veteran who later became an antiwar leader. He is an articulate, telegenic and wealthy candidate known to savor a fight on the political field."

There is a New Breed of Patriots speaking up against the Patriot Act. Grass-roots efforts to rein in the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act are gaining support in Eugene, Ore., Ann Arbor, MI, Denver and other cities. We wrote about this back in July when there were seven cities that had passed resolutions opposing aspects of the Act. Now, at least 21 cities have passed such resolutions.

If you don't mind legalese, you can read the full text of the Act here, courtesy of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center .

If you would like to read a section by section analysis of the Act with some critical commentary, you can pay $19 to Lexis and order the book we co-authored on the Act. It's called "The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001: An Analysis" by Stanley Mailman, Jeralyn E. Merritt, Theresa M. B. Van Vliet, and Stephen Yale-Loehr. Book Description and On-Line Order Form . Unfortunately, we don't get royalties or commissions.

Bottom Line: A better name for the Patriot Act would be the Anti-American Act.

skippy and Lisa of Ruminate this do their usual bang-up job of blogging around this weekend so that those who were off-line the past few days know where to go to catch up. Thanks to both of them.

Very little has been written this week about the death of former West Virginia chemist and expert witness Fred Zain whose perjured testimony was responsible for putting hundreds in jail and even on death row. When Experts Lie tells his story well and links to the official investigative report on his despicable actions.

Finally indicted, his trial was postponed indefinitely due to his having been diagnosed with cancer. He died last week at the age of 52.

He got to spend his final days at liberty. His victims, wrongfully accused defendants, spent years in jail because of his fraud upon the courts.

Goodbye, Mr. Zain.

Update: We found this December 4th obituary in Newsday (Associated Press). We don't have a live link to it, but it is also available on Lexis ($).

"OBITUARIES / Fred Zain, 52, Discredited W.Va. Police Chemist

Charleston, W.Va. - Fred Zain, a former West Virginia State Police chemist whose discredited work resulted in the payment of millions of dollars to wrongfully convicted defendants, has died at age 52.

Zain, head of the state police chemistry lab from 1986-89, died Monday at his home in Ormond Beach, Fla., his lawyer, Tom Smith of Charleston, said yesterday. Zain was suffering from colon cancer.

Prosecutors said Zain lied on the witness stand and faked test results, and thus accepted his fees and salary under false pretenses.

Last year, a West Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict on four counts of obtaining money under false pretenses. Three of the charges dealt with expert witness payments Zain received after he left the state in 1989. He was to have been retried in July, but the trial was delayed indefinitely because of his cancer.

Besides the expense of investigating and prosecuting Zain, and retrying cases related to him, West Virginia has paid at least $6.5 million to settle lawsuits by wrongfully convicted defendants.

No one knows precisely how many convictions resulted from Zain's testimony, or how many people are still imprisoned in West Virginia, Texas and other states where he served as a consultant.

A West Virginia State Police investigation identified as many as 182 cases that might have been affected by Zain's work.

In a 1997 interview in Texas, Zain said he had been made a "scapegoat" by political forces in West Virginia and Texas.

Zain worked as a state police chemist from 1979 until 1989, when he took a similar job in Bexar County, Texas. His work in West Virginia was discredited in 1993 by the state Supreme Court, which said Zain may have lied or fabricated evidence in dozens of rape and murder cases.

His work in Texas also was under fire and led to the payment of at least $850,000 to two men. In 1997, Zain avoided a perjury trial in Texas because the statute of limitations had expired.

Zain was fired by Bexar County after his work in West Virginia was discredited. He later moved to Florida where he worked for a state-run environmental laboratory."

The West Virginia Supreme Court report on Fred Zain's misconduct is here. We got to know one of Mr. Zain's victims, William Harris, several years ago--he was able to get a fair award (about one million dollars) from the state, but how do you repay someone who is yanked from their promising life at 17 and forced to spend 7 years (on a 20 year sentence) in one of the worst adult prisons in the country after being wrongfully convicted of rape based upon a lying chemist's testimony?

William's story is one of the 28 told in the Government publication, Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science, available here.

A detective in William's case was later convicted of perjury. DNA testing proved William was not the donor of the semen involved in the rape. Zain lied and told the jury that the genetic markers in the semen left by the assailant matched those of Harris and only 5.9 percent of the population.

A new report shows that nearly half of the inmates released from the Texas State prison system end up returning to prison..

"The Texas prison system incarcerates 140,000 people, second only to California, and is so big that prisoners are released every weekday. The question no one asks is: Who's coming back? But if someone did, the prisoners would answer: Not me. National studies show otherwise: Roughly half the men will be proved wrong within three years."

Texas does spend a lot of money on rehabilitation. The Bureau of Justice Statistics report that recently released convicts commit 5 percent of serious crimes.

"A system that can keep convicted criminals from re-offending would save money and better protect the public."Efforts to rehabilitate begin as soon as a criminal enters the system. The first stop for everyone is the James Byrd Diagnostic Center in Huntsville.

There, an inmate is tested on intelligence, education, emotional and mental stability and job skills. From the test results, prison officials create an individualized rehabilitation plan.

An inmate who cannot read at a seventh-grade level is enrolled in school. Those already educated can further their studies in college or vocational classes.

Everyone who is able is put to work in cafeterias, on farms and in factories making license plates, clothing, wood furniture. There are 41 prison factories. For many, it is the first steady employment of their lives.

For drug addicts, there are six- to nine-month counseling programs, and the counseling continues after release.

For the most part, inmates adhere to their rehabilitation plans because refusing affects chances. An inmate who gets an education, completes his rehabilitation plan and stays out of trouble stands a pretty good chance of earning. An inmate who does not serves more, if not all, of his sentence.

Texas incarcerates more of its population than any other other state except for Louisiana. It keeps its inmates in jail longer. It says that finding out how to make offenders stay out of prison is the million dollar question.

We don't claim to have the answer, but we agree with Marc Mauer, deputy director of the prison reform group, The Sentencing Project, who says, "The key to reducing recidivism, said is to stop locking up so many people."

"I think a main issue is we've come to rely too heavily on prison. Half the people are there for non-violent offenses, more than four-fifths are there for drug offenses," Mauer said. "There needs to be consequences for violating the law, but we need to distinguish between offenses. Prison should be used as a last resort."

"The best way to ease the transition back into society is to eliminate it altogether, Mauer said. The criminal justice system would be more effective if it allowed non-violent criminals to maintain their connections to the community and their families. Let them keep their jobs and help them overcome the addictions that inspired their crimes, Mauer said. "

"Ultimately, 95 percent of the people are coming back to the community anyway," he said." If roughly half the prisoners who go through the system come back, that also means half will not.