From the Drug Policy Alliance News section:

"Racine police raided a non-profit fundraising event that featured electronic music last Saturday where they arrested three people on drug charges and wrote $430,760 worth of questionable citations. A prepared police statement said: "Based on information from the U.S. Customs Service, undercover officers went through the Haunted Theater (Uptown Theater) at 1430 Washington Ave. After the very brief tour, officers were directed to the basement of Tradewinds Village, 1518 Washington Ave., for the party. There they bought Ecstasy and Ketamine." Although only three arrests were made, police issued citations to 445 attendees with a penalty of $968 each for being "patrons of a disorderly house."

"The crowd was young, between about 17 and 25, said Sgt. William Macemon, public information officer for the Racine Police Department. According to witnesses, police cars and wagons came from every direction to surround the front and back entrances of the Tradewinds Banquet Hall. People outside were forcibly thrown to the ground, hand cuffed, and detained. The front and back entrances were sealed off. Meanwhile, inside, a representative from Dancesafe was forcibly thrown down on a pool table. One of the DJ's was using the bathroom when the police came in with guns drawn. A gun was pointed at the head of the DJ for almost a half hour. The group that organized the fundraiser is encouraging the hundreds of partygoers who were ticketed to contact the American Civil Liberties Union."

More information is available here.

To take action against attacks on raves, go here.

The San Francisco Chronicle endorses Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic Leader because she has the courage to be different:

"Democrats must not be afraid to make the case against a rush to war, ill- advised tax cuts, assaults on the environment or other Bush initiatives that many centrist Americans might oppose -- if the president's policies were exposed to full and vigorous debate. Nancy Pelosi the right leader for this critical challenge."

The political rumor of the day for Arkansas in 2004, received from an unaffiliated Arkansas Voter:

"Watch for Asa Hutchinson to maybe run for the Senate in '04 against Democratic incumbent Blanche Lincoln. His brother apparently may be considered inelectable because he trailed the Republican Governor by 10%+ in heavily Republican counties while losing big in Democratic south and east Arkansas, showing what some called the "hypocrisy factor" (running on "family values" vs. divorcing his wife of 29 years and marrying his intern (and maybe the impeachment vote all the while, but we're not sure)) cost him dearly with moderates Republicans. Attorney General Pryor is also a religious sort, and he apparently picked up the fallout."

"Governor Huckabee was just reelected to a 4 year term. When Lt. Gov. Huckabee became governor in '7/96 because of the Governor's resignation, he had two tractor trailer loads of "Huckabee for Senate" signs he paid $350K for that had just arrived in Arkansas. [The history: He resigned the Republican Senate nomination to be Governor until the '98 election (which he won). The Republican Party had a convention, and T. Hutchinson resigned his House nomination (as an incumbent) to run for the Senate, which he won. A. Hutchinson was then nominated for the House seat, which he won. He resigned from that to be head of the DEA. That seat has been in Republican hands for over 40 years.]"

"Maybe Huckabee still has the signs, and he has a free shot at Lincoln in '04. The Republican Party will have to decide between Asa and Huckabee. It will be a tough race for Lincoln, I'm afraid."

Imagine the head of the DEA being in the U.S. Senate from 2005-2011 when Bush gets re-elected, since the Democrats can't come up with a viable candidate to beat him"

Attorney General John Ashcroft held a news conference Thursday to tell us it's a done deal. The state of Virginia will get first shot at trying to kill accused snipers John Muhammed and John Malvo. The feds have dropped their charges.

Here's what John Ashccroft, the man who runs our "Justice" Department, does Thursday. He drops the federal charges against the accused snipers so that they no longer have a right to their federally appointed counsel who can refuse to allow them to be interrogated in their absence. He arranges for the two to be charged in separate capital cases in different Virginia counties and separately driven to a Virginia county jail. Because they are not yet represented by state defenders, the cops are allowed to interrogate them at will.

He calls a news conference but won't tell us why he charged the two suspects in separate cases with separate killings or why he is using multiple legal theories. He bypasses Maryland, the state that suffered the most, in favor of Virginia, the state most likely to extract the ultimate penalty--death. He declares that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for them, even though they haven't yet had a trial or been found guilty and even though one is only 17. His message is: Malvo may not be old enough to vote, get married, drink alcohol or own real estate, but he's old enough to be killed.

Justice occurs when we provide the accused with a fair trial, competent counsel and strict adherence to their consitutional rights. Injustice occurs when we allow passion and prejudice to override the guarantees of fairness our system provides to even the worst offender among us.

John Ashcroft is not running the Department of Justice but a Department of Injustice.

The incoming Governor of Illinois, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, who beat Attorney General Jim Ryan (unrelated to outgoing Governor George Ryan) in Tuesday's election, will keep the moratorium on the death penalty , "at least until the Legislature addresses problems pointed out by the death penalty commission."

The Illinois Death Penalty Commission recommended 85 reforms to reduce the unfairness in the application of the death penalty in Illinois, none of which have been implemented by the state legislature.

We are pleased to be a recent addition to Stand Down, the NoWar Blog. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a blog with contributions from those on the right as well as the left who oppose an Invasion of Iraq.

As soon as we can catch our breath from the elections, we'll be contributing our two cents on why this war is a bad idea.

Four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army pleaded guilty to second degree murder today in Sacramento. The four include Sara Jane Olson, William Harris, Emily Harris Montague and Michael Bortin.

The charges were brought against the former SLA members earlier this year alleging their participation in a 1975 bank robbery in which a woman was killed. All four were originally charged with first degree murder which carries a life sentence. Under the plea deal, Emily Harris, who police believe was the "shooter" will get eight years and the others will get six.

Sara Jane Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Soliah, is already serving a 14 year sentence which was imposed after her guilty plea to aiding and abetting the group's plotting to plant bombs under Los Angeles police cars.

Patty Hearst would have been the state's star witness had the case gone to trial. Sentencing is set for Feb. 14.

A Baltimore man who has spent 20 years in prison for a rape that DNA tests show he did not commit is scheduled to walk free today after a hearing in Baltimore County Circuit Court, the first person to be exonerated under Maryland's new DNA law."

"Bernard Webster was 19 when a 47-year-old schoolteacher identified him as the man who broke into her Towson home and raped her. The DNA law, which took effect in 2001, allows judges to order DNA testing for people serving sentences for murder and rape when that testing could prove their innocence."

"Webster will be the third person in Maryland - the 115th nationwide - to have a conviction overturned by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, a nonprofit legal clinic that seeks to identify and free people who have been wrongly convicted."

The victim had picked Webster out of a photo lineup as her attacker. The jury believed her, and disbelieved his alibi witnesses. In October, the results of DNA testing on the hospital slides recently found through diligent work by the Maryland Innocence Project showed the semen could not have come from Webster. Last week, the state's attorney's office got the results of its own testing, which also confirmed Webster's innocence.

The victim said yesterday that she was upset and did not want to talk to a reporter. The prosecutor said she still believes she identified the right man and is not convinced Webster is innocent.

Mistakes in identification are common when the victim is of one race and the suspect of another. According to the Innocence Project, mistaken eyewitness identfication occurs in 70% of their cases.

"Webster's conviction is the second to be overturned in Baltimore County because of DNA evidence. Death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth was exonerated in 1993 after DNA testing showed he could not have committed the murder and rape he was convicted of in 1985."

Webster is homeless now and has no family. His lawyers are trying to figure out where he is going to sleep tonight. He has a 10th grade education and was taken from his biological mother at age 3. He grew up with a foster mother who died while he was in prison. He was refused because he wouldn't admit his guilt.

Webster began writing the Maryland public defender's office asking for help in 1983. Before the advent of DNA testing there was nothing they could do. He kept writing them, and in 2001, filed his own pro se motion for a DNA test. The judge granted it under the new statute and a public defender began trying to locate DNA in the then 19- year old crime. Her search led her to the pathology department at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center "where she located three slides of potential DNA evidence preserved from the July 6, 1982, sexual assault evaluation of the victim."

Webster is not entitled to any compensation from Maryland for the 20 years he spent in prison.

One minute before being led to the execution chamber, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of mentally ill Texan James Blake Colburn who had been denied relief by the Supreme Court earlier today. Justice Anton Scalia granted the stay and referred it to the full Court. As of this writing, the grounds upon which he granted the stay are not known.

"The Supreme Court granted a last-minute reprieve tonight to a death-row inmate who suffers from severe mental illness, halting his execution as prison officials were preparing to lead him to the gurney to be injected with lethal fluids."

"Lawyers for the inmate, James Blake Colburn, filed an appeal before the Supreme Court at 5:59 p.m., one minute before Mr. Colburn was scheduled to be lead to the death chamber. It asked the court to stay the execution on the grounds that Mr. Colburn was incompetent to be executed and had been denied his constitutional rights during proceedings in state court."

No one disputes Mr. Colburn is mentally ill. But while the Supreme Court has outlawed execution of the retarded, it has not done so for the mentally ill.

"Psychiatric problems were first diagnosed in Mr. Colburn when he was 14. He began suffering hallucinations and hearing voices at 17, not long after he was raped while hitchhiking. He bounced between mental health programs, and his medical records note that he was voted out of one support group after he tried to kill himself. In all, Mr. Colburn has tried to commit suicide at least 15 times. His medical records say his chronic paranoid schizophrenia has often left him hearing voices that command him to harm himself or others."

Mr. Colburn's lawyers have 90 days to file a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the full Court. If the petition is denied, another execution date will be scheduled within 30 days.

Winona Ryder, found guilty today of two of three counts in her shoplifting trial, will not being going to jail. How do we know? The District Attorney won't be asking for it.

"We never thought about jail time," said the deputy district attorney, Ann Rundle, who prosecuted the case. "We won't be asking for it. We simply want Ms. Ryder to take responsibility for her conduct."

"Since it was not a violent crime, Ms. Rundle said, a more likely and appropriate sentence would be some combination of probation, community service and restitution. "And that's what we're going to ask for," she said."

So why didn't they offer her a deferred judgment on the felonies to begin with? Or a misdemeanor? What were they trying to prove? That celebrities will be treated more harshly than others? They made their point, but we doubt Saks or the public appreciate it.

For more on our view of the charges and trial, go here and here.

"The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it will require thousands of students, workers and other men from five Muslim countries who are temporarily residing in the United States to be fingerprinted and photographed, the latest step in its program to register visitors from countries linked to terrorism."

The program applies to all male citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, "and other people suspected of links to terror."

Muslim and Arab-American groups argue the plan amounts to ethnic profiling. They point out that none of the Sept. 11 terrorists came from those countries, and only Sudan has ties to Al Qaeda.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association also criticized the plan, saying "They're telling us this will make us safe from terrorists. But the terrorists aren't the ones who are going to come forward and register."

An unnamed Justice Department official said the list of originating countries whose male citizens would be subject to the program "would probably grow."

"Under the new measure, which takes effect Nov. 15, men ages 16 and older from the five nations must register with a U.S. immigration officer by Dec. 16. They must present travel documents and proof of residence, such as school registrations, and be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed. They must check in with authorities once a year. The measure applies only to visitors, not political asylum applicants or immigrants who have "green cards" that grant them permanent legal residence."

The Supreme Court heard arguments in a death penalty case yesterday that were highly technical in nature. Charles Lane of the Washington Post does a good job of explaining the issue in Arguing 60(b): a Rule of Life or Death?"

"Abdur'Rahman is a death-row inmate in Tennessee, convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1987. He says he was the victim of a dishonest prosecutor who hid exculpatory evidence. No Tennessee nor federal court has ruled on the merits of that claim."

"If Abdur'Rahman's filing in federal court was a Rule 60(b) motion, as his lawyers insist, then he could be entitled to such a hearing, which might lead to a reversal of his sentence. But if, as lower federal courts have ruled, it was a second or successive petition for habeas corpus -- that is, one that raises an issue another court has dealt with -- it would be forbidden under a 1996 federal law designed to streamline death-row litigation. The way to execution would be clear."

The arguments started out rough for the defense, but Justice Stevens later "all but took over" the hearing, and some of the other justices seemed to come over to his side.

"He noted that the key point in Abdur'Rahman's argument is that the District Court that rebuffed his request for a new hearing on his claim of prosecutorial misconduct was unaware of an obscure Tennessee law that permitted Abdur'Rahman's request. Abdur'Rahman's attorneys and the state's were also in the dark, he said."

"Since the Tennessee Supreme Court clarified the law in a subsequent regulation, Stevens asked, why shouldn't Rule 60(b), a catchall provision designed to let courts correct serious mistakes, apply? He's not asking for a second consideration of a claim; he's asking for consideration of a claim that's never been litigated," Stevens said.

"Other members of the court picked up on Stevens's theme. "You're saying he's just out of luck," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said to Paul Summers, the Tennessee prosecutor arguing the case. Yes, sir," Summers conceded. "That seems terribly unfair," Breyer observed."

Stevens and Breyer make a good point. If the man asserts he is innocent, or was convicted unfairly due to prosecutorial misconduct, he deserves at least one hearing on the issue. No artificial procedural rule, even if it was enacted by Congress, should be allowed to deny a hearing when death is at issue. If the state courts and the lower federal courts refused to consider his claim, we think the Supreme Court ought to--or at least issue an order remanding the case back to the lower courts to do so.