The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on California's Three-Strikes laws. Sasha Abramsky, a Soros Justice Media Fellow and the author of the recently published book, "Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation," has an excellent op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Times on the topic:

The Court will be deciding whether a life sentence for shoplifting is a violation of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Two inmate's cases are before the court: "One, a repeat-burglar named Leandro Andrade struck out for stealing $153.54 worth of videotapes from two K marts; the other, Gary Ewing, who had prior convictions for robbery and burglary struck out for stealing three golf clubs."

Sasha's opinion (with which we agree):

"Tragically, however, as more and more states moved toward the imposition of catch-all mandatory minimum sentences and Three Strikes laws, so more and more Americans, overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds, disproportionately either African-American or Latino, have been subjected to exactly the kind of double-indemnity punishments, and disproportionately severe sentences, handed down to Ewing and to Andrade. Most of the most than 7,000 men and women now serving life sentences in California prisons on Three Strikes convictions, have been convicted on nonviolent, relatively minor crimes, which in and of themselves would generally warrant at most a few years behind bars. Many of these individuals were convicted of their first two "strikes" before the Three Strikes law was even on the statute books."

"California's Three Strikes law, crafted amidst rising public hysteria about a supposed breakdown in societal mores, ought never to have been passed. That it was, and that California's political leaders have used it to prove their tough-on-crime credentials to fearful electors, is a true stain on our country's history. It is past time for that stain to be removed. The Supreme Court has that chance. Let's see if they have the guts to strike out Three Strikes."

Here are Reuters':

The President's last minute campaign stops don't provide a big boost according to the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

"Bush's 15-state blitz in the final six days of the campaign caps a three-week stretch in which he has barnstormed the country. History suggests it's a largely empty exercise."

"Presidential visits to rallies for other candidates excite the party's core supporters, but they also energize the opposition. Any bump up in polls that a president can produce for his party's local candidate tends to be short-lived."

"If Bush hoped his message would reach beyond the auditorium — and all these rallies are produced as much for television as for the audience present — he didn't fare very well. His visit was buried on the evening newscasts of the three network affiliates in the Twin Cities, where more than half the state's population lives. The Bush story was 10th on the 10 p.m. newscast of CBS affiliate WCCO, after stories about such subjects as the arrest of former baseball player Kirby Puckett and an Air Force plane crash in California."

Thanks to Hamster for leading us to the article.

If you are thinking of voting for an incumbant, we recommend you check his or her voting record.

LA Police Chief William Bratton has launched the department's first internal probe since he assumed the top cop job.

The probe concerns possible mishandling of tips about faith healers after a man being treated for a rash went into convulsions and died.

Bratton said that he recently received information that "the department's narcotics division had received tips about suspicious injections as far back as May 2001, but failed to investigate. The tips continued over the past 18 months, he said."

"I'm concerned, very concerned, about how the tip was handled, and I have many questions," said Bratton, who was publicly sworn in Monday. "We are going to try to convince the public of our sincere interest in determining what went wrong so that those mistakes are not made again."

For more on the challenges facing the new police chief, read today's Washington Post article, LA's New Top Cop.

Daily Kos has the latest batch of Zogby polls and it shows Tom Strickland with 53 of the vote to Wayne Allard's 44 in the Colorado Senate race.

Strickland can win, so please, go to the polls Tuesday and cast your vote for him.

The official Mondale for Senate website is up and running.

The federal judge hearing the case of accused sniperand juvenile John Lee Malovo closed the hearing to the media.

The judge ruled that "public interest in the Washington-area sniper cases does not outweigh the suspect's right to be shielded from scrutiny as a juvenile."

For more on the relationship between the two accused snipers, go here.

It was a busy weekend in Chicago. We were at the quarterly board meeting and seminar of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Illinois Governor George Ryan was our luncheon speaker on Friday at the Drake Hotel. We presented him with a Champion of Justice award. He spoke about the moratorium on the death penalty, the Commission he appointed to study the Illinois death penalty system and the 85 reforms it recommended, none of which have been implemented by the Illinois legislature, and the clemency hearings held the last two weeks on the 147 or so death row prisoners. He expressed empathy for the victims' families, said he would meet with them if asked, and said he cannot send someone who might have been wrongfully convicted to the execution chamber.

Ryan praised and credited NACDL vice-president Barry Scheck several times. He was very non-pretentious. He brought his wife, they both ate lunch with us. He told us he was a pharmacist before going into elected office, and described the small town where he has lived for a very long time.

No, Ryan is not going to grant blanket clemency to all of the inmates. He is going to decide on a case by case basis. And he said he'll take his time in deciding. He has about 75 days left. When he was done, we all gave him a rousing standing ovation.

Friday night, about 15 of us went to see Bob Dylan. We had second row seats in the center, right in front of Dylan. He was great. If you want to see what he's been playing in every city, go to BobDylan.com. The playlist for every concert is up on the site. He opened with Maggie's Farm, did Tombstone Blues, Just Like a Woman, Lay Lady Lay, the Stones' Brown Sugar, Blowing in the Wind and many more. He switched between keyboard, guitars and harmonica. We could understand his words. We got out about 11, and then all went to Gibson's for dinner, great steaks, till about 1:30 am. (Too late to start blogging or updating the news).

Saturday was our board meeting. We served on the board of Directors the past six years and this year we were elected an Officer (Secretary) of NACDL . It's a lot of work since there are 12,000 direct members and 25,000 affiliate members.

This morning we had two interesting and topical speakers:

The first was James Harrington, lawyer for the defendant in the Buffalo Six case who was granted bail (and is still trying to post it). He said that although he could understand the government's concern because Lackawanna is close to a power plant near Niagra Falls, there is not much evidence against the six.

Harrington criticized the magistrate judge's bail ruling, saying it was wrong on the law, took the worst possible view of the facts, and that it was not a courageous opinion but one that was intellectually dishonest.

The next speaker was Donna Newman, co-counsel for suspected "dirty bomb" defendant Jose Padilla. She recounted all of the events from the day of Padilla's arrest and was highly critical of the Government's actions in the case.

She said the affidavit for the Complaint filed in federal court against Padilla is similar to the one filed for his arrest--it says the Government received information from 2 confidential informants. She said one of the informants has provided false information to the authorities in the past, and the second has since recanted his statements. Newman says there is no probable cause to detain Padilla as there is no probable cause he committed any crime. Seven briefs have been filed by each side in the case.

We ended around 1pm, and that's the update for now. We will check the news later and resume regular posting tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

Illinois Governor George Ryan is the featured lunch speaker at the meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers at the Drake Hotel in Chicago--at noon. We'll be attending and will report our comments later.

We did get some more info on the Arkansas case involving Wayne Dumond and Huckabee and will fill you in later on that too.

We didn't get to update the news on the left today, so check our media page on the top right for links where you read the sources directly and we'll be back either later tonight or tomorrow.

Instapundit makes some very valid points on the jury nullification measure confronting voters next week in South Dakota:

"I'VE MENTIONED SOUTH DAKOTA'S PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT ON JURY NULLIFICATION BEFORE, but here's an article by Stephanie Simon in the Los Angeles Times on the subject. I think that this is the most telling passage:"

"Opponents, meanwhile, have been afraid to do much public campaigning. Lawyers have debated the amendment at forums across the state—including one here last week at the University of South Dakota law school. They worry that advertising might backfire. Voters tend to be suspicious of attorneys—so they might reason that if the state bar opposes Amendment A, it must be good."

"With all due respect to my own profession, this states a serious problem. The article is pretty balanced overall, but omits the single biggest issue in my opinion: people get exercised at the idea of giving a jury unreviewable discretion to let someone go when they've violated the law, but police and prosecutors do that all the time. The question is, is there any reason to trust juries less? I haven't seen anyone address that, much less answer it satisfactorily. And given that the criminal law has become so complex and unpredictable that prosecutors can almost always find something to charge someone with, there's a lot of unsupervised discretion on that end, too. It only seems fair to give juries authority to police this exercise of prosecutorial discretion, especially as courts are basically unwilling to do so."

"The answer the legal establishment gives to charges that prosecutors might misbehave is basically: "trust us." But they don't trust juries, and they haven't given any very persuasive reasons why they're more trustworthy than juries are. And there are some good institutional reasons to suggest that they're less so. For more on this, you can read my review of Clay Conrad's book, here".

We hope South Dakotans pass the law recognizing the right of juries to return a verdict based upon their sense that the law at issue is not one for which punishment should be imposed.

If you are a juror or a close friend or relative of a juror in the Winona Ryder jury trial, Do Not Read This. Guilt or innocence should be decided solely on evidence presented in the courtroom, not on recaps of the evidence or opinions posted on the Internet:

Yesterday was a good day for Winona Ryder's defense, particularly when Saks security guard Kenneth Evans denied that he had told anyone he was "going to nail" Winona and "get her one way or another."

Evans has been the chief prosecution witness, testifying for three days. He's been the one leading the jury through the videotape, frame by frame. During cross-examination by Ryder's lawyer Mark Geragos, he denied discussing the case with a co-worker shortly after Ryder's arrest last year.

Mark asked him if during a lunch meeting with a male colleague, "did you have a discussion in which you said 'I am going to nail her'?"

Mr Evans replied: "Absolutely not."

Mr Geragos: "Did you tell him you were going to get her one way or another?"

Mr Evans: "Absolutely not."

What that tells us is that Geragos has the colleague on his witness list and will use him during the defense case to attack the guard's credibility. Juries are usually instructed that if they find part of a witness' testimony to be false, they may choose to disregard all of that witness' testimony. Should any juror choose to disregard Evans' entire testimony, there might not be enough evidence to convict her beyond a reasonable doubt. Jury nullification--a not guilty verdict because the jury believes the prosecution is being unfair to Ryder because of her celebrity, would not even be necessary. Someone like juror Peter Guber could simply say, the guard lied about something big -- his intention to get Ryder at any cost -- and I am going to strike from my consideration all of his testimony, including what he said during his walk-through of the video tape with the jury.

We think this trial is a no lose proposition for Ryder. We doubt the judge would jail her if convicted. The prosecution refused to offer her a misdemeanor before trial. So why not go to trial? There is no downside for her. Either she will be acquitted and have no felony on her record or she will be convicted and have a felony but not go to jail --the same as if she had accepted a plea bargain.

Earlier, it emerged that Mr Evans had a personal file on Ryder, including a Polaroid photo taken of her after she was apprehended in Saks and newspaper clippings relating to the case. He didn't turn this file over to the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office as he was required to do. Why would a guard keep a private file on Ms. Ryder unless he was obsessed either with her or with "nailing her?"

It really makes us angry to think of the state of California prosecuting an actress for allegedly stealing $6,000 from a luxury store when Kenneth Lay and his ilk haven't been charged with anything and allegedly stole millions or billions from the American people.

Prosecutors are supposed to care about justice, not winning. They are usually elected. If a DA is running for office in your district Nov. 5, check them out before hand, make sure you know who you are voting for. If we lived in Beverly Hills, we'd be picketing the DA's office. Come to think of it, we're sorry we didn't pick up one of those "Free Winona" tee shirts when we were at the trial Monday.