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.

Our reading suggestions for the rest of the day:

We highly recommend Avedon Carol on war stuff over at The Sideshow, Jim Capozzola's Rittenhouse Review tribute to Paul Wellstone, and Atrios and Lisa English's Ruminate This on just about everything.

Eric at The Hamster quotes the best of the progressive web today (as he does everyday), especially Ralph Neas on the Bush judicial nominees, Eric Alterman who is back from Europe, and Joe Conasen. My DD is doing a great job with election coverage and Skippy has the links to the pros and cons on ballistic fingerprinting.

Congrats to Daily Kos who has made his site meter public and had over 4,000 hits yesterday, and has started a second weblog chronicling his wife's pregnancy.

A plea from Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck for donations of money and frequent flier miles to Send an Exoneree to Chicago, Help Save a Life:

"This is a fundraising plea for a tax deductible contribution you'll never regret -- help sponsor a trip to Chicago, using frequent flier miles or traditional money, by someone who was innocent but wrongly sentenced to death. On December 15th as many as 50 death row exonerees will assemble in Chicago in what will undoubtably be the most important event surrounding Illinois Governor George Ryan's decision as to whether or not to grant clemency to the nearly 160 people currently on the state's death row before he leaves office in January. We need your help! "

"As you know, the Governor declared a moratorium on IL's death penalty several years ago after 13 innocent persons who had been sentenced to death were exonerated, a total that exceeded the number of executions (12) in the state to date. Faced with this shocking error rate and his own crisis of conscience, Gov. Ryan not only declared a statewide moratorium on the death penalty, but convened a blue-ribbon commission of notables from across the political spectrum to study the flaws in Illinois' system and ensure that no innocent person would ever again be sentenced to death. The majority of the Commission stopped short of calling for an outright end to the death penalty, but recommended 86 comprehensive, meaningful reforms based on nearly two years of review of the system's flaws. Months later, however, the State Legislature has yet to act on these recommendations (and has, in fact, rejected many of the most fundamental ones). Governor Ryan's imminent departure from office thus presents what may be the final opp ortunity to obtain meaningful results from the Commission's painstaking work and his own courage in taking on this difficult issue. It also affords an unprecedented opportunity to save the lives of almost 160 people -- some of whom are likely innocent, and far greater numbers of whom were victims of grossly unfair trials and sentencing. "

"A coalition of groups in Illinois are about to launch a two-month campaign to remind the public about the arbitrariness and unfairness of the death penalty in system in Illinois that led to the moratorium in the first place. This message has been largely buried in recent weeks during public clemency hearings, which, as expected, have focused on the heartrending expressions of grief by members of the victims' families who testified and the horrible details of many of the underlying crimes. Once those hearings conclude, however, we hope and expect that the public may once again become receptive to the notion that IL's flawed death penalty system has also exacted a terrible human cost on others, including the families of those who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, and that deciding to commute existing death sentences to life without is the best way to ensure that both fairness and justice are achieved. It is crucial that this message be disseminated and received as widely as possible in th e coming months -- not only to maximize the chances that the Governor will take meaningful action, but to prevent a public backlash on the issue of death penalty reform if and when he does so."

The most important single event in this upcoming campaign will be a historic gathering of innocent men and women who have been released from death row. The goal is to bring as many as 50 of the nation's 102 death row exonerees to Chicago on the weekend of December 15th, for two days of events that will both honor and allow them to speak out in favor of meaningful action by the Governor. As you may recall, the first such Conference on Wrongful Conviction and the Death Penalty was held in Chicago in 1998, and helped set the stage for the IL moratorium.

"Bringing the exonerees to Chicago will be not only the most crucial, but also the most expensive piece of the IL campaign. Organizers have estimated that it will cost an average of $1250 for each exoneree's travel, lodging, and expenses (while some are in major cities or in-state, others live in remote areas and/or need a companion's assistance to travel). As the campaign is already operating on a shoestring budget, this event will be difficult, if not impossible, to pull off without the generous support of others."

"Contributions in any amount will be welcomed to support an exoneree to attend the 2nd National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty. The recipient is the Illinois Death Penalty Education Project, a 501©(3). The address is 850 N. Lake Shore Drive, 4th Floor, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Contributions will be deductible for federal income tax purposes to the full extent allowed by law."

"Please make out checks, frequent flier miles, etc. to the Illinois Death Penalty Education Project c/o NACDL, Attn: Steven Frazier, 1150 18th St. NW #950, Washington DC 20036."

Please help spread the word.

A new article in the Nov/Dec issue of Mother Jones titled Lie Detector Roulette takes on the question of why, if polygraphs are unreliable, government employees are subjected to them?

The article highlights the hypocrisy of government officials over their use:

"Some of those who have promoted polygraphs in the past have changed their tune when faced with the prospect of taking a lie detector test themselves. In August, several members of the House and Senate intelligence committees refused to submit to polygraphs as part of an FBI investigation of who leaked classified information regarding the September 11 attacks. "I don't know who among us would take a lie detector test," says Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). "They're not even admissible in court." Shelby's reticence was an about-face from his stance two years ago, when he spearheaded the expansion of the Department of Energy's polygraph program as the only effective way of tracking down moles."

"Whether the government will continue to have faith in the polygraph depends largely on an upcoming report from the National Academy of Sciences, which is intended to be the definitive evaluation of the test's validity as a screening tool. If the academy echoes other studies that have found polygraphs unreliable, it could lead to a scaling back of lie detectors."

We'll be interested in the report as well. As far as we're concerned, polygraphs are as reliable as voodoo. Their primary usefulness to law enforcement occurs during the pre-test interview process in which they convince people to confess before taking the test. The F.B.I. is famous for this.

We like Matt Yglesias' definition of a "chickenhawk" :

"One shouldn't advocate that your country go fight a war that you're not willing to fight in. If you told me, for example, that in order to invade Iraq successfully we were going to need to implement a draft and send fine young men such as Matthew Yglesias into combat, you can bet I'd start using my newfound free time to organize anti-war rallies. It's obviously a little hard to apply this line of thought to people outside a very narrow age-range, but since starting sometime in the early 1960s our country fought a very, very long war in Vietnam, we have a lot of historical examples of people's behavior we can look at. And we can see that Bush, Cheney, and many others in his administration failed it. They're "chickenhawks" because they supported that war, just not enough to actually go fight in it. That behavior, a willingness to sacrifice the lives of others for goals you recognize as not worth risking your own life over, is indicative of a reckless and immoral attitude toward war and peace in general, and that is a very legitimate issue to raise in this whole Iraq debate."

Political Wire reports today that Third Party Candidates May Tip Balance In Senate. The Strickland/Allard race in Colorado is one that could be affected. The Wire quotes the Wall Street Journal as reporting:

"The development is most notable in Colorado and Missouri." In Colorado, Rick Stanley is running as a Libertarian and "pulling crucial votes away from incumbent Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican." In Missouri, Daniel Romano is running as a Green and "is vying for liberal votes with Democratic Sen. Jean Carnahan." Recent polls "show the races in both states are very tight, so the ebb and flow of a few thousand votes could be pivotal -- with national implications, since Democrats are defending a one-seat majority in the Senate and contests in five states are too close to call."

Mark Leno, who serves on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is the author of California's Prop S, to be voted on by the public on November 5, asks for voters to approve the measure in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Prop. S -- Medical pot, again

"Unfortunately, our federal government, through the Drug Enforcement Agency, has decided to stand between our most vulnerable, ill citizens and their physician-recommended medicine by shutting down cannabis clubs and arresting activists attempting to comply with our voter-approved law. It is interesting to note that national polls consistently reveal that at least 70 percent of Americans disapprove of the DEA's actions as they support the medical use of cannabis. "

"If the federal government continues to assault, intimidate and close our community-based cannabis clubs, leaving many unable to access their medicine, I believe that we must have an alternative distribution network prepared to serve their needs. That is why I have authored Proposition S on Tuesday's ballot. It asks voters if, in light of the DEA's continued policy, we should explore creating a program whereby the city of San Francisco grows and distributes cannabis so that patients can exercise their rights under Proposition 215."

"...here's an issue both the left and the right can embrace: For the very same reasons overnment should stay out of our bedrooms, it should also stay out of our medicine cabinets. Please join me in supporting Proposition S."

The President has a new plan to speed judicial confirmations.

"President Bush yesterday laid out an accelerated method for getting the judges he wants onto the federal bench, brushing aside longstanding traditions by trying to fill vacancies before they occur and demanding that the full Senate vote on all nominees."

"Bush said his plan would correct "a lousy record" in which vacancies have mounted and nominees have languished as the selection of judges has become highly politicized. The proposal gives him new ammunition on a favorite issue for conservatives as he begins a five-day campaign swing before Tuesday's elections.The Democrats who control the Senate are unlikely to approve such a plan, but for Bush, that is largely beside the point."

"Republican officials said the timing was designed to dramatize the stakes going into the elections, when just a few races will decide whether Democrats keep their majority. The strategy, drafting proposals for major changes in the way judges are chosen without consulting senators of either political party, suggested an eagerness by the White House to expand its powers rather than to broker compromise on a delicate issue."