In Senate Cash Rolls In, the Rocky Mountain News updates the contributions and expenditures in the Strickland-Allard Race.

"Democrat Strickland edged out Allard, the incumbent Republican, in fund raising during the first half of October, $316,000 to $286,000. But Allard outspent Strickland $434,000 to $353,000. The Allard campaign spent about $300,000 on media, while Strickland spent about $160,000. Allard had $753,000 in the bank as of Oct. 16, while Strickland had $124,000, the filings said."

"The majority of Allard's donations came from political action committees, mostly business and political groups. Strickland took in a majority of his money from individuals, many of whom identified themselves as attorneys."

Both candidates plan a big media blitz from now till election day. Give to Strickland.

Jeremy Morse, the Inglewood (Los Angeles) police officer who was captured on videotape "slamming a handcuffed teenager against a car last summer" has had his internal review hearing , and on October 14, was dismissed from the department. Morse has also been charged by grand jury indictment.

Some of our prior coverage is here , here and here.

Conscience of a Liberal
by Paul Wellstone

The first part of the book explains Wellstone's unlikely ascension to the Senate in 1990 after a 21 year career teaching political science at Carleton College.

The bulk of The Conscience of a Liberal lays out Wellstone's political agenda, one that included universal health care, reversing welfare reforms, pre-kindergarten education, raising the minimum wage, and campaign-finance reform.

Wellstone concludes with a call for leadership: "This is not a conservative America.... There is a huge leadership void in this country that the Democratic Party, emboldened by political courage and a commitment to the issues that made our party great, can fill."

Bill Bradley said "Read this book and feel thankful that there is a man such as Paul Wellstone in the service of our country."

Senator Paul Wellstone
1944 - 2002
Rest in Peace.

We didn't disappear--we're in Minneapolis about to give a talk to criminal defense lawyers on....Representing the Despised Defendant in the Post-9/11 World. Could anything be more apt today given yesterday's arrests in the sniper case?

We're also over at Altercation today, guest-hosting Slacker Friday. Hope you enjoy it, Eric's back Monday. We'll be back here tonight. And on Fox News discussing the Sniper arrests Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET.

As if there weren't enough to discredit the convictions of the five youths convicted of raping the Central Park Jogger in 1989, Jim Dwyer writing for the New York Times had more this week, in Hair Evidence in Jogger Case Is Discredited

"Contrary to arguments made by a prosecutor at two trials in 1990, four strands of hair were never "matched" to any of the Harlem teenagers accused of beating and raping a jogger in Central Park, a former police scientist said this week."

"The hairs, attributed to the victim and recovered from the clothing of two suspects, were the only pieces of physical evidence offered by prosecutors directly linking any of the teenagers to the crime. The hairs were also cited by the prosecution as a way for the jury to know that the videotaped confessions of the teenagers were reliable."

"Nicholas Petraco, who examined the hairs when he worked in the Police Department's criminalistics division and testified at the trials, said the technique for hair examination in 1990 was not powerful enough to tie anyone to the crime with certainty."

"You can't say `match,' " Mr. Petraco said. "It's impossible. You could never say it `matched.' It's ridiculous."

"At most, Mr. Petraco said, the hairs could be described as "consistent with and similar to" those of the defendants and the victim. The reason he used those words when he testified at the two trials, he said, was to make sure that the jurors and lawyers realized it was entirely possible for the hair to have come from other people."

Petrarco is right. Microscopic hair comparision, which is all that was available in 1990, cannot identify two hairs as the same. They can only say that two hairs have similar characteristics, but they can't say the hairs "match."

Now we have DNA hair testing that can accurately test hairs. It's done through a mitochondrial DNA test which examines the DNA in the hair shaft. It can eliminate suspects as being the source of a strand of hair.

Earlier this year, the hair attributed as being similar to one of the youths, Keven Richardson, was found definitively not to have been his. Nor did it link to any of the other convicted youths.

During his trial testimony, Petrarcho was careful to avoid describing the hair as coming from Kevin Richardson. Not so Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer.

In her closing arguments, she used emphatic language to assert that hair found on a defendant, Kevin Richardson, had been "matched" and vouched for the reliability of the vigorously contested confessions. "Perhaps the most telling of all," Ms. Lederer said, "is the hair that was found on Kevin Richardson's clothes."

She referred the jurors to the testimony of Mr. Petraco, the expert witness called by the prosecution. But in parts of her recitation, his cautious phrasing vanished. "He found on Kevin Richardson's underpants a hair that matched the head hair of" the victim, Ms. Lederer told the jurors. "And there was a second hair on the T-shirt that matched" the victim's pubic hair. She continued: "There was yet a third hair on his jeans, on his blue jeans, that was consistent with and similar to" hair from the victim's head."

"I submit to you that Kevin Richardson's clothing got those hairs when he was with" the victim, Ms. Lederer said. "And it was because he was touching her, because he came in contact with her and with her clothes and when he was on top of her and around her, that's how he got her hair on his clothing."

In other words, D.A. Elizabeth Lederer mistated the evidence.

Law enforcement officials now believe that the hair evidence alone will warrant a new trial. DA Morganthaw has said "state law requires that a verdict be overturned if it seems that newly discovered evidence would have resulted in a different verdict."

In case you were wondering what the blogs covering the upcoming elections were going to do after the November 5 elections, here is Daily Kos's plan:

"After the election I will also be launching a collaborative blog called the Political State Report, featuring "correspondents" writing about political developments in their home states. My goal is to get writers from both the left and the right to cover all 50 states. If you might be interested in participating, please let me know."

The lawyer for the Saudi prisoners at Guantanamo Bay said today that 200 Saudi prisoners will be released.

"The lawyer for Saudi prisoners held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay said Wednesday some 200 Saudi inmates will be released soon for lack of evidence linking them to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida network."

Lawyer Najib Noaimi said that a total of 300 inmates are scheduled to be released, the majority of whom are teachers and social workers in Afganistan. The Government has said a total of 600 prisoners have been held at Guantanamo.

Jeb Bush and his wife Columba finally visited their daughter Noelle in jail.

"Gov. Jeb Bush and wife Columba, in Orlando for Tuesday's gubernatorial debate, visited their daughter, Noelle, at the Orange County Jail. The Bushes spent about 15 minutes with Noelle, 25, who was ordered to spend 10 days in jail last week by an Orange County Circuit judge for violating the terms of her drug-treatment program by possessing crack cocaine. She has been undergoing treatment at the Center for Drug-Free Living."

Is Noelle getting special treatment in jail? You bet, but it's harsher, not more privileged treatment:

"Noelle Bush is being held in protective custody, separate from the general population. Officials said that is the policy for high-profile inmates.The 8-by-9-foot cell includes a metal bed, mattress, sink, battery-operated TV and commode."

It's too bad her father didn't get to see her "protective custody" cell. Or have to spend even four hours alone in it--with the door locked. That might have impressed upon him the absurdity of putting non-violent drug offenders in jail.

Treatment does work, but rarely the first time. Relapses are the norm. We once put a psychologist treating cocaine dependent persons on the stand in a probation revocation proceeding for a client with a dirty ua. We asked her how many cocaine users she had counseled in long term treatment programs. She said 500. We asked how many of them relapsed during the course of the program. She said 500.

(Link to article found on Thinking It Through.)

Maureen Dowd writes about new LA Police Chief-designee William Bratton today in From Vertical to Horizontal. Bratton's swearing-in ceremony is Monday in Los Angeles. We'll be there, and we'll share our impressions with you as soon as we get back to a computer.

Dowd writes:

"As police commissioner of New York City in the mid-90's, Mr. Bratton made the cover of Time for helping Mayor Rudy Giuliani tame the untamable New York, from squeegee guys to wilding thugs. But Rudy, loath to share top billing, forced his brassy chief out."

"Mr. Giuliani thought Mr. Bratton was living too large, hanging out at Elaine's, getting a lot of money for a memoir, flying on private planes, engaging in serial marriages. But given Rudy's subsequent transformation from puritanical to operatic, with Judy Nathan, memoir riches and his own triumphant Time cover, Mr. Bratton may have just been ahead of his time in the Giuliani administration. "There's a certain irony there," Mr. Bratton says dryly."

"Mr. Bratton, who describes himself as "a progressive....says he just wants to focus on moving from "vertical" crime-fighting to "horizontal," and find "new prescriptions" to counter fresh threats: "I would like the opportunity to get the patient through radiation and chemo and into rehab and then into intensive care."

Well said, Bill.

Lisa English over at Ruminate This has some excellent reasons for supporting Bill McBride against Jeb Bush for Governor of Florida. At this late date, supporting means contributing money as well as casting votes--the final tv ad blitz is about to begin and we know those ads cost a bunch.

Political Wire "invited some of the best political weblogs to be part of a new Political Wire feature called Blog Scan. This is one of the fastest ways to see what the political blogosphere is writing about."

TalkLeft is proud to be included in a group that includes such politically astute bloggers as Daily Kos and MyDD. Thanks to Taegan Goddard for setting this up. We are going to add it to our blogroll.

Could the Moussaoui trial get derailed because of the unavailability of captured Al Qaeda members who Moussaoui might want to call as defense witnesses? In U.S. Sees Threat to Terror Trial, published in today's New York Times, the answer according to Government officials and legal experts is "quite possibly."

Moussaoui has a Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him and to seek out and call witnesses on his own behalf. Ramzi Binalshibh, captured in Pakistan, has been in U.S. military custody since September where he continues to be interrogated.

"The officials said defense lawyers acting on Mr. Moussaoui's behalf were demanding access to the captured terrorists for interviews and trial testimony, notably Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was arrested in Pakistan last month. Mr. bin al-Shibh, a 30-year-old Yemeni man, has been described by the United States as a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the officials said the government was refusing access on national security grounds."

"That has provided the court-appointed defense team with a powerful legal argument that Mr. Moussaoui and other Qaeda defendants cannot receive a fair trial, since they are being deprived of their constitutional right to interview witnesses whose testimony might demonstrate their innocence."

"The officials said the issue had been the subject of secret hearings and a flurry of secret court filings in recent weeks in the Alexandria courthouse, where Judge Leonie M. Brinkema has sealed the record on the issue out of concern that publicity could lead to the inadvertent release of classified information."

Moussaoui's Indictment suggests that Binalshibh should have extensive knowledge about Moussaoui's involvement or lack of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The indictment identifies Mr. bin al-Shibh repeatedly, both by his real name and a code name, Ahab Sabet, and charges that he was a key member of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Specifically, the indictment says that Mr. bin al-Shibh wired $14,000 to Mr. Moussaoui from Germany in August 2001."

"The law enforcement officials said the controversy about the witnesses was almost certainly a factor in Judge Brinkema's decision last month to delay Mr. Moussaoui's trial by nearly six months, to next June. In her order, she referred, somewhat cryptically, to "compelling reasons justifying an extensive continuance of pretrial and trial proceedings."

We predicted this exact issue would arise back on September 18. Our other detailed discussions of the effect of Binalshibh's capture on the Moussaoui case are here and here.

As we said in some of our earlier posts, another option for the Government is to charge Binalshibh in federal court though a Superseding Indictment against Moussaoui that adds Binalshibh as a co-conspirator in the September 11 attacks. Since Binalshibh would have a 5th Amendment right to remain silent, Moussoui would not have the right to call him as a witness at a joint trial.

In order for Moussaoui to call Binalshibh as a witness if Binalshibh were charged as a co-conspirator in the same case, Moussaoui would have to move for a separate trial, and would have to make a compelling showing that Binalshibh had information that would exculpate Moussaoui. Moussoui would have to submit an affidavit from Binalshibh stating that not only did Binalshibh have such information but that he was willing to testify to it at a separate trial. If Binashibh were charged in federal court, he would have lawyers appointed to represent him. We think it's unlikely Binalshibh's lawyers would allow him to provide such an affidavit for Moussaoui.

We like this option because it means Binalshibh would not become the subject of a trial by secret military tribunal and it would result in his being provided with counsel and a trial that is open to the public.