ABC News Online is featuring an original report today posing the question Is Torture a Tool in the War on Terror?

Writer Peter Chang examines both whether the War on Terror has changed attitudes on using torture and the reactions to the U.S. refusal to sign the amendment to the U.N. treaty against torture.

Our refusal to approve the amendment is problematic because prisoners are subject to the law of the country in which they are detained which could result in harsher treatment for them than would be allowed under U.S. law.

The ABA today officially passed a resolution opposing the 9/11 Secret Detentions.

The resolution "opposed incommunicado detention of foreign nationals in undisclosed locations by the Immigration and Naturalization Service" and urged that the detainees names be disclosed and they be given immediate access to lawyers and family members.

In urging the protection of the constitutional and legal rights of these detainees, the ABA recommended the following:

"-- disclosing their names, whereabouts and charges against the detainees, and assuring them access to lawyers and family members.

-- promptly charging detainees or releasing them when charges are not brought.

-- providing prompt custody hearings before immigration judges to determine detention and bond issues, with the opportunity for appellate review.

-- conducting public hearings on whether to deport a detainee, except when the individual's safety might be threatened or a judge finds information likely to be disclosed that would compromise national security.

-- permitting independent agencies to visit the detention centers and to meet privately with detainees to monitor compliance."

Last Friday, the group released its report on the 9/11 detainees written by the ABA Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants. The task force, chaired by Miami lawyer Neal Sonnett, included military law experts, prosecutors, judges and defense counsel.

The report calls for detained citizens to have the right to counsel and judicial review of their cases. The report did not address the rights of foreign nationals who are detained as combatants.

Former First Lady Roslyn Carter has publicly called for a moratorium on executions.

Speaking at the American Bar Association annual meeting in D.C., Mrs. Carter said "she was disturbed by the number of mentally ill, young, minority and poorly represented defendants sent to death row."

''Executing mentally ill people does not make sense as a deterrence, and it undermines the integrity and fairness of our system of justice...''

She also said she was "appalled at a recent study's finding that almost seven of every 10 cases ending in death sentences contained 'serious reversible error.' "

Mrs. Carter endorsed both the Innocence Protection Act and the Moratorium on Federal Executions bill now pending before Congress.

She informed the audience that "blacks convicted of killing whites are sentenced to death 22 times more often than blacks who kill blacks, and more than seven times the rate of whites who kill blacks."

While she praised the recent Supreme Court decision banning execution of the mentally retarded, she said we need to go further by extending the ban to the mentally ill and juveniles.

''It should be an embarrassment to every American that we execute children,'' she said. ''The United States is the only country in the industrialized world that still executes anyone, and executing children puts us in the company of Somalia --- only Somalia.''

Mrs. Carter said that "nearly 80 offenders who were under 18 at the time of their convictions sit on death row --- the highest number since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. "

Thank you, Mrs. Carter.

First Nevada, now Arizona. Both will allow voters in November to decide whether to approve an initiative decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana .

In Arizona, the proposal calls for a $250 fine and no jail time for possessing up to two ounces of pot. The fine can be waived by attending a drug education class. More details.

The Nevada proposal would end arrests and jail terms for those who possess up to three ounces of marijuana.

To make a donation to help with tv campaigns supporting the Nevada proposal, visit Nevada for Responsible Law Enforcement.

The Government must think pretty highly of the American Bar Association. It has chosen the ABA annual meeting at least twice this week to warn of coming Administration changes in corporate accountability.

Today, SEC Chief Harvey Pitt told the assembled lawyers to be careful.

Pitt issued a warning to corporate lawyers that "they will be held to account for business wrongdoing more than ever before under new laws adopted amid a flood of Wall Street scandals."

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson told ABA Criminal Justice Section Council members that the Justice Department's new policies would include indicting the corporations as entities, as well as the individual wrongdoers.

Today SEC Chief Harvey Pitt adds corporate lawyers to the list of of potential indictees.

If the saying is true that good or bad things happen in threes, here's our bet for the next Government warning to lawyers: If your corporate client does wrong, we're coming after your fees as illegal proceeds of the wrongdoing, just like we did with the drug dealers.

And before non-lawyers start cheering at the thought, consider this friendly warning: If the corporations' funds for legal fees are frozen or forfeited by the Government, the indicted corporations, their corporate lawyers and their employees will all be declared indigent and the Government, meaning the taxpayer, will end up footing the bill for everyone's legal fees.

We'll be glad when this ABA meeting is over.

Interesting article today on a new study that finding that better medical care decreases the murder rate

"Improvements in emergency care over the past 40 years have helped to dramatically lower the death rate among assault victims by nearly 70 percent and, in the process, decrease the nation's murder rate."

"People who would have ended up in morgues 20 years ago are now simply treated and released by a hospital, often in a matter of a few days said Anthony R. Harris, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who headed the statistical study with Harvard Medical School that looked at crime data from 1960 to 1999."

Prison terms for murder are significantly higher than those for attempted murder, assault with intent to kill, etc.

In the long run, this is good economic news. It costs more to imprison someone for life, especially without, than it does for a term of say 20 years. And when the inmates get old, we have to foot the bill for their increasing medical costs.

The POPS project is part of a national effort to focus on elderly prisoners, a growing segment of the U.S. prison population. The project addresses the special problems of these prisoners, as well as the concerns that the 'graying' of America's prisons pose for the nation in the future, through legislative reform measures and advocating for qualified older prisoners.

POPS legislation has been adopted in a number of states, and POPS has successfully petitioned boards for the release of elderly prisoners who have gone on to lead productive lives within the community. The programs are usually run through law school clinics, e.g., those at George Washington and University of Michigan.

No POPSe has ever committed a recidivist act.

A new poll finds that Americans believe that politics and money have eroded trust in the judiciary

Poll results include: "Nearly three out of four citizens are concerned about the fairness and impartiality of elected judges who raise money to finance their campaigns."

and

"Nearly two out of three Americans say they would have more confidence in elected judges without political ties, according to the poll consisting of 1,040 telephone interviews."

The poll was commissioned by the American Bar Association which is still meeting in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Steven Hatfill Sunday denied being involved in the Anthrax Plot.

Last June he agreed to let FBI agents search his home. They promised him it would be secret. Today he faced news cameras as he angrily denounced the investigation and the charges.

"Within minutes of my signing the release to have my residence and property searched, television cameras, satellite TV trucks, overhead helicopters, were all swarming around my apartment lot," he said.

The F.B.I.'s response? "The F.B.I. does not alert the news media to the service of search warrants."

Maybe they don't do media alerts as a matter of course, but did they do it this time? Or did they leak it to a non-media source knowing or not caring it would subsequently reach the media? Or was it a rogue agent who leaked on his own?

Whichever way you slice and dice it, the FBI has some major explaining to do.

We admire Hatfield's spunk, particularly when he said:

"I acknowledge the right of the authorities and the press to satisfy themselves as to whether I am the anthrax mailer. This does not, however, give them the right to smear me and gratuitously make a wasteland of my life in the process. I will not be railroaded."

This is eerily reminiscent of Richard Jewell. Hatfield has already lost his job. If he's exonerated, you can bet he'll sue for big bucks. And we doubt the FBI will be saved by cover-your-ass statements like Hatfield is a "person of interest," not a suspect.

Update: Tapped today reminds us of Laura Rozen's American Prospect article from June 27, "Who is Steven Hatfill?"

Law Professor Jonathan Turley supports San Francisco's attempt to grow its own pot. Not because he cares about pot, or its medicinal uses for the terminally ill, but because:

"Whatever societal risks are presented by terminally ill patients getting stoned, they pale in comparison with the political risks of yielding to federal authority in this area. Of course, it may be too much to hope that there is more than mere opportunism in the recent embrace of federalism. "

We agree, although we care more about the need for marijuana to be made available to those who could benefit from its medicinal use.

Dianne Davenport is a detainee at the Baltimore City Detention Center for Women. She has been there for eleven months, contracted TB and that's the least of the problems. Here is her account as published yesterday in the Baltimore Sun--these women are living a nightmare and it is truly an abomination that we treat human beings this way.

As promised, here's what Larry Thompson, Deputy Attorney General, or "CEO of the Justice Department" as he referred to himself, said today at the ABA Criminal Justice Section Council Luncheon where he was the keynote speaker.

He addressed two topics: the detention of enemy combatants and corporate fraud. As to the first, it was pretty standard with some familiar buzz lines:

"The Constitution is not a suicide pact" and

"We will think outside the box. We will not think outside the Constitution."

His message was short: Enemy combatants who take up arms against America, including those who are U.S. citizens, are not entitled to enter the criminal justice and court systems. He analogized them to the famous WWII case of a few Germans captured here who were treated as enemy combatants. He said, "Their execution served a necessary purpose" in fighting WWII.

It should be noted that the Justice Department position is directly opposite that of the ABA. ABA President Robert Hirshon commissioned the ABA Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants. The task force, chaired by Miami lawyer Neal Sonnett, included military law experts, prosecutors, judges and defense counsel. Here is the report, jsut released yesterday.

In a nutshell, the report calls for detained citizens to have the right to counsel and judicial review of their cases. The report did not address the rights of foreign nationals who are detained as combatants.

In his remarks yesterday, ABA President Hirshon said, "We accept the importance of intelligence gathering, we need it, but that doesn't mean you suspend the Constitution."

Back to Larry Thompson, who moved on to discussing corporate fraud. Thompson, who has extensive prosecutorial and defense experience in corporate fraud cases and is widely considered to be fair, smart and dedicated, an opinion shared by TalkLeft, has been named by President Bush to head up the new Corporate Fraud task force.

The fraud task force is an inter-agency task force that includes the DOJ, Treasury Dept., SEC, and other agencies. The task force will marshal law-enforcement resources.

Thompson said this means that we will be seeing a lot of indictments of the corporations themselves--charged as entities rather than indictments of just the employees. It won't be automatice that an employee's wrongdoing will lead to the indictment of the corporation, but it will be evaluated in every case.

Justice will use a seven factor analysis to determine whether to charge the coporations. We couldn't write as fast as he rattled them off, so here's those we did get: the corporation's history of wrongdoing; its response to learning of wrongdoing within the corporation, meaning what controls did they set in place to ensure it didn't happen again; the level within the corporation at which the fraud existed (how high up it was); and the pervasiveness of the behavior.

Only by prosecuting the corporations themselves, Thompson said, can there be systemic reform. This is because civil sanctions don't work and are not an effective deterrent. Corporations consider the loss of money to be a routine cost of doing business.

He urged lawyers to remember that when they represent a corporation, their client is not the managment team or individuals who retained them but the corporation itself, which means the shareholders and investors.

He was warmly received, particularly by defense lawyers in the group who have known and worked with him when he was in private practice. For the record, yes we know that some have alleged he has a conflict in leading the corporate task force because the law firm he practiced with and of which he was a partner represented some of the corporations who might be looked at. We are confident that Thompson knows what a conflict is and would have been the first to decline the position if he had an actual conflict.

After Thompson's speech we went over to the exhibition hall to see what the legal service providers were offering and what freebies they were giving away. As usual, the best of the bunch was Lexis-Nexis and Martindale Hubbell. In addition to the goodies they gave away, they had installed ten or more computers in the center of the room so the lawyers could check their email and surf the internet. They also provided the buses that ran all day long shuttling lawyers between the various hotels hosting different section meetings.

As promised, we are reporting live from Washington where the ABA annual meeting is focusing on terrorism issues.

First, the important stuff. The heat wave has gone and it's pleasant enough to walk everywhere. Dulles was not crowded.

Our Bosnian driver was very well-versed in the trials of the moment. His thoughts: The prosecution has not met its burden in the Westerfield/Van Dam case--spot of blood not withstanding, but Westerfield may lose because he comes across too cold; Chandra Levy knew her killer (and according to our driver, so do we. For the record, we disagree-- being a sleazeball doesn't make you a murderer); the death penalty must go because of the number of innocent people sent to death row, without exception-- even for the guy charged in the Samantha Runion murder, if he's convicted; and there's something wierd about the Elizabeth Smart case, no way was it the handyman Ricci who did the kidnapping.

Dinner at organic/natural foods restaurant Nora's was quite good, now we want to try Asia Nora's.

Nice hotel, but no internet access, only dialup, so we may not be as prolific as we had planned. But back to business....

Nearly 7,000 lawyers and others registered in advance for the meeting, and they will be joined by about 2,500 family members and guests.

We are here for the Criminal Justice Section Council meeting. Legendary Miami lawyer Albert Krieger will assume the role of Chair.

Meetings tomorrow include "Leadership in Time of Crisis: The Aftermath of Sept. 11"'; Bringing Transnationals to Justice; Impact of International Law on Death Penalty Litigation; The Boston Strangler Returns: A High Tech Hearing on the Murder ofr Mary Sullivan; Family Unfriendly: The Impact of Criminal Justice Policies on Women Offenders and Children; Cybercrime: An International Problem for All.

And here's one of our personal favorites, "Where Does Your Client's Money Come From? Anti-Money Laundering and Related Enforcement Efforts."

Then there is "US/Mexico Border Issues--Migration Policy Negotiations AFter Sept. 11," and Homeland Security and Civil Liberties in the Balance.

Last but not are two Justice Department officials appearing together to speak about leadership at a time of crisis. They are Michael Chertoff, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division; and Kenneth Feinberg, the official in charge of the department’s Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.

And one not to miss is James Brosnahan, lawyer for captured American Taliban John Walker Lindh, taking part in a program on civil liberties in a time of crisis.

He spoke in San Francisco last week for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and really let loose on the behind the scenes action regarding his client. He and Bobby Lee Cook were mentioned repeatedly as the week's best and most inspiring speakers. If you are around this time, don't miss him. He will open your eyes on a number of case-related issues.

Harvard law professor Arthur Miller will speak on terrorism and the Constitution. And for those who last until Monday, there is Mental Illness and the Death Penalty.

Lunch tomorrow will feature Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, noon - 2 in the Jefferson Ballroom West at the Capital Hilton. We'll be at that one and will duly report afterwards.

The ABA House of Delegates, the policy making arm of the organization, meets Monday and Tuesday when it will consider a proposal that opposes prolonged detention of immigrants before any charges are filed. The recommendation also calls for disclosure of detainees’ names.

At tomorrow's Criminal Justice Section Meeting, we'll be taking up the passage of proposed ABA standards to reduce and/or eliminate felony disenfranchisement- which lawyers call "collateral sanctions" of pleading guilty- like voting, not being able to get professional and other licenses, and things your client never knows they are going to lose until it's too late. We're voting for these for sure.

Keynoting the Opening Assembly on Saturday evening will be renowned civil rights activist Morris Dees, founder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

Also appearing at the meeting will be Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court, who sometimes find themselves at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

All program events are "ala carte" meaning you pay for only what you choose to attend.

And that's a wrap for tonight.