It's a beautiful day here, too nice to spend indoors. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Monica Conyers, wife of Rep. John Conyers, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison this week for her part in a corruption case in Detroit. Her sentencing hearing did not go smoothly, and she unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw her gulity plea (begins on page 3.)

Here's the transcript of her sentencing hearing. Here's the Government's sentencing memo and the Plea Agreement. Some background here.[More...]

Phil Spector's lawyers have filed their opening brief in the appeal of his murder conviction.

[T]hey focused on a judge's decision to allow testimony from five women who claimed Spector menaced them with firearms in the decades leading up to Lana Clarkson's shooting.

Those accounts, which portrayed Spector as a violent misogynist, became "the heart of the state's case, the sine qua non of its efforts to gain a conviction" and amounted to impermissible character testimony, the lawyers wrote.

For one thing, while the judge instructed the jury the testimony could not be taken as propensity to commit a crime, [More...]

Still very busy. Maybe next week will be better.

Open Thread.

In the John Edwards saga, will Andrew Young go to jail today? What happened to the Enquirer's prediction of an imminent indictment of John Edwards? It's been a week since its announcement. Has the grand jury not met, was the tabloid wrong, or will there be news today? (Doesn't the grand jury meet on Thursdays once or twice a month?)

I'm off to work, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

In Grand Junction, Colorado, a strange odor in the Government census office resulted in a search warrant being executed next door and the discovery and seizure of 1,000 marijuana plants. Sid Squirrel, who owns the building and is a realtor, says the plants are his, and he's growing them in compliance with state law. Also found: 300 file folders containing cards of medical marijuana patients.

Colorado law allows patients to possess up to two ounces of marijuana or six plants. Patients can also designate a caregiver. So for each patient who designated Mr. Squirrel as his or her caregiver, Squirrel can grow 6 plants. If 300 patients designated him as a caregiver, he could grow 1,800 plants and be in compliance with state law.

Squirrel was not arrested yesterday. [More...]

The ACLU in Idaho, along with the national ACLU has filed a federal class action lawsuit against a private prison in Idaho run by CCA (Corrections Corp of America) as a result "epidemic violence" to which prison officials have "turned a blind eye."

"In my 39 years of suing prisons and jails, I have never confronted a more disgraceful, revolting and inexcusable case of mass abuse and federal rights violations than this one,” said Stephen Pevar, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU. “The level of unnecessary human suffering is appalling. Prison officials have utterly failed to uphold their constitutional obligation to protect prisoners from being violently harmed and we must seek court intervention."

The complaint is here. [More...]

Who's going home tonight on American Idol? I sure hope it's not Crystal Bowersox or Lilli Scott. Tonight's results will leave the top 12 contestants, the real start of the season.

Who's going home on Survivor? I finally caught up with "24", Damages and The Good Wife. All were excellent this week. I even watched Molly and Jason's wedding last night. It was less schmaltzy than I thought it would be. Maybe it's just that compared to Jake and Vienna, Jason and Molly are a relief to watch. I hope Jakes gets eliminated in week one during DWTS. I'd rather watch Tom DeLay.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Don't Republicans have anything better to do? Now they are attacking Attorney General Eric Holder because he didn't disclose during his Senate confirmation hearings that he signed onto three Amicus briefs for Jose Padilla, the accused enemy combatant held for 3 1/2 years in a military brig, without access to counsel, before charges were filed.

“The briefs should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed. In any event, the attorney general has publicly discussed his positions on detention policy on many occasions, including at his confirmation hearing.”

The briefs challenged then-President Bush's authority to indefinitely detain enemy combatents. They were filed in the Jose Padilla case. Links to them below: [More...]

If you're going to be a police crime lab technician whose drug-testing work can put people in jail, it's probably not a good idea to be stealing and sampling the merchandise, i.e., the seized drugs.

Deborah Madden, age 60, a San Francisco crime lab tech for 29 years, has not been charged with a crime. But suspicions she stole and used cocaine from drug evidence have caused
San Francisco to dismiss 25 drug cases.

Madden abruptly retired Dec. 8 after 29 years on the job and has been in treatment recently for drug and alcohol use, officials said. She left the crime lab shortly after an audit discovered that drug evidence was missing, officials said.

[More...]

Update: The judge has released the three questions asked by the jury during deliberations. The second one:

... a question asked yesterday about whether Clark could be found guilty of first-degree murder "as a result of being complicit." The judge said yes.

If, the judge wrote, "you find that another person committed all or part of either the crime of murder in the first degree (extreme indifference) or murder in the first degree (after deliberation)... then the defendant may be found guilty of either or both murder in the first degree."

Update: 12:08 pm. Foreman hands over verdict forms. Judge examines. Count 1: 1st degree murder: Guilty; Count 2: 1st degree murder: Guilty; Guilty on all 21 counts. (Update: Audio clip of reading of verdict here.)

After 11 hours of deliberations, the jury has reached a verdict in the Willie Clark murder trial. He's accused of killing Denver Bronco Darrent Williams. It will be read in 15 minutes.

I haven't been able to blog about the trial because it's too closely related to a certain federal drug case I'm involved in, but I will cover the verdict. [More....]

President Obama promised to work to equalize crack and powder cocaine penalties. He said he would urge Congress to eliminate the five year mandatory minimum penalty for simple possession of 5 grams or more of crack and eliminate the 100:1 disparate ratio of penalties for crack vs. powder cocaine.

This morning, The Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup hearing on S.1789, The Fair Sentencing Act (Durbin, Leahy, Feingold, Cardin, Whitehouse, Kaufman, Specter, Franken.)

The result: A compromise. The 100:1 ratio and mandatory minimum sentences will not be eliminated, but reduced to 20:1. In other words, no equalization. Crack cocaine will continue to carry a penalty 20 times more severe than powder cocaine. Is it an improvement? Yes. Is it good enough? No.

The Dem's love affair with bi-partisanship continues: [More...]