Arthur Whitfield could use some money. He served almost 22 years in prison for two rapes that occurred in Norfolk's Ghent neighborhood. DNA testing recently ruled out his involvement. As is common, his wrongful conviction resulted from the victim's mistaken identification.

Whitfield's freedom is largely attributable to two government employees who deserve praise for doing their jobs well.

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Big Tent Democrat wrote here about the Obama Administration's position on continued detention of detainees who may be acquitted.

There were two Guantanamo-related hearings this week. One was yesterday, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The other was today, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The ACLU provided testimony at the second hearing, and reports on both. As to yesterday's hearing:

Justice Department official David Kris testified that the Due Process Clause of the Constitution should indeed apply to the commissions system. However, in other testimony, Defense Department official Jeh Johnson stated that the United States can continue to indefinitely hold detainees who have been acquitted of crimes.

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Earlier I wrote about Palin's Hypocrisy. Via Digby, Palin repeats her hypocrisy and falsehoods:

[Q:]At one point during the campaign you said Hillary Clinton whines a little bit too much about being in the public eye. Do you now sort of sympathize with her?

[PALIN]: What I said was, it doesn't do her or anybody else any good to whine about the criticism. And that's why I'm trying to make it clear that the criticism, I invite that. But freedom of speech and that invitation to constructively criticize a public servant is a lot different than the allowance to lie, to continually falsely accuse a public servant when they have proven over and over again that they have not done what the accuser is saying they did. It doesn't cost them a dime to continue to accuse. That's a whole different situation. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Palin is full of it here. For anyone who has slept through the last 2 decades and the last political campaign, Digby has the details.

Speaking for me only

As someone who has argued that there could be a sound, fair, constitutional and Geneva compliant preventive detention system, it seems that every day the Obama Administration takes positions that would shock even a "centrist" (snark) like me. Glenn Greenwald details the latest:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial.

Unbelievable. Now, if we are going to have preventive detention (and I have explained my view on how it could be done before), you can not place someone in preventive detention AFTER acquittal. This is just ridiculous. More . . .

Former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of wire fraud. In exchange, he will cooperate against Blagojevich and Fitzgerald's office will recommend a sentence just under 3 years.

The plea deal was not unexpected. Harris' lawyer sayd he began cooperating almost immediately after indictment.

Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves has vacated the jury verdict finding controversial professor Ward Churchill was improperly terminated.(Background here.) You can read the opinion here.

Naves ruled the Board of Regents had acted in a quasi-judicial role and had absolute immunity. I'm no expert in civil procedure, but wouldn't you expect him to rule on that before the trial, like at the summary judgment phase, to spare everyone (including us taxpayers) the expense of a trial?

As a result of the jury's verdict, Naves had the option of reinstating Churchill's job or ordering "forward pay" for him. The verdict should also have resulted in an award of legal fees for Churchill's lawyer. (The legal fees were about $1 million.) In addition to vacating the verdict, Judge Naves refused to order Churchill reinstated and refused to give him any "forward pay." And I guess because the verdict was vacated, no legal fees were awarded. So a jury finds Churchill was improperly terminated for his political views and he gets nothing. Nice going. (/sarcasm.)[More...]

Torture extorts false confessions, a fact that was apparently irrelevant to interrogators who tortured detainees suspected of terrorism. The unreliability of torture-induced confessions was equally irrelevant to former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. In a series of posts dating back to 2003, TalkLeft followed the developing evidence of Burge's aggressive interrogation practices to this conclusion:

Burge and the detectives under his command found unchecked power to torture suspects, primarily black, on the south side of Chicago.

After the evidence of Burge's reliance on torture became too overwhelming to ignore, more than twenty cases that hinged on confessions given to Burge or his detectives were reviewed by the state attorney general's office. Yesterday, as a result of that review, Ronald Kitchen and Marvin Reeves were freed from prison after serving 21 years for multiple murders. The strongest evidence against them was Kitchen's torture-induced confession. [more ...]

What do Jimmy Carter, William Sessions, Pope Benedict XVI, Bob Barr, Desmond Tutu, and TalkLeft all have in common? A belief that Troy Davis is innocent, and that his execution would be a perverse injustice. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous writes that Davis "represents the most compelling case of innocence in decades."

While Davis' chances of avoiding execution appear to be slim, he's been given a glimmer of hope by the Supreme Court's adjournment for the summer without deciding whether to review his claim that he's entitled to a hearing to demonstrate his innocence. [more ...]

AP:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias will serve as international mediator in the Honduran political crisis. . . . [Clinton] said Zelaya as well as the politician who took over as Honduran leader, Roberto Micheletti, agreed to the Arias role as mediator. . . . "He is the natural person to assume this role," she told reporters.

In addition, the BTD Plan gained traction (snark):

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The Michael Jackson Memorial is about to begin. The musical tributes will be great and there's suspense as to who will sing when, the family has not provided a schedule.

If you're watching, here's a thread to weigh in the memorial and the music. You can view the photos of the service below in larger format here.

Update: 11:34 am (MT): "We are going to see the King. No More Dying". They bring the gleaming casket in. It's topped with flowers and really quite beautiful. The crowd rises and claps. It's very tastefully done so far. updates below.

Sexual violence in prisons is widely acknowledged, rarely discussed, and inexplicably tolerated. Given the culture of vengeance that has been the driving force behind the nation's philosophy of punishment for the last 30 years, it may be that people figure that prisoners deserve whatever happens to them in prison, including rape. Or it may be that people just don't care. They should, because the consequences of prison rape affect society at large, not just the imprisoned victim.

Fortunately, Congress cared enough in 2003 to pass the Prison Rape Elimination Act. While the Act could have done much more to address the problem, it represents an important beginning. Among its other requirements, the law created a commission to recommend national standards to address sexual violence in correctional facilities. That task was recently completed, and the Justice Department now has a year to promulgate a final set of standards that will be binding in federal prisons. State prisons will also need to adopt the standards if they don't want to lose a measly 5 percent of the federal funding they receive that relates to corrections.

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Below, Jeralyn notes that the Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin. We are all pleased for Froomkin and HuffPo, if HuffPo lets Froomkin be Froomkin. Very few on the Left will note this important part of the story, but Glenn Greenwald will:

While this pairing is, in some ways, a natural one . . . there are also potential sources of tension. As a practitioner of what he calls "accountability journalism" -- "explaining how Washington works; pulling no punches" -- Froomkin has been a vehement critic of the Obama administration for the last several months, while The Huffington Post frequently trumpeted (some might say "cheerleading") the Obama campaign and even his presidency . . . Will Froomkin's harsh criticisms of Obama alienate an Obama-loving HuffPost readership?

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