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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Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin. Great decision by Arianna.

Al Franken has been sworn in as U.S. Senator. The Dems now have their 60 majority.

The family motorcade is leaving Forest Lawn for the Staples Center. The motorcade includes a hearse which contains Michael Jackson's casket. MSNBC has medical examiner Cyril Wecht, fresh off the heels of the dismissal of fraud charges against him, providing commentary. Lots of talk about whether the doctors committed a crime in prescribing drugs to Michael Jackson. (Wecht lashed out last week at Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan (of Tommy Chong fame, the one who is asking Obama to keep her on as U.S. Attorney even though she was a Bush appointee.) More on the Wecht's case at the Pittsburgh Gazette here. I rarely agree with Cyril, but I like him personally.

This is an open thread, all topics -- related to the "most important entertainer on the planet" (per CNN) or not - welcome.

Michael Jackson mania continues. Do you really care who will be singing at his memorial tomorrow? I don't. It was his singing and dancing I liked and would want to hear, not his friends. Meanwhile, LA Observed tells us Michael will be buried tomorrow morning at Forest Lawn in the San Fernando Valley and lists several other celebrities who are interred there. Followed by:

Lucille Ball was originally interred there, but her ashes have since been moved, says Find A Grave.com.

Find A Grave.com? How gruesome. Is anyone covering the Obamas in Moscow? I think it's great that the Russian president wore jeans today , but all I've seen besides that are Michelle and the girls' outfits (very cute, especially Sasha, love this photo) and the very important news that the Obamas will vacation this summer at Martha's Vineyard. [More...]

More facts have come to light in the shooting death of Steve McNair. Police yesterday ruled the death a homicide, a fairly obvious conclusion given that McNair was shot twice in the head and twice in the stomach. The remaining question is whether the single shot in the head of McNair's girlfriend resulted from another homicide or a suicide.

One of the factual uncertainties noted in our original post -- that the presence of a gun was not immediately apparent when the police arrived -- has been resolved by news that the gun was found under the girlfriend's dead body. Evidence in support of the murder-suicide theory became stronger today as police revealed a report that the girlfriend purchased a gun a couple of days before she was found dead. While the police have wisely refrained from jumping to conclusions, this increasingly looks like a tragic case of murder-suicide.

In response to news coverage of the 133 death row inmates who have been exonerated and spared execution, death penalty proponents make the argument (pdf) that the list of exonerated inmates is overly inclusive because it includes inmates whose convictions were reversed but whose actual innocence was never conclusively established.

Dan Rodricks at the Baltimore Sun contacted the Death Penalty Information Center, which keeps track of the exoneration count, to ask for a response to that criticism. The DPIC explained what it means to be "exonerated" and therefore included in the count:

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