What's troubling about the Elizabeth Smart case and the focus on the handymane, whether he turns out to be innocent or or not, is the likely negative effect it will have on hiring ex-inmates. It's already tough enough for them out there. If we want to break the cycle of recidivism, we must provide employment opportunities for them when they are released from jail. The Fortune Society is a not-for-profit community-based organization that helps ex-offenders and at-risk youth break the cycle of crime and incarceration.

They also publish a magazine called Fortune News. This months theme is Coming Out, Life After Prison. Check out When You Get Out, All You Know is What You Knew

We also like last week's excellent New York Times article by Alan Feuer that put faces and personal stories on what it's like to come out of prison in New York. For Ex-Convicts, a Bed, a View, a New Outlook .

Update 6/28: Leslie Houten was denied today because of the "calculated pre-planned manner" of her crime, her history of drug abuse when a teenager, and a tendency to form "destructive relationships."

Former Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, now 52 , will have her 14th hearing today. What makes this year different than other years?

This year the Judge ordered the Board to give her a new hearing and to consider her model prison behavior and not just the severity of the offense. If only the severity of the crime were considered, her sentence effectively would be a life sentence without parole, instead of the parole-eligible life sentence she received. The board has been ordered to tell Van Houten what it is she must do to get if they deny her again.

Van Houten has served 30 years in prison. She has apologized for her crime (she wasn't part of the Sharon Tate murders but did play a part in the La Bianca murders the following evening). While in prison she has earned two college degrees and been a model inmate.

We applaud the Judge. Grant Leslie Van Houten. She was 19 at the time of the crime, has paid for it with 30 years of her life, and if you have ever listened to her (and we have, since some of her prior hearings have been televised) you can't help but feel she's genuine and hardly a threat to anyone now.

Don't believe us? Court TV will provide live coverage of the hearing.

The jury has been selected in the retrial of Ex NY Cop (and partner of Justin Volpe) Charles Schwarz for violating Abner Louima's civil rights and obstructing justice when he allegedly restrained Abner Louima during Louima's brutal assault in the precinct house bathrooom during which Volpe sodomized Louima with a broomstick. Schwarz was inititally convicted of the civil rights violation by a jury at the end of a trial in which Volpe plead guilty mid-way through. He got a new lawyer, went on trial again for obstruction of justice, testified on his own behalf, and was convicted. Both convictions were reversed. The first conviction was reversed because his lawyer had a conflict of interest.

What has Abner Louima been up to in the five years since his assault? He has moved to Florida to start a new life. Jim Dwyer, co-author with Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld of "Actual Innocence," takes a roadtrip to the Florida "Boomlands" to visit Louima and reports in today's New York Times Magazine, "For nearly five full years, the same players have been working over the same moment in time and space, fingering at the event until its meaning has all but rubbed away, like the lost language of weathered gravestones. There is no mystery, of course, about what happened to Abner Louima; the mystery is what happened to those cops."

The conspiracy theorists and right-wing websites are abuzz with the physical similarities between U.S. Citizen and military detainee Padilla and John Doe 2 who witnesses at the Ryder Truck rental facility in Junction City, KS identified back in 1995 as the companion of Timothy McVeigh. Witnesses also put John Doe 2 at the Dreamland motel (answering the door to accept a delivery of chinese food) and in Kingman, AZ. The Goverment lobbied hard for the proposition that John Doe 2 didn't exist--that the witnesses confused him with the associate of another truck renter the day before. Here are the pictures, the resemblence is quite striking, we think the matter needs to be investigated into a bit more. For starters, was Padilla in jail or out and about in April, 1995?

John Doe 2 (left) and Padilla (right)

The Judge in the San Francisco dog-mauling case threw out the murder conviction against Marjorie Knoller.

Good. Now California is back to never having gotten away with convicting a dog owner for murder instead of manslaughter based upon a killing committed by his or her dog. The judge had the good sense to recognize that it wasn't like she knew her dog was going to kill someone that day.

For '60s activists, fear of old abuses in new FBI powers Shouldn't we all fear these new powers?

Nat Hentoff in today's Washington Times says we should all be worried since our politican's aren't. He hopes some billionaire will come to the rescue by educating everyone on the Bill of Rights. Not likely.

The Washington Post is reporting that the White House is concerned that Attorney General Ashcroft is stealing the limelight from GW. Now this is more apt to lessen his power than any complaints we the people might have.

And Newsweek has published the emails of some prosecutors working on the John Walker Lindh ("American Taliban") case, showing that even they don't believe in their case against him. And that no one's emails are private.