Sneaky Peaky

Remember Brandon Mayfield?

He's the guy whose fingerprints the FBI found on the detonators near the scene of the Madrid train bombing (except oooopps they weren't his prints).

Mayfield has become a valuable object lesson in more than just the loosey-goosey quasi-science of fingerprint matching.
(My Slate piece on the subject is here)

As it turns out, after a sleazy try at dodging the question, Alberto Gonzales admitted that the government had used the PATRIOT Act against Mayfield. Let's just take a minute to really think about that. After swearing up and down that this was just gonna be used to nab the bad guys, we already have an admission that the government has used a sneak and peak warrant against an innocent American Citizen.

We Forget Sometimes

Just how painful and stressful the fact of an allegation can be. This piece tells the story of Andrew Dunn, a 40 year old law guardian who shot himself in the head today. He'd been accused of...you guessed it, sexually abusing a boy back in 2002 and another starting in 1997. And while I'm sure many people will see this as proof of guilt, I'm not so sure. Imagine the prospect of being wrongly convicted, sentenced to prison and having your reputation completely shredded. I can see that driving someone to suicide.

Beware you're DNA

A Photographer has been ordered to give DNA in connection with a device used to bug Nicole Kidman's House

Does anyone else remember the movie Gattica?

It's here....

Stupid-Syndrome Syndrome

My latest Slate piece is up. It's about the Orwellian world of Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome.

Piggy Piggy Piggy...

Tom Delay pays his family half a million dollars in PAC money. As it turns out, a contribution to DeLay's political action committee is actually a payment to DeLay himself.

When Indigent Defense Depends on Traffic Tickets

So what happens when there's just no public defender money? According to a LA court, cases can be indefinitely suspended until there's money available. Nice. Especially since for some years defendants in some parishes were spending nine months in jail BEFORE even meeting their lawyers.

A Sniff is but a Sniff

In this recent non-ruling The big Supremes decline to decide whether the government can bring a trained dog over to your house to sniff for drugs. The guy who is appealing got 37 years. The problem here is mission creep. They can already use the dogs in airports, bus terminals etc...If this one goes, it'll be canine constitutional carnage... Bye bye fourth amendment.

Good Thinking...

A California court actually did the right thing recently by overturning a 26-years-to-life sentence for Keith Carmony.Carmony had been charged with failing to register as a sex offender. Calling the sentence a violation of the state and federal prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, the court ruled that the defendant's failure to register, was "completely harmless and no worse than a breach of an overtime parking ordinance."

"If the constitutional prohibition is to have a meaningful application," Blease wrote, "it must prohibit the imposition of a recidivist penalty based on an offense that is no more than a harmless technical violation of a regulatory law."

It's important to note that Carmony got the life bid for failing to update his records. He'd already registered but was required to review a form within five days of his birthday even though nothing in it had changed.

Delay no longer

Tom Delay is sucking wind thanks to his antics surrounding the Terri Schaivo case.

His rampant ethical lapses may not have been sticking, but his interventionist nonsense appears to have had a real effect.

A recent Chronicle poll, conducted late last week and published Sunday, indicated that nearly 40 percent of 501 likely voters in his district said their opinion of DeLay is less favorable than last year, compared with 11 percent who said their view of him has improved.

Many said they'd vote for someone else.
Time to start organizing a Dump Delay (Without Delay?)campaign.

Prison Sickness

This piece by fellow Soros Media Fellow Mary Beth Pfeiffer argues that the deaths of 23 inmates in jails across New York -- from Rikers Island to the Albany and Schenectady county lockups -- demonstrate the unseen perils of getting sick in facilities where medical care is contracted to companies seeking to make a profit.

Where NY prison health is concerned, substandard doesn't begin to cover it. I can't tell you how many clients I've had telling horror stories about trying to get treatment.

International news flash--

You might be interested to know that hundreds of death row prisoners in Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica may win a reprieve following an unprecedented Privy Council hearing which is set to begin in London. That's pretty exciting to begin with, but what you may not know is that most countries in the Caribbean have popular majorities that support a mandatory death penalty. Currently, death is the required penalty for a murder conviction.





According to a Caribbean news source...

The case is seen as so important that the Privy Council - the final court of appeal for former British colonies in the Caribbean, but made up mainly of UK law lords - which normally sits in panels of five, has decided to field nine judges for the first time.

The large cast of judges and lawyers means that the case cannot be heard as usual in the Privy Council building in Downing Street, but will be argued over six days in the Moses Room in the Palace of Westminster.

The role of the Privy Council as the final court of appeal for some former British colonies dates back to 1625. Caricom countries have resolved to replace it with their own Caribbean court of justice, but its gestation has been prolonged by political disagreements.

Dahlia does it again

In her incisive takedown of Men In Black,


Fellow slatester (and my editor) Dahlia Lithwick makes the subtle but important point that there has been a significant shift in the nature of right-wing attacks on the judiciary. They are no longer confined to "liberal" or "activist" judges, but rather directed at the judiciary itself.

Though she doesn't say it, to me this is another example of the brilliant right wing triangulation strategy (adopted from the Sinn Fein / IRA or Hamas / Palestinian Authority playbook) that uses attacks on the right from the further right to wrench the terms of the debate rightward. This is what they did when they ran a far right candidate against Arlen Spector claiming he was 'basically a democrat.'

By attacking even conservative judges they acomplish the same thing. Pernicious but effective. The tradgedy is that the left doesn't respond in kind. But ain't that the way of the world...

Of course what makes Dahlia's stuff so wonderful to read is that it not only makes this important point, but it also includes some more general (and deeply satisfying) bashing like the following:

"I use the word 'book' with some hesitation: Certainly it possesses chapters and words and other book-like accoutrements. But Men in Black is 208 large-print pages of mostly block quotes (from court decisions or other legal thinkers) padded with a forward by the eminent legal scholar Rush Limbaugh, and a blurry 10-page 'Appendix' of internal memos to and from congressional Democrats—stolen during Memogate. The reason it may take you only slightly longer to read Men in Black than it took Levin to write it is that you'll experience an overwhelming urge to shower between chapters."

DA: Strip Trick Worth 16 Years in Prison

Exactly how stupid are people in Indianapolis?According tho this report from the AP--pretty stupid. It seems a man has been convicted of tricking men into striping for him while he was on home confinement. (One potential 'victim' was about to strip in hopes of winning a supposed prize when he noticed the big box strapped to the defendant's ankle...)

Poor sad desperate dude.
Poor pathetic stripping dudes.

Great solution--16 years in prison.
Yeah, that makes a whole lotta sense--seems like the stupidest person in Indi is the prosecutor.

Get out of Jail, Pay 126,00 Dollars

I'm just back from giving a little talk at an innocence conference in DC and was about to just slide into a dead sleep when I came across this astonishing piece

It seems the sage state of LA will try to charge Wilbert Rideau $126,000 in court costs now that they've finally released him after 40 years in prison. Here's the comedy--the idiot DA wants Wilbert to pay because he went to trial. But as the piece notes:

"Before trial, District Attorney Rick Bryant declined to accept a plea agreement that would have resulted in the same manslaughter verdict that was ultimately reached by a jury and led to Rideau's release on time served.

"From Day One, we wanted and would have been happy to settle this case. The only reason it went to trial is that Mr. Bryant never really even talked to us about it," defense attorney George Kendall said. Bryant "wanted to convict Mr. Rideau of murder and send him back to Angola (state prison) where he would die and nothing short of that."

Oh yeah--definitely charge the guy. After 40 years in prison, what's a little debt?

Medical Weed Sure...but in Alabama?

Who knew there was a red-state pot smokers movement? This piece discusses the Medical marijuana bill introduced in the ALABAMA state Legislature.

And it's not an April Fools joke. On that front, as it turns out, our culprit is the inimitable Susan Lehman.

Very funny.

April's Fool

Yep! That's him--that's the guy I believe is behind the hilarious FAX purporting to be from the Manhattan DA's office.

Part of that FAX is printed in a post below, but I left out another choice paragraph.

"I hope you will take the time to consider the possibility of a ten week position as a practitioner-in-residence with the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney. The position comes with a negotiable $18,000 stipend. I hope you'll agree to meet with me and several members of the staff at an informal plenary meeting at which we can introduce ourselves and the program and answer any questions you may have."

Brilliant. Except for the part about me selling defense lawyer secrets for 18 grand.
Just a day before April Fools day--Naw...not for a minute.
It's gotta be Jaffe...or maybe, just maybe, it's Schooch...

Costly Ramparts...

This piece reports that the fallout from the Ramparts LA police corruption scandal settlements may reach $70 million. That's a lotta bad cop.

Early April Fools...

This hilarious and ingenious fax came from...
Well, I'm not sure who (though I suspect it was Mike Jaffe...)
It is hilarious. Here's a sample...


Yeah...seems likely huh?

Cameras in the courts...

More on the mass. crackdown on judges! This one is great. They're going to videotape the judges who need a little demeanor help.

Alaskan Reefer Madness!

White House expert: Pot is dangerous :

"A White House official on Wednesday testified to marijuana's dangers during the second hearing of a bill that aims to criminalize Alaskans' possession of more than an ounce of the drug.

Researcher David Murray of the White House's Office on National Drug Control Policy told a Senate committee that marijuana users develop serious cases of psychosis and other problems from inhaling doses of carcinogenic chemicals.

'This is a dirty, dirty drug,' Murray said.

Relax dude. Seriously...

Ever Wonder?

What happens when you win in the US Supreme Court? Read it and weep. Ralph Howard Blakely, in whose name Jeff Fisher won a landmark case in the US Supreme Court was just sentenced to 35 years. After the High Court made its decision, the DA's office came up with a jailhouse snitch to say that Blakely had tried to have his ex-wife murdered. Instead of releasing him, they charged him with solicitation to commit murder.

Same judge, same prosecutor. For shame.

My Review of Courtroom 302 (The Washington Post)

Here is my review of Steve Bogira's new book about the criminal justice system. It was published in the Washington Post today.

More on Medellin...

This fine piece by fellow slatester, fellow Soros Justice Fellow and all around good-fellow Emily Bazelon, gives some nice insight into the arguments on the Medellin case.

Night Court Momma...

Organizing some files, I found this little scrap from a few months ago...

I took my mother to night court a few months ago. After a dozen years of being a public defender, it seemed like the right time to give her another taste of my daily or nightly life. She’d come to court before—once, when I was a young lawyer still traversing the halls of Brooklyn criminal court, even then she was struck by the volume of the justice dispensed in one of my days—8 judges, a dozen cases, half a dozen pleas. Back then, I remember mom being both jazzed and terrified at this strange and abusive world, so far from the sedentary Wisconsin world I grew up in.

And, as the years went by, and I migrated quietly north, to Harlem and then, finally to the Bronx, when relatives or company enquired, mom would still trot out her long stale recollections of that far-away afternoon. And so, just last month, in New York for a conference, it seemed time to refresh her recollections. This time at the beginning of the process—the very first time poor clients meet their lawyers—in arraignments, and often at night.

As far as I could tell, it was the smell that rocked my mother’s world. Sweat and urine and homelessness—the smell of the pens. I glanced over at her as we passed through the barred steel gate, down the graffiti scarred hallway back to where dozens of people, many destined to be my clients were caged. She wrinkled her nose—unused to the peculiar pungency, and almost grimaced, as if to say, “I get that this is criminal court but does it really have to smell so bad?”

She sat through 6 or 7 interviews, farebeats, petit larcenies and drug possession cases.

“Hi, my name is David Feige, and I’m gonna be your lawyer; uuh, and this.." I said, hitching a thumb next to me,

"This is my mom.”

"Hi” they’d all say,

“Hi” she’d reply with a sheepish grin—real alleged criminals look a whole lot different up close—when you know their names and actually listen to their stories.

“Do you mind if my mom, stays while we talk?" I’d ask.

No one did.

Big Death Day

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today on therights of foreigners on death row these 'consular access' cases will be very interesting, sitting as they do at the intersection of some serious doctrinal debates about the role of international law and treaties in domestic affairs and tensions between the executive and judicial branches of government.

On a personal note, I'm proud to say that I was an early adaptor on this--arguing back in the late 90's in dingy Bronx Criminal Court that my client had been denied consular access. I was laughed out of court by the way.

I just like the headline...

Deficient judges get added training.Ah, if it were only that easy...

Horrific Hanophy Hagiography

Sad Days for the New York Daily News as it serves up an appalling puff piece praising a Queens Judge who has “sentenced killers to prison for a cumulative 5,700 years minimum” Yippee! In repeatedly throwing away the key he’s destroyed 232 lives (of those he’s sentenced) probably left over 1,000 kids fatherless, and cost the state (assuming the defendants actually serve out their minimum terms,) somewhere north of 250 million dollars. Quite a legacy—a quarter of a billion dollars we failed to spend on educating our kids. Glad the NYDN saw fit to put him on the cover.

Tell Me Your Name or go to Jail...

Maryland nearly passes a bill making it a crime not to identify yourself to a cop. Interestingly, most of the cops I know insist that this is already a crime and will arrest you for being an asshole if you refuse to give your name (as you are entitled to) They see this as simple justice...

Wherefore Mercy oh Niggardly Bush?

With all this talk about mercy and second chances (ain't that the Christian way?) the Republican president now has exercised his constitutional powers to grant pardons only 37 times, almost half as many times as his father, President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, did during his single term in office, and only one-tenth as frequently as former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Even after accounting for the tendency among presidents to grant most of their pardons late in their tenure, Bush's record of meting out mercy still looks slim in terms of sheer numbers.

For shame.

I didn't believe it at first...

But here it is--the statute that some other bloggers have termed the "Texas Futile Care Act as it turns out, it seems to actually be called the "Advance Directives Act."

And it does seem to suggest (see sec. 166.046) in what can be appropriately termed outrageous hypocracy, that a physician (backed by an ethics board) can pull the plug despite a directive.

This whole Schiavo thing feels so Orwellian. Up is down, poor is rich. Good story trumps good policy.