By Taylor Walker

THE 5-DAY NON-ARREST, NO WATER LOCK-UP

Some of you may already have seen short versions of this flabbergasting story of Daniel Chong, the 24-year-old engineering student and UC San Diego senior who said he was swept up in a Drug Enforcement Administration raid near campus and was taken to a DEA facility where, after questioning, he was told he would be released shortly. But instead Chong put in a tiny holding cell—and forgotten about for the next five days.

Jeff McDonald of UT San Diego has been doing the best job with this story. You can read McDonald’s update about the DEA’s “apology” here, and the main story here. But here are the basics of Chong’s ordeal.

At the DEA field office in Kearny Mesa, Chong said, he was handcuffed and left in a holding cell for about four hours. He was then moved to an interview room, where he was told he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and would be released shortly. One agent even promised to drive him home.

He was then returned to a holding cell to await his release. The door swung closed sometime Saturday and didn’t open again until Wednesday. Chong said he was in one of the middle cells, with no toilet, no water.

“I had to recycle my own urine,” he said. “I had to do what I had to do to survive.”

Soon, Chong said, nothing made sense. He could hear agents chatting among themselves on the other side of the heavy door, and other detainees coming and going from holding tanks nearby.

Days crawled by. No food. No water. No bathroom. He remembers biting his eyeglasses and using the broken shards to scrawl a note onto his left arm.

“Sorry Mom,” he tried to write.

The DEA acknowledged, in a statement to U-T San Diego’s The Watchdog on Monday, that agents left someone in a cell after a raid on April 21 — until they found him and had to call paramedics. San Diego Fire-Rescue Department said that medical call came on April 25.

GROWN UP FOSTER KIDS FIND KEY (LITERALLY) TO BRIGHTER FUTURE

Today, Thursday, Ashley Marquez, an 18-year-old who has recently “aged out” of foster care, will receive the keys to her first apartment, complete with rent-sharing roommate, with the help of First Place for Youth, a nonprofit that aids 16 to 24-year-old foster care kids in things like job training and placement, housing, education completion, and healthcare.

In the past, the stats on kids who age out of foster care have been heartbreakingly bad. But organizations like First Place for Youth are helping young men and women like Ashley break out of the trajectory that foster care has too often predicted.

As First Place for Youth explains the issue:

Each year in California, more than 5,000 youth age out of foster care when they turn 18 and lose access to all state-funded foster care services. Without housing, education or emotional support, 65 percent of foster youth will face imminent homelessness, 20 percent will be arrested or incarcerated, 46 percent will complete high school and only 1 percent will graduate from college.

Research has shown that providing intensive services—such as housing, education and employment support—at the critical juncture when youth are aging out, helps them avoid negative social outcomes and achieve real long-term self-sufficiency.

The kids that come through First Place For Youth seem to prove that a little help goes a long way. According to FPFY’s stats, the youth they work with are five times less likely to experience homelessness, three times less likely to give birth before the age of 21, three times less likely to be arrested, six times more likely to be enrolled in college, twice as likely to graduate from high school, twice as likely to be employed.

Congratulations to Ashley on her first place!

GEORGIA DECIDES TO USE PRISON CELLS MOSTLY FOR DANGEROUS CRIMINALS. (A NOVEL CONCEPT.)

Georgia’s governor signed a criminal justice reform bill Wednesday that will save taxpayers about $264M over the next five years. The sentencing reform will make room for an expanded rehabilitation budget and hopefully curb Georgia’s high recidivism rate (1 in 3 prisoners released are again incarcerated).

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Aaron Gould Sheinin and Bill Rankin have the story.

Here’s a clip:

…Years ago, Georgia was among the states leading the nation in tough-on-crime sentencing laws. But Georgia now joins a host of other states — including Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina — that have enacted legislation to address soaring prison spending that was doing little to reform offenders. The legislation enjoyed extraordinary bipartisan support, with the final version being approved unanimously by both the House and Senate.

The sentencing reform package, which takes effect July 1, is part of a broader criminal justice initiative pushed by Deal. The Legislature also approved the governor’s recommendation to quintuple funding to $10 million for “accountability courts” that require defendants to work, seek treatment and stay sober.

“As we reserve more of our expensive [prison] bed space for truly dangerous criminals [we] free up revenue to deal with those who are not necessarily dangerous but are in many ways in trouble because of various addictions,” Deal said. “Our system is feeding on itself with our recidivism rate being as high as it is. We have the opportunity now to make a difference in the lives of future generations of Georgians.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Listen up, California lawmakers. Why are conservative states like TX and now GA taking the lead in forward thinking and intelligent incarceration policy reform, while y’all are still cowering behind the increasingly flimsy-looking Tough-On-Crime barricade? Yes, realignment was a step. But we need real top-to-bottom sentencing reform—which means, among other things, a sentencing commission that can make informed recommendations that lawmakers actually take seriously.

Really, don’t you feel a tad embarrassed letting Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina zoom past you into the future? Well, don’t you????

Okay. I’m glad we had this little chat.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Starting today, the very smart and talented Taylor Walker is helping me gather stories. Eventually Taylor will be doing a story-gathering and commentary section of her own. But right now, she’s helping me curate and write these multi-story posts. More about—and from—Taylor Walker soon.

NEARLY 50 PERCENT OF AMERICANS SAY THAT TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE IN PRISON & WE COULD LET 20 PERCENT OF ‘EM OUT….SAYS NEW PEW STUDY

The Pew Center on the States has the results of a new survey out that measures attitudes by Americans about who we should incarcerate and for how long.

Turns out that the majority of Americans think that there are “more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate.”

There’s lots more and it’s quite interesting. So check out the summary of the rest of the report here.

ANTONIO GOES LOOKING FOR GANG PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION $$ IN D.C.

The LA Times reports that mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was in Washington DC this week for a gang-violence reduction summit meeting with leaders from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, San Jose and Salinas.

Sunday, he also met with Attorney General Eric Holder, to hit up Holder for some federal money to help to fund LA’s GRYD programs (Gang Reduction and Youth Development), These were the programs that were gathered under the mayor’s umbrella in 2007, and got up and running in 2009.

Last year, the combined prevention and intervention GRYD programs were budgeted at $26 million, made up of federal, state and local monies. Villaraigosa wants the feds to come across with a good chunk of those millions.

Hopefully he’ll get the money he/we need. I just wish that when the mayor made his pitch he didn’t have to try to attribute LA’s drop in gang crime to GRYD, since even his own evaluators from the Urban Institute say otherwise (namely since the parts of Los Angeles that aren’t served by GRYD have had exactly the same drop).

Yeah, yeah. Picky, I know.

ACLU ISSUES REPORT SHOWING HOW MANY POLICE DEPARTMENTS ARE TRACKING US THROUGH OUR CELL PHONES WITHOUT ANYTHING PESKY LIKE, SAY, A WARRANT

A huge pile of information gathered by the ACLU on law enforcement cell phone tracking protocols was released to the New York Times on Saturday. The report returned results that differed considerably between about 200 agencies that agreed to provide information about how they were using our cell phones to track us. Departments across the U.S. are grappling with the lack of concrete boundaries set in place for officers in regard to cell phone tracking. While some agencies state that they are only using tracking without a warrant in life-threatening situations (and sometimes it does save lives), others are using it when they damn please, including in California where state prosecutors advised local police departments on ways to get carriers to “clone” a phone and download text messages while it is turned off.

(About that text downloading function, unreasonable search and seizure anyone? Seriously, how in the world is that not a 4th Amendment violation?)

In order to get the information, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones.

This is from the ACLU’s statement:

What we have learned is disturbing. While virtually all of the over 200 police departments that responded to our request said they track cell phones, only a tiny minority reported consistently obtaining a warrant and demonstrating probable cause to do so. While that result is of great concern, it also shows that a warrant requirement is a completely reasonable and workable policy.

They’ve got a point. And, given this recent SCOTUS decision, I think the SUPREMES may think so too.

LGBTQ BOX TO CHECK MAY SHOW UP IN CAL STATE COLLEGE APS…SO IS THIS A GOOD IDEA? BAD IDEA? MANY ARE NOT SURE

Within the next year, students may see optional sexual orientation check-boxes on their application forms for California state colleges. While the purpose may be to gauge the size of the LGBTQ community on campus, and thus offer better services, some fear it may be an invasion of privacy or that the information may be improperly used or wrongly divulged. The LA Times reports.

it slipped my mind that today was Cesar Chavez Day. So since many are taking the day off (and, yes, many of us aren’t), the promised Part 2 of Aero Bureau will appear Monday, not today.

In the meantime, watch the hour-long PBS video on the Farm Worker’s Movement at the end of the post ( It reminded me about, among other things, all those years that no one I knew would have dreamed of eating table grapes. Even after the strike was over, it took a long time to learn to like them again. I imagine I was far from alone in that somewhat irrational post-strike reaction.)

POLICE UNION VERY UNHAPPY THAT SOME DEPARTMENT INSIDER LEAKED TO THE LA TIMES THE NAME OF THE OFFICER INVESTIGATED FOR RACIAL PROFILING

New LAPPL prez Tyler Izen wrote LAPD Inspector General Alexander Bustamante a strongly worded letter asking for an investigation into the matter.

“…the unlawful disclosure of the confidential information regarding any officer by unscrupulous self-serving individuals has reached a level of indecency so great that we will not stand by and remain silent,” he wrote.

(The full text is here.)

And, to remind you what we’re talking about, here’s an opening clip from Joel Rubin’s LA Times article.

A white police officer has been targeting Latino drivers for traffic stops because of their ethnicity, a Los Angeles Police Department investigation concluded — marking the first time the department has found that one of its officers had engaged in racial or ethnic profiling.

For decades, the question of profiling — “biased policing,” in LAPD vernacular — has bedeviled the department. Accusations that the practice was commonplace throughout the 1970s and ’80s alienated the LAPD from the city’s minority neighborhoods. And, despite dramatic reforms that have boosted the department’s image in recent years, complaints of profiling have persisted, with hundreds of officers being accused of bias each year. Until now, none of those complaints has been substantiated.

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Of course, at least the LAPD’s probable Peace Officer Bill of Rights violator wasn’t a department captain who, in a fit of pique, blurted the existence of an IAB investigation against an LASD sergeant formerly under the captain’s command, all this in front of a very full and public board of supervisors meeting. Making matters worse, the captain failed to include in his blurt (that had a wild-eyed county attorney looking to be on the verge physically tackling him) the information that the charge had already been resolved in the sergeant’s favor—but instead inaccurately implied the exact opposite.

FBI SAYS IT DIDN’T REALLY MEAN THAT “SUSPEND THE LAW” THINGY IT HAD IN ITS COUNTER-TERRORISM BOOKLET

Wired Magazine’s Danger Room section has the not-terribly-cheering story. Here’s a clip:

The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. Which is a good thing, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong.

“Dismissing this statement as ‘imprecise’ is a rather unsatisfying response given the very precise lines Congress and the courts have repeatedly drawn between what is and is not permissible, even in counterterrorism cases, over the past decade,” Steve Vladeck, a national-security law professor at American University, says. “It might technically be true that the FBI has certain authorities when conducting counterterrorism investigations that the Constitution otherwise forbids, but that’s good only so far as it goes.”

The reference to law-bending was noted in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller from Sen. Richard Durbin that Danger Room obtained. When Danger Room asked for the original document, the FBI initially declined. On Wednesday, a Bureau spokesperson relented, but refused to say who prepared the document; how long it was in circulation; and how many FBI agents, analysts and officials received its instruction….

IN NEW YORK CITY A CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT BOARD GETS THE POWER TO PROSECUTE NYPD OFFICERS FOR MISCONDUCT

“Lawyers for the independent agency that investigates allegations of police abuse in New York have been given wide new powers to prosecute officers in misconduct cases under an agreement city officials reached on Tuesday,” writes Al Baker for the NY Times.

This is something that could be very useful to consider in LA. It involves both civilians and police officers.

REMEMBERING THE FIERCE AND GIFTED ADRIENNE RICH, AND THE FABULOUS EARL SCRUGGS

The New York Daily News has an unusually good send off for the enormously influential feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, who died this week.

And in this video from the PBS Newshour Judy Woodruff and Jeffrey Brown help us say goodbye to both Rich and Earl Scruggs, who also died this week.

“He made you stop in your tracks,” said Bela Fleck of the brilliant and beloved banjo innovator Scruggs.

Yep. That he did.

And here he is doing it again— with those he inspired.

And now back to Cesar Chavez.

Okay, if you’ll remember, last week there was the whole legal showdown about whether or not someone could be force to decrypt their laptop’s hard drive if the stuff on said hard drive was incrimination. Could decrypting be shielded by the 5th Amendment?

Different appeals courts, it seems, had differing views of that pesky little question.

On Friday of last week, 11th Circuit ruled that the forced decrypting was, indeed, unconstitutional.

However, a mere day before, the 10th circuit refused to hear the appeal, meaning that the order to decrypt remained in place.

Sooooo….What to do?

Constitutional showdown! Pistols at dawn? (Awfully analog.)

As it turned out, the showdown became moot when the feds managed to decrypt the thing without the defendant’s help.

Wired’ Magazine’s Threat Level section, which has been following this issue wonderfully well, has more. Here’s a clip:

Colorado federal authorities have decrypted a laptop seized from a bank-fraud defendant, mooting a judge’s order that the defendant unlock the hard drive so the government could use its contents as evidence against her.

The development ends a contentious legal showdown over whether forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self incrimination.

The authorities seized the encrypted Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with valid court warrants while investigating alleged mortgage fraud, and demanded she decrypt it. Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop by the end of February. The judge refused to stay his decision to allow Fricosu time to appeal.

“They must have used or found successful one of the passwords the co-defendant provided them,” Fricosu’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

He said the authorities delivered to him Wednesday a copy of the information they discovered on the drive. Dubois said he has not examined it.

The development comes a week after a federal appeals court ruled in a separate case that forcing a criminal suspect to decrypt hard drives so their contents can be used by prosecutors is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination.

It was the nation’s first appellate court to issue such a finding. The Supreme Court has never dealt directly with the issue.

AND IN OTHER NEWS: WHICH WAY LA? DISCUSSES THE POLICE COMMISSION’S RECENT APPROVAL OF CHIEF BECK’S NEW RULES FOR IMPOUNDING CARS OF UNDOCUMENTED RESIDENTS

Click here and listen.

On Tuesday morning, there was mostly ebullience. However, by afternoon the significance of Tuesday’s Proposition 8 decision by the 9th Circuit was being examined from every angle.

The majority opinion for the 2 to 1 ruling was, after all, written by the most liberal justice on the most liberal appellate court in the nation. Yet it was a narrow opinion, a fact that has been criticized by some as not being the history-making ruling it could have been. Still others claim that the very narrowness of the opinion will make it easier for SCOTUS to back, should they agree to take the case next fall.

THE OVERVIEW

NPR’s Talk of the Nation has a great multi-part segment on the decision that gives a good overview.

SOME SAY THE 9TH COULD HAVE MADE HISTORY, BUT DIDN’T: WAS THE 9TH WISE OR GUTLESS?

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate is somewhat critical of the 9th Circuit for not making a more historic decision, but argues that it may be a smart one.

Here’s a clip:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the (“liberal”) 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, led by the (“very liberal”) Stephen Reinhardt, struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. Prop 8, passed by referendum in November 2008, had already been thrashed to a pulp by a (“gay”) judge in August 2010, and when the federal appeals court heard the case in December 2010, it was manifestly clear that they were struggling to find some plausible rationale for a ban on gay marriage that made sense. And given that a lot of folks always thought the fix was in at the 9th Circuit, the real shocker today isn’t that a liberal panel delivered a liberal decision. Rather, what’s so surprising is that they delivered a far more moderate decision than anyone would have predicted.

Consider what a dismal job the proponents of Prop 8 did at trial in this case, proffering mediocre witnesses who proffered mediocre evidence that gay marriage would harm children and imperil heterosexual marriage. (Who can forget Prop 8’s star witness David Blankenhorn’s admission that he knew of no study that proved children reared by gay couples fared worse than those raised by heterosexual parents.) Then, recall the almost painfully meticulous findings of fact (80! 80 findings of fact!) produced by Judge Vaughn Walker to support his conclusion that Proposition 8 violated not just the constitutional promise of equal protection, but also a fundamental right to marry the partner of one’s choosing. Against this dramatic backdrop, today’s 2-1 decision is downright modest, corralling the ruling to apply only in California, and only because of the indignity of Prop 8, which “eliminated” a right that had already been granted same-sex couples. Confronted with massive constitutional questions, the majority wrote, “We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case, however, because California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of ‘marriage,’ and Proposition 8’s only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation, while leaving in place all of its incidents.”

Today, the most liberal judges in the most liberal state on the most liberal appeals court had an opportunity to make history. Instead, they opted to do far less.

Read the rest though, because her analysis goes much farther.

AND FOR THOSE WANTING HANDICAPPING ABOUT HOW THIS RULING WILL FARE IN THE FUTURE WHEN IT COMES TO SCOTUS…..

60 Minutes legal analyst, Andrew Cohen, who also writes for the Atlantic, points to all the ways that Tuesday’s ruling was carefully tailored to address the legal sensibilities of Anthony Kennedy, who will almost certainly be the Supreme Court’s swing vote on the matter, should they decide to take the case.

Here’s a clip:

The only serious question, in the 552 days between the trial court’s ruling and today, was how far the 9th Circuit would travel, doctrinally, in declaring Prop 8 to be an unconstitutional violation of the due process and equal protection rights of same-sex couples. Would it follow the logic and reasoning of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, the Republican appointee who presided over the trial in this case and then had to defend himself against allegations that he was biased because he is gay? Or, would the 9th Circuit strike out on its own?

In the colossal wake of Perry v. Brown, 133 pages of fur and teeth, the best answer I can offer today is that the federal appeals court’s majority sought to thread a needle between recognizing the constitutional rights of certain same-sex couples to stay married and respecting the current equal protection jurisprudence of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Republican appointee and native Californian, whose vote everyone agrees ultimately will decide the fate of Prop 8 and therefore the fate of same-sex marriage in America.

The 9th Circuit’s ruling is much narrower than was Judge Walker’s ruling and clearly aimed at Justice Kennedy’s jurisprudence in cases involving discrimination based upon sexual orientation

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via the Hollywood Reporter

UPDATE: Today is a very good day for human beings.

No reporting can speak quite as eloquently to the point as the opening of the ruling itself, the majority opinion, written by Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

You can find it here.

But here’s one line that sums up all:

Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to opposite sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for “laws of this sort.”

The opinion (with minority commentary) goes on for another 128 pages.

But that’s the heart of the matter. Straight up.

The court’s decision, had it’s light moments, which in a back door way also spoke deeply to the issue.

As The wrap reports via Reuters:

The appellate court judges who ruled Tuesday that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, mentioned Jumbotrons, Frank Sinatra, movies and Marilyn Monroe along with Supreme Court precedents in their decision.

“Had Marilyn Monroe’s film been called ‘How to Register a Domestic Partnership with a Millionaire,’ it would not have conveyed the same meaning as did her famous movie, even though the underlying drama for same-sex couples is no different,” the judges wrote.

The judges wrote that in society, “We are excited to see someone ask, ‘Will you marry me?’, whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly it would not have the same effect to see, ‘Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?’.”

They even invoked Groucho Marx, William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln — all in one paragraph:

“Groucho Marx’s one-liner, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?’ would lack its punch if the word ‘marriage’ were replaced with the alternative phrase. So too with Shakespeare’s ‘A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.’ Lincoln’s ‘Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory,’ and Sinatra’s ‘A man doesn’t know what happiness is until he’s married. By then it’s too late.’”

The Court mentioned Shakespeare a few times:

“We emphasize the extraordinary significance of the official designation of ‘marriage,” the decision says. “That designation is important because ‘marriage’ is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults. A rose by ay other name may smell as sweet, but to the couple desiring to enter into a committed lifelong relationship, a marriage by the name of ‘registered domestic partnership’ does not.”

The ruling by the 3-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is due to be announced at 10 am, Tuesday.

Fingers crossed.

One day we’ll look back on this crazy period in which some among us were not allowed to marry the people they love because of the whacked notion that those unions, no matter how devoted, would do harm to the concept of marriage as a whole—and we’ll wonder what in the world we could possibly have been thinking.

Howard Mintz at the San Jose Mercury News has a good break down of the possible outcomes. Bob Egelko of the SF Chron also has a clarifying take.

SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES CAN’T BE GUARANTEED CONFIDENTIALITY IN JAILS COMMISSION TESTIMONY

The controversy over whether or not those testifying before the Citizens Commission on Jail Violence can be offered anonymity may have just been settled.

LA Times reporters Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard spoke to the Commission’s lead attorney, Richard E. Drooyan, who explained that legally, a promise of anonymity wouldn’t hold up if deputies were asked to testify in future criminal or civil cases in court.

(By the way, Drooyan is also the president of the Los Angeles police commission.)

Here’s how the LAT story opens:

A commission investigating allegations of deputy brutality inside Los Angeles County jails cannot guarantee confidentiality for deputies who want to testify, dealing a blow to efforts to combat what has been described as a code of silence among some jail guards.

Members of the special commission created by the county Board of Supervisors had raised the possibility of allowing deputies and others to provide anonymous testimony as they attempt to determine the scope of any brutality against inmates.

But Richard E. Drooyan, the panel’s general counsel, has told commissioners that a court could compel them to provide the identities during a criminal investigation or civil litigation. Allegations of excessive force against inmates is the subject of an FBI probe as well as civil lawsuits, including one filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In an interview with The Times on Saturday, Drooyan said he hoped former deputies and current guards would be willing to come forward despite the limits on confidentiality.

“There is at least some chance that we’ll be able to preserve confidentiality, but it’s not something we can guarantee,” he said.

Drooyan notes that the Commission will be looking at systemic issues, not criminality by individual deputies. In other words, the issue is reform, not nabbing people. So hopefully everyone with something important to say will say it anyway, even without anonymity.

A CALIFORNIA CASE OF WARRANT-FREE TRACKING HEADS FOR THE SUPREMES

Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News has this well-reported story. Here’s how it opens:

A year and a half ago, a Silicon Valley community college student wound up in the cross hairs of a shadowy but common law enforcement practice now at the center of an unfolding legal drama in the U.S. Supreme Court.

On his way to school, Yasir Afifi, an Arab-American, stopped for an oil change and later discovered that the GPS tracking device he found on the underbelly of his car had been put there by the FBI without a warrant.

Now the Supreme Court is expected to decide any day whether the government has a right to use that tactic without a search warrant in a case that highlights the tensions between law enforcement needs and the privacy implications of new technologies that can track our every move.

In a Washington, D.C., case, the Supreme Court is considering whether warrantless GPS tracking violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure, one of the core rules in any criminal case. The scope of the court’s ruling could have far-reaching implications when everything from smartphones to dashboard gadgets offer authorities a generous menu for tracking suspects.

The Obama administration and law enforcement groups say GPS tracking is no different from ordinary police surveillance on public streets. There is no constitutional barrier to GPS tracking in public places, they argue.

Really? Really?? Yeah, okay, we all know that privacy’s a thing of the past, but this sounds a little police state-ish.

The problem is that if the Supreme Court rules against the tracking, some righteous convictions will be tossed out. On the other hand, if one has a warrant, no problem with slapping on that tracker.

No one seems to have a clear bet as to which way SCOTUS will go.Yet, whatever their ruling, it will be significant, as this case will set the course for other technologies that have yet to appear.

UPDATE: THE SUPREMES REJECTED WARRANT-CHALLENGED TRACKING: GO, SCOTUS!

Ars Technica has a very interesting write up on the split in thinking on the court that went into the unanimous decision.

JUVENILE LIFE FOR NON-HOMICIDE CASES—LOUISIANA STRUGGLES WITH WHAT TO DO

In a 2010 decision (Graham vs. Florida), The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that kids convicted of crimes that don’t involve murder cannot be locked up for the rest of their lives.

The states with cases affected by the ruling are now struggling with how things should play out with their non-homicide LWOP cases. Louisiana is one of those states. Here’s the opening to a story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that deals with one such case that has pushed the issue into the open.

Giovanni Brown was 16 when he and another teen forced their way into a home in an upscale Harvey subdivision in 1999, armed with pistols and intent on mayhem. After holding four people against their will for hours, ransacking the home and trying in vain to force the homeowner to withdraw cash from an ATM, the teenagers stole two cars loaded with the family’s property.

Brown was prosecuted as an adult and convicted of aggravated kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery. He was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison with no chance of probation, parole or suspended sentence for the kidnapping, and another 40 years for robbery. Under Louisiana law, Brown would never leave prison, a reality his public defender Marquita Naquin argued during the trial.

“What can a 16-year-old do in the first 16 years of his life that demands that we throw him away?” Naquin asked the jury just before it unanimously rejected her plea.

Her argument proved prophetic.

Louisiana’s DA’s Association is arguing that inmates like Giovanni Brown should not be eligible for parole until they are 60 years old.

And while we’re having this discussion, at the risk of doing my broken record thing again (which I’ll be doing once more in the next week or so because California’s legislative attempt to modify juvenile LWOP may be coming up for a vote soon), please do remember that the U.S. is the only country in the world—IN THE WORLD— that imprisons kids for life. So either we have a much worse class of kid in this nation, or we’ve got a policy that……let’s just say it needs some improvement.

“CRIME AFTER CRIME” – THE STRUGGLE TO FREE BATTERED WOMAN, DEBORAH PEAGLER

The feature-length documentary film, “Crime After Crime,” traces the legal battle to free Deborah Peagler from a California prison 20 years after she was connected to the murder of the man who had abused her and forced her into prostitution.

It premiered Thursday night on OWN, the Oprah Winfrey network, but it will encore, so power up your DVRs. It’s an incredible California criminal justice story and points beyond itself to a discussion we should be having about whom we incarcerate.

Here’s what WitnessLA posted about the case of Deborah Peagler two years ago.

And here’s an interview with Yoav Potash, the film’s director.

ICE SHATTERED FAMILIES

In the first six months of 2011, the US government removed more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of U.S.-citizen children.

Some of those kids stayed with other family members. But, many end up in the foster care system.

In a new study, the Applied Research Center estimates that there are approximately 5,100 children living in foster care whose parents have been either detained or deported.. If the same rate holds true for new cases, writes ARC in their report, in the next five years, 15,000 more children will land in the foster care system when their moms and/or dads are detained or deported.

Here’s what ARC recommends:

Federal, state and local governments must create explicit policies to protect families from separation. These polices should stop the clock on the child welfare process and the immigration enforcement process to ensure that families can stay together and allow parents to make the best decisions for the care and custody of their children.

The whole study is a worthwhile read.

CAMERAS, COPS AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Journalists and activists and citizens have the Constitutional right to photograph or video officers making an arrest as long as the picture taking doesn’t interfere with the police. But a lot of law enforcement see the matter otherwise.

The Crime Report has an interesting story by Jeremy Kohler about the conflict over this right that is being played out on many streets in the U.S.

Here’s a clip:

Walking by the Boston Common one afternoon in October 2007, Simon Glik saw three police officers forcing a young man face down on a park bench and heard a bystander say, “You’re hurting him.”

Concerned that officers were using unreasonable force to arrest the man, Glik, a young lawyer, used his cell phone to film the incident from 10 feet away.

After placing the suspect in handcuffs, an officer told him he’d taken enough pictures. Glik responded, “I am recording this. I saw you punch him.”

An officer asked Glik if his cell phone recorded audio. Glik said yes. The officer cuffed Glik, and arrested him on a charge of violating Massachusetts’s wiretap law, aiding in the escape of a prisoner, and disorderly conduct.

They also erased some of the recording, according to news accounts.

Glik was part of a trend that is riling journalists and activists…..

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