MITRICE RICHARDSON FINALLY SADLY FOUND

Thursday was the day that the LA County Office of Independent Review delivered a report that the release of likely mentally ill Mitrice Richardson from the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s station in the early morning hours of with no purse, no cash or credit cards, no cell phone, and no one in evidence meeting her—was not improper, according to department regulations.

The deputies’ actions may have been legal. But no one who puts themselves in the emotional shoes of Mitrice’s family and friends could ever imagine that the sheriffs’ choices that night were wise or right.

The truth of that fact also became clear on Thursday when skeletal remains found in the Malibu Hills a few miles from the the Lost Hill’s station, in and old marijuana grove, were identified as the pretty young troubled woman whom we all hoped so much would one day be found alive.

At the press conference yesterday, Sheriff Baca acknowledged in so many back-handed words that the handling of Mitrice’s case was tragically flawed. “Life is fragile. The circumstances of this case are tragic……..’Properly’ doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done something more. The soul searching in the sheriff’s department is certainly being done….I’m very, very disappointed that he’s not alive.” he said grimly. (Here’s a link to audio of the press conference.)

The LA Times makes the point in a Friday editorial.

Mitrice’s father is pressing for Baca plus the deputies who were involved in his daughter’s unwise and tragic arrest and middle-of-the-night release, to take a lie detector test.

The LA Times’ Andrew Blankstein and Carla Hall have done an excellent job in pulling together the whole deeply saddening story.

One of the weird and troubling things that emerged at Thursday’s press conference is that, according to the sheriff’s department, there is no trail in to the place that Mitrice was found. Law enforcement had to be choppered in. So how is it possible that a confused young woman got there on her own?

YOUNGEST G’ITMO TERROR SUSPECT’S TRIAL SUSPENDED WHEN ATTORNEY COLLAPES

Nothing about this trial of Omar Kadr seems to be going smoothly. Here’s the news update on the military-appointed attorney being airlifted out of Guantanamo.

In the meantime, the Toronto Globe and Mail (Kadr is a Canadian citizen) has a interesting article titled: Khadr jury to decide: jihadist or scared teen

Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal is also covering the trial and has a report here.

CROWNING FRANZEN

Time Magazine has dubbed Johnathan Franzen a the Great American Novelist and put him on its cover. Seriously???? I mean, I lovedThe Corrections too, but…..

I guess they really, really, REALLY liked his new novel, Freedom, that’s coming out at the end of this month.

(And, yes, I will be reading it right away, now that I’ve motored through nearly everything else on my summer reading list. And speaking of summer reading, or the record, David Mitchell is probably a genius. His summer book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is nearly Tolstoy-ish in it’s breathtaking narrative inventiveness. But, for pure summer delight, it was lots more fun to read the latest James Lee Burke.)

What books have you loved this summer? (I’ve got more. Let’s talk.)

OKAY, BIG STORY COMING ON MONDAY. JUST IN THE FINAL EDITING STAGES

In the meantime, have a de-lightful weekend. And thanks to those of you who sent me empathetic dog-related notes (or posted dog-related comments). All were very much appreciated.

Now off to check on the progress of some terrific Annenberg grad students who are working on a gang story downtown.

xoxox!

Drawing of Darwin reading is from Origin Graphics

A June 2007 Supreme Court case called Bowles v. Russell, had to do with a Mr. Bowles who missed his opportunity to file a Habeas appeal in a murder case. (Mr. Bowles was the alleged murderer.) It seems the court in question told him that the deadline was on the 26th of the month; he got his filing in a day early, on the 25th. However, the court had told him wrong. The actual deadline was two days earlier on the 24th. Ooops.

The upshot? Bye-bye appeal.

In a 5-4 decision the Supremes agreed with the lower court that while Bowles may have gotten a sucky deal, that was just the breaks. Deadlines were deadlines.

Mr. Bowles, it should be noted, was a convicted murderer and nobody’s idea of a sympathetic character.

Yet now the decision that bears his name is reaping unexpected and awful consequences-–not so much for convicted felons, but for injured military veterans.

Adam Liptak has the story in Tuesday’s NY Times.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court said there are some filing deadlines so rigid that no excuse for missing them counts, even if the tardiness was caused by erroneous instructions from a federal judge.

The vote was 5 to 4, and Justice David H. Souter wrote a furious dissent. “It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way,” he said, adding that he feared the decision would have pernicious consequences.

He had no idea.

The court’s decision concerned a convicted murderer who had beaten a man to death. But now it is being applied to bar claims from disabled veterans who fumble filing procedures and miss deadlines in seeking help from the government. The upshot, according to a dissent in December from three judges on a federal appeals court in Washington, is “a Kafkaesque adjudicatory process in which those veterans who are most deserving of service-connected benefits will frequently be those least likely to obtain them.”

The Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear an appeal from David L. Henderson, who was discharged from the military in 1952 after receiving a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He sought additional government help for his condition in 2001, and he was turned down in 2004.

Mr. Henderson, who served on the front lines in the Korean War, had 120 days to file an appeal, but it took him 135 days. He had a pretty good excuse.

His psychiatrist has said under oath that he is “incapable of rational thought or deliberate decision-making.” As a consequence, the psychiatrist added, “Mr. Henderson has been incapable of understanding and meeting deadlines.”

The courts acknowledge this. On the other hand, they say, deadlines are deadlines.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in Washington, ruled against Mr. Henderson in December, saying the Supreme Court’s decision from three years ago, Bowles v. Russell, left it no choice.

In a dissent, Judge Haldane R. Mayer, writing for himself and two colleagues, called the majority’s approach “both ironic and inhumane.”

Since the summer of 2008, writes Liptak, there have been more than 225 similar dismissals.

Read the whole thing. It’s very eloquent and very sad.

Transmissions,—the wonderful blog run by Diane Winston, USC’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion—frequently features smart and provocative essays.

The latest essay by Specialized Journalism grad student, Tom Pfingsten, talks about the lousy way the media covered the health care reform abortion controversy. It is particularly worth your time.

Here’s how it opens:

Politicized or not, most Christians have deeply religious reasons for opposing abortion, and that’s why it’s a shame that the U.S. media’s coverage of the issue at the most crucial moment of the recent congressional health-care debate was reduced to two lone words: “Baby Killer!”

They were shouted by Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) and they instantly displaced any thoughtful coverage that might have helped nonreligious Americans understand why abortion was such a sticking point for conservative legislators.

Neugebauer claimed he was referring to the health care bill, not Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who had opposed the bill because of its funding for abortions, but changed his mind and was speaking when “Baby Killer!” was heard throughout the room. Either way, Neugebauer’s outburst immediately became the most newsworthy thing to come from the health care debate that day, judging by the flood of coverage devoted solely to Neugebauer’s poorly timed exclamation.

Within hours, news sites and TV stations were knee deep in a whodunit-style investigation to uncover whose voice had sent the words flying across the floor of the legislature. Never mind why they were shouted. USA Today headlined its story with the revelation that Neugebauer was behind the unfolding scandal. The Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle both dissected the political consequences. And Diana Butler Bass, writing for the Huffington Post, focused on the morality of using the words “Baby Killer” as a personal insult. (Bass did, however, include an insightful paragraph about mainstream Christian beliefs regarding “any sort of intentional violence against human beings”—including abortion.)

Even before Neugebauer’s infamous flare-up on March 21, news outlets were doing a poor job of explaining why abortion was being viewed as a deal-breaker. On the previous day, the Washington Post astutely declared that the health-care vote “may hinge on abortion issues,” but did not explain why.

Read on.

NOTE: I regret to say that the comments are closed for the next few days.

Barack Obama pledged to close Guantanamo within a year of his inauguration. But Gitmo is still open and too many of the dark and toxic stories that characterized Gitmo under Bush are still in evidence.

Here are two of them.

THE UIGHURS

Seven Chinese ethnic-minority Uighurs being held on Guantanamo contend that they are being held illegally by the U.S, government. Their case has come to Supreme court.

In yesterday’s Slate, Rebecca Crootof and Oona A. Hathaway have an analysis. Here’s a clip

The Uighurs’ story is by now depressingly familiar. Having fled first to Afghanistan to avoid persecution in China and then to Pakistan to avoid U.S. bombing in the wake of 9/11, the Uighurs were turned over to the U.S. military by local inhabitants in exchange for $5,000 per person. The United States suspected them of being enemy combatants (wrongly, our government now admits) and sent them to Guantanamo Bay, where they have been imprisoned for the past seven years.

After the Uighurs’ detention was challenged in court, the U.S. government determined that there was no legal reason to continue to hold them. But repatriation to China was not an option. The United States concluded that the Uighurs might well face persecution and perhaps even torture as suspected members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which China regards as a terrorist organization.

Switzerland has finally agreed to take the Uighurs, thus suggesting they should be released. So why hasn’t it happened? Perhaps the Surpemes will answer that question.

THE GUANTANAMO 3: WAS IT A TRIPLE SUICIDE??

While the Uighurs’ limbo is deeply disturbing, the story of the three prisoners whom, we are told, committed a coordinated suicide on the same night chills in a whole different way.

A law professor with his students, plus a reporter from Harper’s magazine named Scott Horton, all got drawn into investigating the issue.

The stories below tell what these investigations found. .

First, the journey taken by the law professor and his students as told this week on Dick Gordon’s The Story.

Here’s a clip of the text. (And there are links to the investigation.) But listening to this story is the thing.

When three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay died on the same night in June 2006, the official report said they had committed coordinated suicides by hanging themselves in their cells. Years later, a Seton Hall University professor named Mark Denbeaux asked a group of his law students take another look based on newly-released documents from multiple investigations. Adam Deutsch and Kelli Stout were part of that group. They were shocked to learn the three men had been dead at least two hours before they were found, when they were supposedly under constant supervision. And that was just the beginning.

And now there ’s Scott Horton’s investigation that will appear in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine.

The opening makes a sobering accusation:

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.

Late on the evening of June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners…..

Although a number of others have criticized Horton’s story, While others have criticized the story’s critics.

For me, it was Horton’s work in combination with that of the law prof and his students that made this a case that demands investigation.

Listen and …..read. See what you think.

These are very, very dark times for American justice….and yet Wednesday there was a small shard of light from an unexpected source.

As nearly everyone by now knows, in was on Wedesday that the verdict was announced in the case of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan. It was the very first of the post 9/11 war crimes trials.

Here are clips the New York Times editorial on the subject:

Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced … a guilty verdict.

[SNIP]

The rules of justice on Guantánamo are so stacked against defendants that the only surprise was that Mr. Hamdan was actually acquitted on the more serious count of conspiring (it was unclear with whom) to kill Americans during the invasion of Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001.

The charge on which Mr. Hamdan was convicted seemed logical since he did work as Mr. bin Laden’s driver. But it was still an odd prosecution. Drivers of even the most heinous people are generally not charged with war crimes.

[SNIP]

Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in Guantánamo, put the trial in a disturbing light. He testified that he was informed by his superiors that only guilty verdicts would be tolerated. He also said that he was told to bring high-profile cases quickly to help Republicans score a pre-election public relations coup.

Colonel Davis gave up his position on Oct. 4, 2007. That, he wrote in The Los Angeles Times in December, was “the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system.”

Let’s sit quietly and think about that last bit for a few minutes: “Only guilty verdicts would be tolerated.”

Yet, like the passengers on the two ferry boats in The Dark Knight, who refused to live up to the cynical expectations of the Joker, the six-member jury of military officers voted not to convict Hamdan of the bigger, badder charge of conspiring to attack civilians, but found him guilty only of the lesser charge of providing support to al-Qaeda. They then sentenced him to five-and-half years—although, when the prosecutors didn’t get the verdict they wanted, they asked for 30.

Because of time-served, this means Hamdan will be eligible for release in five months.

The Bush administration, however, made it clear before Wednesday’s verdict, that no matter what his sentence, Bush Co intends to hold Hamdan indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”

Hamdan’s lawyers intend to file a Habeas Corpus petition. so that he might go home to his family once he has served his sentence.

The Bush Administration will natually fight the petition with everything it’s got.

Here is the Miami Herald’s description of what happened just after the trial ended:

After the jury’s verdict, the judge turned to the convicted terrorist and said:

“I wish you godspeed, Mr. Hamdan. I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country.”

”God willing,” the man in traditional Yemeni robe and head scarf replied in Arabic, interrupting.

The judge continued: “And I hope that you are able to be a father, and a provider, and a husband in the best sense of the word.”

Then the detainee said it again: “Inshallah.”

There are those who are already trying to claim Hamdan outcome merely proves that the post-911 military tribunals can be fair.

Nice try. But, no. A trial in which no other verdict is permissable other than guilt is, by definition, a kangaroo court.

This principle also holds true for a trial in which one’s sentence doesn’t matter because the government intends keep the defendant as long as it pleases.

But, here’s the thing: What the Hamdan case really proves is that sometimes even inside kangaroo courts, people don’t want to behave like kangaroos anymore. They decide they’d rather be human. They’d rather be decent.

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A SMALL SIDE NOTE: In an interview on the Tavis Smiley Show last night, Jane Mayer, author of the recently released book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, said that she thought many of the real heroes of the torture/Guantanamo/civil liberties conflict were military people, folks who, in the face of often severe pressure, stood up and said, “No. I won’t. This isn’t right. It’s to what we do here in America.”

If you believe the U.S. military is doing a dandy job figuring out exactly who is the enemy and who is not at Guantanamo, Bloomberg colunmist Ann Wolner has a court ruling she’d like to tell you about. It was made last week by a conservative-leaning appeals court. For the details, here are some clips from yesterday’s column by Wolner:

The federal appeals court in Washington D.C., the first court to look into the facts behind a specific Gitmo detention, decided the military had no credible evidence to label a man an enemy combatant and keep him locked up for six and a half years.

“It is undisputed that he is not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and that he has never participated in any hostile action against the United States or its allies,” the court said.

Made public last week, the ruling found not a shred of credible evidence to support the government’s claim that Huzaifa Parhat had anything at all to do with America’s enemies, whether through combat or support or association with a group that may have associated with them.

Parhat is one of 13 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo who fled persecution in China, camped in Afghanistan and wound up in Pakistan, where authorities handed him over to the U.S. His case is essentially identical to the dozen other detainees who are all members of the Uighur ethnic group. (That’s pronounced WEE- gur.)

Beyond those 13 cases, the Parhat decision shows how little it takes to get labeled an enemy combatant and imprisoned for years on end……

Read the rest of the column here.

In the upcoming April 17 issue of the New York Review of Books, veteran investigative reporter Raymond Bonner reviews four books that cover aspects of Guantanamo. But as is often the case for the best NY Review of Books stories, Bonner’s piece is less review than it is a comprehensive essay on the issue that the books generally cover—which is, in this instance, the ghastly moral and legal bungling that has characterized the Bush administration’s handling of terrorists suspects both at Guantanamo Bay and the various “black sites” that we, the lowly American public, have learned about only in disturbing dribs and drabs.

Here’s the opening of Bonner’s essay:

On February 11, 2008, the Pentagon announced that charges were being filed against six men in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the attacks and one of al-Qaeda’s most senior members, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a leader of the Hamburg cell that included several of the September 11 pilots. It has taken nearly seven years for these men to be indicted—while more than 240 other prisoners continue to remain at Guantánamo in a state of indefinite detention without charge. In contrast, Britain, after one of the longest and most expensive trials in its history, has already convicted and sentenced four men for the failed attacks on the London subway on July 21, 2005.

Last year, British officials also arrested three other men for involvement in the deadly attacks on three London subway lines and a bus on July 7, 2005, two weeks earlier; they are scheduled to go on trial at the end of March. Spain has convicted twenty-one of twenty-eight men charged in connection with the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004; and Indonesia has held lengthy trials and convicted four men who were accused of the terrorist attacks in Bali in October 2002, two of whom have been sentenced to death, and two to life imprisonment.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a guiding principle of the American criminal justice system. The Bush administration has ignored this principle with impunity, and America’s image abroad has suffered greatly as a result.

The administration could have avoided much of the criticism it has received for its handling of terrorism suspects. It didn’t have to listen to the civil libertarians and human rights lawyers. All it needed to do was heed the advice of the country’s military lawyers…..

[snip]

As the Bush administration, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, began hurriedly drafting rules to try suspects, the most senior military lawyers, from all four services, were “appalled” at the lack of rights that the administration proposed granting the defendants….

Bonner’s essay goes a lot further, including references to what the three presidential candidates have been willing to say—and not say—about Guantanamo and torture. For example there’s this:

“Only Obama makes a point in his speeches that he would restore habeas corpus for Guantánamo prisoners,,” writes Bonner. “It generally brings loud applause.”

Three separate stories tonight—one on television, two on radio—addressed the idea that the Bush Administration has created what many have called an Imperial Presidency—a presidency that believes itself above the US courts, above the necessity to honor long-standing government treaties, and above international law.

The first of the three stories was the much ballyhooed 60 Minutes segment about Murat Kurnaz, a German traveling in Pakistan who was nabbed three months after 9/11 and transported to Afghanistan where he says he was tortured severely. It seemed to matter little that the FBI, U.S. intelligence and German intelligence had reportedly concluded that Kurnaz was innocent of the terrorism charges brought against him. He was subsequently transferred to Guantanamo where charges against him fell further apart. In 2002, German intelligence agents wrote their government, saying, “USA considers Murat Kurnaz’s innocence to be proven. He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.” Instead, Kurnaz was kept in Guantanamo for an additional three and a half years.

When contacted, the US Department of Defense responded to 60 Minutes in letter form that called Kurnaz’ accusations outlandish and unsubstantiated.

The second two stories were on this week’s This American Life. In one episode, TAL tells about the more than a hundred foreign women who got married to Americans, then had their spouses die less than two years after the marriage. The US government responded to their grief and loss by curtly informed the widows “You’re no longer married to Americans. Your citizen application is denied. Now get out of the country.” The widows went to court over the matter, and the court told the government that it had to let the women stay. But the US government ignored the court and told them they have to leave anyway.

Story three was about an American couple who lived on the Canadian border and decided to build a retaining wall inside the ten-foot buffer zone that is on either side of the international boundary. The International Boundary Commission told the Americans that they couldn’t have the wall inside the buffer zone and would have to take it down. The Americans sued the Commission, the bi-national entity created by a 1925 treaty to inspect and oversee the US Canada border. And that’s when the Bush administration stepped in….

You can hear the rest on This American Life here. (The promos up now, and podcasts will be available of the program in a few days)

In a way this is all an old issue. We have long been aware that in instances ranging from FISA to signing statements, when the Bush administration doesn’t like a law or a legal ruling it pretty much does what it pleases regardless of restrictions placed on it by Congress or courts.

But the real question is, what will happen next January when we have a new president? Wll he or she keep the newly established Imperial presidency, or dismantle it.

(NOTE: Above graphic shamelessly heisted from Ross Blog at NBC.com)

I’ve been in a non-blogging state of mind….working on another deadline, and generally enjoying the lovely fall weather. But will be back in full force tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, aside from the various news stories on Blackwater, gang “rent” payments, and DWP rate hikes, out of Sunday’s papers, I recommend the following:

FROM THE LA TIMES:

The Facebook Revolution – No this isn’t a social justice issue, but it’s an interesting read anyway, unless you’re planning to live like Christopher McCandless, the Into the Wild guy. (And things didn’t turn out that well for him anyway.)

Militant Atheists are Wrong – an anti-anti God essay that has some interesting and discussion-provoking points to make. “Their assault on religious faith amounts to an attack on the human imagination,” writes author Lee Siegel.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

On Torture and American Values - “Truly banning the use of torture would not jeopardize American lives,” writes the NY Times, “experts in these matters generally agree that torture produces false confessions. Restoring the rule of law to Guantánamo Bay would not set terrorists free; the truly guilty could be tried for their crimes in a way that does not mock American values.” Expert opinions on this matter are pretty close to unanimous. So why does American policy dictate otherwise?

Race Gap: Crime vs. Punishment - An interesting and nuanced essay that asks the questions: IF criminal legal proceedings seem to turn out differently for people of different races, when does a constitutional problem exist?

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

The WaPo has its own torture-memo-related editorial, but the big Must Read from today’s Post is this story: An Exit Toward Soul-Searching: As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound.

AND ABOUT CERTAIN SPORTS DEVELOPMENTS having do with (cough) damned Stanford (cough), I have no freaking comment.

Imporant newly proposed immigration legislation….another MacArthur Park march and rally….a strongly worded new ACLU legal filing regarding the LAPD….

Yesterday was a full day.

I’m finishing up a deadline so I’ll be back with a new posting late this afternoon.

In the meantime, here’s a post from the always interesting ProfsBlog about how bad California’s prison system really is. It’s titled “Golden State Guantanamo.” Here’s the main ‘graph:

One of the least covered and most important areas of California’s socio-legal landscape is its bloated and inhumane prison system that now holds approximately 80,000 prisoners more than the 100,000 its 30+ prisons were designed to house. While Guantanamo has rightly been a subject of constant attention in the main stream media and the legal blogosphere, California’s prison crisis constitutes a human rights abuse of equal if not greater significance. Three separate federal courts now have jurisdiction over different aspects of the crises created by the endless growth of this system. The overcrowding has transformed the state’s already warehouse like prisons, which lacked educational or treatment facilities, into something that deserves the term “camp”, with gyms and hallways packed with bunk beds. Such conditions, and a chronic shortage of guards, has a more hellish twist when you consider that most of these prisoners are considered players in a racialized gang order that involves more than a dozen different factions (many divided within ethnicity). But suffering can be more mundane as well. In a new report prepared for one of the federal courts (described in today’s SF Chronicle), that of Hon. Thelton Henderson (N.Dist CA), the special master appointed by Judge Henderson criticized the system for being as many as 2,700 guards short and noted that plans to add thousands of new beds would only increase the numbers of people exposed to the system’s broken health and dental systems (the subject of the case before Judge Henderson). I’m not an expert in the metrics of pain, but how many unset broken bones or uncared for dental abscess equals a case of water boarding?

Now before anybody labels this an over-the-top rant by some no-nothing bleeding heart, you should know it was written by Jonathan Simon, the Associate Dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School. Simon’s own blog, Governing Through Crime, is full of other interesting takes on California’s crime and prison policies.

In fact, here’s something he wrote on my fabulously smart friend, Joan Petersilia, the state’s top expert (and one of the nation’s top experts) in prison reentry and parole policy.

Okay, back soon. In the mean time, please inform, argue, opine, take issue and discuss this— or any of the other pressing topics of the last 24 hours.

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UPDATE: Blogfather Marc Cooper has a good take on the immigration package, as I knew he would.

This weekend the NPR radio show, This American Life, replayed an updated version of its 2006 Peabody Award-winning episode, Habeas Schambeas.

(The link can be found here.)

The Habeas episode is a terrific piece of radio journalism that has gotten more important, not less, since its original broadcast in March of last year. I urge you to listen.

Here’s a snippet from TAL’s own description of the program:

The right of habeas corpus has been a part of this country’s legal tradition longer than we’ve actually been a country. It means the government has to explain why it’s holding a person in custody. But now, the war on terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that the prisoners should not be covered by habeas — or even by the Geneva Conventions — because they’re the most fearsome terrorist enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes?

Just to be clear: the right of habeas corpus is not a right or left issue. It is one of the most fundamental freedoms that the great experiment known as the United States of America has pledged to protect.

In September of 2006, some six months after the show was originally broadcast, the Republican members of Congress members along with most of their Democratic brethren, voted to pass the Military Commissions Act, a fear-based piece lawmaking that, in one legislative swoop, took away the ancient right of habeas corpus for any non-citizens declared to be “enemy combatants”

At that juncture, the rest of us-–if we’d had any sense—should have marched in the streets over the issue. But we didn’t. Okay, water under the bridge. But as of late last week, two new things have happened regarding our nation’s relationship with the Great Writ.:

Read the rest of this entry »