Stanford Law School’s Three Strikes Project, along with a group of Stanford lawyers and other supporters, hope to get an initiative on the November 2012 ballot that would amend California’s Three-Strikes law—the harshest in the nation— so that it is aimed at dangerous repeat offenders, not hapless former thieves who, on impulse, snatch a floor jack from a tow-truck, or shoplift a $2.50 pair of socks.

Tracy Kaplan of the San Jose Mercury News, reports that the long-planned ballot initiative has been given to the California Attorney General’s office for review. Supporters intend to start collecting the necessary 504,760 signatures in mid-December .

Here’s a clip from Kaplan’s story:

An effort to limit California’s tough Three Strikes Law is gaining momentum, with a proposed ballot initiative that would reserve the toughest penalty — 25 years to life — for the baddest of the bad, including murderers, rapists and child molesters.

The initiative, now under state legal review, was carefully crafted by a group of Stanford University law professors and stops far short of the extensive changes proposed under a previous reform measure that narrowly failed in 2004.

The Legislature and voters passed the Three Strikes Law in 1994 after several high-profile murders committed by ex-felons sparked public outrage, including the kidnapping from her Petaluma home and strangling of 12-year-old Polly Klaas. Since then, the courts have sent more than 80,000 “second-strikers” and 7,500 “third-strikers” to state prison, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. Though third-strikers make up just 6 percent of the prison population, they are responsible for a disproportionate share of the state’s spiraling prison health care costs — at least $100 million annually — as they age and need more medical attention, according to the California auditor.

If passed, the initiative would still trigger a life sentence for rapists, murderers, and child molesters with even the most the most minor of third “strikes.’ But it would eliminate the notorious inequities that the existing law has produced in which former felons are locked up for life after shoplifting or breaking into a soup kitchen, with the California tax payers paying the tab.

LA District Attorney Steve Cooley wouldn’t tell Kaplan whether or not he supported the proposed initiative. (He opposed a more ambitious initiative aimed at amending 3-Strikes in 2004.) However, Cooley did give her a verbal wink, noting that the new initiative was very similar to SB 1642, a legislative effort to reform the law that he supported in 2006.

Like me, Kaplan was part of a May 2011, Journalism Fellowship (sponsored by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice), in which two-dozen reporters chosen from all around the state met with experts on all sides of the 3-Strikes question. Cooley was one of the experts who met with us and, even back then, he made it clear he welcomed a wisely constructed revision of the 1995 law—as long as it didn’t go too far.

“A lot of judges are looking back at some of those [3 strikes cases] and saying, ‘You know what? I’d like to have that one back again,’” said Cooley.

Here’s a clip of Cooley answering questions from a gaggle of us who cornered him on the topic.

If you want to do something concrete today for the American service men and women, I recommend a donation—small or large— to these excellent folks.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America were already planning to honor photojournalist Tim Hetherington and author Sebastian Junger at the IAVA’s yearly gala dinner—their Heroes Dinner—that will take place tonight at 7 pm at on the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot. The two are being honored for their work in general, but specifically for their film, Restrepo, which follows one platoon of soldiers stationed in the Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, a location generally considered to the the most dangerous of the Afghan war.

Both veterans and those in active military service embraced Restrepo with an unusual amount of affection. It was a film that really got it, they said, that really showed with no b.s. what it was like to be in combat in the 21st century. The official Twitter feed of the U.S. Army Reserve tweeted in support of Restrepo after it was nominated for an Oscar, as did IAVA’s founder and executive director, Paul Rieckhoff, who had come to regard Hetherington as a personal friend.

Then, on April 20—just a week ago—Rieckhoff got the call that Tim Hetherington had been killed in the Libyan town of Misrata.

Although most veterans have known more than their share of death, still the news about Hetherington was a blow.

Reickhoff posted the following statement online late that same day:

The IAVA family is deeply saddened by the loss today of our dear friend Tim Hetherington. Tim was not only a renowned filmmaker and photojournalist, but also a tremendous leader, advocate and partner to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans everywhere. He was one of the few journalists willing to risk his own life to tell our toughest stories. Tim understood the harshest realities facing troops on the front lines because he stood there right alongside us in the fight. Our community has lost a brilliant journalist and a true brother. From his Oscar-nominated film Restrepo to his involvement with military and veterans charities, Tim lived his life with unparalleled passion, energy and commitment. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Tim’s family and friends. His legacy will live on through his historic contributions to our community and to the world at large. He never forgot us. And we’ll never forget him.

Now, in addition to the recognition of the two filmmakers, the glittery gala will will include a memorial retrospective of Hetherington’s work and life.

It should be a good night, but a bittersweet one.

“In it’s desire to sanitize war, society dehumanizes it….I’ve come to realize the war machine is, in fact, very human. Take a group of young men, train them together, put them on the side of a mountain and they will kill and be killed for each other.”

– Tim Hetherington, November 2010

The brave and brilliant photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who co-directed with Sebastian Junger the profoundly affecting and deeply humanizing war documentary, “Restrepo,” about U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, was killed Tuesday in Misrata, Libya.

This is terrible, terrible news.

Here are the details from Reuters.

Photojournalist Tim Hetherington, the co-director of Oscar-nominated war documentary “Restrepo,” died in the besieged Libyan town of Misrata on Wednesday, doctors said.

Getty photographer Chris Hondros was in critical condition in intensive care, doctors at the hospital where he was being treated said. He had suffered brain injuries.

The photographers were among a group caught by mortar fire on Tripoli Street, the main thoroughfare leading into the center of Misrata, the only major rebel-held town in western Libya and besieged by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces for more than seven weeks.

“It was quiet and we were trying to get away and then a mortar landed and we heard explosions,” Spanish photographer Guillermo Cervera said.

UPDATE: Chris Hondros has died of his injuries. Hondros was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2004 for his photos of conflict in Liberia, and got the Robert Capa Gold Medal for photography in 2005 (among others) for this amazing set of images.

This is from the Human Rights Watch statement:

Hetherington was a brilliant photographer and videographer who covered many of the world’s most critical human rights stories: conflicts in Liberia, Afghanistan, Darfur, and now Libya. In every assignment, he demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity to his subjects, a tender insight into their human ordeals, and a keen sense of how visual imagery could be used to effect positive social change.

“Tim Hetherington was much more than a war reporter,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “He had an extraordinary talent for documenting, in compassionate and beautiful imagery, the human stories behind the headlines. We are saddened by his death and extend our deepest condolences to his family and countless friends.”

Roth reiterated Human Rights Watch’s call on the Libyan government to cease unlawful attacks against civilian areas in Misrata.

Hetherington lived in Monrovia, Liberia for eight years during the brutal civil war that engulfed Liberia and neighboring countries. The film that Hetherington co-directed, “Liberia: An Uncivil War,” and his book, “Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold,” did more than any other body of work to tell the complete story of the conflict, focusing on individual Liberians and allowing them to tell their own stories in their own words.

And here’s Hetherington in his own words in an OpEd from last year.

To those who have served, and those who still serve.

CNN’S MICHAEL WARE SUFFERS FROM PTSD AND IS HAUNTED BY A POSSIBLE WAR CRIME HE WAS NEVER ABLE TO REPORT

CNN’s Michael Ware is one of the most courageous, insightful and brilliant war reporters working. Now an article in the Brisbane Times plus a new documentary on Australian TV let us in on the cost of his work—and recount the incident that was “too hot to broadcast.”

DESPITE THE FISCAL SETBACKS, SIGNS OF LIFE AND HOPE ARE EVERYWHERE AT HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES REPORTS NEON TOMMY’S CALLIE SCHWEITZER

Callie Schweitzer, the editor-in-chief of Annenberg’s Neon Tommy, made her first visit to Homeboy Industries on the day that the office was reeling and grief stricken because friend and employee Irvin Panameno had been fatally shot the morning before.

Interestingly, Schweitzer saw the staff’s reaction to the tragedy as indicative of the program’s strength. After researching and interviewing further, she came back with an excellent report detailing the various signs of fiscal recovery in evidence at Homeboy, as it continues to deal with the cash flow problems that reached their nadir on that heartbreaking day last May, when Father Greg Boyle was forced to lay off 330 employees.

YES THERE WAS A SETBACK TUESDAY WITH DADT, BUT GAY RIGHTS MOVES FORWARD SAYS THE NY TIMES

Well, let’s hope they’re right. Here’s the link to the news analysis by the NYT’s John Schwartz.

The NYT also has this editorial on the disheartening defeat of the repeal of an irrational and unjust practice that discriminates against so many fine and courageous people who serve in our military.

HOLLYWOOD WANTS STATE PARKS OPEN (OTHERWISE THE PRODUCERS AND DIRECTORS LOSE THEIR BACK LOTS)

Or so the LA Times’ Richard Verrier reports and it’s a hard observation to dispute. But, hey, if H’Wood wants to be FOP—friend of parks—for its own selfish reasons, y’all com’on down! We’re tickled to have you. LA’s kids who need and deserve park access get the benefit—as will the rest of us.

STEVE LOPEZ TRIES OUT USE-OF-DEADLY-FORCE

The LA Times Steve Lopez decides to walk in a cop’s metaphorical shoes by taking a video-simulator training session on deadly force at the LAPD academy at in Elysian Park.

His only regret at the end of the day was that he didn’t get to then help frog march Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo out of his house in handcuffs” and/or smash in the door of Bell Mayor Oscar Hernandez with a battering ram.
(An entirely understandable regret. I’d've liked to have been there to do a little bashing myself.)

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.

Sgt. Maj. Robert J. Cottle was a well-liked SWAT officer who was also a Marine. This week he was killed while serving in Afghanistan. Officer Cottle is the first Los Angeles police officer to be killed in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said he had known Cottle for 20 years. and was “deeply saddened” by his death. Beck also said he would talk to reporters about Cottle after Friday’s 9 a.m. recruit graduation ceremony,

LAPPL President Paul Weber was also particularly warm in his praise. “As a SWAT officer, R.J. was a tactical genius,” wrote Weber in the police union’s statement on Thursday late afternoon. “His military service gave him unique skills that he generously shared with fellow officers.”

Cottle leaves behind a wife and a young daughter.

The LA Times has more specific information on the circumstances of Cottle’s death:

[Cottle], 45, was traveling with three other Marines in the Marja region of the country, which has been the focus of an intense U.S.-led offensive against Taliban forces in recent weeks, said LAPD Capt. John Incontro, who oversees SWAT operations.

Their armored vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, killing Cottle and another Marine and seriously wounding the two others, Incontro said. No other details of the incident were available. Cottle, who joined the LAPD in 1990 and won one of the coveted SWAT positions six years later, is the first active LAPD officer to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, police officials said.

A veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, Cottle had deployed to Afghanistan in August last year and was scheduled to return home this summer.

A somber mood fell over the department’s Elysian Park training academy Wednesday afternoon, as members of the tightly knit SWAT unit were summoned to receive news of Cottle’s death from command staff. Officers recalled a friend who stood out even in the rarefied air of SWAT for the intensity he brought to the LAPD’s most demanding assignment and the care he showed for other officers who had turned him into one of the unit’s leaders.

Incontro remembered the night in 2008 when another SWAT officer, Randall Simmons, was killed during a prolonged standoff with a man who had killed several people and then barricaded himself in a house. After Simmons was shot and rushed to a hospital, Cottle went from one SWAT officer to the next, helping to calm them and keep them focused on the still-unfolding situation.

Here’s a randomly chosen 2008 account of the type of thing that R.J. Cottle did as an LAPD SWAT officer.

Bottom line: It sounds as if an exceptionally good man has been lost.

I am one of those who would have been shouting in an undignified manner at the TV tonight if Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker had not won.

For the record, I can’t tell you how bored I am with the complaints that the film doesn’t get all its details right. Art is not always about accuracy (for that we turn to documentary and nonfiction), but it is always about truth.

The Hurt Locker is only nominally about the U.S. Army EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) units—although it uses that material as a vehicle. It is about the ambiguity of war. And in depicting that moral and emotional ambiguity, it succeeds with great and lasting resonance.

Like all good art it allows the beholder to project on it what he and she will. For the antiwar liberal it is an antiwar movie. For the conservatives it is a jagged love letter to the bravery of our troops.

It is also none of the above and all of the above. For me the film successfully brought to life the words of Tim O’Brien, from his exquisite “The Things They Carried,”

True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis…..War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference – a powerful, implacable beauty – and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly.

To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.

The beautiful and important The Hurt Locker lays out an array of these contradictory truths within the convention of a compelling and deeply human narrative —and thus it escaped the confines of its story to burrow permanently inside many of us who see it.

That is why, for me, this year—despite the joys and revelations of other work like Precious and A Single Man, Kathryn Bigelow’s relatively small film is The One.

I’m just glad the Academy agreed so I was not reduced to lecturing the television.

And I’m really, really glad Jeff Bridges won too. And The Cove. And Mo’Nique. And Christoph Waltz, while we’re at it. And I thought Sandra Bullock was fabulously classy, even though I always want Merl Streep to win. If she’s not in a movie that year, I don’t care. I just think she should win anyway. (In truth, what an array of terrific women up for best actress this year!) And anytime T-Bone Burnett can win something, it is a good night.

My good pal, Marc Cooper, has had the excellent idea of weaving the war stories of his younger years as a reporter into a chapter by chapter series of blog posts.

The site where these stories live is called, logically enough, Reporter War Stories.

And the tales contained make for intriguing reading.

The first is a tale of Chile in 1971: The Day Fidel Arrived. But you should begin here at the prologue.

I particularly like the next entry Chile 1973 My .22 And Me Parts I & II It opens like this:

Lest you think ill of me, I had some legit reasons to carry. After all I worked for a Socialist president at a time of great social unrest. And there were literally armed fascist gangs running in the streets. And being a good citizen and all, I had legally registered the gun with the Ministry of Defense as required. I did not, however, have a permit to carry. And I can’t imagine I would have ever used the gun except to maybe throw it at somebody.

On a night in late May, the evening before Allende was to deliver that year’s equivalent of the State of the Union speech, the fascists had blown up a major oil pipeline. Allende declared a state of emergency, putting more militarized carabinero police and some army units out on the street.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I had finished translating an advance copy of the speech that afternoon and I spent the evening with friends at a very good French restaurant called La Cascade. On the way home, around midnight, our taxi driver spotted a police roadblock and check point. No sweat he said. No sweat, as ling as nobody in the car had a gun.

My girlfriend at that time told me not be stupid and give her the gun. She would put it in her panty stockings crotch and the polite Chilean cops would never check there.

I did my on-the-spot risk assessment and decided against the crotch option. I figured there was little chance the police would pat down a car full of happy gringos. And if they did, it would be easier to talk my way out of it all rather than tick them off by hiding it on a girl.

That didn’t work out quite so well.

Read the rest.