By William Fisher
The nation’s legal aid organizations are intended to provide lawyers for the poor. But today these agencies are overburdened, underfunded, and inefficient.
Yet, the non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute Justice (JPI) says, “At a time when more poor people are seeking legal help, legal services programs are bracing for more federal funding cuts.”
The JPI says, “Inadequate public defense systems lead to more incarceration, in the form of unnecessary pretrial detention, increased pressure to plead guilty, wrongful convictions, excessive sentences and increased barriers to successful community re-entry. Incarceration, in turn, can lead to higher costs for individuals, families, communities and taxpayers.”
In criminal cases, the Constitution guarantees a person a lawyer if he or she can't afford to hire one. But in civil cases, low-income individuals must fend for themselves.
Recently, the Institute reports, a U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee proposed cutting legal aid funding by 26 percent for the next funding cycle. States like Mississippi receive 80 percent of their funding from the federal government, says Rebekah Diller, deputy director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
"It's a terrible time to cut legal aid programs," Diller said. "We are really concerned... Everybody is still suffering with the recession."
Plus, Diller says, areas like Mississippi are dealing with the aftermath of tornadoes and flooding, which have increased the need for civil legal help for low-income residents.
Last year, the two Legal Services programs in the state, Mississippi Center for Legal Services and North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, lost about $228,000 when federal funding for such programs were cut 4 percent, said Sam Buchanon, executive director of Mississippi Center for Legal Services.
"We are praying the proposed 25 to 26 percent cut in funding doesn't pass," Buchanon said. "That would devastate programs."
If the proposed 26 percent cut goes into effect, national funding would be down to the lowest level since the start of the program in 1974, Diller said.
At the same time, the national poverty population eligible for civil legal aid grown by 17 percent since 2008 to an all-time high of 63 million Americans.
The federal Legal Services Corp. - which distributes grants to local programs -reports that from 2009 to 2010, foreclosure cases were up 20 percent at LSC-funded programs; unemployment compensation cases increased 10.5 percent; landlord-tenant disputes rose by 7.7 percent; bankruptcy, debt relief and consumer finance cases were up by nearly 5 percent.
Mississippi Center for Legal Services serves 43 counties in the central and southern part of the state and has offices in Jackson, Hattiesburg, McComb and Biloxi. North Mississippi Rural Legal Services covers 39 counties in the northern part of the state with offices in Oxford, Clarksdale, Greenville, Tupelo and West Point.
Last year, the legal services programs closed about 10,800 cases.
Mississippi currently receives more than $5 million annually in federal legal service funding.
As more people seek help, Buchanon said the Mississippi Center for Legal Services doesn't have the manpower to service all the requests.The same holds true for the North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, according to executive director Ben Cole. Cole said 60 percent of the people who seek the agency's services are turned away because it doesn't have enough workers.
According to the Institute, “many systems across the country have been in a state of ‘chronic crisis’ for decades. The defender systems that people must rely on are too often completely overwhelmed; many defenders simply have too many cases, too little time and too few resources to provide quality or even adequate legal representation.”
JPI adds that “only seven per cent of all county-based public defender offices have enough investigators to meet national guidelines.”
The following are some of the main findings in the Justice Policy Institute’s new report, System Overload: The Costs of Under-Resourcing Public Defense.
The majority of public defender offices and systems have excessive caseloads. Only 27 percent of county-based public defender offices and 21 percent of reporting state public defender systems have enough attorneys to meet caseload guidelines.4 Statewide systems had only a median of 67 percent of the number of attorneys necessary to meet caseload guidelines. Nearly 60 percent of county-based public defender offices
do not have caseload limits or the authority to refuse cases due to excessive caseloads.
Overwhelming caseloads can prevent even the most dedicated and talented attorneys from providing their clients with a quality defense. A lack of resources limits the ability to prepare and investigate. Only 7 percent of all county-based public defender offices have enough investigators to meet national guidelines and 87 percent of small county-based public defender offices do not have a single full-time investigator.
When defenders do not have access to sufficient resources they may be unable to interview key witnesses, collect or test physical evidence, or generally prepare and provide quality defense for their client, resulting in poorer outcomes for the client.
Public defense systems don’t have enough independence or oversight. Without independence from judicial and political influence, the defense system’s legitimacy can be compromised. A lack of oversight has also
contributed to a system in which a person’s access to justice varies wildly depending on the zip code or county in which he or she was accused of an offense.
Only 27 percent of county-based public defender offices and 21 percent of state public defender systems have enough attorneys to meet caseload guidelines.
A lack of resources limits training opportunities. Ongoing education and training is vital, especially with technological advancements in DNA and forensics, which can make cases more time consuming and complicated. Without this training—or the time to use it—defense attorneys may be less equipped to test the prosecution’s evidence at trial or advise a client regarding a plea offer, possibly leading to a conviction or harsher sentence for their client.
Lack of quality defense may lead to pretrial detention. In places where defender caseloads are very high or the court fails to appoint counsel in a timely manner, poor people may spend a lot of time in jail before ever speaking to a lawyer or appearing in court.
Unnecessary or prolonged pretrial detention due to case delays, late appointments of counsel, lack of or limited pretrial advocacy can also increase costs. Pretrial detention is expensive and can have a negative
impact on people and their families.
Lack of quality defense could lead to excessive prison sentences. A general lack of advocacy at sentencing, coupled with a lack of investigation throughout the process can lead to inappropriate and unnecessarily harsh sentences.
A lack of quality public defense and the costs that accompany them disproportionately affect people of color and those with low income, as public defense is provided to people who cannot afford to hire an attorney.
Furthermore, people from communities with low income are more likely to be arrested than people from more affluent communities. Research also shows that the justice system in general also disproportionately affects people of color. As people of color are also disproportionately affected by poverty, they are also more likely to require court appointed counsel when arrested.
The JPI report contains a series of recommendations, including integrating a holistic and community-based approach to public defense, collecting better data, conducting more empirical evaluations of the impact of public defense systems on people, communities and criminal justice, and. involving public defenders and affected communities in the policy making process.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Bahrain: Dialogue with Teargas?
Some mainstream media are suggesting that the Bahraini version of The Arab Spring is over. Crushed was the word used by one of the mainstream US newspapers.
But the Sunni King of the tiny oil-rich country, Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa, says the independent report he commissioned is being implemented. The report concluded that peaceful demonstrators were being attacked by soldiers, arbitrarily arrested, taken to prison and tortured. The King has, unexplainably, accepted the report's findings and promised to work with the people on long-overdue reforms. He is seeking patience from his majority Shia subjects.
But these subjects – at least what appears to be a substantial proportion of them – have run out of patience. They have been shot at, killed and wounded, arrested and tortured since March. They have no faith in the
King's reforms. They think he's stalling to buy time. They are telling a very different story.
Their story is about peaceful demonstrations being broken up by security forces with live fire in addition to tear gas, batons and water canon. Their story is about continuing middle-of-the night home invasions by security men, threatening whole families, arresting the men, and taking them away to an uncertain future. Their story is about sick people in jail not getting adequate medical attention and prisoners being routinely tortured. Their story is about thousands of teachers, doctors and nurses being fired from their jobs. Their story is about thousands of students expelled from the university.
These Bahrainis will be satisfied with nothing less than the abdication of the King, the removal of his family from the most senior government posts, a new constitution and an election to create a parliamentary democracy. The King has won no trust from this group. Their mantra here, as it was for Mubarak in Tahrir Square in Egypt, is: The King Must Go!
There are other Bahrainis, however, who appear willing to attempt to participate in a dialogue with the Royals to determine for themselves whether His Majesty is serious about real reforms. But thus far, there has
been virtually no action taken by the Government to begin creating any sort of dialogue.So while the Royal family and its government remain unified and determined, a small divide has opened among two factions of protestors.
How this will play out over time is unclear. But time appears to be on the side of the King, in whose name security forces, backed by the presence of troops from Saudi Arabia, appear prepared to continue their brutal crackdowns on dissidents.
That became clear this weekend.
Saudi-backed regime troops attacked anti-government protesters demanding an end to the rule of the Al Khalifa family in the eastern Bahraini town of Toobli. Clashes between protesters and government forces have also been reported in a number of other villages and towns across the Persian Gulf sheikdom. The troops used tear gas to disperse the protesters. Several protesters have so far been killed and hundreds injured.
Following is a lightly edited report from the spokesperson for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Maryam Al-Khawaja. She is believed to be in London. Her father, her sister and her sister's husband and their two-year old son, are currently in prison in B
Death of three civilians:
23 Nov 2011, Abdul Nabi Kadhem (44), fatally wounded when his car was intentionally hit by fast-moving police vehicle, forcing him to collide with a standing wall of a building. This was the morning of the ceremony for the release of the report.
7 Dec 2011, Zahra Saleh, (27), was hit with metal rod in head on 18 Nov. The government insists that the protesters were the ones who hit her and that she had turned to the security forces for protection. My colleague went to the hospital, as well as a member of AlWefaq party, to try to speak to Zahra; both of them were stopped, questioned then turned away by Ministry of Interior employees. Also, in Bahrain, it is highly unlikely for anyone to turn to police for protection, especially someone who was supporting the protest
movement as was seen on her facebook page.
11th Dec 2011, Sajida Faisal (5 days old) dies from teargas suffocation, according to her parents: http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4898
Attacks on all-types gatherings:
- Mourners have been attacked in Aali.
- Religious processions were attacked in Muharraq by the security forces, then by the thugs.
- Ministry of Interior yesterday prevented an "authorized" sit-in by sacked workers in front of the civil service bureau, and dispersed the crowds by force.
- Protests, small or large, continue to be attacked in the same way. Security forces continue to shoot excessive amounts of teargas on residential areas as collective punishment (http://yfrog.com/od8xblij,
http://yfrog.com/mgpzaphj). Teargas used is made in USA, France and Brazil.
Injuries showed the continued use of: Shotgun, teargas and rubber bullets.
Tonight there were heavy attacks on protesters in several villages, this came after a huge protest earlier in the day in front of the United Nations building due to a visit by OHCHR staff to the country.
http://mypict.me/index.php?id=331492144. Tomorrow protesters have planned to set up a similar "Pearl square gathering" with tents but along the Budaiya Highway. The organizers have urged people not to block the roads, and to remain peaceful at all times.
It is important to note that despite the many injuries we saw today (including pellets in eyes), protesters are still not able to seek medical attention at the hospital as it continues to be under the control of the army, and instead have o attempt to treat themselves at home.
Adel Fulaifal is a known torturer from the 90's and the reason he was not held accountable is because of Decree 56 which was issued by King Hamad granting amnesty to all those guilty of crimes of torture during
the 90's. Many still hold positions in government.
Government Actions since the report:
[We have called for the dissolution of the National Security Apparatus and the Special Security Apparatus and the return of their jurisdictions to the regular security apparatuses; ]
Unlike many other nations involved in versions of the Arab Spring, Bahrain pays careful attention to the positions taken by the U.S. Government. Bahrain has a strategic importance to the US because it is
the home of the US Fifth Fleet.
Thus far, the US has spoken out against the brutality involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations, but has not taken sides. It finds itself eager not to anger the Saudis, who provided troops to Bahrain some months
ago at the request of the King. The Saudis were unhappy with the speed at which it says President Obama threw Egypt's Hosni Mubarak under the bus.
The US is also interested in minimizing the influence of Iran among Bahraini Shia, who make up a majority of the subjects of the Sunni King.
The US applauded the King's appointment of an independent fact-finding commission headed by a well-known international jurist, and has urged the King to lose no time creating a structure for constructive dialogue.
But a one-party dialogue is a monologue. And just how Bahrain will reach a point of dialogue is unclear when peaceful protesters continue to fill the streets and the security forces continue to kill, injure and imprison them.
But the Sunni King of the tiny oil-rich country, Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa, says the independent report he commissioned is being implemented. The report concluded that peaceful demonstrators were being attacked by soldiers, arbitrarily arrested, taken to prison and tortured. The King has, unexplainably, accepted the report's findings and promised to work with the people on long-overdue reforms. He is seeking patience from his majority Shia subjects.
But these subjects – at least what appears to be a substantial proportion of them – have run out of patience. They have been shot at, killed and wounded, arrested and tortured since March. They have no faith in the
King's reforms. They think he's stalling to buy time. They are telling a very different story.
Their story is about peaceful demonstrations being broken up by security forces with live fire in addition to tear gas, batons and water canon. Their story is about continuing middle-of-the night home invasions by security men, threatening whole families, arresting the men, and taking them away to an uncertain future. Their story is about sick people in jail not getting adequate medical attention and prisoners being routinely tortured. Their story is about thousands of teachers, doctors and nurses being fired from their jobs. Their story is about thousands of students expelled from the university.
These Bahrainis will be satisfied with nothing less than the abdication of the King, the removal of his family from the most senior government posts, a new constitution and an election to create a parliamentary democracy. The King has won no trust from this group. Their mantra here, as it was for Mubarak in Tahrir Square in Egypt, is: The King Must Go!
There are other Bahrainis, however, who appear willing to attempt to participate in a dialogue with the Royals to determine for themselves whether His Majesty is serious about real reforms. But thus far, there has
been virtually no action taken by the Government to begin creating any sort of dialogue.So while the Royal family and its government remain unified and determined, a small divide has opened among two factions of protestors.
How this will play out over time is unclear. But time appears to be on the side of the King, in whose name security forces, backed by the presence of troops from Saudi Arabia, appear prepared to continue their brutal crackdowns on dissidents.
That became clear this weekend.
Saudi-backed regime troops attacked anti-government protesters demanding an end to the rule of the Al Khalifa family in the eastern Bahraini town of Toobli. Clashes between protesters and government forces have also been reported in a number of other villages and towns across the Persian Gulf sheikdom. The troops used tear gas to disperse the protesters. Several protesters have so far been killed and hundreds injured.
Following is a lightly edited report from the spokesperson for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Maryam Al-Khawaja. She is believed to be in London. Her father, her sister and her sister's husband and their two-year old son, are currently in prison in B
Death of three civilians:
23 Nov 2011, Abdul Nabi Kadhem (44), fatally wounded when his car was intentionally hit by fast-moving police vehicle, forcing him to collide with a standing wall of a building. This was the morning of the ceremony for the release of the report.
7 Dec 2011, Zahra Saleh, (27), was hit with metal rod in head on 18 Nov. The government insists that the protesters were the ones who hit her and that she had turned to the security forces for protection. My colleague went to the hospital, as well as a member of AlWefaq party, to try to speak to Zahra; both of them were stopped, questioned then turned away by Ministry of Interior employees. Also, in Bahrain, it is highly unlikely for anyone to turn to police for protection, especially someone who was supporting the protest
movement as was seen on her facebook page.
11th Dec 2011, Sajida Faisal (5 days old) dies from teargas suffocation, according to her parents: http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4898
Attacks on all-types gatherings:
- Mourners have been attacked in Aali.
- Religious processions were attacked in Muharraq by the security forces, then by the thugs.
- Ministry of Interior yesterday prevented an "authorized" sit-in by sacked workers in front of the civil service bureau, and dispersed the crowds by force.
- Protests, small or large, continue to be attacked in the same way. Security forces continue to shoot excessive amounts of teargas on residential areas as collective punishment (http://yfrog.com/od8xblij,
http://yfrog.com/mgpzaphj). Teargas used is made in USA, France and Brazil.
Injuries showed the continued use of: Shotgun, teargas and rubber bullets.
Tonight there were heavy attacks on protesters in several villages, this came after a huge protest earlier in the day in front of the United Nations building due to a visit by OHCHR staff to the country.
http://mypict.me/index.php?id=331492144. Tomorrow protesters have planned to set up a similar "Pearl square gathering" with tents but along the Budaiya Highway. The organizers have urged people not to block the roads, and to remain peaceful at all times.
It is important to note that despite the many injuries we saw today (including pellets in eyes), protesters are still not able to seek medical attention at the hospital as it continues to be under the control of the army, and instead have o attempt to treat themselves at home.
- Arrest continued following the daily protests. Arrested people not necessary protesters. Many are children under 18.
- We have received a number of cases from families that their detained relatives are still being subjected to torture.
- Religious places…attacked with teargas canisters in two occasions, in Aali during mourning of AbdulNabi, and later after attacking a religious procession in Muharraq.
- Several journalists (including columnist Nicholas Kristoff) have faced harassment including brief detention and being tear gassed (EPA/DPA, Reuters, NYTimes, Washington post) http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4897
- Trials continued of teachers, doctors and others. Three athletes were sentenced up to 1 year. (It's not clear if these are included in the ecent pardon for athletes) http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4869.
- Human Rights Watch observer was banned from entry to court. Teachers trial adjourned to the 19th (http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4903).
- Mustafa AlMoamen, brother of Ali AlMoamen who was killed on 17th February, was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment today for illegal gathering and inciting hatred against the regime, not first case where brother of someone killed is imprisoned. The judge is a member of the royal family. Trials of doctors postponed until January 9th. Continuation with case against 28 doctors charged with misdemeanors, adding charge of possession of white weapons. Case against 139 people for illegal assembly postponed until March.
- New batch of government employees including teachers has been suspended from work for up to 10 days (no salary). New sacking Ministry of Justice (Minster is a member of the formed committee to follow up BICI recommendations). News in papers yesterday of reinstatement of 480 sacked workers not true as my colleague met with the health workers who stated that no one had been returned to work.
- The case of dismissed workers can be example of how the king is not obliged to BICI recommendations. On 1 July Bassiouni (head of the Commission) told the media "King PROMISED me to return those dismissed for expressing their opinions" http://t.co/zG7sOd8o and the govt issued PR releases saying "PM gave the private sector 10 days to reinstate wrongfully sacked employees" http://t.co/lpg9baDx , however thousands still sacked.
- Attempt to hinder and hijack civil society associations: the recent dismissal of the legitimate elected board of the Bahrain Bar Society: http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/4890
- Conditions at central prison,"Jaw", has become even worsen after the publication of report. Less hours outside cell, restrictions on excercize of religious rituals, no hot water for showers, families not allowed to bring winter clothes, despite number of detainees suffering from Sickle Cell Anemia and other health problems.
- Hunger strike started at cell 7 in the Dry Docks prison, and the Central police station against arbitrary arrest, torture and demanding their release. Two of the detainees who were taken to court today fainted as they are entering their 5th day or hunger strike. When the trial hearing adjourned, detainees Sayed Ahmed Neama, Mohamed Saleh and Abdullah Maki were beaten by the police in front of the lawyers.
- Violence inciting increased online by the pro-gov, some with real names like the ex-colonial Adel Falifel, sending threats directly to Human Rights defenders while no action taken against him (this is a country which arrested people for their pro-democracy online posts).
Adel Fulaifal is a known torturer from the 90's and the reason he was not held accountable is because of Decree 56 which was issued by King Hamad granting amnesty to all those guilty of crimes of torture during
the 90's. Many still hold positions in government.
- The National Commission said its priorities are the dismissed workers and students, and the religious places, which are indeed priority, but how come the martyrs and detainees are not on the very top priority list?
- It seems the PM is now publicly inciting against the pro-democracy protesters (Arabic): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCPK_YkJaPc&feature=related
Government Actions since the report:
- Interview with the King yesterday, in which he "denied systematic rights abuses during the handling of protests earlier this year" and insisted some protesters were being trained in Syria. http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=319679
- Labyrinth of follow-up committees:
- National Commission: 18 members appointed by the king, mostly members of the Shura council, human rights activist (Abdullah AlDurazi), minister of justice, others. After their first meeting they have been divided into new 3 sub-committees to deal with legislative issues, judicial issues and national reconciliation. Two members of Alwefaq were invited by they have rejected the invitation.
- Following their first meeting the commission announced that "All proposals brought forward for discussion will be approved by consensus". Government work group: formed by the PM as per the king order. They have to study the BICI report and to cooperate with the National Committees to implement the recommendations.
- Reform to MOI:
- Appointment of John Timoney, the former Miami Police Chief known for brutality and Former Metropolitan police Chief John Yates known for a phone hacking scandal.
- Bahrain's head of public security Tariq bin Dinah was dismissed then appointed security adviser.
- Minister said there would be cooperation with international rganizations to develop a curricula to train ministry personnel. This will lead to the drafting of a code of conduct for the police force. He confirmed the commencement of a study to draft legislations that would guarantee visual and audio recording for all official questioning of detainees.
- The Prime Minister today participated in the Ministry of Interior's celebration of the "policeman day".
- Authorities in Bahrain say prosecutors have charged 20 members of the security forces for alleged abuse of protesters they are responsible for "instances of excessive force and mistreatment of detainees".
- Royal pardon to 100 athletes, not unconditional release with dropping of all charges. No other releases, not even those mentioned in the tortured cases.
- National Security Head Sheikh Khalifa bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa promoted to General Secretary of the Supreme Council of Defence and he king's advisor with Minster rank.
- A new head (Adel bin Khalifa Hamad Al Fadhel) was appointed for the National Security Apparatus. Its responsibilities have been amended so that the NSA has no right to arrest suspects, while its dutiesare limited to collecting intelligence information, and detecting and uncovering detrimental activities relating to spying, and collaboration with foreign countries and terror in order to safeguard national security, institutions and systems. The NSA shall refer to the Interior Ministry all cases requiring arrests.
[We have called for the dissolution of the National Security Apparatus and the Special Security Apparatus and the return of their jurisdictions to the regular security apparatuses; ]
- Government announced that the Red Cross allowed access to the prisons. This might be the only real step, but if these visits actually start now and not after two years [we are calling on Bahrain to sign the Optional Protocol against Torture, which involved that there will be a tanding committee to visit the prisons any time and that the visits could be sudden]
- The Interior Minister issued an order to the public prosecutor to investigate all deaths and torture cases implicating the police. Both the Minister of Interior and the public prosecutor should be investigated and tried for violations against human rights. End of Report.
Unlike many other nations involved in versions of the Arab Spring, Bahrain pays careful attention to the positions taken by the U.S. Government. Bahrain has a strategic importance to the US because it is
the home of the US Fifth Fleet.
Thus far, the US has spoken out against the brutality involved in the pro-democracy demonstrations, but has not taken sides. It finds itself eager not to anger the Saudis, who provided troops to Bahrain some months
ago at the request of the King. The Saudis were unhappy with the speed at which it says President Obama threw Egypt's Hosni Mubarak under the bus.
The US is also interested in minimizing the influence of Iran among Bahraini Shia, who make up a majority of the subjects of the Sunni King.
The US applauded the King's appointment of an independent fact-finding commission headed by a well-known international jurist, and has urged the King to lose no time creating a structure for constructive dialogue.
But a one-party dialogue is a monologue. And just how Bahrain will reach a point of dialogue is unclear when peaceful protesters continue to fill the streets and the security forces continue to kill, injure and imprison them.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
ICE Targets Even Fewer Criminals
By William Fisher
Last year, a controversial immigration enforcement program designed to trigger deportation proceedings against serious criminals in the US illegally, was severely criticized for managing to apprehend criminals comprising only 16.5 of total cases. This year, from July to September, only 13.8 per cent of the total were charged with having engaged in criminal activities.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University said that its findings "appear to contrast sharply" with the White House's announcement that: "Under the President's direction, for the first time ever the Department of Homeland Security has prioritized the removal of people who have been convicted of crimes in the United States." TRAC said the findings also are "hard to reconcile with ICE's recent press statements that claimed that during the past year the agency had targeted a large and increasing number of convicted criminals for deportation."
TRAC conducted a case-by-case analysis of records covering all proceedings filed in the Immigration Courts. They were obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
EOIR, a part of the Department of Justice, administers the nation's special administrative court system charged with deciding whether noncitizens should be deported or are legally entitled to remain in the country.
In previous analyses of Secure Communities data, such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have discovered that ICE's "serious criminals" include people driving with broken taillights, others wanted for minor shoplifting offenses, and drivers who have failed to pay traffic tickets.
"Not only has ICE targeted relatively few criminals as the basis for seeking deportation in these court proceedings, but this proportion has been declining steadily throughout the past year: 15.8 percent were charged with engaging in criminal activity during the first quarter period (October - December 2010), 15.1 percent during the second quarter (January - March 2011), 14.9 percent during the third quarter (April - June 2011), and finally 13.8 percent during the fourth quarter (July - September 2011). The average rate across the four quarters for FY 2011 was 14.9 percent," TRAC said.
These results are based upon TRAC's analyses of case-by-case records. These same case-by-case court records showed that during FY 2011 ICE initiated deportation proceedings against 188,770 individuals who were charged only with violating immigration rules. This amounted to 83.4 percent of the total cases. The proportion charged only with violating immigration rules was up slightly over levels in FY 2010 when 81.9 percent were so charged.
The number of individuals ICE sought to deport on national security or terrorism grounds - always few in number - also fell this past year. During FY 2010 a total of 42 deportation proceedings in the Immigration Courts included these grounds. This fell to only 30 during the past year, TRAC said.
The organization was sharply critical of ICE for failing to give TRAC access to documents it is permitted to have under the Freedom of Information Act. (FOIA)
TRAC says, "Unfortunately, while the agency could easily clear up these apparent discrepancies it has chosen not to do so. Indeed, for twenty months, in clear violation of public disclosure laws, ICE has persisted in withholding from TRAC the case-by-case data TRAC requested under FOIA that the agency maintains on these same court proceedings - information precisely parallel to what the Department of Justice already determined must be released to the public from its own files. DHS and other government offices have failed to rectify this matter despite TRAC's appeals to DHS's Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, as well as to the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS)."
TRAC added, "The records ICE is withholding would show just which ICE programs - such as Secure Communities or others - have contributed to fewer alleged criminals being targeted for deportation in court proceedings. The data would also allow the public to judge whether ICE's actual activities match ICE's announced policies to target serious criminals, and those who pose threats to public safety, as well as to better monitor how the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion in whom it seeks to deport."
In addition, TRAC says it contacted ICE's Public Relations office on November 7, 2011 asking for explanations of the figures given in the agency's October 18, 2011 press release that claimed the agency's FY 2011 accomplishments closely matched announced ICE priorities. At a meeting with ICE officials November 10, the agency promised to promptly provide answers to a series of TRAC questions that asked for details backing up the agency's claims. Again and again, however, the promised answers did not materialize. ICE's Public Affairs office continues to say the promised answers will be forthcoming.
On the basis of the extremely detailed and timely records that TRAC has obtained, "enforcement patterns can be determined for each state, Immigration Court and hearing location. What were the charges brought against each of the individuals in these various locations? What was their nationality? You can now access these detailed and highly localized portraits on TRAC's public website by accessing a new special web-based interactive tool," TRAC said.
Comprehensive data covering FY 1992 through FY 2011 are now included. TRAC's app lets you track - on a charge-by-charge basis - how well or poorly the deportation proceedings initiated by ICE actually match its announced priorities and policies. With the prosecutorial discretion ICE is asking its attorneys and enforcement personnel to exercise, are the agency's limited resources being focused on high priority targets for deportation? Those charged simply with entry without inspection are separately enumerated among these charge classes. Also included is information on whether the individual charged was a so-called "aggravated" felon, or charged with some other criminal violation.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) continues to attack the program known as Secure Communities, or S-Comm, for failing to "immediately ensnare any immigrant in the deportation pipeline the moment they come into contact with the criminal justice system."
The ACLU says "Detain first, investigate later - that is Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mantra when it comes to its Secure Communities ("S-Comm") program."
It explains: "Under S-Comm, the fingerprints of every person arrested by the police are shared with ICE at the moment they are booked into police custody. Without investigating the person's immigration status, ICE immediately sends an "immigration detainer" or a request back to the police if they want the person to continue to be detained for immigration purposes. Detain first, investigate later."
The ACLU asks, "See a problem with this? Not only does it violate the Fourth Amendment's basic prohibition against detaining a person without probable cause to do so, but it commonly ensnares the wrong people, including people who are not even immigrants, but United States citizens, causing them to be unlawfully detained."
As an example, the ACLU presents the case of Antonio Montejano, a U.S. citizen who was born in Los Angeles.
This is what the ACLU wrote: "A few weeks ago, Antonio was arrested by the Santa Monica Police Department for shoplifting. He accidentally left a Sears store without paying for the candy his young children had taken and eaten while in the store. One of his children also placed a $10 perfume bottle in a bag that had already been paid for.
"When security guards stopped Antonio, accusing him of stealing the perfume, Antonio explained that it was an honest mistake and that he would be happy to pay for it. After a long back and forth with the security guards, the police were called and Antonio was taken into custody.
"Antonio normally would have been released from Santa Monica Police custody within hours of being booked into their custody. But ICE interfered through S-Comm. When Antonio was booked, ICE immediately placed an "immigration detainer" on him, instructing the local authorities to detain him until they could pick him up.
"Antonio spent four haunting and unwarranted days in jail on the immigration detainer. For two of those days, Antonio was detained in a temporary holding cell in Los Angeles County Sheriff's custody that only had chairs, no beds. The authorities forced him to sleep on the hard floor, depriving him of any mattress or blankets, a practice the federal courts have long denounced as flagrantly unconstitutional. Antonio repeatedly protested to jail authorities that he was a U.S. citizen. But only after the ACLU of Southern California contacted a senior ICE official four days later, did they finally agree to lift the detainer.
"ICE, quite clearly, has no business arresting and detaining American citizens. But as described in a recent report by the Warren Institute at University of California - Berkeley, they do so over and over again through the fundamentally-flawed S-Comm program. (ICE's own data in the first year of S-Comm activation revealed that five percent of persons identified by S-Comm were in fact U.S. citizens.) And they do so by enlisting the unwitting participation of local jail authorities in these unconstitutional practices.
"The costs and consequences of S-Comm's detain first, investigate later are borne out every day in the jails and police stations across the country where non-deportable citizens and noncitizens suffer needless detention, while they beg for ICE to finally investigate their cases so that they may be released from jail."
President Obama has failed to keep the promise he made during his presidential campaign to introduce legislation to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, he has placed more personnel on the Southern US border, and deported more people during his term than any other president in US history.
The continued absence of a body of immigration law worthy of a superpower is no doubt due in part to the intransigence of the Republicans in Congress. And the President's relative silence on this issue must surely give the GOP the sense that immigration reform is nowhere near Obama's top priorities.
Sadly, they could well be right.
Last year, a controversial immigration enforcement program designed to trigger deportation proceedings against serious criminals in the US illegally, was severely criticized for managing to apprehend criminals comprising only 16.5 of total cases. This year, from July to September, only 13.8 per cent of the total were charged with having engaged in criminal activities.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University said that its findings "appear to contrast sharply" with the White House's announcement that: "Under the President's direction, for the first time ever the Department of Homeland Security has prioritized the removal of people who have been convicted of crimes in the United States." TRAC said the findings also are "hard to reconcile with ICE's recent press statements that claimed that during the past year the agency had targeted a large and increasing number of convicted criminals for deportation."
TRAC conducted a case-by-case analysis of records covering all proceedings filed in the Immigration Courts. They were obtained from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
EOIR, a part of the Department of Justice, administers the nation's special administrative court system charged with deciding whether noncitizens should be deported or are legally entitled to remain in the country.
In previous analyses of Secure Communities data, such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have discovered that ICE's "serious criminals" include people driving with broken taillights, others wanted for minor shoplifting offenses, and drivers who have failed to pay traffic tickets.
"Not only has ICE targeted relatively few criminals as the basis for seeking deportation in these court proceedings, but this proportion has been declining steadily throughout the past year: 15.8 percent were charged with engaging in criminal activity during the first quarter period (October - December 2010), 15.1 percent during the second quarter (January - March 2011), 14.9 percent during the third quarter (April - June 2011), and finally 13.8 percent during the fourth quarter (July - September 2011). The average rate across the four quarters for FY 2011 was 14.9 percent," TRAC said.
These results are based upon TRAC's analyses of case-by-case records. These same case-by-case court records showed that during FY 2011 ICE initiated deportation proceedings against 188,770 individuals who were charged only with violating immigration rules. This amounted to 83.4 percent of the total cases. The proportion charged only with violating immigration rules was up slightly over levels in FY 2010 when 81.9 percent were so charged.
The number of individuals ICE sought to deport on national security or terrorism grounds - always few in number - also fell this past year. During FY 2010 a total of 42 deportation proceedings in the Immigration Courts included these grounds. This fell to only 30 during the past year, TRAC said.
The organization was sharply critical of ICE for failing to give TRAC access to documents it is permitted to have under the Freedom of Information Act. (FOIA)
TRAC says, "Unfortunately, while the agency could easily clear up these apparent discrepancies it has chosen not to do so. Indeed, for twenty months, in clear violation of public disclosure laws, ICE has persisted in withholding from TRAC the case-by-case data TRAC requested under FOIA that the agency maintains on these same court proceedings - information precisely parallel to what the Department of Justice already determined must be released to the public from its own files. DHS and other government offices have failed to rectify this matter despite TRAC's appeals to DHS's Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, as well as to the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS)."
TRAC added, "The records ICE is withholding would show just which ICE programs - such as Secure Communities or others - have contributed to fewer alleged criminals being targeted for deportation in court proceedings. The data would also allow the public to judge whether ICE's actual activities match ICE's announced policies to target serious criminals, and those who pose threats to public safety, as well as to better monitor how the agency exercises prosecutorial discretion in whom it seeks to deport."
In addition, TRAC says it contacted ICE's Public Relations office on November 7, 2011 asking for explanations of the figures given in the agency's October 18, 2011 press release that claimed the agency's FY 2011 accomplishments closely matched announced ICE priorities. At a meeting with ICE officials November 10, the agency promised to promptly provide answers to a series of TRAC questions that asked for details backing up the agency's claims. Again and again, however, the promised answers did not materialize. ICE's Public Affairs office continues to say the promised answers will be forthcoming.
On the basis of the extremely detailed and timely records that TRAC has obtained, "enforcement patterns can be determined for each state, Immigration Court and hearing location. What were the charges brought against each of the individuals in these various locations? What was their nationality? You can now access these detailed and highly localized portraits on TRAC's public website by accessing a new special web-based interactive tool," TRAC said.
Comprehensive data covering FY 1992 through FY 2011 are now included. TRAC's app lets you track - on a charge-by-charge basis - how well or poorly the deportation proceedings initiated by ICE actually match its announced priorities and policies. With the prosecutorial discretion ICE is asking its attorneys and enforcement personnel to exercise, are the agency's limited resources being focused on high priority targets for deportation? Those charged simply with entry without inspection are separately enumerated among these charge classes. Also included is information on whether the individual charged was a so-called "aggravated" felon, or charged with some other criminal violation.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) continues to attack the program known as Secure Communities, or S-Comm, for failing to "immediately ensnare any immigrant in the deportation pipeline the moment they come into contact with the criminal justice system."
The ACLU says "Detain first, investigate later - that is Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mantra when it comes to its Secure Communities ("S-Comm") program."
It explains: "Under S-Comm, the fingerprints of every person arrested by the police are shared with ICE at the moment they are booked into police custody. Without investigating the person's immigration status, ICE immediately sends an "immigration detainer" or a request back to the police if they want the person to continue to be detained for immigration purposes. Detain first, investigate later."
The ACLU asks, "See a problem with this? Not only does it violate the Fourth Amendment's basic prohibition against detaining a person without probable cause to do so, but it commonly ensnares the wrong people, including people who are not even immigrants, but United States citizens, causing them to be unlawfully detained."
As an example, the ACLU presents the case of Antonio Montejano, a U.S. citizen who was born in Los Angeles.
This is what the ACLU wrote: "A few weeks ago, Antonio was arrested by the Santa Monica Police Department for shoplifting. He accidentally left a Sears store without paying for the candy his young children had taken and eaten while in the store. One of his children also placed a $10 perfume bottle in a bag that had already been paid for.
"When security guards stopped Antonio, accusing him of stealing the perfume, Antonio explained that it was an honest mistake and that he would be happy to pay for it. After a long back and forth with the security guards, the police were called and Antonio was taken into custody.
"Antonio normally would have been released from Santa Monica Police custody within hours of being booked into their custody. But ICE interfered through S-Comm. When Antonio was booked, ICE immediately placed an "immigration detainer" on him, instructing the local authorities to detain him until they could pick him up.
"Antonio spent four haunting and unwarranted days in jail on the immigration detainer. For two of those days, Antonio was detained in a temporary holding cell in Los Angeles County Sheriff's custody that only had chairs, no beds. The authorities forced him to sleep on the hard floor, depriving him of any mattress or blankets, a practice the federal courts have long denounced as flagrantly unconstitutional. Antonio repeatedly protested to jail authorities that he was a U.S. citizen. But only after the ACLU of Southern California contacted a senior ICE official four days later, did they finally agree to lift the detainer.
"ICE, quite clearly, has no business arresting and detaining American citizens. But as described in a recent report by the Warren Institute at University of California - Berkeley, they do so over and over again through the fundamentally-flawed S-Comm program. (ICE's own data in the first year of S-Comm activation revealed that five percent of persons identified by S-Comm were in fact U.S. citizens.) And they do so by enlisting the unwitting participation of local jail authorities in these unconstitutional practices.
"The costs and consequences of S-Comm's detain first, investigate later are borne out every day in the jails and police stations across the country where non-deportable citizens and noncitizens suffer needless detention, while they beg for ICE to finally investigate their cases so that they may be released from jail."
President Obama has failed to keep the promise he made during his presidential campaign to introduce legislation to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, he has placed more personnel on the Southern US border, and deported more people during his term than any other president in US history.
The continued absence of a body of immigration law worthy of a superpower is no doubt due in part to the intransigence of the Republicans in Congress. And the President's relative silence on this issue must surely give the GOP the sense that immigration reform is nowhere near Obama's top priorities.
Sadly, they could well be right.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Death Sentences Drop to Lowest Number Since 1976
By William Fisher
The death penalty may be on the way out.
Sentences to the ultimate punishment began their downward trajectory in the late 1990s, and in the 15 years between 1996 and 2011 death sentences declined about 75 percent. In 1996, 315 individuals were sentenced to death.
New death sentences dropped to 78 in 2011, representing a dramatic decline from last year’s number of 112 and marking the first time since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 that the country has produced fewer than 100 death sentences in a single year.
These are some of main findings in the annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), based on data as of mid-December 2011. The DPIC is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.
“Many of those challenging the death penalty now had defended it in the past, including people who introduced death penalty legislation or presided over executions. The multitude of problems associated with the death penalty is gradually convincing Americans that it can no longer be sustained,” the Report says.
The Report also notes that Executions have also steadily decreased nationwide, with 43 in 2011 and 46 in 2010, representing a 56 percent decline since 1999, when there were 98. Texas had 13 executions in 2011, and 24 in 2009, representing a 46 percent drop over two years.
Further information on these data is contained in “The Death Penalty in 2011: Year End Report” which can be found at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
“This year, the use of the death penalty continued to decline by almost every measure. Executions, death sentences, public support, the number of states with the death penalty all dropped from previous years,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC’s Executive Director and the report’s author. “Whether it’s concerns about unfairness, executing the innocent, the high costs of the death penalty, or the general feeling that the government just can’t get it right, Americans moved further away from capital punishment in 2011.”
Many states with the death penalty on the books, including Maryland, South Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana, had no new death sentences this year. California had a sharp drop in death sentences in 2011, decreasing by over half since 2010 when there were 29 sentences. Repeal of the death penalty is likely to be on the ballot in that state next year.
The declining numbers occurred in the context of three significant developments in the evolution of capital punishment this year:
· Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation to repeal the death penalty, making Illinois the fourth state in four years to abandon capital punishment. A commission reported that the state had spent $100 million on assisting counties with death penalty prosecutions while the state’s deficit grew to one of the country’s largest.
· Many Americans were shocked to learn that a man, Troy Davis in Georgia, could be executed in spite of strong doubts about his guilt. Several key witnesses recanted their testimony against Davis, causing even death penalty supporters like former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr to state: “Imposing a death sentence on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve the interest of justice.”
· Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber stopped a pending execution and ordered that no others would occur during his term. Governor Kitzhaber, who oversaw two executions in the 1990s, urged citizens to “find a better solution” to a system that he said is arbitrary, expensive and “fails to meet basic standards of justice.”
Also this year, the Report noted, the Gallup Poll, which measures the public's support for the death penalty without offering alternatives, recorded the lowest level of support and the highest level of opposition in almost 40 years. Some 61 percent supported the death penalty, compared to 80 percent in 1994. Thirty-five percent were opposed, compared to 16 percent in 1994. A more in-depth CNN poll gave respondents a choice between the death penalty and life without parole for those who commit murder. Fifty percent chose a life sentence, while 48 percent chose death.
One clear sign of increasing discomfort with the death penalty has been the decline in the number of states with capital punishment in effect. Illinois joined New Mexico, New Jersey, and New York in abandoning the death penalty, marking an 11% decline in death penalty states since 2007.
Death Penalty Statistics 2011 2010 2000
Executions 43 46 85
New Inmates Under
Death Sentence 78 112 224
Death Row population
(As of Jan. 1) 3,251 3,261 3,652
Percentage of executions by region:
South (32 executions) 74% 76% 89%
Texas (13) 30% 40% 47%
Midwest (6) 14% 17% 6%
West (4) 12% 7% 5%
Northeast (0) 0% 0% 0%
Executions Since 1976: 1,277
Texas 477 (37%)
Virginia 109 (9%)
Oklahoma 96 (8%)
Report data show that three states combined – Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma – meted out 682 death sentences since 2976. That represents 53 per cent of all executions in the US. Most US executions occur in the South.
The number of new death sentences dropped dramatically in 2011, falling below 100 for the first time in the modern era of capital punishment. Executions also continued to decline, while developments in a variety of states illustrated the growing discomfort that many Americans have with the death penalty.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, the governor of Oregon declared a moratorium on all executions, and a national outcry was heard around the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia because of doubts about his guilt.
In January, the Illinois legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, replacing it with a sentence of life without parole. The legislation requires some of the money saved by this action to go to victims’services and crime prevention. Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill, making Illinois the fourth state in four years to abandon capital punishment. A state commission reported $100 million had been spent on assisting counties with death penalty prosecutions over the past seven years, while the state’s deficit had become one of the largest in the country.
Illinois had not had an execution in 12 years.
In Georgia, the report declared, a very different scenario played out, but it also exposed deep concerns about the use of the death penalty. On September 21 Georgia executed Troy Davis, despite significant doubts about his guilt and urgent requests from national and international leaders to spare his life.
Davis had been convicted principally on the basis of eyewitness testimony, a form of evidence that has recently come under increasing scrutiny.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently considered Perry v. New Hampshire, a case questioning the validity of eyewitness testimony when the identification was made under unreliable circumstances. At the same time, years of scientific study on the accuracy of human memory are pointing to the need for reform in the use of eyewitness evidence in criminal cases.
Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Columbia University, whose experiments on memory were reported in the journal Cognitive Psychology, noted, “Memory is weak in eyewitness situations because it’s overloaded. An event happens so fast, and when the police question you, you probably weren’t concentrating on the details they’re asking about.”
About 75% of DNA-based exonerations have come in cases where eyewitnesses have made mistakes. Scientists suggest that witness testimony should be viewed more like trace evidence, with the same fragility and vulnerability to contamination. Strong emotions felt by victims of a crime is one such possible area of contamination. Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, found that the accuracy of lineups improves when the possible suspects are presented to witnesses in sequence, rather than all at once, as in the traditional lineup. The downfall of side-by-side lineups, Dr. Wells said, is that “if the real perpetrator is not in there, there is still someone who looks more like him than the others.” The Supreme Court of New Jersey recently promulgated new rules for dealing with the problems of eyewitness identification.
Years after his trial, 7 of the 9 state witnesses against Davis changed their stories. A federal judge in Savannah conducted a hearing to review this new evidence, but in order to grant Davis a new trial the judge required not only that he establish reasonable doubt of his guilt, but that he provide clear proof of his innocence, which he was unable to do to the judge’s satisfaction.
A former head of the FBI, along with former judges, prosecutors, and elected leaders from around the country urged the Board of Pardons and Paroles to intervene to prevent a miscarriage of justice. Citizens protested in front of the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Georgia prison where the execution took place. Similar demonstrations occurred in cities around the world.
People were shocked that in the U.S. someone could be executed despite so much doubt about his guilt. When Davis was denied clemency, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia said, “Imposing a death sentence on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve the interest of justice.”
Even former supporters of the death penalty found the process so inflexible and unresponsive that they were convinced the system is not working. President Jimmy Carter said, "If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated."
Finally, in Oregon on Governor John Kitzhaber halted a pending execution and declared that no additional executions would occur during his tenure. He urged the legislature and the people of the state to seek a sensible way to address serious crime: "I am convinced we can find a better solution that keeps society safe, supports the victims of crime and their families and reflects Oregon values," he stated. "I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am Governor."
Figuring out the ‘why’ of the death penalty’s decline is complicated. But the statements of governors who have the life and death responsibility may shed some light on the underlying reasons.
Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon put a halt to executions in 2011, stating,” Oregonians have a fundamental belief in fairness and justice – in swift and certain justice. The death penalty as practiced in Oregon is neither fair nor just; and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that determines whether someone sentenced to death in Oregon is actually executed is that they volunteer.”
Gil Garcetti, the former district attorney of Los Angeles who pursued numerous death sentences, said California's death penalty is dysfunctional and the resources spent on it should be diverted to more pressing needs.
"California's death penalty does not and cannot function the way its supporters want it to. It is also an incredibly costly penalty, and the money would be far better spent keeping kids in school, keeping teachers and counselors in their schools and giving the juvenile justice system the resources it needs. Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they've already been committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims."
Garcetti said the death penalty causes ongoing torment to the family members and friends of murder victims: "The living victims of a particular crime might think that a death verdict provides closure, but for most, there was no such closure."
Many of those who have analyzed the system of capital punishment, including leaders in law enforcement, former supporters of the death penalty and victims’ families, have concluded the system is seriously flawed. Among those who spoke out this year were:
Dr. Allen Ault, a retired Georgia prison warden, underscored the difficult issues prison officials face when participating in an execution: "You're killing somebody. And there’s no denying that, especially when we know that several people have been declared innocent with the new scientific techniques, and we're not real sure if the individual we're executing this evening or next week is really guilty -that in itself, that kind of doubt. The other thing most of us know [is] all the research which indicates that capital punishment does not deter . . . it seems so illogical to say to the public we do not want you to kill, and to demonstrate that, we're going to kill individuals."
Kathryn Gaines, Rita Shoulders, Victoria Cox and Ruth Lowe had someone in their family murdered but believe a death Sentence for the killers would only deepen their personal wounds. Shoulders lost her sister to murder; Cox lost her brother; Lowe also lost her brother; and Gaines her eldest grandchild. Ruth Lowe said of the man who killed her brother, "I’m learning to forgive. And even if I had the chance, I wouldn’t want him Year executed. It would do nothing for me; it would do nothing for the rest of my family. To take his life would make no sense.” Kathryn Gaines said, "You cannot bring a life back by taking away another life. It hurts a whole family."
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo advocated for a sentence of life without parole to replace the death penalty: "There is a punishment that is much better than the death penalty: one that juries will not be reluctant to impose; one that is so menacing to a potential killer, that it could actually deter; one that does not require us to be infallible so as to avoid taking an innocent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the level of the killers."
Don Heller, a Republican former prosecutor and author of the 1978 ballot initiative that greatly expanded California's death penalty law, now says, "I never contemplated the staggering cost of implementing the death penalty: more than $4 billion to date and approximately $185 million projected per year in ongoing costs. . . . It makes no sense to prop up such a failed system.”
But for many, the following statement carries the highest level of credibility: It comes from Jeanne Woodford, former Warden of San Quentin prison in California.
She said of the death penalty, “The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution." She added, “There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system. The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty.”
The death penalty may be on the way out.
Sentences to the ultimate punishment began their downward trajectory in the late 1990s, and in the 15 years between 1996 and 2011 death sentences declined about 75 percent. In 1996, 315 individuals were sentenced to death.
New death sentences dropped to 78 in 2011, representing a dramatic decline from last year’s number of 112 and marking the first time since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 that the country has produced fewer than 100 death sentences in a single year.
These are some of main findings in the annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), based on data as of mid-December 2011. The DPIC is a non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.
“Many of those challenging the death penalty now had defended it in the past, including people who introduced death penalty legislation or presided over executions. The multitude of problems associated with the death penalty is gradually convincing Americans that it can no longer be sustained,” the Report says.
The Report also notes that Executions have also steadily decreased nationwide, with 43 in 2011 and 46 in 2010, representing a 56 percent decline since 1999, when there were 98. Texas had 13 executions in 2011, and 24 in 2009, representing a 46 percent drop over two years.
Further information on these data is contained in “The Death Penalty in 2011: Year End Report” which can be found at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
“This year, the use of the death penalty continued to decline by almost every measure. Executions, death sentences, public support, the number of states with the death penalty all dropped from previous years,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC’s Executive Director and the report’s author. “Whether it’s concerns about unfairness, executing the innocent, the high costs of the death penalty, or the general feeling that the government just can’t get it right, Americans moved further away from capital punishment in 2011.”
Many states with the death penalty on the books, including Maryland, South Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana, had no new death sentences this year. California had a sharp drop in death sentences in 2011, decreasing by over half since 2010 when there were 29 sentences. Repeal of the death penalty is likely to be on the ballot in that state next year.
The declining numbers occurred in the context of three significant developments in the evolution of capital punishment this year:
· Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation to repeal the death penalty, making Illinois the fourth state in four years to abandon capital punishment. A commission reported that the state had spent $100 million on assisting counties with death penalty prosecutions while the state’s deficit grew to one of the country’s largest.
· Many Americans were shocked to learn that a man, Troy Davis in Georgia, could be executed in spite of strong doubts about his guilt. Several key witnesses recanted their testimony against Davis, causing even death penalty supporters like former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr to state: “Imposing a death sentence on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve the interest of justice.”
· Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber stopped a pending execution and ordered that no others would occur during his term. Governor Kitzhaber, who oversaw two executions in the 1990s, urged citizens to “find a better solution” to a system that he said is arbitrary, expensive and “fails to meet basic standards of justice.”
Also this year, the Report noted, the Gallup Poll, which measures the public's support for the death penalty without offering alternatives, recorded the lowest level of support and the highest level of opposition in almost 40 years. Some 61 percent supported the death penalty, compared to 80 percent in 1994. Thirty-five percent were opposed, compared to 16 percent in 1994. A more in-depth CNN poll gave respondents a choice between the death penalty and life without parole for those who commit murder. Fifty percent chose a life sentence, while 48 percent chose death.
One clear sign of increasing discomfort with the death penalty has been the decline in the number of states with capital punishment in effect. Illinois joined New Mexico, New Jersey, and New York in abandoning the death penalty, marking an 11% decline in death penalty states since 2007.
Death Penalty Statistics 2011 2010 2000
Executions 43 46 85
New Inmates Under
Death Sentence 78 112 224
Death Row population
(As of Jan. 1) 3,251 3,261 3,652
Percentage of executions by region:
South (32 executions) 74% 76% 89%
Texas (13) 30% 40% 47%
Midwest (6) 14% 17% 6%
West (4) 12% 7% 5%
Northeast (0) 0% 0% 0%
Executions Since 1976: 1,277
Texas 477 (37%)
Virginia 109 (9%)
Oklahoma 96 (8%)
Report data show that three states combined – Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma – meted out 682 death sentences since 2976. That represents 53 per cent of all executions in the US. Most US executions occur in the South.
The number of new death sentences dropped dramatically in 2011, falling below 100 for the first time in the modern era of capital punishment. Executions also continued to decline, while developments in a variety of states illustrated the growing discomfort that many Americans have with the death penalty.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, the governor of Oregon declared a moratorium on all executions, and a national outcry was heard around the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia because of doubts about his guilt.
In January, the Illinois legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, replacing it with a sentence of life without parole. The legislation requires some of the money saved by this action to go to victims’services and crime prevention. Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill, making Illinois the fourth state in four years to abandon capital punishment. A state commission reported $100 million had been spent on assisting counties with death penalty prosecutions over the past seven years, while the state’s deficit had become one of the largest in the country.
Illinois had not had an execution in 12 years.
In Georgia, the report declared, a very different scenario played out, but it also exposed deep concerns about the use of the death penalty. On September 21 Georgia executed Troy Davis, despite significant doubts about his guilt and urgent requests from national and international leaders to spare his life.
Davis had been convicted principally on the basis of eyewitness testimony, a form of evidence that has recently come under increasing scrutiny.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently considered Perry v. New Hampshire, a case questioning the validity of eyewitness testimony when the identification was made under unreliable circumstances. At the same time, years of scientific study on the accuracy of human memory are pointing to the need for reform in the use of eyewitness evidence in criminal cases.
Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Columbia University, whose experiments on memory were reported in the journal Cognitive Psychology, noted, “Memory is weak in eyewitness situations because it’s overloaded. An event happens so fast, and when the police question you, you probably weren’t concentrating on the details they’re asking about.”
About 75% of DNA-based exonerations have come in cases where eyewitnesses have made mistakes. Scientists suggest that witness testimony should be viewed more like trace evidence, with the same fragility and vulnerability to contamination. Strong emotions felt by victims of a crime is one such possible area of contamination. Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, found that the accuracy of lineups improves when the possible suspects are presented to witnesses in sequence, rather than all at once, as in the traditional lineup. The downfall of side-by-side lineups, Dr. Wells said, is that “if the real perpetrator is not in there, there is still someone who looks more like him than the others.” The Supreme Court of New Jersey recently promulgated new rules for dealing with the problems of eyewitness identification.
Years after his trial, 7 of the 9 state witnesses against Davis changed their stories. A federal judge in Savannah conducted a hearing to review this new evidence, but in order to grant Davis a new trial the judge required not only that he establish reasonable doubt of his guilt, but that he provide clear proof of his innocence, which he was unable to do to the judge’s satisfaction.
A former head of the FBI, along with former judges, prosecutors, and elected leaders from around the country urged the Board of Pardons and Paroles to intervene to prevent a miscarriage of justice. Citizens protested in front of the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Georgia prison where the execution took place. Similar demonstrations occurred in cities around the world.
People were shocked that in the U.S. someone could be executed despite so much doubt about his guilt. When Davis was denied clemency, former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia said, “Imposing a death sentence on the skimpiest of evidence does not serve the interest of justice.”
Even former supporters of the death penalty found the process so inflexible and unresponsive that they were convinced the system is not working. President Jimmy Carter said, "If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated."
Finally, in Oregon on Governor John Kitzhaber halted a pending execution and declared that no additional executions would occur during his tenure. He urged the legislature and the people of the state to seek a sensible way to address serious crime: "I am convinced we can find a better solution that keeps society safe, supports the victims of crime and their families and reflects Oregon values," he stated. "I refuse to be a part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer; and I will not allow further executions while I am Governor."
Figuring out the ‘why’ of the death penalty’s decline is complicated. But the statements of governors who have the life and death responsibility may shed some light on the underlying reasons.
Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon put a halt to executions in 2011, stating,” Oregonians have a fundamental belief in fairness and justice – in swift and certain justice. The death penalty as practiced in Oregon is neither fair nor just; and it is not swift or certain. It is not applied equally to all. It is a perversion of justice that the single best indicator of who will and will not be executed has nothing to do with the circumstances of a crime or the findings of a jury. The only factor that determines whether someone sentenced to death in Oregon is actually executed is that they volunteer.”
Gil Garcetti, the former district attorney of Los Angeles who pursued numerous death sentences, said California's death penalty is dysfunctional and the resources spent on it should be diverted to more pressing needs.
"California's death penalty does not and cannot function the way its supporters want it to. It is also an incredibly costly penalty, and the money would be far better spent keeping kids in school, keeping teachers and counselors in their schools and giving the juvenile justice system the resources it needs. Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they've already been committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims."
Garcetti said the death penalty causes ongoing torment to the family members and friends of murder victims: "The living victims of a particular crime might think that a death verdict provides closure, but for most, there was no such closure."
Many of those who have analyzed the system of capital punishment, including leaders in law enforcement, former supporters of the death penalty and victims’ families, have concluded the system is seriously flawed. Among those who spoke out this year were:
Dr. Allen Ault, a retired Georgia prison warden, underscored the difficult issues prison officials face when participating in an execution: "You're killing somebody. And there’s no denying that, especially when we know that several people have been declared innocent with the new scientific techniques, and we're not real sure if the individual we're executing this evening or next week is really guilty -that in itself, that kind of doubt. The other thing most of us know [is] all the research which indicates that capital punishment does not deter . . . it seems so illogical to say to the public we do not want you to kill, and to demonstrate that, we're going to kill individuals."
Kathryn Gaines, Rita Shoulders, Victoria Cox and Ruth Lowe had someone in their family murdered but believe a death Sentence for the killers would only deepen their personal wounds. Shoulders lost her sister to murder; Cox lost her brother; Lowe also lost her brother; and Gaines her eldest grandchild. Ruth Lowe said of the man who killed her brother, "I’m learning to forgive. And even if I had the chance, I wouldn’t want him Year executed. It would do nothing for me; it would do nothing for the rest of my family. To take his life would make no sense.” Kathryn Gaines said, "You cannot bring a life back by taking away another life. It hurts a whole family."
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo advocated for a sentence of life without parole to replace the death penalty: "There is a punishment that is much better than the death penalty: one that juries will not be reluctant to impose; one that is so menacing to a potential killer, that it could actually deter; one that does not require us to be infallible so as to avoid taking an innocent life; and one that does not require us to stoop to the level of the killers."
Don Heller, a Republican former prosecutor and author of the 1978 ballot initiative that greatly expanded California's death penalty law, now says, "I never contemplated the staggering cost of implementing the death penalty: more than $4 billion to date and approximately $185 million projected per year in ongoing costs. . . . It makes no sense to prop up such a failed system.”
But for many, the following statement carries the highest level of credibility: It comes from Jeanne Woodford, former Warden of San Quentin prison in California.
She said of the death penalty, “The death penalty serves no one. It doesn't serve the victims. It doesn't serve prevention. It's truly all about retribution." She added, “There comes a time when you have to ask if a penalty that is so permanent can be available in such an imperfect system. The only guarantee against executing the innocent is to do away with the death penalty.”
Friday, December 16, 2011
Our U-Turn President
By William Fisher
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. President Obama has done enough 180-degree last minute change-ups to make his opponents chuckle up their sleeves and his supporters become impotently furious.
Furious because they will have to vote for Obama in November. Impotent because they feel they have no other choice. Waking up on Nov 5th and finding Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney as Commander-in-Chief would create a national shortage of cardiologists.
For progressives, what may help cushion the blow a bit is the memory of all this all having happened before. The catalog of 180’s is long and painful. It started with the President’s pledge – on his first day in office – to close Guantanamo. For a variety of reasons – principally Congress’s unreasoned hysteria about trying accused terrorists in our regular court system and therefore setting the stage for exonerations – and then we’d have Arabs walking up and down our main streets, dating our daughters and running for the school board (while they built “dirty bombs” in their rented rooms).
Our recent memories are packed with Obama’s numerous other U-Turns. For example, he continues the CIA’s program of extraordinary renditions to countries with long records of prisoner torture.
After releasing two of the so-called “torture memos” prepared by lawyers in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, he dug his heels in about further releases and about prosecuting CIA officials and agents for torturing prisoners, saying he’d rather look forward than backward.
His lawyers continue to invoke “state secrets” privileges in terror-related court cases, effectively silencing those who looked to the courts to hear their stories of abuse by the Bush Administration.
His fence-sitting at the beginning of the Arab Spring, which caused him, for example, to describe fallen Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as “a stalwart ally,” and virtually abandon the pro-freedom demonstrators in tiny Bahrain because of its strategic importance as the home of the US Fifth Fleet.
Then there are the multiple flip-flops in the non-national security category, topped most recently by his “compromise” with the Republicans to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling and trying to avoid a default on the country’s debt and a downgrade in US Securities. The agreement was reached, and the GOP was overjoyed. The default was avoided, but the downgrade came anyway.
Now comes the latest incarnation of the same modus vivendi adopted by Obama on many other issues – his shocking turnabout regarding the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). A tiny part of the gargantuan funding bill for the Pentagon, it has taken on huge importance because of what it does to our justice system.
It authorizes the Pentagon to arrest suspected terrorists – including American citizens and regardless of where they are arrested – and detain them indefinitely without charge or trial. For a nation that prides itself on being rooted in the rule of law, it establishes a two-tier system of justice, with our regular courts doing what courts mostly do, but no longer trying accused terrorists.
These will be tried at Guantanamo, and if they are acquitted, the Department of Justice has made clear that they will be held anyway. But there’s little danger of acquittal, since GITMO’s Military Commissions are structured to obtain convictions, not acquittals.
Courts, on the other hand, are designed to achieve justice. Without help from the military, our courts have tried and convicted several thousand accused terrorists. Our civil judges would seem to know the drill, but Congress evidently never got the memo.
But a flock of prestigious military and civilian authorities did. Opposition to the detention provisions of the legislation came from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House Advisor for Counterterrorism John Brennan, and Lisa Monaco, head of DOJ’s National Security Division. The Senate ignored them all.
So President Obama trotted out one of his standard excuses for flip-flopping. Noting that last minute “tweaks” in the legislation in Conference Committee now made it acceptable to the Administration, Obama backed off his veto threat and signaled that he will sign this odious bill.
His rationale is familiar: Had he not obtained the changes that made the bill signable into law, the measure would have failed in its final vote, triggering a government shutdown. To avoid that, and the disruption it would create, compromise with the Republicans and some conservative Democrats was essential.
So in the end, the Republicans will get all they wanted – a Draconian law that, inter alia, makes the entire US a battlefield, plus the campaign-ready perception of Obama as a weakling, not ready to meet the GOP on the political battlefield. That, of course, will strengthen the public’s perception of Democrats historically being soft on terror (despite the deaths of Osama bin Laden, et al.).
I have to believe that the chief advantage Obama wanted from this legislation was yet more authority flying out of Congress and landing in the Executive Branch of government. Many observers believe that this is a power-grab by the President that is even more outrageously unconstitutional than the claim of George W. Bush that the government could spy on American citizens at will, without probable cause, and without oversight by anyone.
At the end of the day, this legislation will make counter-terrorism more difficult for the US, and evoke suspicion from many democratic nations who are spooked by the arrested without due process and held indefinitely without charge or trial.
Nor will it do anything good for America’s reputation in the world. After an initial burst of goodwill following his election and his Cairo speech, US prestige has been on a dramatically downward trajectory, further fuelled by The Arab Spring.
Even more reason why I take my hat off to Laura Murphy of the ACLU for her tenacity and optimism. At this, the 11th hour, she is still imploring the President not to sign the bill. It’s probably too late.
But she says, “The president should more carefully consider the consequences of allowing this bill to become law. If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and America’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”
I wish her the luck of the Irish. But I am not so optimistic.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. President Obama has done enough 180-degree last minute change-ups to make his opponents chuckle up their sleeves and his supporters become impotently furious.
Furious because they will have to vote for Obama in November. Impotent because they feel they have no other choice. Waking up on Nov 5th and finding Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney as Commander-in-Chief would create a national shortage of cardiologists.
For progressives, what may help cushion the blow a bit is the memory of all this all having happened before. The catalog of 180’s is long and painful. It started with the President’s pledge – on his first day in office – to close Guantanamo. For a variety of reasons – principally Congress’s unreasoned hysteria about trying accused terrorists in our regular court system and therefore setting the stage for exonerations – and then we’d have Arabs walking up and down our main streets, dating our daughters and running for the school board (while they built “dirty bombs” in their rented rooms).
Our recent memories are packed with Obama’s numerous other U-Turns. For example, he continues the CIA’s program of extraordinary renditions to countries with long records of prisoner torture.
After releasing two of the so-called “torture memos” prepared by lawyers in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, he dug his heels in about further releases and about prosecuting CIA officials and agents for torturing prisoners, saying he’d rather look forward than backward.
His lawyers continue to invoke “state secrets” privileges in terror-related court cases, effectively silencing those who looked to the courts to hear their stories of abuse by the Bush Administration.
His fence-sitting at the beginning of the Arab Spring, which caused him, for example, to describe fallen Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as “a stalwart ally,” and virtually abandon the pro-freedom demonstrators in tiny Bahrain because of its strategic importance as the home of the US Fifth Fleet.
Then there are the multiple flip-flops in the non-national security category, topped most recently by his “compromise” with the Republicans to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling and trying to avoid a default on the country’s debt and a downgrade in US Securities. The agreement was reached, and the GOP was overjoyed. The default was avoided, but the downgrade came anyway.
Now comes the latest incarnation of the same modus vivendi adopted by Obama on many other issues – his shocking turnabout regarding the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). A tiny part of the gargantuan funding bill for the Pentagon, it has taken on huge importance because of what it does to our justice system.
It authorizes the Pentagon to arrest suspected terrorists – including American citizens and regardless of where they are arrested – and detain them indefinitely without charge or trial. For a nation that prides itself on being rooted in the rule of law, it establishes a two-tier system of justice, with our regular courts doing what courts mostly do, but no longer trying accused terrorists.
These will be tried at Guantanamo, and if they are acquitted, the Department of Justice has made clear that they will be held anyway. But there’s little danger of acquittal, since GITMO’s Military Commissions are structured to obtain convictions, not acquittals.
Courts, on the other hand, are designed to achieve justice. Without help from the military, our courts have tried and convicted several thousand accused terrorists. Our civil judges would seem to know the drill, but Congress evidently never got the memo.
But a flock of prestigious military and civilian authorities did. Opposition to the detention provisions of the legislation came from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, FBI Director Robert Mueller, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House Advisor for Counterterrorism John Brennan, and Lisa Monaco, head of DOJ’s National Security Division. The Senate ignored them all.
So President Obama trotted out one of his standard excuses for flip-flopping. Noting that last minute “tweaks” in the legislation in Conference Committee now made it acceptable to the Administration, Obama backed off his veto threat and signaled that he will sign this odious bill.
His rationale is familiar: Had he not obtained the changes that made the bill signable into law, the measure would have failed in its final vote, triggering a government shutdown. To avoid that, and the disruption it would create, compromise with the Republicans and some conservative Democrats was essential.
So in the end, the Republicans will get all they wanted – a Draconian law that, inter alia, makes the entire US a battlefield, plus the campaign-ready perception of Obama as a weakling, not ready to meet the GOP on the political battlefield. That, of course, will strengthen the public’s perception of Democrats historically being soft on terror (despite the deaths of Osama bin Laden, et al.).
I have to believe that the chief advantage Obama wanted from this legislation was yet more authority flying out of Congress and landing in the Executive Branch of government. Many observers believe that this is a power-grab by the President that is even more outrageously unconstitutional than the claim of George W. Bush that the government could spy on American citizens at will, without probable cause, and without oversight by anyone.
At the end of the day, this legislation will make counter-terrorism more difficult for the US, and evoke suspicion from many democratic nations who are spooked by the arrested without due process and held indefinitely without charge or trial.
Nor will it do anything good for America’s reputation in the world. After an initial burst of goodwill following his election and his Cairo speech, US prestige has been on a dramatically downward trajectory, further fuelled by The Arab Spring.
Even more reason why I take my hat off to Laura Murphy of the ACLU for her tenacity and optimism. At this, the 11th hour, she is still imploring the President not to sign the bill. It’s probably too late.
But she says, “The president should more carefully consider the consequences of allowing this bill to become law. If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and America’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”
I wish her the luck of the Irish. But I am not so optimistic.
The Part of Our Justice System No One Wants You to Know About
By William Fisher
Remember Mike Nifong? Sure. He’s the sleazebag former District Attorney in the Duke University lacrosse team’s stripper rape scandal back in 2006. He made himself a short-lived hero by agreeing to prosecute members of the Duke Lacrosse team for allegedly raping an Africa-American stripper and dancer the team had hired for a party.
But Nifong, hell bent on winning reelection, forgot that he was an officer of the Court. He went public with a series of accusations that later turned out to be untrue; he exaggerated and intensified racial tensions; he unduly influenced the Durham police investigation; he tried to manipulate potential witnesses; he refused to hear exculpatory evidence prior to indictment; that regulations on the conduct of an identification exercise were breached by failure to include "dummy" photographs; that he had never spoken directly to the alleged victim about the accusations; and that he made misleadingly incomplete presentations of various aspects of the evidence in the case (including DNA results).
He was dismissed from his job and later disbarred.
Or how about federal prosecutor William Welch, and his deputy chief, Brenda Morris, who convicted Senator Ted Stevens -- and helped their own cause by withholding evidence from the defense that could have helped the defendant.
Or there’s Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the so-called Detroit Sleeper Cell terrorism case. He was removed from the case on suspicion that he allegedly failed to turn over photographic evidence to the defense.
These acts and alleged acts by prosecutors all qualify as prosecutorial misconduct. There are hundreds of such cases in our justice system every year. Very few of them ever get such high visibility. In fact, most abuses of this kind probably go unnoticed and unreported. In the three cases referenced above, only Nifong lost his law license. The others did not.
But, since 9/11, there has been another kind of misconduct growing. It usually takes place outside the courtroom and is a favorite of politicians of both parties, especially if they are running for reelection.
This is the phenomenon of politicians and others with private agendas calling press conferences to launch inflammatory – and usually false or grossly exaggerated – claims about the importance of a given case to the national security of the United States.
Examples are legion. When Jose Padilla was arrested for what the press told us was an attempt to explode a “dirty bomb” (a nuclear device) in the middle of New York City, then Attorney General John Ashcroft was in Moscow.
He immediately reorganized his day and hurriedly called a press conference where he trumpeted Padilla’s apprehension in what TIME called a “fear-inducing video hookup.”
Ashcroft was surely on a roll that day. But is was not long before it began to be clear that, to quote TIME again, “[Padilla] is not the deadly, skilled operative Attorney General John Ashcroft seemed to be describing when he announced Padilla's arrest… In fact, history may judge the Administration's legal treatment of Padilla—locking him up indefinitely with no plan to try him—as more alarming than Padilla himself.”
When Padilla was finally arraigned in Federal Court, the “dirty bomb” charge was nowhere to be found.
Then there was the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, NY, a community near Syracuse. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled “a terrorist” by then Attorney General Ashcroft and then New York Gov. George Pataki.
On the day of the arrest Ashcroft announced that “funders of terrorism” had been arrested. And just before Dhafir’s trial began in October 2004, Pataki described the case as a “money laundering case to help terrorist organizations … conduct horrible acts,” an announcement perfectly timed to reach potential jurors.
But no reference to terrorism or to Dhafir’s Muslim faith was permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was “selectively prosecuted.”
Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering, conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq, misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy, spending $544,000 for his own purposes, defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations. No terrorism here.
Politicians outside the courtroom intentionally hyping the extreme dangers presented by defendants have become standard practice. This has occurred numerous times when it was clear that the alleged “terrorists” were pathetic down-and-outers who many believe had been entrapped by the FBI.
What politicians say at their press conferences is intended to achieve one objective only: to plant doubt in the minds of prospective jurors.
Independent activist Katherine Hughes adds that, “In Dr. Dhafir’s case, they also transformed his community image from a compassionate humanitarian into a crook and supporter of terrorists.”
And just a few days ago, we recall New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg convening a hastily organized press conference to announce the arrest of one Jose Pimentel.
Flanked by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Bloomberg said:
“Yesterday afternoon, New York City police officers arrested a 27-year-old Al Qaeda sympathizer who was plotting to bomb police patrol cars and also postal facilities, as well as target members of our Armed Forces returning from abroad. Jose Pimentel of Washington Heights, which is in the northern end of Manhattan, faces terrorism-related charges….”
Bloomberg also got an opportunity to praise the work of New York’s Finest.
“The NYPD Intelligence Division did outstanding work in tracking this individual and containing the threat he posed to the city. The police constructed a duplicate of an explosive device that the suspect built, and then detonated it in a way that he intended to use his weapon. We wanted to show you a video about the resulting damage,” he said.
He went on: “The suspect was a so-called lone wolf, motivated by his own resentment of the presence of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as inspired by Al Qaeda propaganda. He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad. He represents exactly the kind of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller and his experts have warned about, as American military and intelligence agencies have eroded Al Qaeda's ability to launch large-scale attacks.
“This case is also reminiscent of another lone wolf plot in 2004 in which two New Yorkers angry over the treatment of prisoners in Iraq plotted to bomb the Herald Square subway station. Like the current case, the Herald Square plot was uncovered by the NYPD Intelligence Division.
“And as with still another case earlier this year in which a lone wolf plotted to attack a large synagogue, the NYPD teamed-up with the Manhattan District Attorney's office to prosecute Pimentel under State terrorism-related statutes.
“Whether launched by lone wolves, Al Qaeda, or Al Qaeda affiliates, there have been at least 13 previous terrorist plots since 9/11 targeting New York City. This would be the fourteenth.
“Because of such repeated threats, the NYPD remains focused on preventing another terrorist attack. We assign a thousand officers to counter-terrorism duties every single day. This is just another case where our precautions paid off."
Some journalists covering the story simply transcribed Bloomberg’s words. Others were suspicious. Did Bloomberg rush this arrest and press conference to divert attention away from the conflicts with the Occupy movement, whose members, as well as some journalists, had just been driven out of Liberty Square, and their tents and other equipment destroyed by police? And where was the FBI? The Bureau participates in almost all such events with the mayor and with less city lights. Soon we learned that the FBI was saying it would not have made this arrest.
That’s a big statement for that agency, which has been suspected by many of using paid informants to entrap gullible individuals, and get them involved in terror plots. However, many of these so-called plots look like children’s games. In others, the alleged perpetrators look so disheveled, bedraggled, disoriented, that they seem like the last people who would be capable of carrying out a terror plot.
In addition to trying to influence juries with incendiary and fear-provoking pronouncements, politicians and the law enforcement agencies they support employ a second technique – in some ways, worse than the false accusations.
This is the designation known as the “person of interest.” This insidious label has the capacity to put life on hold, to turn lives upside down, to bankrupt citizens unable to pay lawyers’ fees to try to prove their innocence.
Remember Richard Jewell? To refresh your memory, Jewell, 33, was working as a security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Atlanta Police have received a message saying, "There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes." Jewell was working in Centennial Park.
At 1:20 a.m., a pipe bomb exploded near a huge sound-and-light tower erected by AT&T, which had become a major attraction for visitors to Centennial Olympic Park. The blast killed two people and injured 111 others.
Richard Jewell was the hero of the incident. He was responsible for finding the backpack that had contained the bomb, and for getting people out of the immediate area, thus probably limiting further death and injury.
But four days after the bombing, news organizations reported that Jewell had become the main focus of their investigation as a potential suspect in the bombing. At the time, Jewell was unknown to authorities, and a lone wolf profile made sense to FBI investigators after being contacted by his former employer at Piedmont College.
Though he was never arrested or charged with any crime, Jewell was named as a "person of interest.” His home, where he lived with his mother, was searched and his background exhaustively investigated, all amid a media storm that had cameras following him to the grocery store. Eventually, Jewell was exonerated, and once again hailed as a hero. The media circus pursued Jewell everywhere for weeks, until Eric Rudolph pled guilty to carrying out the bombing attack at the Centennial Olympic Park, as well as three other attacks across the South.
After his exoneration, Jewell filed a series of lawsuits against the media outlets which he claimed had libeled him, primarily NBC News and The Atlanta Constitution, and insisted on a formal apology from them. Jewell's attorneys contend Piedmont College President Raymond Cleere called the FBI and spoke to the Atlanta newspapers, providing them with false information on Jewell and his employment there as a security guard. Jewell's lawsuit accused Cleere of describing Jewell as a "badge-wearing zealot" who "would write epic police reports for minor infractions." Eventually he received an apology from the FBI.
Toward the end of the incident, broadcast host Bill Press discussed Jewell on television. Turning to Larry Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia, a guest on the program, he commented, "He (Jewell) did a pretty good job of destroying his own reputation, first, didn't he, Larry?"
To which Sabato replied, "You know, Bill, that's a great example of what happens when some poor soul, and I'm going to assume he's innocent until it's proven otherwise, some poor soul wanders into the media spotlight, because that's what happens. I remember the fellow who deflected the gun from President Ford out in California in 1975 and he saved the president's life and within 48 hours, a newspaper had revealed to his family, who didn't know, that he was gay."
Unlike Jewell, Steven Hatfill was never seen as a hero. But, just as Jewell’s life had been turned upside down by law enforcement, Hatfill’s also became a living hell.
Steven Jay Hatfill, now 60, is an American physician, virologist and bio-weapons expert who underwent what was considered by many to be a trial by media with great toll on his personal and professional life. After eight months of pressure from the media and amateur detectives, the US Department of Justice identified the former government scientist as a "person of interest" in its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. He was put under 24/7 surveillance.
FBI searches of his apartment in July and August 2002 were well-attended by journalists, many of whom had been pointing at Dr. Hatfill for months.
Dr. Hatfill later sued the government for ruining his reputation, a case that the government settled for US$5.8 million. He also filed lawsuits against several periodicals that had pointed to him as a figure warranting further investigation.
The situation became even more tragic when FBI and DOJ officials later blamed the anthrax deaths on another government scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, whom they concluded had acted alone. Ivins committed suicide. The case remains unsolved.
The abuses described here are miscarriages of justice, whether they occur in or outside a court. Politicians and law enforcement agencies depend on a supine press corps to circulate their stories all over the world in minutes. With the help of a media more skilled in stenography than in reporting, unsubstantiated rumors are printed and broadcast as facts. If further investigation is done by the media (which is rare) corrections often appear, if at all, long after the event. Yet they can rob you of your reputation before you have a chance to respond.
To be the target of a media blitz is tantamount to being found guilty of something. When a politician or an overly zealous prosecutor tags you as a dangerous terrorist before you ever go to court, you might as well not go to court. Such is the fear of terror that has pervaded our country since 9/11 that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has even successfully dictated where and how to try those accused of terrorism.
Is there anything ordinary citizens can do about these kinds of events? Unfortunately, not much. We should be urging our political leaders to choose their words more carefully and to show more respect for the rule of law. We should reign in over-zealous prosecutors who see their mission in life as collecting scalps. And we should be campaigning in Congress for substantial revisions in the “material support” law.
Politicians, judges, prosecutors and lawmakers need to demonstrate that they know the difference between governance and show business!
Ordinary citizens can’t censor what politicians say. And Judges could do a far better job of censoring what lawyers say (or fail to say) in court.
Perhaps the simplest target for irate citizens is the “person of interest” designation. The phrase has no legal meaning; it is administrative verbiage that law enforcement uses to show the public it’s working hard to find to find the guilty.
That phrase should be expunged from the Justice Department’s lexicon.
And that’s well within the President’s prerogatives.
.
Remember Mike Nifong? Sure. He’s the sleazebag former District Attorney in the Duke University lacrosse team’s stripper rape scandal back in 2006. He made himself a short-lived hero by agreeing to prosecute members of the Duke Lacrosse team for allegedly raping an Africa-American stripper and dancer the team had hired for a party.
But Nifong, hell bent on winning reelection, forgot that he was an officer of the Court. He went public with a series of accusations that later turned out to be untrue; he exaggerated and intensified racial tensions; he unduly influenced the Durham police investigation; he tried to manipulate potential witnesses; he refused to hear exculpatory evidence prior to indictment; that regulations on the conduct of an identification exercise were breached by failure to include "dummy" photographs; that he had never spoken directly to the alleged victim about the accusations; and that he made misleadingly incomplete presentations of various aspects of the evidence in the case (including DNA results).
He was dismissed from his job and later disbarred.
Or how about federal prosecutor William Welch, and his deputy chief, Brenda Morris, who convicted Senator Ted Stevens -- and helped their own cause by withholding evidence from the defense that could have helped the defendant.
Or there’s Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the so-called Detroit Sleeper Cell terrorism case. He was removed from the case on suspicion that he allegedly failed to turn over photographic evidence to the defense.
These acts and alleged acts by prosecutors all qualify as prosecutorial misconduct. There are hundreds of such cases in our justice system every year. Very few of them ever get such high visibility. In fact, most abuses of this kind probably go unnoticed and unreported. In the three cases referenced above, only Nifong lost his law license. The others did not.
But, since 9/11, there has been another kind of misconduct growing. It usually takes place outside the courtroom and is a favorite of politicians of both parties, especially if they are running for reelection.
This is the phenomenon of politicians and others with private agendas calling press conferences to launch inflammatory – and usually false or grossly exaggerated – claims about the importance of a given case to the national security of the United States.
Examples are legion. When Jose Padilla was arrested for what the press told us was an attempt to explode a “dirty bomb” (a nuclear device) in the middle of New York City, then Attorney General John Ashcroft was in Moscow.
He immediately reorganized his day and hurriedly called a press conference where he trumpeted Padilla’s apprehension in what TIME called a “fear-inducing video hookup.”
Ashcroft was surely on a roll that day. But is was not long before it began to be clear that, to quote TIME again, “[Padilla] is not the deadly, skilled operative Attorney General John Ashcroft seemed to be describing when he announced Padilla's arrest… In fact, history may judge the Administration's legal treatment of Padilla—locking him up indefinitely with no plan to try him—as more alarming than Padilla himself.”
When Padilla was finally arraigned in Federal Court, the “dirty bomb” charge was nowhere to be found.
Then there was the prosecution of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an oncologist from Manlius, NY, a community near Syracuse. Dhafir was arrested in February 2003 in a raid that drew nationwide media coverage. Long before his trial began, he was labeled “a terrorist” by then Attorney General Ashcroft and then New York Gov. George Pataki.
On the day of the arrest Ashcroft announced that “funders of terrorism” had been arrested. And just before Dhafir’s trial began in October 2004, Pataki described the case as a “money laundering case to help terrorist organizations … conduct horrible acts,” an announcement perfectly timed to reach potential jurors.
But no reference to terrorism or to Dhafir’s Muslim faith was permitted in court, and no terrorism charges were ever brought against him. His supporters claim he was “selectively prosecuted.”
Dhafir was convicted in February 2005 of 59 criminal counts, including money laundering, conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iraq, misusing $2 million that donors contributed to his unlicensed charity, Help the Needy, spending $544,000 for his own purposes, defrauding Medicare out of $316,000, and evading $400,000 in federal income tax payments by writing off the illegal charity donations. No terrorism here.
Politicians outside the courtroom intentionally hyping the extreme dangers presented by defendants have become standard practice. This has occurred numerous times when it was clear that the alleged “terrorists” were pathetic down-and-outers who many believe had been entrapped by the FBI.
What politicians say at their press conferences is intended to achieve one objective only: to plant doubt in the minds of prospective jurors.
Independent activist Katherine Hughes adds that, “In Dr. Dhafir’s case, they also transformed his community image from a compassionate humanitarian into a crook and supporter of terrorists.”
And just a few days ago, we recall New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg convening a hastily organized press conference to announce the arrest of one Jose Pimentel.
Flanked by Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Bloomberg said:
“Yesterday afternoon, New York City police officers arrested a 27-year-old Al Qaeda sympathizer who was plotting to bomb police patrol cars and also postal facilities, as well as target members of our Armed Forces returning from abroad. Jose Pimentel of Washington Heights, which is in the northern end of Manhattan, faces terrorism-related charges….”
Bloomberg also got an opportunity to praise the work of New York’s Finest.
“The NYPD Intelligence Division did outstanding work in tracking this individual and containing the threat he posed to the city. The police constructed a duplicate of an explosive device that the suspect built, and then detonated it in a way that he intended to use his weapon. We wanted to show you a video about the resulting damage,” he said.
He went on: “The suspect was a so-called lone wolf, motivated by his own resentment of the presence of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as inspired by Al Qaeda propaganda. He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad. He represents exactly the kind of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller and his experts have warned about, as American military and intelligence agencies have eroded Al Qaeda's ability to launch large-scale attacks.
“This case is also reminiscent of another lone wolf plot in 2004 in which two New Yorkers angry over the treatment of prisoners in Iraq plotted to bomb the Herald Square subway station. Like the current case, the Herald Square plot was uncovered by the NYPD Intelligence Division.
“And as with still another case earlier this year in which a lone wolf plotted to attack a large synagogue, the NYPD teamed-up with the Manhattan District Attorney's office to prosecute Pimentel under State terrorism-related statutes.
“Whether launched by lone wolves, Al Qaeda, or Al Qaeda affiliates, there have been at least 13 previous terrorist plots since 9/11 targeting New York City. This would be the fourteenth.
“Because of such repeated threats, the NYPD remains focused on preventing another terrorist attack. We assign a thousand officers to counter-terrorism duties every single day. This is just another case where our precautions paid off."
Some journalists covering the story simply transcribed Bloomberg’s words. Others were suspicious. Did Bloomberg rush this arrest and press conference to divert attention away from the conflicts with the Occupy movement, whose members, as well as some journalists, had just been driven out of Liberty Square, and their tents and other equipment destroyed by police? And where was the FBI? The Bureau participates in almost all such events with the mayor and with less city lights. Soon we learned that the FBI was saying it would not have made this arrest.
That’s a big statement for that agency, which has been suspected by many of using paid informants to entrap gullible individuals, and get them involved in terror plots. However, many of these so-called plots look like children’s games. In others, the alleged perpetrators look so disheveled, bedraggled, disoriented, that they seem like the last people who would be capable of carrying out a terror plot.
In addition to trying to influence juries with incendiary and fear-provoking pronouncements, politicians and the law enforcement agencies they support employ a second technique – in some ways, worse than the false accusations.
This is the designation known as the “person of interest.” This insidious label has the capacity to put life on hold, to turn lives upside down, to bankrupt citizens unable to pay lawyers’ fees to try to prove their innocence.
Remember Richard Jewell? To refresh your memory, Jewell, 33, was working as a security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Atlanta Police have received a message saying, "There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes." Jewell was working in Centennial Park.
At 1:20 a.m., a pipe bomb exploded near a huge sound-and-light tower erected by AT&T, which had become a major attraction for visitors to Centennial Olympic Park. The blast killed two people and injured 111 others.
Richard Jewell was the hero of the incident. He was responsible for finding the backpack that had contained the bomb, and for getting people out of the immediate area, thus probably limiting further death and injury.
But four days after the bombing, news organizations reported that Jewell had become the main focus of their investigation as a potential suspect in the bombing. At the time, Jewell was unknown to authorities, and a lone wolf profile made sense to FBI investigators after being contacted by his former employer at Piedmont College.
Though he was never arrested or charged with any crime, Jewell was named as a "person of interest.” His home, where he lived with his mother, was searched and his background exhaustively investigated, all amid a media storm that had cameras following him to the grocery store. Eventually, Jewell was exonerated, and once again hailed as a hero. The media circus pursued Jewell everywhere for weeks, until Eric Rudolph pled guilty to carrying out the bombing attack at the Centennial Olympic Park, as well as three other attacks across the South.
After his exoneration, Jewell filed a series of lawsuits against the media outlets which he claimed had libeled him, primarily NBC News and The Atlanta Constitution, and insisted on a formal apology from them. Jewell's attorneys contend Piedmont College President Raymond Cleere called the FBI and spoke to the Atlanta newspapers, providing them with false information on Jewell and his employment there as a security guard. Jewell's lawsuit accused Cleere of describing Jewell as a "badge-wearing zealot" who "would write epic police reports for minor infractions." Eventually he received an apology from the FBI.
Toward the end of the incident, broadcast host Bill Press discussed Jewell on television. Turning to Larry Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia, a guest on the program, he commented, "He (Jewell) did a pretty good job of destroying his own reputation, first, didn't he, Larry?"
To which Sabato replied, "You know, Bill, that's a great example of what happens when some poor soul, and I'm going to assume he's innocent until it's proven otherwise, some poor soul wanders into the media spotlight, because that's what happens. I remember the fellow who deflected the gun from President Ford out in California in 1975 and he saved the president's life and within 48 hours, a newspaper had revealed to his family, who didn't know, that he was gay."
Unlike Jewell, Steven Hatfill was never seen as a hero. But, just as Jewell’s life had been turned upside down by law enforcement, Hatfill’s also became a living hell.
Steven Jay Hatfill, now 60, is an American physician, virologist and bio-weapons expert who underwent what was considered by many to be a trial by media with great toll on his personal and professional life. After eight months of pressure from the media and amateur detectives, the US Department of Justice identified the former government scientist as a "person of interest" in its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. He was put under 24/7 surveillance.
FBI searches of his apartment in July and August 2002 were well-attended by journalists, many of whom had been pointing at Dr. Hatfill for months.
Dr. Hatfill later sued the government for ruining his reputation, a case that the government settled for US$5.8 million. He also filed lawsuits against several periodicals that had pointed to him as a figure warranting further investigation.
The situation became even more tragic when FBI and DOJ officials later blamed the anthrax deaths on another government scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, whom they concluded had acted alone. Ivins committed suicide. The case remains unsolved.
The abuses described here are miscarriages of justice, whether they occur in or outside a court. Politicians and law enforcement agencies depend on a supine press corps to circulate their stories all over the world in minutes. With the help of a media more skilled in stenography than in reporting, unsubstantiated rumors are printed and broadcast as facts. If further investigation is done by the media (which is rare) corrections often appear, if at all, long after the event. Yet they can rob you of your reputation before you have a chance to respond.
To be the target of a media blitz is tantamount to being found guilty of something. When a politician or an overly zealous prosecutor tags you as a dangerous terrorist before you ever go to court, you might as well not go to court. Such is the fear of terror that has pervaded our country since 9/11 that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has even successfully dictated where and how to try those accused of terrorism.
Is there anything ordinary citizens can do about these kinds of events? Unfortunately, not much. We should be urging our political leaders to choose their words more carefully and to show more respect for the rule of law. We should reign in over-zealous prosecutors who see their mission in life as collecting scalps. And we should be campaigning in Congress for substantial revisions in the “material support” law.
Politicians, judges, prosecutors and lawmakers need to demonstrate that they know the difference between governance and show business!
Ordinary citizens can’t censor what politicians say. And Judges could do a far better job of censoring what lawyers say (or fail to say) in court.
Perhaps the simplest target for irate citizens is the “person of interest” designation. The phrase has no legal meaning; it is administrative verbiage that law enforcement uses to show the public it’s working hard to find to find the guilty.
That phrase should be expunged from the Justice Department’s lexicon.
And that’s well within the President’s prerogatives.
.
America’s Toughest Sheriff Still Defiant. DOJ Probe “Political.”
By William Fisher
After the Justice Department charged that Joe Arpaio -- who likes to call himself America’s toughest sheriff -- discriminated against Latinos and punished those who complained, the cop whose defiance of the Feds became his mantra reacted true to form: he again defied the Feds by labeling the charges “political.”
In a sharply-worded rebuke following a three-year investigation, the Department of Justice said in a letter that the office headed by the larger-than-life sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) showed “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that included “the highest levels of the agency.” The letter also noted that, earlier in its investigation, Arpaio had refused to cooperate and forced the DOJ to sue him, obliging Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.
The 22-page letter, signed by Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, is addressed to the Maricopa County Attorney. If Arpaio and his office refused to enter into a court-approved settlement agreement, the government would file a lawsuit to compel compliance.
The letter is also seen as the opening salvo of a legal war against Arpaio and his methods. The DOJ is currently conducting a separate federal grand jury investigation into allegations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption department and for denying the civil rights of those they apprehend or imprison.
Adding yet more weight to the DOJ letter, Arpaio – who has been reelected to his post four times – is up for reelection in 2014. Some observers believe that the growth of the County’s Latino population, and its increasing political sophistication, could spell trouble for the 79-year-old lawman.
The DOJ said the allegations its letter were based on interviewing more than 400 inmates, deputies and others, including Arpaio and his senior deputies, visiting the jail, and reading internal documents numbering into the thousands of pages.
The investigation concluded that Latinos in Maricopa County were receiving “second-class policing services” and that a “culture of bias” exists in Arpaio’s office. At a news briefing, the DOJ spokesman said, “We have to do cultural change and culture change starts with people at the top.”
In a related development, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano – a former governor of Arizona -- announced that, as a result of the DOJ’s findings, the federal government would no longer allow Arpaio’s deputies to use the DHS database to check the immigration status of inmates in their custody.
Arpaio’s office has participated in several DHS programs, including one known as 287(g), which empowers local law enforcement officers to enforce Federal immigration law. That program has been widely criticized on a number of grounds, including the local police or sheriff’s lack of experience enforcing complex immigration law. Because of the DOJ investigation, his participation in this program was terminated by the DHS.
The DHS also limited the sheriff’s office’s access to the database it uses for another of its more controversial programs, known as Secure Communities. This program allows local law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of people it has in custody and to notify the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), which handles deportation proceedings. The program was designed to identify serious criminals in the US illegally and has been heavily criticized for identifying for deportation people arrested for committing minor crimes, such as speeding or driving with a broken taillight.
The DHS said in a statement, “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is troubled by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program.
“This is a sad day for America as a whole,” Sheriff Arpaio told The New York Times. “We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration,” he said, adding that he is merely following the law.
But the DOJ investigation found mountains of evidence that the sheriff’s office were practicing the most egregious forms of racial profiling in targeting Latinos.
Their letter said “The absence of clear policies and procedures to ensure effective and constitutional policing, along with the deviations from widely accepted policing and correctional practices, and the failure to implement meaningful oversight and accountability structures, have contributed to a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.”
The DOJ said that a substantial percentage of the incident reports filed after traffic-related stops suggest that these stops may have violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.
The report also noted that Sheriff Arpaio had conducted numerous raids targeting illegal immigrants. These raids were highly publicized and were sometimes prompted by complaints simply referred to people with “dark skin” or to Spanish speakers congregating in an area. “The use of these types of bias-infected indicators as a basis for conducting enforcement activity contributes to the high number of stops and detentions lacking in legal justification,” the report said.
Sheriff Arpaio has become the darling of Republican candidates for the presidency. He has had visits from Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, and Herman Cain, who has since dropped out of the race. Arpaio has endorsed Governor Perry.
Arpaio has won reelection four times by hefty margins. But in recent months, his popularity appears to have somewhat declined due to allegations that his department misappropriated county funds and failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sexual-abuse cases, where many of the complainants were illegal immigrants.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit challenging the illegal arrest and detention of a U.S. citizen and a legal resident by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) deputies. It is described below as fairly typical of the tactics used by Arpaio’s officers. It was written by the lawyers for two men who were driving down a public roadway when they were stopped and arrested without justification, and transported to the site of an immigration raid.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on behalf of Julian Mora, a legal permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, and his son Julio Mora, a US citizen, against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County. The lawsuit charges that the MCSO deputies racially profiled the father and son as they drove their pickup truck on a busy public road and illegally arrested and detained them, violating the US Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law and prohibition on unreasonable seizures.
Julian Mora was driving to work when, without provocation, an MCSO vehicle cut in front of him forcing him to stop abruptly. MCSO deputies then ordered the father and son out of their vehicle, then frisked and handcuffed them. Although the deputies had no reason to believe that the Moras had broken any law or were in the country unlawfully, they transported the Moras to Handyman Maintenance, Inc. (HMI), where MCSO was conducting a raid that morning. For the next three hours, the Moras were held in handcuffs at HMI, where they were denied food and water and forbidden contact with the outside world. They were not released until they were interrogated.
The ordeal was particularly humiliating for 66-year-old Julian Mora who, due to his diabetic condition, has difficulty controlling his bladder and had an urgent need to use the bathroom. MCSO personnel, however, rejected his repeated requests. Eventually, deputies escorted him outside where he was made to urinate in the parking lot. MCSO personnel later mocked his son Julio when he had to use the bathroom, because he had difficulty going with his hands still cuffed.
"To this day, I don't know why the officers stopped us out of all the cars on the road," said 19-year-old Julio Mora. "We were treated like criminals and never told why. I was very scared. I never thought something like this would happen to me. Now I know it can happen to anyone, citizens too. I don't think it's fair."
The federal lawsuit was settled when Arpaio’s lawyer agreed to a $200,000 payout to the Moras.
There are more than a thousand other lawsuits pending against Arpaio and his office. Many of these types of suits have been settled out of court, limiting the availability of details. But the cost of the settlements to the County are substantial.
The DOJ investigation has focused on the Sheriff’s office (MCSO's) compliance with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. § 14141 ("Section 14141"), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d to 2000d-7 and its implementing regulations at 28 C.F.R. § 42.101 et seq. ("Title VI"). Section 14141 prohibits law enforcement agencies, such as MCSO, from engaging in activities that amount to a pattern or practice of violating the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Title VI and its implementing regulations provide that recipients of federal financial assistance, such as MCSO, may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. These laws give the United States the authority to file legal action and obtain the necessary relief to ensure compliance with the Constitution and laws of the United States.
After the Justice Department charged that Joe Arpaio -- who likes to call himself America’s toughest sheriff -- discriminated against Latinos and punished those who complained, the cop whose defiance of the Feds became his mantra reacted true to form: he again defied the Feds by labeling the charges “political.”
In a sharply-worded rebuke following a three-year investigation, the Department of Justice said in a letter that the office headed by the larger-than-life sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix) showed “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos” that included “the highest levels of the agency.” The letter also noted that, earlier in its investigation, Arpaio had refused to cooperate and forced the DOJ to sue him, obliging Arpaio and his deputies to cooperate.
The 22-page letter, signed by Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, is addressed to the Maricopa County Attorney. If Arpaio and his office refused to enter into a court-approved settlement agreement, the government would file a lawsuit to compel compliance.
The letter is also seen as the opening salvo of a legal war against Arpaio and his methods. The DOJ is currently conducting a separate federal grand jury investigation into allegations of abuse of power by the department’s public corruption department and for denying the civil rights of those they apprehend or imprison.
Adding yet more weight to the DOJ letter, Arpaio – who has been reelected to his post four times – is up for reelection in 2014. Some observers believe that the growth of the County’s Latino population, and its increasing political sophistication, could spell trouble for the 79-year-old lawman.
The DOJ said the allegations its letter were based on interviewing more than 400 inmates, deputies and others, including Arpaio and his senior deputies, visiting the jail, and reading internal documents numbering into the thousands of pages.
The investigation concluded that Latinos in Maricopa County were receiving “second-class policing services” and that a “culture of bias” exists in Arpaio’s office. At a news briefing, the DOJ spokesman said, “We have to do cultural change and culture change starts with people at the top.”
In a related development, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano – a former governor of Arizona -- announced that, as a result of the DOJ’s findings, the federal government would no longer allow Arpaio’s deputies to use the DHS database to check the immigration status of inmates in their custody.
Arpaio’s office has participated in several DHS programs, including one known as 287(g), which empowers local law enforcement officers to enforce Federal immigration law. That program has been widely criticized on a number of grounds, including the local police or sheriff’s lack of experience enforcing complex immigration law. Because of the DOJ investigation, his participation in this program was terminated by the DHS.
The DHS also limited the sheriff’s office’s access to the database it uses for another of its more controversial programs, known as Secure Communities. This program allows local law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of people it has in custody and to notify the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), which handles deportation proceedings. The program was designed to identify serious criminals in the US illegally and has been heavily criticized for identifying for deportation people arrested for committing minor crimes, such as speeding or driving with a broken taillight.
The DHS said in a statement, “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is troubled by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) findings of discriminatory policing practices within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). Discrimination undermines law enforcement and erodes the public trust. DHS will not be a party to such practices. Accordingly, and effective immediately, DHS is terminating MCSO’s 287(g) jail model agreement and is restricting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office access to the Secure Communities program.
“This is a sad day for America as a whole,” Sheriff Arpaio told The New York Times. “We are proud of the work we have done to fight illegal immigration,” he said, adding that he is merely following the law.
But the DOJ investigation found mountains of evidence that the sheriff’s office were practicing the most egregious forms of racial profiling in targeting Latinos.
Their letter said “The absence of clear policies and procedures to ensure effective and constitutional policing, along with the deviations from widely accepted policing and correctional practices, and the failure to implement meaningful oversight and accountability structures, have contributed to a chronic culture of disregard for basic legal and constitutional obligations.”
The DOJ said that a substantial percentage of the incident reports filed after traffic-related stops suggest that these stops may have violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable seizures.
The report also noted that Sheriff Arpaio had conducted numerous raids targeting illegal immigrants. These raids were highly publicized and were sometimes prompted by complaints simply referred to people with “dark skin” or to Spanish speakers congregating in an area. “The use of these types of bias-infected indicators as a basis for conducting enforcement activity contributes to the high number of stops and detentions lacking in legal justification,” the report said.
Sheriff Arpaio has become the darling of Republican candidates for the presidency. He has had visits from Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, and Herman Cain, who has since dropped out of the race. Arpaio has endorsed Governor Perry.
Arpaio has won reelection four times by hefty margins. But in recent months, his popularity appears to have somewhat declined due to allegations that his department misappropriated county funds and failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sexual-abuse cases, where many of the complainants were illegal immigrants.
Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit challenging the illegal arrest and detention of a U.S. citizen and a legal resident by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) deputies. It is described below as fairly typical of the tactics used by Arpaio’s officers. It was written by the lawyers for two men who were driving down a public roadway when they were stopped and arrested without justification, and transported to the site of an immigration raid.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on behalf of Julian Mora, a legal permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, and his son Julio Mora, a US citizen, against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County. The lawsuit charges that the MCSO deputies racially profiled the father and son as they drove their pickup truck on a busy public road and illegally arrested and detained them, violating the US Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law and prohibition on unreasonable seizures.
Julian Mora was driving to work when, without provocation, an MCSO vehicle cut in front of him forcing him to stop abruptly. MCSO deputies then ordered the father and son out of their vehicle, then frisked and handcuffed them. Although the deputies had no reason to believe that the Moras had broken any law or were in the country unlawfully, they transported the Moras to Handyman Maintenance, Inc. (HMI), where MCSO was conducting a raid that morning. For the next three hours, the Moras were held in handcuffs at HMI, where they were denied food and water and forbidden contact with the outside world. They were not released until they were interrogated.
The ordeal was particularly humiliating for 66-year-old Julian Mora who, due to his diabetic condition, has difficulty controlling his bladder and had an urgent need to use the bathroom. MCSO personnel, however, rejected his repeated requests. Eventually, deputies escorted him outside where he was made to urinate in the parking lot. MCSO personnel later mocked his son Julio when he had to use the bathroom, because he had difficulty going with his hands still cuffed.
"To this day, I don't know why the officers stopped us out of all the cars on the road," said 19-year-old Julio Mora. "We were treated like criminals and never told why. I was very scared. I never thought something like this would happen to me. Now I know it can happen to anyone, citizens too. I don't think it's fair."
The federal lawsuit was settled when Arpaio’s lawyer agreed to a $200,000 payout to the Moras.
There are more than a thousand other lawsuits pending against Arpaio and his office. Many of these types of suits have been settled out of court, limiting the availability of details. But the cost of the settlements to the County are substantial.
The DOJ investigation has focused on the Sheriff’s office (MCSO's) compliance with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. § 14141 ("Section 14141"), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d to 2000d-7 and its implementing regulations at 28 C.F.R. § 42.101 et seq. ("Title VI"). Section 14141 prohibits law enforcement agencies, such as MCSO, from engaging in activities that amount to a pattern or practice of violating the Constitution or laws of the United States.
Title VI and its implementing regulations provide that recipients of federal financial assistance, such as MCSO, may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. These laws give the United States the authority to file legal action and obtain the necessary relief to ensure compliance with the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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