November 2009 Archives

Heather Ellis,allegedly cut in front of waiting customers at a Walmart in Missouri two years ago, a charge Ellis disputes, maintaining she was joining her cousin in another checkout line. She also has claimed that she was then pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers as she resisted arrest. Ellis is now on trial facing 15 years in jail on the charge of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Alternet reports
 

Think about the story of Heather Ellis, then think about the fact that half of the people in the United States prison system are Black folks, even though we make up just 13 percent of the population. Then, ask yourself if our criminal justice system is operating the way it's supposed to operate.

Three years ago, Heather Ellis, a college student at the time, was waiting on line at Wal-Mart. She decided to get into another line, then got into a verbal altercation with customers. The cops were called. And she is facing a possible 15-year sentence in prison.

Black folks keep focusing on Ellis' background -- she's a young school teacher with no record. Seemingly a good person, right? While that is true, my point is that should be irrelevant. Even if Ellis were a convicted felon, even if she had been stuffing DVDs down her pants, she should still not be facing 15 years in prison. Our criminal justice system is supposed to work for all of us, not just the good Blacks, not just those of us with character above reproach. 

If you believe Ellis' side of the story, she got out of her original line at Wal-Mart to join her cousin in a line that was moving more quickly. When she did, Ellis was pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by white police officers.

If you believe law enforcement's side of the story, Ellis shoved merchandise off the conveyor belt, became belligerent when she was confronted, told the police she would beat them if they touched her, refused to leave the store and resisted arrest.

The whole thing is strikingly similar to the Henry Louis Gates Jr. story. A Black man (in this case, woman) sees the situation through one lens, while a white officer (in this case, white officers and white Wal-Mart customers) see things through a different lens. Back then, I argued that perhaps Gates did get angry, perhaps he did say something to that officer that he should not have said, but the reality is that calling a cop a racist is not against the law, disturbing the peace and causing a public nuisance are not things you can do inside your own home. In this case, even if Ellis did resist arrest, she still should not be facing a 15-year sentence.

Purdue student pays parking ticket by placing $20 in a locked box, a prank now being called terrorist mischief. 

BoilerStation.com reports

Wesley Allen has never met Roy C. Sun, a Purdue University student suspected of "terroristic mischief" after a closed box was found in a building on the West Lafayette campus.
Nonetheless, Allen organized a rally Monday afternoon to support Sun, 21, and protest what he deemed was an overzealous arrest by the Purdue University Police Department.

Inside the package were $20, a wheel lock and a parking ticket that was issued to Sun a week ago.

"It's crazy that someone trying to pay a parking ticket could be arrested for terrorism," said Allen, 24, a Purdue graduate student. "It's not right."

Sun is one of three people suspected of leaving the package in a hallway Thursday morning at Purdue's Visitor Information Center -- prompting an evacuation of the building off Northwestern Avenue.

Thanks to Jonathan Turley

After running out of his house upon seeing his dog shot to death by police, an elderly man, who reacted angrily to the dog's death, is tasered for "ignoring" an order to stop and turning to go back into his house. Only problem is the man in question was deaf.

Jonathan Turley reports

Police in Bruceville-Eddy, Texas shot and killed a dog that they insist was threatening them and then tasered its elderly owner for failing to obey their commands. The man turns out to be deaf and there is still no word on the investigation that began in March in the incident.

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Last week Attorney Lynne Stewart began serving a 28 month sentence in federal prison after a U.S. appeals court upheld Stewart's 2005 conviction of assisting terrorism for distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the "Blind Sheikh," who is serving a life sentence on terror-related charges.

Before entering prison November 18 Stewart spoke about the case and her impending prison term with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

Jurist Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson Law School in Philadelphia explains why the "clear message of the 125-page majority appellate panel opinion is that attorneys who zealously represent their clients in the post-9/11 era beware."

Two prominent legal and human rights coalitions filed separate friend of the court briefs this week weighing in on the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project et al case due to be heard by the US Supreme Court soon.

The case involves federal laws outlawing all "material support" of terrorist groups or foreign terrorists organizations (FTOs), which broadly define "material support" to include, among other things, any "service," "training," "expert advice or assistance," or "personnel", and prohibiting even work  intended to further entirely peaceful, lawful objectives. 

The American Civil Liberties Union filed  its brief on behalf of the Carter Center, Human Rights Watch and several other human rights and humanitarian organizations.

"The material support law is so vague and broad that peace, human rights and aid groups are left hopelessly guessing whether their constitutionally-protected speech could land them in jail," said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "Cutting off aid to terrorism is undoubtedly an important government interest, but criminalizing legitimate peace-building and humanitarian work - including advocacy to end terrorism and violence - does nothing to further that interest and actually makes it more difficult to achieve."

Seperately, The Constitution Project and The Rutherford Institute filed a brief arguing that applying the material support statutes to punish pure speech that seeks to further lawful, non-violent ends is unconstitutionally overbroad. The brief explained that the challenged provisions of the material support laws conflict with First Amendment protections for free speech and freedom of association, and should therefore be struck down by the Court.

"This case provides an opportunity for the Supreme Court to rein in the unconstitutional use of the material support statutes to prohibit protected First Amendment activities," Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, said. " Our brief urges the Court to strike down the challenged provisions of the law, to ensure that terrorist activities are prohibited, but free speech and association are still safeguarded by the First Amendment."

The case was originally brought to trial  in 1998 on behalf of a human rights group, a retired federal administrative judge, a doctor, and several nonprofit groups who at that time challenged the constitutionality of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996, which made it a crime punishable by up to ten years of imprisonment and fines to provide "material support," including humanitarian aid, literature distribution and political advocacy, to any foreign agency that the Secretary of State has designated as "terrorist."

Challenging the law was a Los Angeles-based group, Humanitarian Law Project, described as a human rights advocacy organization, and its president.  Their lawyers said the group had been providing human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers' Party -- or, PKK, the main Kurish political party in Turkey.  Once the PKK was designated by the State Department as a terrorist group, the Humanitarian Law group stopped its training.  The group and others sued, seeking the chance to renew aid to what the organizations said werelawful, nonviolent activities overseas.

The Humanitarian Law Project's challenges to the constitutionality of AEDPA, and subsequent material support provisions enacted in the Patriot Act of 2001 have been upheld in several lower court decisions over the past decade.

Most recently the Ninth Circuit Court in December 2007 found key provisions of the terrorism support law to be unconstitutionally vague, and blocked their enforcement. 

In June 2009, however, The Obama Administration petitioned the Supreme Court to revive key parts of  the federal law making it a crime to provide support to foreign groups deemed to be terrorists. 

Yesterday's briefs follow a similar brief filed last week by The Center for Constitutional Rights.

At the time of CCR's filing CCR Cooperating Attorney David Cole said, "This statute is so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes. In our view, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted."   

Town council votes to deploy license plate readers to record data  and check criminal databases on every car entering and leaving town.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports

A novel anti-crime surveillance program that will record the license plate number of every car entering and leaving Tiburon should be up and running within six months, officials said Thursday.

CIA predator drones killing from the sky without legal framework or accountability.

Nat Hentoff reports

In October, during an interactive session with students in Pakistan, a female medical student praised Hillary Clinton for inspiring women; but then the same admirer asked the secretary of State how the United States justifies using those CIA remote-controlled Predator drone planes without sharing intelligence with the Pakistan military. These airborne assassins kill civilians while targeting terror suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Clinton refused comment on this expansive and lethal program, details of which are, of course, classified state secrets.

But another Pakistan woman flatly told Clinton that these drone devastations of suspected terrorist hideouts are like "executions without trials."

The secretary of State's blunt response about these sometimes-summary executions was: "There is a war going on."

During an interview on the Pakistan TV program "Our Voice," still another woman asked our chief foreign affairs officer if she considered these high-tech Predator drone attacks terrorism.

Clinton's terse reply to such an accusatory question to so high a level of a visitor from an key ally of Pakistan was, "No, I do not." Next question?

On Oct. 27, as Agence France Press reported, our killer drones were confronted at the United Nations by Philip Alston, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions.

"My concern," he said, "is that drones/Predators are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law."

Alston sent a strong message, without naming him, to President Obama: "We need the United States to be more up front and say, 'OK, we're willing to discuss some aspects of this program,' otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line that the CIA is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws."

Is it possible that the CIA would actually commit alleged war crimes - and the U.S. government would not hold the CIA and itself accountable in any way?

Is water wet?

Vetoes bill which would have allowed same-sex couples to be buried together because it's too much like marriage.

Providence Journal reports

An opponent of same-sex marriage, Governor Carcieri has vetoed bill that would have added "domestic partners'' to the list of people authorized by law to make funeral arrangements for each other.

In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: "This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

"If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the state of Rhode Island decide.''

The bill, also sponsored by state Sen. Rhoda Perry and state Rep. David Segal, would add "domestic partners'' to the list, in current law, of people who can legally make arrangements for a deceased person's funeral, cremation or burial to include domestic partners if the deceased person left no pre-arranged funeral contract.

Thanks to Jonathan Turley

Feeling threatened by 5th grader kicking him Ft. Smith cop electrocutes her to avoid "danger" of trying to restrain her.

The Raw Story reports

It was an encounter one Ozark 10-year-old will likely never forget.

Called to a home to help control an allegedly "unruly child," an Ozark police officer was reportedly told by the girl's mother that he could use the electric weapon to subdue her, according to 40/29 News Arkansas.

However, the girl supposedly kicked the officer in the groin when he approached. "He had no other choice [but to Taser her]," Ozark Police Choief Jim Noggle reportedly said. "He had to get the child under control."

According to the Associated Press, the officer's name is Dustin Bradshaw. His aggressive approach to dealing with a child has the girl's father enraged.

"If you can't pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don't think you need to be an officer," Anthony Medlock reportedly said.

You won't likely hear this answer on Jeopardy anytime soon: "Is the only country in the developed world where minors, even children as young as 13 are regularly put in prison for life without parole, even for non-murder offenses." But in case you do the question is "What is the United States?"

ACLU blog reports

Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida. In both cases, the petitioners argued that when a child is sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Both Sullivan and Graham committed crimes in which no-one was killed: when he was 13, Joe Sullivan raped a woman, and at 16, Terrance Graham committed armed burglary. Sullivan and Graham are sentenced to die in prison. (Read more about the Graham and Sullivan cases and about the international human rights law angle here.) (PDF)

In the United States, approximately 2,570 children are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Children as young as 13 have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without a second chance and an opportunity for release.

We are the only country in the world where children are serving such cruel sentences.

In February 2006, the ACLU submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) challenging the practice of life without parole sentencing for children under universal human rights principles. The petition alleges that the human rights of children sentenced to life without parolesentences in the state of Michigan have been violated. It asks the IACHR to review Michigan sentencing laws as they are applied to children and find them in violation of the American Declaration of the Rights of Man and other universal human rights principles.

Over the past decade the Innocence Project at Northwestern University has been instrumental in reopening, through the investigative efforts of Northwestern journalist students, cases in which the criminal justice system had failed defendants.

A court in Illinois has now come up with a novel way to avoid the potential exposure of future embarrassing facts relating to prosecutorial  misconduct and other mishaps: Blame the Messenger, by making the Innocence Project, rather than the facts it muckrakes up the issue.

Truthout reports

The work of many Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism students, under the direction of investigative journalism professor David Protess as part of the Medill Innocence Project, has helped lead to the release of 11 wrongfully convicted inmates, and when former Illinois Gov. George Ryan dropped sentences of everyone on Death Row before he left office, he acknowledged that it was partly because of the wrongful convictions resulting from the research done by Protess and his students.

Northwestern undergraduate journalism students continue to gain firsthand experience in investigating wrongful convictions under Protess as part of the Innocence Project, but the investigation into one case - of Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of shooting and killing a security guard in 1978 and whose murder conviction is being reviewed - has stirred recent controversy.

That's because staffers in the Cook County state's attorney's office have demanded that they need students' grades, grading criteria, syllabus and e-mail messages related to the students' investigation. Northwestern University and Protess, though, argue in court documents that turning over so many materials is burdensome and not relevant to deciding whether McKinney should be exonerated. A court date to address these matters is set for early November.

The National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Obama last week, contains numerous revisions to the Military Commissions ACT if 2006, but precious little in the way of substantive reform, according to a number of legal and human rights groups who have analyzed the bill.

 William Fischer provides a useful synopsis of pertinent critiques of the bill.

Arizona ACLU finds most immigrants rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as dangerous criminals or illegal fugitives in "sweeps" are neither, just "incidentals" (AKA "collateral damage").

The Arizona Republic reports

Last November, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted an operation in northern Arizona to look for immigration fugitives.

The operation was part of an ICE program whose main objective is to arrest and deport dangerous illegal immigrants who had previously been ordered deported and had prior criminal records.

But a review of ICE documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties

Union of Arizona under a Freedom of Information Act request found that the majority of the people arrested during the operation were neither criminals nor fugitives.

The operation lasted four days and was conducted in the Flagstaff, Sedona, Prescott and Prescott Valley areas by ICE agents with help from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office and the Prescott Police Department, the ACLU said.

In all, 80 illegal immigrants were arrested, including 14 fugitives and 66 non-fugitives, according to the documents, which the ACLU posted on its Web site. http://tinyurl.com/y873vfj Of the 80 arrested, six had prior criminal histories, including two who were fugitives and four who were non-fugitives.  Of the 66 non-fugitives arrested, 62 had no previous criminal history.

An ICE memo that was part of the documents noted that 18 of the 80 people arrested were the result of two smuggling vehicles filled with illegal immigrants stopped by Arizona DPS officers on I-17. Twenty-five of the 80 were the result of ICE officers assisting the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office in its  attempts to locate and arrest people who had criminal arrest warrants and lived in a trailer park in Sedona.

"Contrary to assertions from Department of Homeland Security officials that they are focusing on apprehending criminal fugitives, these documents demonstrate that they are continuing to round (up) immigrants who were not previously ordered deported and who pose no threat to the public safety," Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement posted on the group's Web site.

Thanks to Billof Rights Defense Committee

Glenn Greenwald lays out the implications of the Maher Arar decision this week.

Business as usual at the end of the decade of the taser.

Minneapolis: Man tasered with his hands on the hood of a car, clearly NOT "resisting arrest".

Alaska: 81 year old Episcopal priest tasered.

Man tasered for "resisting arrest" by washing his hands.

Thanks to Jonathan Turley

Partially (barely) declassified FBI documents describe CIA secret prisons, including prisoners "manacled to the ceiling". 

The NY Times reports

F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners "manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock," and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including "How close is each technique to the 'rack and screw,' " according to hundreds of pages of partly declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department.

  

The documents include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says department officials declined to prosecute the case.

The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, a Washington advocacy group. Some are new versions of documents previously released.