March 14 TEXAS: Full probe of Cantu's innocence hits snags----Trio who may exonerate the executed man say prosecutors are intimidating Nearly 4 months after Bexar County prosecutors promised to vigorously reinvestigate the questionable execution of Ruben Cantu, they have yet to obtain full statements from the 3 witnesses who claim he was innocent. All 3 say they want to cooperate but prosecutors' tactics have intimidated them. The lone eyewitness against Cantu, who has now recanted, has been threatened with prosecution for Cantu's death. Another said he has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury. And the 3rd says he balked after being confronted with a lie detector test by investigators who refused to identify themselves. "I think they're just trying to cover up for what happened 20 years ago," said David Garza, one of the three men who say Cantu was wrongly executed. "They just don't want to admit that they messed up." Cliff Herberg, first assistant district attorney for Bexar County, did not return repeated calls from the Houston Chronicle about the status of the investigation. In the past, Susan Reed, elected district attorney, has repeatedly promised that her office would conduct a thorough and objective review. But Robert Hoelscher, deputy director of the Texas Innocence Network, said prosecutors have displayed an inappropriate bias since the investigation began, both in private actions and public statements. "The Ruben Cantu case is not about death penalty politics," Hoelscher said. "It's about whether the state of Texas executed an innocent young man. No other issue is relevant until you resolve that fundamental question." Cantu was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Pedro Gomez during a house robbery on Nov. 9, 1984. Cantu, 17 at the time of the crime, and Garza, his 15-year-old co-defendant, were convicted after the lone surviving eyewitness, Juan Moreno, identified them as his attackers. Moreno, then an illegal immigrant from Mexico, says he was under intense pressure from police officers to falsely identify Cantu. Co-defendant Garza has provided a sworn statement that claims another teen, not Cantu, was with him that night. The 3rd man, Eloy Gonzales, swears Cantu was with him in Waco - about 180 miles from the crime scene. 'Pretty serious stuff' Prosecutors reopened the case and began re-examining old files in late November after the Chronicle published a story about claims that Cantu, executed in 1993, was innocent. As the investigation began, Reed announced she would consider building a case of murder by perjury against Moreno, the eyewitness. At the time, she told the Chronicle: "A man has been executed because of that lie. That is pretty serious stuff." Moreno, now a San Antonio contractor, was 19 at the time of the crime and barely survived the shooting. His story provides the most compelling evidence for the claim that Texas executed the wrong man. But no one from the Bexar County prosecutors' office has heard it from him. Cynthia Orr, a San Antonio lawyer who represents Moreno, has said that Reed's statements make it difficult for her client to cooperate. She said it looks like prosecutors would rather silence Moreno than hear him out. Prosecutors recently subpoenaed Gonzales, the potential alibi witness, to force him to testify before a grand jury, though he says he has offered to cooperate. Gonzales, who has a criminal record, claims that Cantu was with him in Waco stealing cars at the time of the murder. Gonzales' brother and sister also told the Chronicle that Cantu was with them. Gonzales said he thinks the subpoena was issued to shake him up. "What (the D.A.) is trying to do is see if she can cover this up," Gonzales said. "But this is a serious offense. This is not something we'd forget about." The subpoena issued to Gonzales is the first signal that the District Attorney's office plans to use a grand jury as part of its investigation. The investigation is being led by Tamara Butler Strauch, a senior assistant district attorney. Former District Attorney Sam Millsap, who oversaw the Cantu case as chief prosecutor, said prosecutors may need a grand jury to obtain sworn statements. "It makes sense to do this to get what everyone is saying today under oath," he said. Millsap, who now opposes the death penalty, told the Chronicle last year that he never should have sought a capital sentence in the Cantu case because it was based almost entirely on a single witness, the man who has since recanted. Fred Rodriguez, a criminal defense attorney who defended Garza and later served as district attorney, said he thought prosecutors were more likely to use a grand jury to consider criminal charges against a target such as Moreno, which would be a tough sell. "You're looking at a guy who got shot nine times and who barely survived being indicted by murder for perjury?" Rodriguez laughed. "Wow." An investigator and an attorney from the District Attorney's Office did obtain in December a partial interview with Garza, who is in prison in Beaumont for an unrelated burglary. But in an interview with the Chronicle at the Stiles Unit, Garza said he refused to cooperate after district attorney's officials refused to identify themselves and immediately pressed him to take a lie detector test. Garza also refused to give them a sworn statement he has provided to the Chronicle about the crime, which names another person as the murderer. Herberg, in a December interview, said investigators were unimpressed with Garza. He emphasized that Garza initially said he saw Cantu near the crime scene, according to an old police report. Meanwhile, the man Garza accuses now has denied involvement and passed a lie detector test, Herberg said. 'Beyond the extra mile' The Cantu case has gained national attention because the acknowledged execution of an innocent man could cast serious doubt on the capital punishment system itself. With such high stakes, Hoelscher, of the Texas Innocent Network said the Bexar County officials should do everything they can to avoid the impression they have made up their minds against Cantu - especially since Reed had a small role in the case years ago. As judge, Reed rejected Cantu's state appeal and later set his execution date, though she has said those actions don't affect her ability to serve as an impartial fact-finder now. "This review is being conducted by the office that prosecuted Ruben Cantu," Hoelscher said. "It must go well beyond the extra mile to show the public that it is conducting a fair, thorough and impartial assessment." ******************* DA's conflict of interest SUSAN Reed, the Bexar County district attorney whose office is investigating whether a San Antonio man was put to death 13 years ago for a crime he didn't commit, has a conflict of interest. I say this as a strong admirer of Reed. In more than 20 years of covering the justice system in San Antonio, I wrote many stories of incompetence and corruption regarding three of her predecessors and applauded voters as they tossed the incumbents, two Democrats and a Republican. Elected in 1998, she is an avid Republican (she flew to Florida in the wake of the 2000 election to help seal the victory for Bush), but she hired as her top assistant a liberal Democrat, a gifted criminal defense attorney who had never been a prosecutor. Encouraging creativity The result is an office that aggressively and competently has gone after criminals of all sorts - not just thieves and convenience-store murders but white-collar miscreants and politicians as well. She encourages creativity. When a swindler got elderly people to turn over certificates of deposit to him, her office decided the banks should have refused (as some did) to cooperate. She used money-laundering laws to seize the money from the banks, and the elderly targets got 90 cents on the dollar back. The Texas banking commissioner and the banks were outraged. Another case involved a young man and his teenage wife living with his parents while he regularly abused her. Charging the mother When the wife decided to take their child and leave, the mother called her son at work. He came back and killed both his wife and a police officer who responded to a call. Reed not only won a death penalty for the killer but an indictment of his mother for reckless endangerment. She knew her son was violent and shouldn't have called him. Reed agreed to a plea with probation but made her point. Parents, like bankers, bear responsibility for their actions. Now Reed is faced with the task of investigating serious allegations that 13 years ago, under a DA she didn't respect, Bexar County may have sent a man to his death for a shooting crime he didn't commit. The sole eyewitness, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant named Juan Moreno, who survived multiple gunshot wounds while a companion died, has since become a citizen and lived a quiet life as a contractor. He now says he felt pressured into falsely identifying as the assailant, Ruben Cantu, a 17-year-old with a record. He says he has carried the guilt of Cantu's execution for all these years. In an interview shortly after the Chronicle reported on his quiet recantation, Reed said if she determined Moreno is telling the truth she would consider charging him with a crime. Perjury? No, the statute of limitations ran a decade ago. The charge would be felony murder by perjury. There is no statute of limitations for murder. As noted in an earlier column, Texas law allows a murder charge if, in the act of committing a felony, someone acts in such a way as to cause a death. The law was originally meant for such things as reckless behavior during a bank robbery, but George Dix, a respected expert on criminal law at the University of Texas Law School, says Reed's interpretation is valid. Though Cantu wasn't executed for 3 years, the law refers to the act, not the result, as being committed during the felony. The Texas definition of "causation" is a bit murky but seems to boil down to this: If Cantu would not have been executed but for Moreno's false testimony, Moreno caused his death. It would be hard to argue that, as the only eyewitness, Moreno wasn't key to the conviction and sentence. But because he faces such prosecution, Moreno's lawyer can't let him talk to Reed's investigators without immunity. That's the conflict. Reed, however, does not seem conflicted by it. "Life is full of conundrums," she says, and adds, "On the horns of a dilemma, do you make a deal with the devil?" Some of her critics have accused Reed of threatening Moreno to intimidate him and others like him in the future. Knowing Reed, I disagree. She is a passionate prosecutor and, like most prosecutors, she's more comfortable focusing on the weakness of individuals than on the weakness of the system. That doesn't make her a bad DA. It does, however, argue that a district attorney should not have the sole responsibility for investigating the system's performance. (source for both: Houston Chronicle (Rick Casey for this item) ) *************** Defense Attorneys For Death Row Inmate To Continue Appeal Process The defense attorneys for 27-year-old Robert Salazar, Jr. says they're going to file a new appeal on Tuesday. An earlier appeal was rejected. According to Salazar's attorneys, there is new evidence, an IQ test in particular, that proves Salazar is mentally retarded. Salazar was convicted of the 1997 murder of 3-year-old Adriana Gomez. His execution date is set for March 22nd. (source: KLBK News) USA: THE US GULAG PRISON SYSTEM - THE SHAME OF THE NATION AND CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY No, not the one you think, outrageous as it is. I'm referring to the US prison system that's with no exaggeration about as shockingly abusive as the gulag abroad. It qualifies for that label by its size alone - more than 2.1 million as of June, 2004 and growing larger by about 900 new inmates every week. Blacks (mostly poor and disadvantaged) especially are affected. While they make up just 12.3% of the population, they account for 1/2 the prison population, and their numbers there have grown 5-fold in the last 25 years. Hispanics (also poor) account for another 15%. About half of those incarcerated are there for non-violent offenses, and half of those (500,000) are drug related. But while blacks make up 15% of ilicit drug users, they account for 37% of drug arrests, 42% of drug offenders in federal prison and 62% in state prisons. And Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that in one third of the states 75% of all prisoners for drug-related offenses are black. In my home state of Illinois they reported the number to be an astonishing 89%, a total exceed by only one other state. Further, in a so-called free society, below the radar are hundreds of political prisoners, mostly people of color, there only because they represent a threat to the state from their pursuit of justice for their people if they were free. Today the US shamelessly has more people behind bars than any other nation including China with over 4 times our population. And things have become especially repressive against those in society least able to defend themselves including immigrants of color and our newest head of the queue demon - Muslims. The Bush administration has made a bad situation far worse taking full advantage of their fear-induced "permanent state of war" and sham "global war on terrorism" to target all those seen as a potential threat to their plan for global dominance and full control at home. Taken as a whole, this is a national disgrace and outrage, but the effect on those targeted is pretty much below the radar, unreported and undiscussed in the mainstream. Who cares about a couple of million mostly poor, mostly people of color (including immigrants, many of whom are undocumented and have no legal rights at all) languishing behind bars out of sight and out of mind. When any of this is discussed, it's to let the (voter eligible) public know our political leaders are "tough on crime" and working to keep us safe. Safe from whom or what? In the words of a great world class journalist, that kind of talk is "what comes out of the rear end of a bull." What's really going on has little to do with public safety but lots to do with controlling a justifiably restive population of poor and desperate people, the inability of those people to afford a proper defense in our so-called criminal justice system stacked against them, and a growing opportunity for big business to profit on human misery. It's a kind of modern day slavery - a growing state and privately run criminal injustice and prison industry using human beings as their product. In this land of opportunity and the "free market", all things (and people) are commodities to be exploited for profit. A GROWTH MARKET OF POOR AND DESPERATE PEOPLE, MOSTLY BLACK AND HISPANIC - A READY RESOURCE FOR THE PRISON GROWTH INDUSTRY The way this country has always treated its least advantaged throughout its history is shameful. British historian Arnold J. Toynbee perceptively understood this in his quote made 46 years ago when he said: "America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in the defence of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for: Rome consistently supported the rich against the poor.........and since the poor, so far, have always and everywhere been far more numerous than the rich, Rome's policy made for inequality, for injustice, and for the least happiness of the greatest number." Imagine what Toynbee might say today if he were still living. Toynbee didn't say it but he might have added that none in America have fared worse than people of color - American Indians, Hispanics, Asians and especially Blacks first brought here as chattel and who remained that way for over 300 years. Even when they were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and guaranteed the right of life, liberty and property, due process and equal protection under the law by the 14th Amendment they still seldom got it. Throughout the 100 years of Jim Crow justice and even after the civil rights gains in the 1960s, most blacks and other people of color have always been on the bottom rung of society (along with our native people) and denied most of its benefits including equal justice under the law. There are those today in the US, even from the progressive community, who like to say this country has come a long way from its racist past, and while there are still far too many inequities we're making progress. Are these people living in the same country and on the same planet as I am? In the US the statistics on blacks alone in the criminal justice system make a mockery of any notion of a nation no longer racist. When it comes to the issue of justice, we've never been more racist since the days of legal slavery. The numbers are truly shocking and in a country claiming to be a democracy and a model for the rest of the world. I hope that world makes another choice. There are far better ones than ours, and our imperial adventures abroad and policies at home toward our least advantaged prove it. THE SHAMEFUL FACTS PAINT AN UGLY PICTURE OF ANOTHER (LOCKED UP) AMERICA, OUT OF SIGHT AND OUT OF MIND Here are some key facts. Nationwide black males over 18 are incarcerated at 9 times the rate of comparable white males, and in 11 states those rates range from 12 to 26 times the rate for whites. In my home state of Illinois the rate is 15 times, and in the nation's capital the rate is an astonishing 49 times. The most current data on incarceration for blacks in the US was 1,815 per 100,000 vs. 609 per 100,000 for Latinos, 235 for whites and 99 for Asians. For adult black males the rate was 4,630 per 100,000, 1,668 for Latinos and 482 for whites. In 1999, 11% of black males in their 20s and early 30s were in prison including one third of black male high school dropouts. Even worse, the statistical model used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the turn of the century to determine racial and ethnic differences in their chances for incarceration at sometime in their lifetime predicts a 29% chance of serving prison time for a black male aged 16 in 1996. The comparable chance for a white male in the same age group was 4%. In 2002 the Justice Policy Institute reported there were more black men behind bars than in colleges or universities. It also reported that 30% of black males between 20 and 29 are either in prison or on probation or parole. >From the numbers above we know that one in every 20 black men over 18 is now in a state or federal prison compared to one in every 180 whites. And in some states like Oklahoma, Iowa, Rhode Island, Texas and Wisconsin, the black male incarceration rate incredibly is between 13 -14% of all black men in those states - a devastating blow to the black families and communities there. It's also true that the best predictor of a state's incarceration rate and its total prison population is the size of its black population. By almost all measure the state of what can only be called the US criminal injustice system is shocking and outrageous. In the last 35 years the total number incarcerated has exploded from less than 300,000 in 1970 to more than 7 times that number now. Today the US is number one not only in its total prison population but in the highest number per 100,000 population imprisoned - 690. Only Russia is a close second with 675 while in South Africa it's 400, England - 125, France - 90, Sweden - 60 and Italy - 40. Would anyone suggest the US is 17 times more non-law-abiding than Italy, or is there a simpler explanation? It's also true that race is the most prominent reason why states deny voting rights to convicted felons and ex-felons. The greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the more likely it is for that state to disenfranchise its residents who've served time in jail. A prison record in those states means a loss of a citizen's most fundamental democratic right. The laws vary by state, but The Sentencing Project estimates 4.7 million Americans, or 1 in 43 adults, have currently or permanently lost their right to vote because of a felony conviction. And 1.4 million black men, or 13% of all black men, are so disenfranchised, a rate 7 times the national average. Even more shocking, the same report estimates that given the current rates of incarceration, 30% of the next generation of black men will be disenfranchised at some time in their life. And in states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, as many as 40% of black men may permanently lose their right to vote. Let's be very clear. Based on the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution it can, and I believe should, be argued that all state disenfranchisement laws are unconstitutional. Section 1 of that amendment reads: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous servitude." It remains for a future Congress and/or the courts to address this issue and decide whether we're to be a democracy for all our citizens or just for those we decide are eligible and for the reasons we choose. And this doesn't address the more basic question of whether our right to vote really matters. The public has virtually no voice in choosing the 2 major parties' candidates, and when we cast our votes the new electronic voting machines can easily be programmed or manipulated to ignore our choice and count it for another candidate and even do it multiple times. This is why half the eligible voting public opt out. They don't believe the system is free and fair so why bother. That thought never leaves my mind, and I wonder why I bother. But that consideration awaits another commentary and analysis, a pretty fundamental and important one. THE BIG AND GROWING BUCKS SPENT ON LOCKING PEOPLE UP IN CAGES Since the 1970s the prison-industrial complex has exploded in size and continues to grow exponentially. It now exceeds $40 billion annually and rising. On average states now spend 60 cents on prisons for every dollar spent on higher education, up from 28 cents in 1980. And several large states are so hell-bent to lock people up their annual budget for prisons exceed that for education. Also, the overall rate of prison spending growth has greatly exceeded that for education for the past 25 years. It's shocking that the annual per prisoner cost today almost equals a year's tuition at Harvard. And what's all this spending buying us. Not a damn thing except a nation growing more repressive, more racist and more likely to target anyone if they ever run short of their current favorites. But since 9/11 they've tapped a new vein of 1.5 million Muslims. And if they throw in Hindus, Buddhists and a few other easy to demonize miscellaneous sects out of the mainstream they can easily triple that number. Now that's a "strike" that may be too "rich" to ignore. Think of all the new prisons they'll need to lock up a load of them, get them off the streets and help keep a new growth industry growing and prosperous. Contrary to the "law and order" baloney from our politicians, there's no evidence of a rising trend of criminality, including the violent kinds. Since 1980, the data on the national crime rate has trended slightly up, then down, without any significant change. Still the incarceration rate has skyrocketed reflecting a crime wave that doesn't exist. In the 1990s, thanks to a good economy, crime rates actually fell, but incarceration rates rose dramatically nonetheless. Smell fishy? It sure does to me. And my own view, shared by others, is that this is all part of a sinister effort to control dissent by a combination of a state-induced climate of fear and hard line national security police state tactics to keep a restive population in line. Those most likely to be restive are the ones most deprived, the ones left out over the last 25 years when the wealth gap widened exponentially between rich and poor and continues to unabated. At the same time the social safety net has been and continues to be shredded making conditions intolerable for the poor and also impacting lower and middle income earners and families. Of course, the ones always hurt most are people of color and that means mostly black people. But Hispanics are gaining ground in this race to the bottom as that segment of our population (including undocumented immigrants) is growing the fastest along with those from Asia. THE SO-CALLED "WAR ON DRUGS" - IT'S A HOAX AND A NATIONAL DISGRACE We should have caught on by now. When our political leaders want to scare hell out of us about something, real or imagined (you can bet it's the latter), they declare war on it. It gets the juices flowing and the flags waving. We had the phony "cold war", and now, with "the evil empire" gone and desperate to find new imagined and contrived enemies, we have a "war on terrorism" and a "war on drugs." We also have an unmentioned "war on the climate" as witnessed by the alarming rate of melting of the polar and Greenland ice caps. Maybe one day they'll declare dandruff public enemy number one and declare war on it. Might as well. It would make as much sense as all the others, except for the one real one they never mention caused by global warming. And, oh yes, there's one other war never mentioned, and it's the most important and dangerous one of all - it's the ongoing and growing war on the Constitution and our sacred Bill of Rights. They're being taken from us right before our eyes, and in our blindness and mental fog we don't even see it happening. Most of us know the Ben Franklin quote about those who would sacrifice their freedom for security deserve neither and will lose both. He also said that "distrust and caution are the parents of security" and reportedly said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Franklin's contemporary, the great German philosopher and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, just as wisely said that "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." Franklin, Goethe and many others aren't considered iconic and venerable historic figures for nothing. And if we take the trouble to read them, we have the benefit of their great wisdom. They've warned us with it, and we damn well better be listening and heeding them. If not, we'll awaken one day, find our precious freedoms gone, finally understand what happened, and it'll be too late. Except for the 2 unmentioned real wars, the others are surreal ones. They're contrived and concocted by devious politicians for their own interests like trying to get reelected or needing a reason to raise defense or homeland security spending. They're also to benefit their corporate allies who profit from them. The more they can scare us the greater the amount of our tax dollars they can divert from vital societal needs to put in the pockets of their corporate friends and fight wars of imperial conquest for their benefit. And the more repressive laws they can pass to destroy our civil liberties, and as discussed above, lock up in cages those most in need and most likely to be restive about it. The current catchy phrase in the "drug war" was first used during the supposed crack epidemic in the 80s, but we can pin one more rap on Richard Nixon who first declared a "war on drugs" over 30 years ago. But the idea of making some "drugs" illegal goes back much further than that, to the 1930s (and earlier) when prohibition ended and alcohol producing companies may have decided to eliminate the threat of a competing "drug." You'd think we might have learned something from 13 years of violence and corruption under Prohibition that made criminals out of otherwise law-abiding people who may have just wanted a cold beer and also created a new revenue source for organized crime. But all that was chicken feed compared to today as the UN now estimates the annual take from trafficking elicit drugs is around $400-500 billion. That's double the sales revenue from US legal prescription drugs Big Pharma reported in 2005. Those profiting big time from the illegal ones include more than the "kingpins" and organized crime. The market is so big everyone wants in on it. For many banks, including the major international money center ones, "laundering" drug money is one of their important profit centers. And it's well-known that the CIA was been involved in drug-trafficking (directly or indirectly) throughout its half century existence and then began to profit from it in earnest during the Contra wars of the 1980s to fund their operations. Today the CIA is part of the elicit drug trade in places like Afghanistan working with major criminal syndicates in the huge business of trafficking heroin. The take from this one operation alone is so lucrative it's hard to imagine they'd ever give it up or not want in on all other major parts of the drug trade worldwide. Who'll stop or prosecute them? And what criminal enterprise wouldn't want them as a partner to guarantee them ease of access to the US and other major markets. That's a marriage joined together none of the parties would ever want to put asunder. And now in this modern Age of (contrived) Anxiety, we have 2 new "super-spook" agencies established to take full surveillance advantage of the Bush administration's unjustifiable "wartime" powers and fear-induced concocted "war on terror" to last for "generations" - The Office of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Wanna bet they're also in the elicit drug biz big time. How could they resist it. They both need every buck they can get to watch all of us, everywhere, all the time - which is what they're now doing. And it's an indisputable fact that all the spy agencies are above the law and can do whatever they please - spy legally and illegally, traffic elicit drugs, torture detainees they control and murder anyone they target including heads of state. But it's the purpose of this essay to focus on how the so-called drug war has led to a burgeoning prison-industrial complex that adversely affects the lives of millions of society's most disadvantaged who happen to be mostly people of color and most of them black. Just like during Prohibition, otherwise law-abiding people have become criminals and are being locked away for long sentences. The repressive "mandatory minimum" sentences are especially harsh and outrageous. Supposedly established to target "kingpins" and big time dealers, it hasn't turned out that way and likely was never intended to. The US Sentencing Commission reports that only 5.5% of all federal crack cocaine defendants and 11% of all federal drug defendants are "high-level" dealers. The rest are low-level operatives and those caught "possessing." In most cases they're from society's least advantaged and poor, and most of them are black. These convenient targets create a ready supply of bodies to fill prison cells as part of the plan to remove the unwanted from the streets and create a new growth industry at the same time. SOME QUICK FACTS ABOUT COCAINE AND ITS DERIVATIVE "CRACK" AND HOW ITS USE TARGETS BLACKS First off, coca leaf cultivation in South America has been the cornerstone of the Andean region for 4 thousand years, and its consumption has been part of the culture since before the Incas. It's commonly used by millions of people there including the cocaleros, or coca farmers, as we in this country use coffee, tea, a glass of wine or just a cold beer. Besides drinking coca tea, the leaf is chewed to relieve fatigue, suppress appetite, as a communal activity and to offset altitude sickness. The US Embassy in Peru even recommends it for the latter purpose. Use of cocaine in the US didn't first begin in the 60s. It's been around recreationally for nearly 150 years for "whatever ailed you" tonics, in cigarettes, ointments and nasal sprays. Its use was perfectly legal until the federal government classified it as a narcotic (which it is not) in 1914. After that it could only be gotten legally by prescription or illegally from a "street dealer." Cocaine is a powder which in "cooked" form is called "crack." The law treats each very differently. The racist "mandatory minimum" sentencing laws established by Congress in 1986 penalize crack users especially harshly. Defendants convicted of selling 500 grams of powder cocaine vs. 5 grams of crack each receive 5 year sentences. For 5 kilos of powder and 50 grams of crack it's a 10 year sentence. That's a 100:1 ratio. Why? Hold on, there's more. Simple possession of any amount of powder by a first-time offender is a misdemeanor punishable by a max 1 year sentence. For crack, simple possession is a felony carrying a 5 year sentence. Now to the why. Blacks accounted for 84% of convicted crack offenders in 2000, Hispanics 9% and whites 6%. For powder it was Hispanics - 50%, blacks - 30% and whites - 18%. Now you know. The federal crack laws established 20 years ago were part of the "Reagan revolution" and its racist war against the poor, mainly blacks. It was also intended as a defense against those least advantaged poor and mainly blacks as the "Reagan revolution" began dismantling the social safety net and transferring wealth to the rich and well-off. That transfer has now been ongoing for 25 years with no end in sight. The "war on drugs" and its harsh laws, mainly targeting blacks, were intended to defuse the inevitable pressure that would build among the poor and black community and likely explode again in the streets as it did in the 60s. 2.1+ million people locked in cages is how this nation's leaders address the gross social inequity problem it deliberately created. It's their solution, and it's a national disgrace and outrage. TORTURE IN US PRISONS - IT'S NOT JUST AT GUANTANAMO AND ABU GHRAIB - IT'S RIGHT HERE IN THE USA Surprised? The few who even think about this may be, but even many of them shamefully believe all those locked up deserve the harsh treatment they get. Aren't they sent there to be punished for committing crimes? Did they expect a "country club?" Punishment is what they get big time because prisons everywhere are brutal places, and those sent to them have no rights and it shows in how they're treated - routinely. And let's be perfectly clear about the way it is at all US domestic and foreign based prisons (and most all other countries' as well): No, it doesn't just happen at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram near Kandahar, Afghanistan; and no, it's not just by a few "rogue elements" or "bad apples." What goes on is policy, and it comes right from the top sanctioned and approved. And let's be very clear about one other thing. The real criminals sit in corporate suites and boardrooms or in capitol hill offices while their victims are locked in cages and subjected to unspeakable abuse and brutal torture with no chance to stop it or receive redress. Prisons, with few exceptions, are not intended for rehabilitation. They are institutions societies use for vengeance and punishment. There are the most gruesome hellholes around the world the US takes full advantage of just in the prisoners it "renditions" for attempted information extraction by some of the worst physical and psychological tortures the human mind can conceive. But this essay is about what goes on in US prisons within our borders, and what you'll read below will sound like reports about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Get ready to feel your skin crawl. Everything we saw on TV months ago about prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib (and heard goes on at Guantanamo) happens in our state and federal prison system right here at home and lots more we didn't see or hear about. These are the lessons and techniques first devised and used in US based torture-prisons and then exported for use in our comparable torture-prisons around the world. That's the way things are in all our prisons, and in the language of author Gertrude Stein when she referred to roses: a prison is a prison is a prison. The main difference between San Quentin and Abu Ghraib is their location. What goes on at both and all others includes savage beatings by prison guards; attacks by fierce dogs that inflict real bites; severe shocking with cattle prods and 50,000 volt emitting Taser electro-shock guns often used multiple times that make the victim shake for hours after being struck and can also kill and often do; assaults by toxic chemicals like pepper spray strong enough to inflict severe pain, 2nd degree burns, temporary blindness, and even death in a vulnerable victim; and all this happening at times with prisoners stripped naked including brutal rapes by guards, other prisoners and much more. A courageous woman activist imprisoned for several months for her actions told me the case of a woman she saw stripped naked in her cell and then bound suspended in spread-eagle form on her prison bars and left there for hours to suffer. The experience devastated her and nearly killed her. And she was another activist being punished for her courageous acts. Hard to believe? You'd better believe it because it goes on every day in all prisons routinely throughout the country - acts of deliberate barbarity and sadism, so severe they can and do kill and often leave their victims an emotional shell when they don't. Whenever you hear reports about prisoners committing suicide, you'd better think hard about it. It's most likely they were murdered by prison guards and reported as suicide. It may be from repeated Taser shocks, from being beaten to death so savagely every rib in their body was broken or just from a body giving out from repeated and brutal maltreatment over a long period with nothing more to look forward to but more of the same. How many can endure the worst of that? No one in a civilized country should ever have to. And no civilized person should believe they had it coming. HOW INTERNATIONAL LAW TREATS TORTURE International law is explicit and long-standing forbidding the use of any form of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment under any circumstances. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlawed it in 1948. The Fourth Geneva Convention then did it in 1949 banning any form of "physical or mental coercion" and affirming detainees must at all time be treated humanely. The European Convention followed in 1950. Then in 1984 the UN Convention Against Torture became the first binding international instrument dealing exclusively with the issue of banning torture in any form for any reason. And let's be clear on what's meant by torture and inhumane treatment. It includes punching a prisoner or detainee in the mouth or kicking him or her in the stomach or butt. Except for the non-binding "Universal Declaration", all the others are binding international law, and the US is a signatory to the 4th Geneva Convention and the UN Convention. And hold on, there's more. The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a criminal offense for US military personnel and US nationals to commit war crimes to include cruel treatment and torture covered under the 4th Geneva Convention. And virtually every human rights organization is on the record banning all kinds of torture anywhere for any reason. A BRIEF DIVERSION ON TORTURE OVERSEAS I must include some important information about one type of torture that may be only going on overseas - for now. Although the US is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, it's routinely ignored and violated them with impunity in US prisons and abroad. Further, the CIA's use of psychological torture was exempted in the UN Convention. With cover from that exemption, Professor Alfred McCoy's new book - A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation From the Cold War to the War of Terror - exposes the CIA's secret efforts to develop new forms of torture over that period. He explained how they conducted intensive research to crack the code of human consciousness and through much trial and error came up with human devastating psychological and self-inflicting torture techniques - from sensory disorientation or the severe pain from tortures like forced continuous standing for 24 - 48 hours. The CIA experiments continue now at Guantanamo and other overseas hellhole torture-prisons. But 2 new techniques have been added - cultural sensitivity and individual fears and phobias. This 4-fold assault on the human psyche is now being used against prisoners held in overseas prisons, and the detainees affected (most picked up randomly and guilty of no offense) are being used as human "lab rats" in a gruesome, vile and clearly illegal and immoral experiment to devise the most effective psychological techniques to break down a human subject - to break a human being so totally it's near impossible to recover. I could find no information on if these experiments are now being conducted in US domestic prisons. But that doesn't mean they're not. They may be happening here, but we don't know about them. But the key point is this. Once the use of torture in all forms gains currency, it's inevitable it will spread everywhere. And let's be very clear on one other point. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the so-called McCain Anti-Torture amendment) passed in December last year is so full of loopholes and offsets by other legislation that it's worthless and will do nothing to stop the tortures explained above. THE DEATH PENALTY - THE "HEART OF DARKNESS" OF OUR CRIMINAL-INJUSTICE SYSTEM Life in prison is a living hell for all those in one as all the victims know who've been there or those of us who've read about it in detail as I have. Being there is like being in one of the 5 levels of Dante's hell where those consigned to spend eternity are doomed to eternal punishment. All prisons are hellholes. But for those prisoners with any hope of release one day, the second lowest level of Dante's hell is any of the so-called "supermax" prisons. They're supposedly intended to house society's most dangerous, incorrigibly violent inmates, but many sent there aren't that at all like the many political prisoners consigned that fate because the state wishes to bury them alive and keep them isolated. The number in these "special" hellholes are a small but growing percent of the total prison population, and those in them spend their waking and sleeping hours locked in small, often windowless, cells for long sentences of many years. They're deprived of all contact with other inmates and only allowed out for brief periods a few times a week for showers and some solitary exercise in a small, enclosed space. They're deprived of all mental stimulation from human contact, recreation or education, and are nearly always shackled hands and feet and escorted by armed guards whenever they leave their cells. Prisoners who've endured this torture, come out, and spoken publicly about it have described it to be like living in a tomb. And the state inflicted misery they've been subjected to often results in a host of severe emotional problems including insanity. Try locking yourself in your bathroom with a little plain food and water for 24 hours (if you can stand it) and see how you feel. Then multiply that by 20 or more years. The state and federally sponsored murder factories known as "death rows" are, without a doubt, the lowest and worst level of Dante's hell. Dante might have written his words "Abandon every hope, all ye who enter" for the abandoned souls sent to these barbaric death factories. They only look different than Auschwitz. Those entering never come out (except the few lucky ones DNA evidence exonerate). As of April, 2005 there were 3452 on "death row" in the 37 states with the death penalty including 36 in federal prisons and 7 held by the US military. The vast majority of them are poor or disadvantaged and their racial breakdown is as follows: 45.5% white, 41.7% black, 10.4% Hispanic, 1.2% Asian, 1.2% American Indian and .5% unknown. Nearly all of them, 98.5%, are male. Most civilized countries have no death penalty, and in the Global North only the US and Japan still do. Japan is very selective in who it executes, unlike the US with its assembly line-like killing operations. The Japanese have executed about 50 inmates in the last dozen years and about an equal number now await execution. Many opponents of the death penalty call these "final solution" acts institutionalized, state-sponsored, ritualistic acts of torture-murder. They say "torture" because often the prisoner is so hated that their executioners "deliberately" try to inflict pain during the process of killing them. And while that alone is inhumane and barbaric enough, all too often the accused is innocent, often the state knows it, and they're still put to death. Most often these are people of color, most likely black, poor and unable to afford a proper defense. They become victims of a system not based on justice but on vengeance along with the belief by elected officials that being "tough on crime" is a good vote getter. The case of Stan "Tookie" Williams, as much as anyone, stands out for its barbarity and gross injustice. Stan was a co-founder of the Crips street gang as a teenager in South Central Los Angeles in 1969. He was convicted and sentenced to death for multiple murders he said he never committed (I believe him), but never got a proper defense to prove it. Even later when evidence became known that might have exonerated him, he was never given a chance to prove his innocence. Over a dozen years before his execution in California, Stan changed his life, became an anti-gang activist while on death row, and renounced his former gang affiliation. He co-wrote children's books, worked to convince youths not to join gangs and wrote one of the most compelling books on prison life I ever read called Life in Prison. He did it to show readers what prison life is really like in plain, stark language. He pulled no punches. Anyone reading it will know that prison is no place any human being wants to be. For his work in prison, Stan received multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations, in 2004 a feature film called Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story was made about his life, and as his execution date approached, a mass effort I was part of was launched to urge an uncaring and hostile Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency. Fat chance. Thousands joined the effort including celebrities, politicians, Nobel laureates and Pacifica Radio, especially on its very special bold and courageous KPFA weekday news and information program Flashpoints Radio (the best program of its kind anywhere). It was all in vein, clemency was denied and Stan was put to death by lethal injection on December 13, 2005 as thousands protested outside the infamous San Quentin State Prison. Stan's death was not easy or painless. It took repeated needle insertions in a process that took nearly 30 minutes of great inflicted pain to complete. Stan's suffering at the end was not an exception. It's common practice, and as mentioned above, is deliberately inflicted by a sadistic staff. As such, even for a prisoner being executed, this is a flagrant violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment." But who cares and who will act to prevent it when it's inflicted on a condemned black man and on the day the state murders him. THE PROFITABLE BUSINESS OF RUNNING A GULAG The for-profit side of running a gulag began to explode during the Reagan years when incarceration rates began increasing dramatically. Along with a growing private prisons industry (a small slice of the prison pie still largely a public enterprise), a vast array of private businesses wanted a piece of the action and got it. These include architectural and construction companies; food service contractors; all sorts of equipment, hardware and other suppliers of steel doors, razor wire, communications systems, and health care and medical supplies. There's also a big need for uniforms and assorted weapons including dangerous products to restrain like clemical sprays that can injure, cause severe pain, second degree burns, temporary blindness or worse and taser electro-shock guns that emit 50,000 volts of electricity (enough to flatten an all-pro NFL lineman in peak form) that can and have killed as many as 167 victims from it's use through January, 2006. And there's loads more. The (mal) care and feeding of a couple of million humans takes a lot of supplying to keep the system going. Add it all up and it's big business, and it gets bigger with every new prison and the inmates to fill them. Not to worry. Unlike oil, there's no chance of running out bodies. The big players in this growing industry are the private companies that run the hellholes. And the ones they run are even more hellish than the public ones. Private, publicly owned corporations with shareholders and Wall Street to please always need a growing revenue and profit stream and strict cost control to maximize the bottom line part of it. That means understaffing, low pay for poorly trained staff, poor and unsafe conditions, little or no life-enhancing or self-help programs like educational opportunities or counseling services to rehabilitate those in need like ilicit drug users, and even worse medical care than the third world kind in the publicly run system. Why bother, they all cost money, reduce profits and constrain shareholder equity. Private contractors can also exploit prisoners as de facto chattel. They're not obliged to pay wages or benefits and can take full advantage of all those bodies free of charge. Why would they ever pass that up. It's one more revenue and profit stream. The private side of running prisons is still a small part of the total. But it's growing, and as it does, it's darker side may just get darker. Unlike most businesses, quality control is not one of their concerns. If humans suffer to enhance the bottom line, who will care. In running a gulag, you just gotta keep 'em under control locked in cages, and if you use, abuse and lose some along the way, there's plenty more supply to fill the available beds. That's how it works in a nation that commodifies its masses and exploits them. It's what happens in this modern era when social conditions deteriorate enough to produce what Franklin Roosevelt spoke about in the Great Depression years of the 1930s when he said "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." It's not that bad yet, but we're heading in that direction. As discussed above, it produces a restive population the state chooses to lock up in lieu of providing vital social services to satisfy essential needs. The result is the US gulag, the shame of the nation. Future historians and others will judge us by the character of our social conscience, especially how we treat our least advantaged and most needy. They'll also judge us by our system of justice and the prisons within it which reflect that conscience. The honest ones won't be kind. The great Russian 19th century novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, once remarked that he measured the quality of a society by the quality of its prisons. He might have added by its quantity as well. THE EVIDENCE SHOWS A NATION MOVING FROM A REPUBLIC TO TYRANNY The evidence on our criminal injustice system and prisons within it alone shows a nation moving from a republic to tyranny. It's not much different from what happened in ancient Rome when it passed from a republic to an empire under the rule of its emperor Augustus Caesar after Julius ignored his "Ides of March" warning and ended his reign the hard way in the Roman Senate. Our prison system alone is a stark symbol and reminder of a society based on militarism and imperial conquest abroad, the shredding of our civil liberties at home, and the dismantling of our social contract obligation along with the transfer of wealth to the privileged and powerful. It reflects a nation descending into the hell of tyranny and despotism that threatens to become worse and affect us all except those at the top. We've created the monster of a national security police state (run by the new Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence) to control a growing restive population that will likely grow larger. It will include many more of us as those in need grow in numbers and new demons are easily found, targeted and moved to prison cells to maintain absolute control. That's how it works in all tyrannical states, even ones claiming to be democracies like ours but which, in fact, are not. It happened in ancient Rome and in more modern times in Nazi Germany after Hitler was appointed Chancellor and ended the Weimar Republic. He called his party the National Socialist German Workers Party (the term Nazi is the short form for National Socialist with a "zi" on the end), but his constituents were the German industrialists and militarists and his ideology was fascist and racist. It wasn't long before he removed his many enemies and tried to create a state for the privileged and Aryian pure. The immortal words of Pastor Martin Niemoller explained it and warns us now when he said they first came for the Jews, then the Communists, then the trade unionists and each time he didn't speak out because he wasn't one of them - until there was no one left and they came for him, and there was no one to speak out to help him. This essay only addresses the mass incarceration of the most vulnerable among us. I've discussed the other issues in other writings and intend to write solely about our war on immigrants in a future article. But unless we heed Pastor Niemoller's warning, one day, sooner than we think, they'll come for us and who'll be left to help. Based on the evidence I've presented we already have a society out of control with a reckless rogue administration, a "go-along" Congress and "friendly" courts leading us along the road to hell. The US prison system is its metaphor and clear warning and reflects a repressive state based on harsh and unjust Patriot Act laws that are close to being supplemented by a racist, fascist-style immigration bill passed by the House (the so-called Sensenbrenner anti-immigration bill) and now being considered in the Senate. Its provisions that criminalize undocumented immigrants (targeted at those of color) and all those compassionate enough who help them are right out of the bowels of Nazi hell. It may pass and likely be followed by even more repressive laws that target you and me unless we're one of the privileged. So far, the targets are mostly those on the bottom rungs of society - people of color including immigrants and Muslims. But also in the line of fire is anyone of influence (including Muslim academics falsely labeled terrorists) daring to speak out and oppose state policy. How long will it be before it gets even worse and no one is safe? Few people know the president has now given himself the sole power to designate anyone he chooses for any reason he decides a "bad guy" - incredibly in that language. Going even further, in January, 2006, George Bush claimed the right to govern as a "Unitary Executive" with the power to abrogate the separation of powers doctrine, bypass the Congress and courts and act as he chooses to "protect national security." This simply means if he decides to ignore the law he'll govern by presidential edict usurping the right of dictatorial power with no constraint. If he's ever brazen enough to do it (and don't believe he won't be) and isn't stopped, he'll have "crossed the Rubicon" and turned the country into a full-blown totalitarian state and the ball game is over for all of us. We're already all in the queue as potential prey, and we'd better understand we're moving up in it fast. Unless Bush-Cheney and those around them are stopped, they'll come for us one day, and then it'll be too late. It makes a shameless mockery of any notion that all citizens, rich and poor, are entitled to the sacred rights and protections guaranteed us by the Constitution. Only the privileged and powerful get that right today, not the rest of us. And if you're black and poor, an undocumented immigrant or a Muslim of color (our latest public enemy No. 1), you have no rights at all. Step right up, they've assigned you a number too, and you'd better keep a bag packed. We've come a long way in our 230 year history but, except for brief periods of relief and redress, it's been pretty much downhill. If that's "the American way", it's time we retool and find a new path to follow, one based on social, political and economic justice, of caring about all others instead of using and abusing them for the benefit of a privileged few. We may not have much time left, so we better wake up and move fast. If we keep watching Fox News, read the New York Times, listen to NPR and then run to the mall, we're doomed to meet the same fate as all other nations who followed the road we now travel. It's the road to hell, and ours isn't even paved with good intentions. (source: Uruknet - Stephen Lendman) WISCONSIN: Death penalty up for debate Local Republican legislators agree the state should end a 150-year prohibition on the death penalty, though others aren't so sure. Last week, the Wisconsin Senate passed a resolution calling for an advisory vote during the September primary on whether the state should have the death penalty. The referendum language specifies death as an option in cases of vicious, 1st-degree murders in which conviction includes DNA evidence, according to the Associated Press. Wisconsin has not had the death penalty since it was prohibited in 1853. Among the senators voting for the resolution were Luther S. Olsen, R of Ripon, and Dale Schultz, R of Richland Center, who represent the Baraboo/Sauk County area. Efforts to reach the two for comment were unsuccessful Monday. The Senate resolution must also be passed by the State Assembly before it goes to the voters. Rep. J. A. "Doc" Hines, R-Oxford, said he would support a statewide referendum on the death penalty. In heinous cases involving the murder of children and killing of police officers, Wisconsin should not keep convicted criminals in prison for life, he said. "Those people don't deserve to live," Hines said. Hines said with very strict limitations on what crimes would be subject to the death penalty and modern techniques like DNA evidence, the chance of convicting the wrong person is low. "I don't believe everybody who is convicted of a very serious crime should be put to death," he said. Republican Assemblywoman Sheryl Albers of Reedsburg said she could support a limited, carefully-defined death penalty. "It's a pretty harsh penalty, I think it should be limited in scope to some crimes," she said. "I think for some crimes it is the way to go." The state crime laboratory is two years behind in actually testing DNA evidence from crime scenes, said Albers. State officials and the state Legislature have not provided the resources the lab needs to conduct testing in a timely manner. "Until such time as the DNA backlog has been adequately addressed, I don't think it's appropriate to put the death penalty out there to the public," she said. "If the evidence can't be tested, it's unfair to put them on death row." In response to a written set of questions, Sauk County Sheriff Randy Stammen said the public should be able to make a statement on the death penalty issue, but he hopes they reject it. Stammen said he has met people with little or no regard for the lives of others, and the threat of the death penalty is not going to prevent them from killing. Execution can only stop them from killing again, which can also be accomplished with life in prison. Evidence like DNA testing can help make an investigation credible, but it is not infallible, he said. Wisconsin should not take the chance of executing an innocent person and the state would not be made better by capital punishment, said Stammen. "Executing an innocent person is the ultimate wrong that government could do to society," Stammen said. Efforts to reach Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett and Baraboo Police Chief Dennis Kluge for comment were also unsuccessful. Hines said he believes there will be strong debate and a close vote if the death penalty referendum comes before the public next fall. (source: Baraboo News Republic) VIRGINIA: Judge Rules That Prosecutors Can Seek Death for Moussaoui----Improperly Coached Witnesses Won't Be Permitted to Testify The federal judge hearing the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui ruled today that federal prosecutors could go forward with their case for capital punishment, but without crucial testimony from aviation officials who were improperly coached by a government lawyer. After a hearing in which the aviation officials appeared in the absence of the jury, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration witnesses who had been coached would not be allowed to testify before the jury and that she would bar evidence from them. Although she allowed the trial to continue, the ruling dealt a serious blow to the prosecution, which considered the aviation officials' testimony crucial to its case. The ruling came after Brinkema heard from a succession of aviation officials who denied that coaching by Carla J. Martin, a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, would affect their testimony. Earlier, Martin took the witness stand and, faced with possible legal sanctions herself, told the judge she wanted an attorny. Martin and half a dozen aviation officials appeared at the hearing called by Brinkema to determine whether she should throw out the death penalty for Moussaoui because of improper coaching of 7 witnesses by Martin. Martin, the 1st to take the stand today, asked permission to address the court and was immediately cut off by an irritated Brinkema, who told her, "No, you're a witness." When prosecutor David J. Novak suggested that Martin be advised of her rights, Brinkema told her that she has the right not to testify, that her testimony could be used against her because she is in jeopardy for the alleged violation of a court order and that she has the right to be represented by counsel. Martin said she was in "an adversarial proceeding" and wanted a lawyer. She said she spoke to an attorney last night, but that he was unable to come to the court this morning. At that point, Brinkema directed her to contact the lawyer and see if he could come in later today or, if not, at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. The delay was the latest twist in the case of Moussaoui, an avowed al-Qaeda member who is the only person charged in the United States with involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He has pleaded guilty to 6 counts related to the attacks, and federal prosecutors are trying to persuade a jury in Northern Virginia is to sentence him to death. Yesterday, Brinkema halted the trial and threatened to remove the death penalty as a possible sentence on grounds that Martin, a veteran government aviation lawyer, improperly shared testimony and communicated with witnesses. After Martin's brief appearance this morning, four senior officials of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration told Brinkema that if they are allowed to testify during the penalty trial, their testimony would not be affected by their communications with Martin. Both Lynne A. Osmus, assistant FAA administrator for security and hazardous materials, and her deputy, Claudio Manno, told the court that they were unaware of Brinkema's order that witnesses should not discuss their testimony with anyone. Manno said he had been reading about the trial in The Washington Post and watching reports about it on television. Asked what impact e-mails from Martin would have on his testimony, Manno, a former director of the FAA's office of intelligence, said, "In my opinion, none at all, because I can only testify about what I know and that's it." Manno said he and Osmus asked to be assigned another lawyer about a week and a half before Martin sent them the e-mails at issue, because they felt Martin had a tendency to go off on tangents and was taking up a lot of their time. Matthew Kormann, an official in the TSA intelligence service, and Patrick McDonnell, a former FAA intelligence director, also said Martin's coaching would not alter their testimony. Today's witnesses testified in the absence of the jury, which was excused by Brinkema while she considered what to do about Martin's actions. Brinkema, clearly exasperated by the new problems in the oft-delayed case, yesterday called Martin's conduct "the most egregious violation of the court's rules on witnesses" she had seen "in all the years I've been on the bench." Even prosecutors were stunned by Martin's actions, calling them "reprehensible" in court papers and adding, "We frankly cannot fathom why she engaged in such conduct." Martin violated a court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to 7 witnesses -- all current and former federal aviation employees -- and coaching them on their upcoming testimony, court papers say. She also shared the e-mails among the witnesses. Brinkema had ruled earlier that most witnesses could not attend or follow the trial and could not read transcripts. She told jurors yesterday that the ruling was "meant to prevent witnesses from comparing their testimony or listening to what other witnesses said and changing their own testimony." The judge ordered a hearing today to find out how the incident happened. To sanction the government for the error, she could remove the death penalty, forbid the witnesses from testifying or declare a mistrial. The government could appeal either of the first 2 sanctions. Further embarrassing the government, Martin's e-mails sharply criticized prosecutors' case, saying, among other things, that their opening statement "has created a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck through." Martin did not return calls to her home or office yesterday and did not answer the door at her apartment. Moussaoui, 37, has pleaded guilty for conspiring with al-Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. If Brinkema were to forbid the death penalty, the case would end and Moussaoui would be sentenced to life in prison. It would be a huge setback for the government. "This is the only opportunity for the government to make a Sept. 11 case. This is it. There isn't another," said Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard University. "The government has to cross every t and dot every i to ensure that the Sept. 11 families finally have their day in court. If it gets messed up over a technicality . . . there is no excuse." Duke University law professor Robert P. Mosteller said ethical restrictions against speaking with witnesses are drilled into every attorney. "Lawyers don't do things like this," he said. "The federal rule on witnesses is elegant in its simplicity, and it's usually not something people get wrong." TSA officials referred calls to the Justice Department. Justice Department officials declined to comment. Martin, an aviation security expert, had served as a liaison between prosecutors and witnesses expected to testify about airport security. She was working with government and defense witnesses and was not a member of the prosecution team. Brinkema told jurors yesterday before dismissing them for the day that prosecutors deserved "great credit" for reporting the error to her. Defense attorneys accused Martin of trying to shape the testimony of key witnesses. "This is not going to be a fair trial anymore . . . because of what a lawyer did in an absolute abrogation of your rules," defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. said as he urged Brinkema to strike the death penalty. Brinkema has removed the death penalty once, in 2003, after the government disobeyed her order to allow Moussaoui's attorneys to interview captured al-Qaeda leaders who they said could clear him. Eventually, she was overruled by a higher court. Fordham Law School professor James Cohen, an expert in witness tampering, said dismissing the death penalty this time "might be too harsh a penalty." Other legal specialists said Brinkema might strike the testimony of the witnesses with whom Martin communicated. Those witnesses, three for the government and four for the defense, are expected to testify about what the government might have done to boost airport security if Moussaoui had confessed his knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot when he was arrested in August 2001. Even that would be a severe blow to the government because that is the crux of its argument for execution: If Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI, the attacks could have been prevented. Assistant U.S. Attorney Novak said in court yesterday that the testimony of the contacted witnesses constituted "half the evidence in this case." Prosecutors urged Brinkema last night to throw out neither the death penalty nor the testimony of the seven witnesses, saying defense attorneys can address any problems caused by Martin's e-mails during direct or cross-examination. "Dismissal of the death notice is simply too extreme a sanction and the public should not be deprived of its right to see this trial proceed to verdict," the prosecution filing said. The filing, however, acknowledged that Martin had intended "to better prepare the witnesses for questions by the defense." Court papers said the government learned of Martin's e-mails when Osmus approached prosecutors Friday night. Novak then learned that Martin had also e-mailed the other witnesses. Court documents say they include Robert White, a former FAA liaison to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center who works at the TSA, and Pat McDonnell, the FAA's retired director of aviation security and intelligence. Martin's e-mails were highly critical of the government's case, especially an assertion by prosecutors that the government could have stopped the Sept. 11 terror attacks if Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI by, among other things, having the FAA focus airport security on short-bladed knives. The Sept. 11 hijackers used such knives to take over 4 airplanes. "There is no way anyone could say that the carriers could have prevented all short bladed knives from going through -- Dave [Novak] MUST elicit that from you and the airline witnesses on direct, and not allow the defense to cut your credibility on cross," Martin wrote. Defense attorneys noted that Martin has been present from the beginning at almost every proceeding in the Moussaoui case, including sensitive hearings. She was a career FAA attorney who moved to the new Transportation Security Administration in 2002, largely because of her work on the case of the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, officials familiar with her work said. Martin represented the government at a civil trial in which victims' families sued the airline. She was there to make sure that sensitive information was not discussed in open court. Several officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Martin often served as a liaison with Justice Department lawyers in aviation security cases. (source: Washington Post) ***************** Death Penalty Phase: Consider justice Prosecutors must feel they dodged a bullet when a judge allowed the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui to continue. But federal authorities ought to consider life in prison for the strange, troubled conspirator. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema showed restraint Monday in letting the federal case continue. But she still forbade the government from presenting a whole line of evidence about aviation security measures, an argument that was expected to make up half the case for convincing a jury to authorize Moussaoui's execution. Moussaoui already has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Brinkema's decision has the merit of preserving the jury's right to have a say. But almost everything else raises questions about whether justice, American ideals and America's standing in the world can truly be served by executing Moussaoui. Testimony already has brought fresh reminders about uncoordinated handling of intelligence before the attacks. In a world where only a few countries use the death penalty, Moussaoui's case stands out for targeting a deeply troubled individual. He may not be insane, but he fits no definition of normal, here or anywhere else. It was outrageous for a government attorney to ignore judicial orders about trial transcripts and witnesses following the trial for the purpose of shaping trial testimony. The Bush administration should ask itself whether Americans place vengeance over respect for the rule of law. (source: Opinion, Seattle Post Intelligencer) ************ GRIEVING 9/11 MA EASES AGONY OF TERROR MOM The mother of a 9/11 victim tearfully embraced the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, who came to a moving service at a Westchester church to ask for understanding of her son. "She is just a very sweet, humble person," grieving mom Connie Taylor told The Post. "You'd love to know this person." Aicha el-Wafi was "just like any other mother. She loves her son like any mother does," she said. Taylor, whose son Brad Vadas, a 37-year-old securities trader, died in the Sept. 11 attacks, said Sunday's meeting of the two mothers was "very accidental." Taylor, of Connecticut, was at the Memorial United Methodist Church in White Plains on Saturday night, where her choral group was meeting, when the Rev. Joseph Agne passed on a surprising request. "The pastor told us [el-Wafi] was going to be there Sunday and was interested in meeting the mothers of 9/11 victims," she said. El-Wafi had been in the United States since March 4 to attend her son's death-penalty sentencing trial. She was staying at the home of a woman from the church, who offered her a place to stay before she flew home to France yesterday, Taylor said. On Sunday, el-Wafi, with the help of her interpreter, told a "welcoming gathering" of about 40 people her side of her son's tragedy. "She just sat there and gave a little talk and answered some questions," Taylor recalled. "She has no words to explain or express how terrible she feels," the interpreter said. "She never asked for any of this. She would love to be just a mother." El-Wafi, who was married at 14 and divorced at 24, brought up four children alone while working as a cleaning woman. She said she lost her son to a militant group the way another parent might lose a child to drugs or a religious cult. "She talked about his upbringing and how difficult it was," Taylor said. Taylor added it was a very different life from her own son's. "I've always been grateful that my son never experienced the kind of terror that other people have been living with their entire lives," she said. El-Wafi said, in French, "The hardest suffering in the world today is that of parents who lose their children." "There will never be an explanation to justify this. The suffering will last forever," she added, according to The Journal News. When she looked into Taylor's eyes, she began to weep. Taylor embraced her, as others attending the service gathered around them in tears. "As sad as it is, I think there was a certain amount of understanding," Taylor said. Her son was a securities trader, working on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower, when the first hijacked plane struck. Taylor said that right after Sept. 11, she was asked to speak at a gathering of peace activists near the United Nations. "I told them how grateful I was my son never had been afraid to walk down the street or get into an airplane," she said. "We can't say the same thing now." After she spoke she was touched when "a boy from Palestine came up to me and said, 'There's never been a day in my life when I wasn't afraid.'" El-Wafi, who had met other relatives of 9/11 victims in 2002, was apprehensive when she arrived in the United States to attend the sentencing trial in Alexandria, Va., Taylor said. "The minister said when she came over she was very leery, as I would be," she said. But after meeting members of the church, "she became very comfortable with the congregation." During Sunday's meeting, El-Wafi passed around photos from her wallet of her son and of a grandson, the way doting parents do. She said she was pained by knowing her son will never walk free. "A part of me is inside him. I can't help it," The Journal News quoted her as saying. She said she feels the pain when she sees her son's boyhood friends, now happy adults, walk the streets of her neighborhood. "Why is it I am being deprived of that pleasure?" she asked. El-Wafi added that she had another son who had joined an Islamist movement in Lebanon. "In these movements, they look for the little cracks to get into people's minds and control them," she said. Taylor said Sunday's meeting provided some comfort. "I felt it was good. And I hope it was good for her," she said. (source: New York Post)
