Sept. 11 TEXAS----impending execution Cocaine addict set to die for 1991 Houston slaying A violent rampage that began 15 years ago in Huntsville, leaving 2 people dead and a third seriously wounded, could come full circle with an execution tomorrow. Convicted killer Farley Charles Matchett is set to die tomorrow night in the Texas death chamber in Huntsville. The 43-year-old inmate was convicted in the 1991 fatal beating and stabbing of his 52-year-old uncle, Uries Anderson, at Anderson's Houston home. Matchett also had a life prison term for killing a 74-year-old woman in Huntsville and leaving a 91 year-old Huntsville woman with brain damage in a beating that got him 99 years in prison. All 3 crimes were commited the same week in July 1991. Matchett would be the 21st Texas prisoner to receive lethal injection this year. The total already exceeds the 19 inmates Texas put to death in 2005. A record 40 were executed in 2000. Matchett's attorneys are asking the courts to block the execution, and they've asked Governor Rick Perry for a reprieve. On the Net: Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Death Row, http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/deathrow.htm Farley Matchett, http://www.ccadp.org/farleymatchett.htm (source : Associated Press) ************** As his execution nears, an inmate opens up----The ex-crack addict asks: How much remorse is enough for crime? Farley Charles Matchett needed another fix. The crack addict had randomly knocked on doors in a northeast Houston neighborhood before he appeared at Uries Anderson's doorstep to ask for money. Anderson, who was related to Matchett by marriage, lectured him about his drug habit. Anderson, who was home alone, may not have known how deep Matchett's desperation ran. A day earlier in Huntsville, Matchett killed 74-year-old Melonee Josey with a meat hammer after she refused to give him money. The day before that, he severely beat 91-year-old Ola Mae Williams for the same reason. Anderson's body was found 2 days later, on July 14, 1991. The 52-year-old father of 4 had been stabbed twice in the back and his head badly beaten with a hammer. Matchett was arrested when he tried to cash one of Anderson's personal checks. He confessed to Houston police about the 3-day crime spree and later pleaded guilty to Anderson's murder. On Tuesday, Matchett is scheduled to become the 21st man in Texas to die by lethal injection this year. During a recent interview from death row, the 43-year-old spoke about his life before and after drugs, his court case and what he considers an unfair shake at the legal system with his state-appointed counsel. Matchett believes another review of his appellate case can spare his life. "I live every day with what happened, and I regret what happened," he said. "How much remorse does society want me to show?" Problems early on Matchett was raised early on by his paternal grandparents in the East Texas town of Madisonville. His teenage mother lived in nearby Midway, and he rarely saw his father. After his mother, Annie Robinson, married, Matchett went to live with her in Grand Prairie near Dallas. At 13, Matchett began to hang out on the streets and run errands for drug dealers and prostitutes. The bottom really fell out of his life when his 11-year-old sister was raped. Matchett said he blamed himself for not being around to protect her. "It was the worst time of my life," Matchett said. He dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Army, but soon learned that the life of solitude he had sought would not be found in the military. Matchett "lost interest" and was discharged in 1981 for being absent without leave, fighting with a private and possession of marijuana. After the Army, Matchett worked as a truck driver, school bus driver and landscaper. He could make it through the week, but come Friday his addiction took hold and he "binge smoked." "You couldn't get me to do nothing on the weekend," he said with a smile. Matchett had at least two chances to quit his $600-a-day drug habit. In 1990, he was referred to a drug and alcohol program after he was charged with possession of marijuana. He never showed after his first visit, court records indicate. A year later, his mother enrolled him in a drug treatment program, but he was discharged after less than a month - also just 4 months before Anderson and Josey were slain. "He was not willing to listen and was closed minded," court documents state. Matchett said the program wasn't the right fit. He insists his addiction should've been handled with medication. "I could've got over my addiction, and I wouldn't be in this situation," he said. For the sake of his appeal, Matchett was careful not to go into great detail about what landed him on death row 13 years ago. Still, he recalled hardly eating or sleeping in the days leading up to the homicides. "I didn't realize what I had done," Matchett said. Questions linger Those words, conveyed to Anderson's eldest son, offered scant explanation why Matchett took his father's life. "He's definitely caused pain in my life and throughout the lives of my family members," said Uries Anderson Jr., a Naval officer stationed in Norfolk, Va. "Will death suffice for his punishment? Maybe. Maybe not. I think it's up to the higher being. Let him decide." Anderson said the last time he saw his father was just a few days before he was murdered. He was off to work, wearing his typical all-white painter's uniform. The younger Anderson was in Hawaii, celebrating his graduation from Kashmere High School, when he received word to return home. His mother, Lonnie, and 13-year-old brother, Lamarcus, were also out of town at the time. Uries Anderson Jr. said he has lingering questions about what provoked Matchett. "I want to know what happened in those closing moments," he said. 'Set up' by attorney Matchett said he is sorry about what happened and has prayed for the ability to accept his fate. But he won't give up until he gets another review of his case, Matchett said. He insists he was "set up" by his lead trial attorney, the late Donald Davis. He said Davis persuaded him to plead guilty after he assured him the death penalty was off the table as an option. Attorney Robert Morrow, who also represented Matchett during the trial, did not return repeated phone calls. Roe Wilson, a Harris County assistant district attorney, said court records don't support Matchett's claim of a deal was to spare him from the death penalty. The punishment options should have been clear from the start of jury selection, she said. By that point it was too late, Matchett said. "He chose to finance his drug habit by murdering elderly people and stealing from them," Wilson said. "No, there's no sympathy for him." Roy E. Greenwood, an Austin lawyer appointed to represent Matchett in the Huntsville cases, said he remains puzzled about Matchett's guilty plea. He said Matchett should have been able to argue in court that he killed Anderson in self-defense, but was prohibited by the plea. "Why he (Davis) pled him guilty and blew off all these legal issues never made sense to me," Greenwood said. "You just don't give up with plea of guilty." Matchett, whose federal and state appeals all were denied, also faulted his trial attorneys for not presenting mitigating evidence for jurors to consider a lesser punishment. He also claimed that court-appointed appellate attorneys botched his appeals. No grounds for appeal U.S. District Judge Sim Lake denied the assertion and wrote in a 2003 dismissal order that inmates' claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in post-conviction appeals is not grounds for court relief. The Supreme Court has recognized, he wrote, that there is no constitutional right to an attorney in state appeals. Matchett accepted plea deals in the Huntsville cases. He received a life prison sentence for Josey's July 11, 1991, murder and 99 years in prison for attacking Williams. Anti-death penalty groups and activists, including French actress Bridget Bardot, have latched onto Matchett's case. Matchett said he's touched by the support, but he's ready if he is executed Tuesday. "I'll finally be free. Death is a bridge we all must cross, and if this is my time it's my time," Matchett said. "If I could turn back the hands of time, I would." (source: Houston Chronicle) CALIFORNIA: Court documents detail execution delay----Anesthesiologist picked to serve as backup in lethal injection of Morales refused to participate despite court order California's scheduled execution of Michael Angelo Morales, officially called off at 2:45 a.m. Feb. 21, was actually aborted more than six hours earlier, when an anesthesiologist was told of his court-ordered duties for the first time and responded, "I can't participate. I can't proceed." Five days earlier, the state had filed a document in federal court stating that the backup anesthesiologist, now identified only as "A2," would "monitor (Morales) and provide the verification" that he was unconscious during the execution. A U.S. District Court judge and then the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals accepted that assurance and permitted the execution preparations to move forward. But nobody had told A2, who was recruited with an understanding that he'd do nothing but serve as a "warm body." The scenario unfolded Tuesday in a lengthy statement of the facts, filed jointly by the state attorney general's office and Morales' lawyers in preparation for a full-blown judicial review of California's lethal injection procedure. Set to open Sept. 26 in federal court in San Jose before U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, the hearing will revolve around whether the procedure presents an unacceptable risk of inflicting extreme pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The focus will be on the qualifications of execution team members and the conditions under which they work. In newly filed prehearing statements, Morales' lawyers contend executions are carried out under "unacceptable conditions" by prison staff "with criminal records of misconduct," who lack training in administering intravenous drugs and other essential personal and professional skills. The Morales lawyers also say a former execution team leader was removed from that job and suspended from work for several months for misconduct unrelated to the carrying out of executions. The contentions of criminal backgrounds and misconduct appear in a list of statements to which the state has objected, in most cases because of the "form of the statement" rather than the content. The events that led to the postponement of the Morales execution last winter are described in a separate account of the facts to which both sides have agreed. It reports that the backup anesthesiologist was first confronted with his duties at an execution rehearsal on Feb. 18. Stationed in an anteroom off the death chamber, he learned he was expected to signal when Morales was unconscious. He refused to rehearse his assigned part and then obtained the warden's permission to stand farther away from the death chamber, in the room where drugs are mixed. He could merely "show up ... and stand in that little room," seeing nothing. He didn't learn of the 9th Circuit order until he arrived at the prison Feb. 20 for the execution that had been scheduled for Feb. 21, a minute after midnight. The 9th Circuit's Feb. 19 order permitting the execution to proceed accepted assurances by the state that 2 anesthesiologists would monitor Morales to make sure he was unconscious before the administration of potentially painful lethal drugs. When A2 announced that he would not proceed, "Dr. (Robert) Singler concurred," according to the undisputed statement of facts. The reference apparently identifies for the first time the primary anesthesiologist assigned to the Morales execution, but does not make clear whether Singler also backed out or merely concurred with A2's decision to do so. The Morales team hopes to put both doctors on the stand during the upcoming four-day hearing, but the attorney general has objected. The undisputed facts include behind-the-scenes information about lethal injection executions that have occurred in California, particularly that of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. One doctor at the Williams execution complained that he had been bumped by "some big fellow from Sacramento" in the cramped, darkened anteroom from which the execution team first sedates the inmate and then administers drugs to paralyze and, finally, to kill him. The drugs are administered through a long catheter that passes through the wall and into the death chamber. The big Sacramentan would "block the light ... that helped to allow me to see what I'm doing," said Dr. Jack St. Clair, a prison physician who's scheduled to testify at the lethal injection hearing later this month. According to Morales' lawyers, but disputed by the attorney general, "a large man" also stood in the way of a licensed vocational nurse whose job at Williams' execution was to select the right sequence of drugs from a cart. Also asserted by the Morales' team but disputed by the state: The nurse responsible for setting 1 catheter in Williams blew the vein on the 1st 2 tries. After she failed a 3rd time, the warden gave the order: "Proceed." (source: Sacramento Bee) NORTH DAKOTA----federal death penalty trial Judge restricts family testimony in Sjodin sentencing trial Alfonso Rodriguez Jr.'s mother can't say she loves him in court even to try to save his life, the judge in his death penalty trial ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson's ruling means Rodriguez's mother, sisters or other family members won't be allowed to make emotional pleas to the jury to spare him the death penalty. Erickson explained in his written order that Rodriguez's family will be restricted in their testimony the same way he's restricted victim impact testimony from Dru Sjodin's family. On Thursday, the jury found Rodriguez eligible for the death penalty, 8 days after it convicted him of kidnapping resulting in the death of Sjodin, a 22-year-old student at UND. On Monday, jurors will begin hearing opening arguments and testimony about whether they should sentence the 53-year-old Crookston man to death or to life in federal prison without parole. The jury, not the judge, sentences those it convicts in federal death penalty trials. Attorneys for the prosecution and defense have argued for months about what sort of testimony and witnesses would be allowed in this third phase of his trial, sentence selection, if it came to pass. Thursday, as the sentencing stage became a reality, there was real and thick emotion in the courtroom. Rodriguez's mother and 2 of his sisters cried openly while the long eligibility verdict was read. At least 3 of the 7 women on the jury wiped tears from their eyes, too. The sentencing phase is expected to take a week or more, and involve perhaps the most contentious courtroom debates between the prosecution and defense and cross-examination of expert witnesses. The defense is expected to call members of Rodriguez's family to testify, as well as psychiatric and psychological experts who have examined Rodriguez. During the jury selection interviews, defense attorney Richard Ney suggested that such testimony might include witnesses whose first language is Spanish, and evidence of childhood sexual abuse of Rodriguez by an older woman, the effect of farm chemicals on the son of former migrant laborers, and other "psychological" issues. Sjodin's parents, Allan Sjodin of Minneapolis and Linda Walker of Pequot Lakes, Minn., and others are expected to give victim impact testimony. The prosecution also is expected to have its own bevy of medical experts to offer rebuttal testimony to the defense's expert witnesses. Law enforcement officials, prison employees and former fellow inmates of Rodriguez may testify, according to court documents and statements in court. The prosecution will try to prove aggravating factors and the defense will offer mitigating factors about Rodriguez and the crime. The jury alone will decide on one of only two possible sentences, life in prison without parole or death. Judge Erickson said in his ruling Friday that courts are split on whether a defendant's family members saying they have affection for him "constitutes evidence for a mitigating factor." Some courts have ruled such testimony "provides information about the defendant's character because he must possess some redeeming qualities to have earned that affection," Erickson said. Other courts say such testimony reveals nothing about a defendant's character "because it is not a certainty that a mother, or any relative, only expresses love for her son or a relation who has earned it." Erickson ruled that he will take the same approach to testimony from Rodriguez's family as he has to testimony from family and friends of Sjodin. "An expression of love or affection for (Rodriguez) provides no relevant information for the jury to consider," the judge wrote. "The court will limit the testimony of (Rodriguez's) family members to categories such as activities they engaged in with him or statements regarding the general nature of his character." "As far as testifying about the kind of loss (Rodriguez's) death would have on them, the court will allow brief testimony that goes to the nature of the relationship they expect that they could still have with him while he is in prison. Just as with victim impact testimony, the court will not allow purely emotional pleas to the jury." As he earlier ruled about victim impact testimony from the prosecution side, Erickson said Friday he would not allow Rodriguez's family members to "express any opinions about what sentence (he) should receive because this interferes with the jury's duty to choose the appropriate sentence." Before the jury arrives at 1 p.m. Monday, Erickson and the prosecution and defense teams will meet, perhaps for 2 hours or more, in open court to "hash out" several issues on how to proceed with the sentencing selection. (source: Grand Forks Herald) ************** DEATH PENALTY TRIAL----Hypnosis again key in a Ney defense When North Dakota filed its first death penalty case in more than a century, it looked to Wichita to find a lawyer capable of putting up a defense. No one in the Wichita legal community was surprised when Richard Ney got the call. Ney is known in legal circles as a skilled criminal defense lawyer -- and as the lawyer who won one of Wichita's more memorable murder cases. In 1988, Ney helped persuade a jury to find Bill Butterworth not guilty of killing Philip Fager and his 2 daughters. This past week, one of Ney's arguments in the North Dakota trial of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. brought back memories of the Butterworth trial. Ney argued that a witness should not take the stand because her memory had been revived through hypnosis. To the casual observer, that might seem a reversal of positions he argued 18 years ago. Ney, other lawyers and the U.S. Supreme Court say it's not. State v. Butterworth The Butterworth case shocked police and prosecutors. It's credited with helping to oust Clark Owens as district attorney and put Nola Foulston in the office. It solidified Ney's reputation as a defense attorney. "There were a lot of homicides in my 26-year tenure, but certain ones stick in your mind," said former Wichita Police Chief Richard LaMunyon. "We felt we had a solid case and that the system failed, in my opinion." Philip Fager had been shot in the back and his 2 daughters, Kelli, 16, and Sherri, 9, drowned in the hot tub at their home near 13th and Woodlawn. Butterworth had installed the hot tub. One of the key moments of that trial came when Ney persuaded a judge to allow a first in a Kansas courtroom -- that Butterworth testify on memories recovered through hypnosis. Butterworth took the stand over the objections of prosecutors and told the jury that, under hypnosis, he remembered going to the home and finding Philip Fager and one of his daughters already dead. In a panic, Butterworth said, he left in the Fagers' car. Prosecutors appealed the use of the testimony -- also a rare move. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the testimony. This past week in North Dakota, Ney argued a woman's testimony, "enhanced" by hypnosis, should be stricken in a case likely to leave a memorable mark across North Dakota. U.S. v. Rodriguez Rodriguez, 53, is facing death in a state that doesn't have a death penalty law. Neither does neighboring Minnesota, where both Rodriguez and Dru Sjodin, whom he's convicted of killing, lived. As a result, no lawyer in either state is qualified to defend in a death case. But when Rodriguez was accused of kidnapping, raping, beating and stabbing the 22-year-old University of North Dakota student, prosecutors decided to make an exception. The U.S. attorney's office charged Rodriguez in federal court so it could seek death. 2 weeks ago, the jury convicted Rodriguez of abducting Sjodin, of Pequot Lakes, Minn., from the parking lot of a Grand Forks, N.D., shopping mall on Nov. 22, 2003. Investigators said that after tying her, raping her and slashing her throat, Rodriguez dumped her near his hometown of Crookston, Minn. That's where the hypnosis testimony comes in. Prosecutors want to show the jury that Rodriguez has made similar sexual assaults on women dating back to 1974. Rodriguez had just been released from prison 6 months before Sjodin's death, after spending 23 years behind bars for assaulting a woman in 1980. That woman could not identify Rodriguez as her attacker until after she underwent hypnosis. The judge allowed the jury to consider the conviction, but the woman didn't take the stand. Ney argued that Minnesota law prevents such testimony as unreliable. But the courts distinguish between testimony from defendants and that of other witnesses. The law The year before Butterworth went to trial, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in an Arkansas case that a defendant's right to testify on his or her behalf outweighs laws that prohibit memories refreshed by hypnosis. Rock v. Arkansas carved out an exception for defendants that has not been extended to other evidence, such as polygraph tests, or other witnesses. "A defendant always has a right to testify in his own behalf -- you can't prevent them from doing that," Ney said. "Rock v. Arkansas was only about defendants. Across the board, both in federal and state courts, it's been held to not let (other) witnesses provide post-hypnotic testimony." Lawyers who try capital cases say they are obligated to raise objections on any issue which might later come up on appeal. "If you don't make a record and don't object to things like that, you run the risk of screwing up your case," said Jay Greeno, another experienced Wichita lawyer. "You always hear the story of 2 defendants in a capital murder case," Greeno said. "One of the attorneys raised an objection when the law was clearly against him. And when it went up on appeal, the higher court reversed the earlier decision. Well, the defendant whose lawyer raised the objection got his case overturned. The other one didn't get to, because his lawyer didn't object." This week, Ney begins arguing for Rodriguez's life. The jury will decide whether Rodriguez faces death or life in prison. Last week, the jury spent more time deliberating the death penalty than it did in determining his guilt. When the case entered the sentencing phase on Thursday, 3 jurors wept. (source: Wichita Eagle) SOUTH DAKOTA: Death penalty will see scrutiny -- But lawmakers say it won't be overturned Sioux Falls area lawmakers are staking their ground in the death penalty debate in anticipation of a major battle next year. The battle, however, could be lopsided. Death penalty opponents will undoubtedly challenge capital punishment, but their bills will be quickly dispatched, several lawmakers say. "We'll keep it," Sen. Tom Dempster predicted Wednesday. Some lawmakers think there will be an effort to make use of the death penalty more common in South Dakota. "I think you'll have both sides," Sen. Jason Gant said. Meanwhile, lawmakers are also speculating about who will introduce legislation to change South Dakota's lethal injection law to allow for 3-drug executions. The issue elbowed onto center stage following last month's decision by Gov. Mike Rounds to delay the execution of convicted killer Elijah Page. The inmate was 1 of 3 men who stabbed, kicked and beat Chester Poage to death in March 2000 in a gulch near Spearfish. Page was set to be executed Aug. 29 with three drugs, but state law calls for 2 drugs. Sen. Gene Abdallah, a staunch supporter of the death penalty, said he's willing to fix the law so that the state can move on with executions. "If no one else will introduce a bill, I will," he said. But many lawmakers say that Rounds and his administration are responsible for introducing legislation to update the state's lethal injection law. They fully expect Rounds to be the point man on the issue. "I would think that probably the governor will lead the charge," Sen. Bill Earley said. Rep. Roger Hunt agrees. "On this one, I think most of the Legislature will leave it up to the governor and the Department of Corrections," he said. If for some reason a bill didn't come from the governor, Hunt said there are enough lawmakers who would introduce their own bills. While lawmakers expect the administration to offer up a relatively easy fix to the state's law, other death penalty bills will probably emerge from legislators. "I don't think it will be a simple issue," Sen. Dick Kelly said. "I think there will be a strong move to look at the death penalty." "If everything would have went as planned last week, that individual would be dead right now, and I don't think the death penalty would have been an issue in the 2007 session," Gant said. How big an issue? Earley predicts a majority of lawmakers uniting behind a bill that updates the law. "The few people I've talked to have said, 'Let's go and change it and move on,' " he said. Death penalty opponents may sponsor bills, but if history repeats itself, they won't get far. In the past several years efforts to do away with capital punishment have failed. In 2004, for example, a bill to repeal the death penalty barely survived its first committee hearing by one vote, only to die by a 27-8 vote on the Senate floor. Rep. Kathy Miles, the Democratic whip in the House, has voted twice to abolish the death penalty. She'll do it again, she said, if her constituents want it repealed. In South Dakota, the death penalty isn't a Democratic or Republican issue, Miles said. Some Democrats are for capital punishment while some Republicans are against it. For that reason, Miles said she won't attempt to force other Democrats on the issue. "I personally will not," she said. "I can't speak for everyone else." Abdallah said any effort to abolish the death penalty will be done over his objection. Although he thinks any such effort would fail, he concedes that some lawmakers are reconsidering their positions, which surprises him. "I've heard some senators comment that they were pro death penalty, but because of this, they want to rethink it. I don't know why," he said. Ultimately, the fate of the death penalty in South Dakota could rest with voters. If this year's election ushers in a new wave of faces, opponents could have a better chance. "We all have to remember that an election can change a lot of things," Rep. Shantel Krebs said. Polls show that a healthy majority of Americans favor the death penalty. Krebs said it hasn't been a hot topic among constituents she's talked to. Krebs supports capital punishment in "heinous" cases, but she's willing to listen to the arguments of opponents. "That's our job as legislators - to hear both sides of the story," she said. (source: Argus Leader, Sept. 8) USA: The insidious costs of terrorism It has been 5 years since the 9/11 attacks, 5 years since we were awakened from our false sense of security to face a more uncertain and dangerous world than many of us had imagined. The America of Sept. 11, 2001, was a nation paralyzed by fear and obsessed with its newfound insecurity. In that sense, little has improved over these 5 years. The small, virulent band of Islamic extremists behind the 9/11 attacks aren't a historical footnote today but are now viewed as the catalysts for a worldwide, generational strife - a seemingly never-ending, amorphous war on terror. Our insecurity, if anything, has taken root. Consider the words of U.S. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, as he laid out his party's legislative priorities this month: "From homeland security to national security to border security, House Republicans will focus first and foremost on addressing the safety and security needs of the American people throughout the month of September." Security, security, security, security. After 5 years, we're still talking about all of the work that needs to be done to make us secure. We live in a world of Condition Yellow, where talk of freedom is interrupted by news of secret CIA prisons. Where national security has been used to justify just about anything: from preemptive war to warrantless wiretapping to farm subsidies. All of the drumbeating to terror-proof America over the past 5 years has come at great cost: in lives, in international reputation and in many of the very principles we once considered the bedrock of what it means to be an American. "In general, there was a willingness of the American people to consider trading civil liberties for security, but there's a lot more scepticism now because people have seen that these efforts haven't brought them any security," said Elliot Mincberg, legal director for the liberal People for the American Way. Responding to 9/11 has become an all-encompassing rationale, a justification for what looks more and more like self-inflicted wounds of a Big Brother government adamant in its use of unchecked power but unable to do its homework. Just ask Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, who went on to co-chair the 9/11 Commission, only to be disillusioned by the government's response to the group's recommendations. Here's what he said last December: "It is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis. It is scandalous that airline passengers are still not screened against all names on the terrorist watch list. It is scandalous that we still allocate scarce homeland security dollars on the basis of pork-barrel spending, not risk. . . . "We believe that the terrorists will strike again. If they do, and these reforms have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?" 'Unfettered control' The response to Hurricane Katrina last year only reinforced the notion that America may not be doing a heckuva job when it comes to managing the big picture. Stepping up cargo screening at seaports, securing weapons of mass destruction from the former Soviet Union and establishing oversight of how intelligence money is being spent are still on the to-do list 5 years after the attacks of 9/11. It's not as if we've been idle. We've been busy these past 5 years, busy flailing around in a kind of insecure incompetence, as the executive branch brazenly seized new powers in the name of national security. Consider this: When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a provision in the Patriot Act, the U.S. Department of Justice decided that portions of the ACLU's court filings should be blacked out because public knowledge of them would be a threat to national security. What was so threatening? Censored portions included this: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent." This was a quotation from a U.S. Supreme Court decision. That's right. The executive branch of government arbitrarily decided that a prior opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court violated national security. That's the kind of rabbit hole we're in now. Or consider this. The no-fly list that Kean complained about has become a mess. The list of possible terror suspects who should be kept from flying on U.S. commercial airliners has grown significantly since 9/11, when there were only 16 names on the list. On the day after the attacks, there were 400 names on the list. It has continued to grow. Who's on the list now? It's a secret. But last year, the Transportation Security Administration reported that 30,000 people called to complain that their names were on the no-fly list in error. The list has flagged infants, pop singer Cat Stevens and a smattering of members from Congress, including Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. Author James Moore discovered this year that he was on the list when he tried to fly. He was given an 800 number to call to protest his grounded status. In his blog, Moore relays the conversation of that call: Moore: "Ma'am, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List." Agent: "I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir." Moore: "What can you tell me?" Agent: "All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for." Moore: "Well, let me get this straight. Our government is looking for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after the first 2 notes of the National Anthem? We need to find this guy. He sounds dangerous to me." Agent: "I'm sorry, sir, I've already told you everything I can." Moore: "Oh wait. One last thing: This guy they are looking for? Did he write books critical of the Bush administration, too?" Moore's most recent book was entitled "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential." That's the kind of rabbit hole we're in now. Last year, Cyrus Kar, an American in Iraq making a documentary film about the Persian King Cyrus the Great, was detained for 50 days there by U.S. forces without charges while his family sued to have him released. The government, unable to classify Kar as an enemy combatant, held him as "an imperative security internee." Timothy Lynch, the director of the conservative Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, cites the Kar case in his report, Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism. An imperative security internee? "That designation apparently means that until the Supreme Court rules that this new category of person retains rights as well, the government will do whatever it wants," Lynch wrote. "Should the Supreme Court rule that the Bill of Rights applies to 'imperative security internees,' what is to stop the government from inventing another label for its prisoners?" During the past few years, the FBI has used terrorism concerns as a reason to investigate all sorts of Americans far removed from Islamic fundamentalism. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the environmental group Greenpeace, the ACLU and protesters at the North American Wholesale Lumber Association convention in Colorado were all subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations since 9/11. Millions of Americans have been monitored through a warrantless surveillance program, secretly authorized by President Bush, that was begun in 2001 and was ruled unconstitutional last month by a federal district judge in Michigan. "It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," wrote U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor. "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." Giving up liberties to feel safe is still a deal many Americans will accept. But what exactly have we gained? And in these 5 years, what was the biggest domestic terrorist plot unearthed? I guess it would have to be what's been called the Miami plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Sounds scary. But what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called a "significant investigation" in the war on terror turned out to be the arrests of a small gathering of Bible-study, housing-project, Miami-area men who practiced martial arts in a warehouse and sold African-American hair-care products in the neighborhood. The men, part of a self-styled, ideologically muddled group they called Seas of David, were conflated into Al-Qaeda terrorists by an undercover FBI informant. The informant, who was not affiliated with Al-Qaeda, administered a fake Al-Qaeda oath to the men and gave them a video camera so they could shoot footage of American buildings they may like to blow up someday - if they only had the weapons, cash, transportation and a memory chip for the camera. Oh, and boots, too. These guys said they needed boots to wage their "full ground war" on the U.S. The government supplied them boots, then arrested them. So to recap: It's an Al-Qaeda plot to blow up a Chicago landmark, except that nobody involved was Al-Qaeda, and they hadn't even traveled to Chicago to videotape the Sears Tower with their government-provided camera. That's what's been called the Sears Tower Plot. That's the kind of rabbit hole we're in now. Sentences of 20 days During the past 5 years, the government has gone to great lengths to highlight the terrorist threat and salute its own efforts in combating it. Last year, the president, while stumping for the extension of his power under the Patriot Act, said, "Federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted." But a review of U.S. Department of Justice figures by The Washington Post revealed that only 39 people were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security. And most of them were minor false-statement violations of immigration laws and not related to any act of terror. The newspaper found: "A large number of people appear to have been swept into U.S. counterterrorism investigations by chance - through anonymous tips, suspicious circumstances or bad luck - and have remained classified as terrorism defendants years after being cleared of connections to extremist groups. "For example, the prosecution of 20 men, most of them Iraqis, in a Pennsylvania truck-licensing scam accounts for about 10 % of the individuals convicted - even though the entire group was publicly absolved of ties to terrorism in 2001." TRAC, a data research organization connected to Syracuse University, released a report recently that looked at the 5-year record of terrorism prosecutions in the United States. "The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive," the report concluded. "For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the 2 years after 9/11, for example, the median sentence - 1/2 got more, and 1/2 got less - was 28 days. "For those referrals that came in more recently - through May 31, 2006 - the median sentence was 20 days." By contrast, the report noted, the typical sentence on a terrorism case in the 2 years prior to 9/11 was 41 months. Human warehouse The record in the now notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is also less than meets the eye. While the more than 400 "enemy combatants" there have been described by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "the worst of the worst," many of the men held for years in this secret prison have questionable ties to terrorism. The conservative National Journal reviewed Defense Department court filings and other documents relating to 446 detainees at Guantanamo and found that most of the detainees there were not captured by Americans or Afghans in combat, but actually were handed over by Pakistan. About half are Afghans. And most were only said to be "associated" with Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and picked up in the mountainous border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Many of the enemy combatants arrested in that region say they fled the sudden chaos of Afghanistan without retrieving their passports and identification papers, and that when they asked to be taken to their embassies, they were taken to prison instead," Corine Hegland, of the National Journal, wrote. "Many of the men who detailed their capture described being taken through one, two or 3 Pakistani prisons before they were delivered to the Americans." The cost for running this sort of human warehouse has been worldwide condemnation, a stain on the country's commitment to the rule of law and putting America at odds with the United Nations, which called for the camp's closing and referred the matter to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. That's the kind of rabbit hole we're in now. Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo Bay. But last year, Halliburton - formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney - was awarded $30 million to build a permanent prison there. And last week, the president announced that 14 high-value prisoners - the real worst of the worst - would be transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay, apparently to bolster its necessity. A mind-set of fear Since 9/11, the only actual terrorist attack foiled during its execution was the apprehension of Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, who was trying to strike a match to light a plastic explosive in his shoe during a London-to-Miami flight on Dec. 22, 2001. And yet it took the TSA until August of this year to declare that all airline passengers must have their shoes scanned before boarding. As for the matches, well, you can't take a lighter on the plane, but each passenger is still permitted up to four books of matches in their carry-on luggage. Why? You can't smoke on a plane. Does anybody really know what you can or can't take onto a plane these days? OK, here's a quiz. Which of these items is prohibited as a carry-on item? (A) knitting and crochet needles; (B) a 7-inch screwdriver; (C) a tennis racket; or (D) toothpaste. The answer is the toothpaste, which became banned after last month's liquid-based London terror plot was foiled. Screwdrivers, wrenches and other small tools used to be banned, but now they're allowed again. As for the tennis racket, it's OK, but a pool cue or a lacrosse stick isn't. Crochet needles of any size are OK now, too, as well as metal pointy-tip scissors that are shorter than 4 inches. It's easy to get lost in shifting sands of concern in the post-9/11 world. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in his book "Why Courage Matters," offered a rare but refreshing bit of perspective to this new mind-set. "Suck it up, for crying out loud," he wrote. "You're almost certainly going to be OK. And in the unlikely event you're not, do you really want to spend your days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape?" The fear, however, has played into a mood that has given the government what has amounted to nearly a blank check when it comes to taking shortcuts with civil liberties and constitutional safeguards. The Patriot Act, penned in haste after 9/11, allowed the FBI to expand its use of National Security Letters, a 1970s provision that allowed the agency to skirt privacy law by secretly reviewing records on individuals without judicial oversight. The use of these letters has skyrocketed since 9/11, reaching about 30,000 a year. They allow the agency access to phone records, correspondence and financial records of ordinary Americans without judicial or congressional review. 2 years ago, a federal judge in New York ruled it was unconstitutional to use these National Security Letters to secretly get records from Internet service providers without oversight. "Under the mantle of secrecy, the self-preservation that ordinarily impels our government to censorship and secrecy may potentially be turned on ourselves as a weapon of self-destruction," U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote. "At that point, secrecy's protective shield may serve not as much to secure a safe country as simply to save face." 'Dirty bomb' case The court cases, as they begin to tumble in, are starting to add up to a legal rebellion to what has been an aggressive executive branch and a compliant, silent Congress. Take the case of Jose Padilla, the Chicago-born gang member who became known as the man who wanted to set off a "dirty bomb" in America. Then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, while traveling in Russia, announced the arrest of Padilla 4 years ago. "I am pleased to announce today a significant step forward in the war on terrorism," Ashcroft said. "We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." The government classified Padilla as an "enemy combatant," saying that although he was a U.S. citizen, he wasn't entitled to the rights of a U.S. citizen. He was held in solitary confinement in a Navy brig in South Carolina for more than 3 years. At first, a federal appeals court gave the Bush administration wide latitude in holding Padilla without a charge or court appearance. But after 3 years, and with Padilla's unusual confinement percolating its way toward a review by the U.S. Supreme Court, prosecutors switched gears, coming up with less serious charges against him, dropping any claim of a dirty-bomb plot and asking that he be added as a defendant to an unrelated case in Miami federal court. This evoked an unusual scolding from appellate Judge J. Michael Luttig, who previously had sanctioned Padilla's remarkable confinement. Luttig wrote that Padilla's legal status deserved to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and that dropping the dirty-bomb claim "may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts." Luttig wrote that the government left "the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake." Luttig is no wide-eyed liberal activist judge. He had been on a short list of conservative appellate judges considered for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. No 'blank check' The government ran into even bigger legal problems with its attempt to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a way that defied all notions of what we might consider a fair trial. The Bush tribunal plan was to hold secret death-penalty, non-jury trials of the detainees, in which they would neither be allowed in the courtroom nor privy to the evidence against them. The Bush administration also tried to deny any federal court review of its Guantanamo Bay treatment of prisoners, saying that Guantanamo Bay is not a U.S. territory, and therefore the courts aren't available to detainees there. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. In the 1st of 2 slaps against the White House's assertion of new powers, the court ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainees do have access to the federal court. Writing for the court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in a 2004 opinion that the war does not give the president "a blank check" to abrogate rights at his discretion. "It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested," O'Connor wrote, "and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad." The second Supreme Court decision came this summer: this one ruling that the president doesn't have the right to order tribunals at Guantanamo Bay that violate the U.S. Constitution, the military's own code of justice and the Geneva Conventions. The court, in a 5-3 vote, ruled that the Bush administration either needed to follow the established military justice system or ask Congress to draft a new law to sanction what was essentially unsanctioned executive power. "Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation's ability to deal with danger," wrote Justice Steven Breyer. "To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation's ability to determine - through democratic means - how best to do so. "The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means," Breyer wrote. "Our Court today simply does the same." Last week, Bush pressed forward with his tribunal plan, asking Congress to write a law that allows the provisions questioned in the Supreme Court decision. But there are signs that Congress is losing its appetite for rubber-stamping another questionable legal shortcut. "Congress has really fallen down," said Howard Simon, Florida director for the ACLU. "The fact that they're starting to stand up now is probably because the president's poll numbers are down." Where does this leave us? In the middle of a debate that is far from resolved. Tonight, Bush will address the nation in a live prime-time television broadcast to mark the fifth anniversary of the attacks. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the speech will cover "where we've been since Sept. 11 and how we move together." (source: Frank Cerabino, The Pulse-Journal)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, CALIF., N. DAK., S. DAK., USA
Rick Halperin Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:58:46 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
