Category: Supreme Court

Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Torture Allegations

We may finally begin to see justice restored in the United States of America.

Breaking news from The New York Times:

The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.

When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general’s findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder’s associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider.

With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda.

The advice from the Office of Professional Responsibility strengthens Mr. Holder’s hand.

The recommendation to review the closed cases, in effect renewing the inquiries, centers mainly on allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Justice Department report is to be made public after classified information is deleted from it.

President Obama, it’s time to lead and let justice be served.


Brian Dugan Killed Jeanine Nicarico

Two men were once on Death Row for the murder of Jeanine Nicarico.  Brian Dugan has been trying to confess to this horrible crime for years.

Tuesday, he finally got his chance.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Some in the audience wiped away tears as State’s Atty. Joseph Birkett solemnly described the fingernail scratches 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico left on the wall that showed how she tried to fight off a would-be burglar.

How Brian Dugan promised to take the girl home but instead killed her.

The murder “went as perfectly as the others, but something was wrong,” Brian Dugan told an Illinois State Police psychologist, Birkett recounted. “I felt like I was going to get caught.”

And he did. Dugan, already serving life sentences for two other murders, formally admitted in court Tuesday that he and he alone kidnapped, raped and killed the girl on Feb. 25, 1983. 

His admission, first made in 1985, had long been rejected by DuPage officials. But on Tuesday Birkett said Dugan has been telling the truth.

Birkett’s 55-minute recitation of the facts was a dramatic turn in a case with 26 years’ worth of twists, including the false convictions and Death Row sentences of two other men and the acquittals of seven DuPage County law-enforcement officials on malfeasance charges. The drama will kick into high gear again in September, when Birkett pursues his long-stated goal of having Dugan sentenced to death.

The details:

Birkett’s description of Nicarico’s final hours were brutal and difficult to listen to, as were his descriptions of the autopsy results. Some in the audience wiped away tears as they heard how Dugan brutalized the girl on a sleeping bag in the woods, leaving her bloody and disoriented, then promised to wash her up and take her home, but instead crushed her skull with either a baseball bat or a tire iron.

Birkett also described in detail the 1985 rape and murder of 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman of Somonauk, one of two murders for which Dugan already is serving concurrent life sentences. Bakalis has previously approved allowing the details of the Ackerman case at a trial, ruling that the similarities with the Nicarico murder showed a legal pattern of behavior.

Dugan sat quietly during Birkett’s grim reading of a 14-page statement. Melissa’s father stonily stared off into space.

When it was over, the judge denied Dugan’s request to read aloud a letter that he carried with him, a letter his attorneys contended was an apology.

This was not the only child this monster murdered.  We should be grateful the judge did not permit him to read his letter, address the families.  They don’t need that.

Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the same crime.  Birkett said Dugan’s confession completely exonerates them.

Two on Death Row for a crime they didn’t commit.  Some would argue that the system worked, eventually.  Except these two lost years of their lives because of Dugan’s crime.  The two were set free in 1995, twelve years after Jeanine’s death, when DNA tests and recanted testimony damaged the prosecution, the Tribune says.

The temptation is great for us to kill this man.  If anyone deserves to die…

Dolling out death takes us down a slippery slope, though.  We don’t do that well.  We make mistakes.  We can be incredibly stupid animals, Vonnegut said.  We suffer under the illusion that “The System” is somehow divine, that there is this separate entity apart from humanity called “The System,” and that “The System” will protect us in spite of ourselves.

Except it won’t.  The system is us.  We are the system. That system is us at our best and our absolute worst.

Put this monster away forever.  And mourn Jeanine Nicarico and Melissa Ackerman once more.


Stupid White Men Attack Wise Latina Supreme Court Nominee

Honestly, have you had enough of the stupid old white men repeatedly attacking Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over her “wise latina” remark?  How can Republicans possibly waste the entire confirmation hearings focusing on speeches, and ignoring all of the nominee’s decisions?

Any Republicans reading this?  I’d love to know your “approval rating” of the stupid white men you sent to the United States Senate.  How can they dance for days without asking one substantive question?

From Salon.com:

By the sixth hour of the hearing, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham had dispensed with the formalities altogether. “If I may interject, Judge, [lawyers] find you difficult and challenging more than your colleagues,” Graham blurted, without irony. “Do you think you have a temperament problem?” A minute later, he had turned, weirdly, to personal advice: “Maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” Graham also cautioned Sotomayor to “appreciate the world we live in,” in which she could say something about a “wise Latina” and still expect to win a seat on the Supreme Court — since white men wouldn’t be able to get away with similar remarks. And he led her through a ritualized denunciation of al-Qaida, asking how women would be treated if the jihadists had their way.

What made his performance even stranger, though, was that Graham is likely to vote for Sotomayor’s confirmation. “Now, let’s talk about you,” he told her, just before haranguing her about her temperament. “I like you, by the way, for whatever that matters. Since I may vote for you that ought to matter to you.”

Honestly, Lindsey Graham showed his idiotic side this week.  At times, he appeared juvenile in his attempts to bait the judge into an inappropriate remark.  Too bad for him.

I found one media report amusing this week: before television, there were no lengthy Supreme Court hearings.  Without a pulpit, these things just happened, and took little time.

Imagine that.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed and sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.  She seems firm but fair.  And she really knows the law.

That’s all we can ask.


Recommended Reading for Sarah Palin: New York Times v. Sullivan

Sarah Palin is coming after you if you don’t like her.

Bucke up your boot straps, you betcha.

Incensed by the reaction to her resignation as governor of Alaska, Palin is on a  war path with the media, and her lawyer has already targeted a liberal Alaskan blogger, the New York Times, MSNBC, and anyone else who gets in her way.

The soon-to-be former governor is doing everything she can to stay in the headlines, lashing out at every last person who dares to disagree with her.  Can you imagine her as president?

Let’s start with a tip of the hat to GOP 12 for alerting us to a note to supporters that appeared on Palin’s Facebook page today as well as the response from one of her lawyers. In her Facebook post, she bashes the media:

The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the “politics of personal destruction”. How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it’s about country. And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make.

The legal offense emerges:

The abruptness of her announcement and the mystery surrounding her plans has fed widespread speculation. But Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein on Saturday warned legal action may be taken against bloggers and publications that reprint what he calls fraudulent claims.

“To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as ‘fact’ that Governor Palin resigned because she is ‘under federal investigation’ for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation,” Van Flein said in a statement. “This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law.”

Has Sarah Palin or her legal team never read the 1964 Supreme Court decision The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan?  Anyone considering a run for public office of any kind should read it before circulating peititions.  Here’s the basic issue, directly from the decision, written by Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.

Respondent, an elected official in Montgomery, Alabama, brought suit in a state court alleging that he had been libeled by an advertisement in corporate petitioner’s newspaper, the text of which appeared over the names of the four individual petitioners and many others. The advertisement included statements, some of which were false, about police action allegedly directed against students who participated in a civil rights demonstration and against a leader of the civil rights movement; respondent claimed the statements referred to him because his duties included supervision of the police department.

L. B. Sullivan was one of the three elected Commissioners of the City of Montgomery, Alabama.  He brought civil action against four black Alabama clergymen and the New York Times. A jury in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County awarded him damages of $500,000, the full amount claimed, against all the petitioners, and the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed.  Sullivan claimed that he had been libeled by statements in a full-page advertisement that was carried in the New York Times on March 29, 1960.  Entitled “Heed Their Rising Voices,” the advertisment stated the following:

“As the whole world knows by now, thousands of Southern Negro students are engaged in widespread nonviolent demonstrations in positive affirmation of the right to live in human dignity as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

It went on to charge that,

“in their efforts to uphold these guarantees, they are being met by an unprecedented wave of terror by those who would deny and negate that document which the whole world looks upon as setting the pattern for modern freedom. . . .”

Succeeding paragraphs purported to illustrate the “wave of terror” by describing certain alleged events. The text concluded with an appeal for funds for three purposes: support of the student movement, “the struggle for the right to vote,” and the legal defense of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the movement, against a perjury indictment then pending in Montgomery.

The third and sixth paragraphs of the ad were Sullivan’s libel complaint:

Third paragraph:

“In Montgomery, Alabama, after students sang ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’ on the State Capitol steps, their leaders were expelled from school, and truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas ringed the Alabama State College Campus. When the entire student body protested to state authorities by refusing to reregister, their dining hall was padlocked in an attempt to starve them into submission.”

Sixth paragraph:

“Again and again, the Southern violators have answered Dr. King’s peaceful protests with intimidation and violence. They have bombed his home, almost killing his wife and child. They have assaulted his person. They have arrested him seven times — for ‘speeding,’ ‘loitering’ and similar ‘offenses.’ And now they have charged him with ‘perjury’ — a felony under which they could imprison him for ten years. . . .”

You could argue that Sullivan was already on thin ice with this suit.  His name never appears in the advertisement.  Sullivan disagreed:

Although neither of these statements mentions respondent by name, he contended that the word “police” in the third paragraph referred to him as the Montgomery Commissioner who supervised the Police Department, so that he was being accused of “ringing” the campus with police. He further claimed that the paragraph would be read as imputing to the police, and hence to him, the padlocking of the dining hall in order to starve the students into submission.  As to the sixth paragraph, he contended that, since arrests are ordinarily made by the police, the statement “They have arrested [Dr. King] seven times” would be read as referring to him; he further contended that the “They” who did the arresting would be equated with the “They” who committed the other described acts and with the “Southern violators.” Thus, he argued, the paragraph would be read as accusing the Montgomery police, and hence him, of answering Dr. King’s protests with “intimidation and violence,” bombing his home, assaulting his person, and charging him with perjury. Respondent and six other Montgomery residents testified that they read some or all of the statements as referring to him in his capacity as Commissioner.

The Supreme Court rejected Sullivan’s arguments, holding “A State cannot, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, award damages to a public official for defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves ‘actual malice’ — that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.

The key here is “actual malice.”   Was there actual malice involved?  SCOTUS said no, and this decision has been the standard-bearer for all cases that followed.

In short, to paraphrase a colleague of mine, you would have to falsely accuse a public official of something absolutely horrible, like infanticide, say that you know it is true, that you have seen proof — all the while knowing that what you are saying is a damn lie.  Like it or not, public officials are considered “public property,” and the public can say almost anything at all about them, true or false, and face no consequence for doing so.

From SCOTUS again:

In Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U. S. 250, the Court sustained an Illinois criminal libel statute as applied to a publication held to be both defamatory of a racial group and “liable to cause violence and disorder.” But the Court was careful to note that it “retains and exercises authority to nullify action which encroaches on freedom of utterance under the guise of punishing libel”; for “public men are, as it were, public property,” and “discussion cannot be denied, and the right, as well as the duty, of criticism must not be stifled.”

In essence, you’re main limitation on what you can and cannot say about a public official is your conscience.  The law will let you say a lot.

Did you ever wonder why some politicians running for office say the most awful things about their opponents and get away with it?  Despicable and lowly as this behavior is, it’s because they can.  If you don’t like their behavior — and you shouldn’t — then campaign against them.

Palin may not like what New York Times Co. v. Sullivan has to say, but her threats are baseless.   Does this mean that she can’t file a lawsuit, force a blogger to retain an attorney?  Does this mean that no judge will take the case?  Absolutely not.  Our courts are full of baseless lawsuits, and we watch the most ridiculous lawsuits for entertainment on television.  Ask Judge Judy.

Again, from SCOTUS:

We reverse the judgment. We hold that the rule of law applied by the Alabama courts is constitutionally deficient for failure to provide the safeguards for freedom of speech and of the press that are required by the First and Fourteenth Amendments in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.

Is it right to trash Sarah Palin without mercy?  No.  It’s not right to do that to anyone.  Is speculation on why she might have resigned committing libel?  Absolutely not.  She gave very few clues as to why she quit.

Look, Palin can sue anyone she wishes, making life absolute hell for them in the meantime.  Perhaps that’s all she really wants to do.

She can face  every liberal blogger in America on The People’s Court if she likes.  It would be a wonderful venue for her, giving her all the TV time she yearns for and more.

But she will lose.

Right now, whether she likes it or not, she’s public property, just like every other public official in the United States of America.

You betcha.


Christian Extremist Kills Abortion Doctor

I want to start by saying that, previously, I had only used the words “Christian terrorist,” in academic settings.  I had naively hoped that I would never have to use those words for real.

But Dr. George Tiller as shot dead in church on Sunday, and everything is different now. We must accept that Dr. Tiller was shot by a Christian extremist.  The suspect, Scott Roeder, was an anti-abortion activist who claimed to be a Christian.

But he was no Christian. This was not the act of a Christian. This was an act of terrorism, pure and simple.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Reporting from Wichita, Kan. – The 51-year-old man held on suspicion of killing prominent abortion provider Dr. George Tiller had attended the physician’s trial earlier this year and was outraged at his speedy acquittal, an anti-abortion activist said Monday.

Scott Roeder attended a demonstration outside a Kansas City clinic two weeks ago and spoke of traveling to Wichita for the trial of Tiller, who was charged with 19 misdemeanors for allegedly failing to comply with Kansas abortion laws, said Eugene Frye, who has helped organize vigils in the area for 25 years. A jury found Tiller not guilty in 45 minutes.

Authorities say Roeder was a member of anti-government militia groups and was a regular at pickets outside clinics. Frye said Roeder was a soft-spoken man who normally spent his time chatting about the federal income tax, which he called illegal, or esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament. But, Frye said, he had noticed a difference this time.

“He said he’d been down to Wichita for George Tiller’s trial and he said it was an absolute sham,” Frye said. “He seemed agitated — but agitation for Scott, for a lot of people would be normal.”

Roeder’s ex-wife described her husband:

Roeder’s ex-wife, Lindsey Roeder, said her husband became obsessed with anti-government theories and abortion in the early 1990s and that it poisoned their marriage.

“The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion,” she told the Associated Press. “That’s all he cared about is anti-abortion. ‘The church is this. God is this. Yada, yada.’ “

Violent words are the seed of violence.  They pave the path to hate.  The overwhelming vast majority of Christians are horrified by this murder.  As a Christian, I am horrified.  And, yet, we must accept that there are those who are pleased.

Rachel Maddow ran a segment tonight called “Incitement to Terrorism.”  She blasts Bill O’Reilly for praising the murder of Dr. Tiller.  O’Reilly says Tiller is responsible for the destruction of “60,000 fetuses.”  Interesting choice of words.

Maddow interviews Frank Schaeffer, who wrote Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.  Schaeffer apologizes for the death of Dr. Tiller, claiming some responsibility for this act of violence because of his anti-abortion efforts in the past.

The interview is very much worth watching.  I leave you with this segment from the Rachel Maddow show for your reflection:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy


Obama Taps Sotomayor for Supreme Court

sonia-sotomayor-supreme-courtNumerous news sources are reporting that President Barack Obama has chosen federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. She will become the first Hispanic in history to wear the robes of a Supreme Court justice.

From the Sun-Times:

If confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter. Two officials described Obama’s decision on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement had been made.

Administration officials say Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years. A formal announcement was expected at midmorning. Obama had said publicly he wanted a justice who combined intellect and empathy — the ability to understand the troubles of everyday Americans.

Turning Left will carry the president’s full statement when he announces Sotomayor’s appointment.