Justice Clarence Thomas Says Civil Asset Forfeiture by Cops is 'Harmful to the Disadvantaged' -Lower Court Listens

From [HERE] In March the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case filed by a Texas woman fighting for the return of over $200,000 in cash that the police seized from her family. Although neither Lisa Olivia Leonard nor any of her relatives were ever charged with any underlying crime connected to the cash, the state's sweeping asset forfeiture laws allowed the authorities to take the money.

The Supreme Court offered no explanation when it refused to hear Leonard v. Texas. But one member of the Court did speak up in protest. In a statement respecting the denial of certiorari, Justice Clarence Thomas made it clear that in his view modern asset forfeiture law is fundamentally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution. Yesterday, one of the most influential federal appellate courts in the country—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit—signaled its agreement with Thomas' assessment in a notable decision in favor of an innocent couple fighting for the return of $17,900 in cash seized by the police.

As Thomas explained in Leonard v. Texas, "this system—where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use—has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses." For one thing, "because the law enforcement entity responsible for seizing the property often keeps it, these entities have strong incentives to pursue forfeiture." For another, this sort of police abuse disproportionately harms disadvantaged groups. "These forfeiture operations frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings," he observed. "Perversely, these same groups are often the most burdened by forfeiture. They are more likely to use cash than alternative forms of payment, like credit cards, which may be less susceptible to forfeiture. And they are more likely to suffer in their daily lives while they litigate for the return of a critical item of property, such as a car or a home."

To make matters worse, Thomas continued, the Supreme Court's previous rulings in this area do not line up with the text of the Constitution, which "presumably would require the Court to align its distinct doctrine governing civil forfeiture with its doctrines governing other forms of punitive state action and property deprivation." Those other doctrines, Thomas noted, impose significant checks on the government, such as heightened standards of proof, various procedural protections, and the right to a trial by jury. Civil asset forfeiture proceedings, by contrast, offer no such constitutional safeguards.

In short, Justice Thomas offered a searing indictment of modern civil asset forfeiture and called on the judiciary to start reconsidering its flawed approach.

The D.C. Circuit got the message. In its opinion yesterday in United States v. Seventeen Thousand Nine Hundred Dollars in United States Currency, the D.C. Circuit repeatedly cited Thomas' Leonard v. Texas statement while ruling in favor of a New York City couple that went to court seeking the return of $17,900 in cash seized by law enforcement officials. Once again, the police took the money despite the fact that no underlying criminal charges were ever filed. But after Angela Rodriguez and Joyce Copeland submitted a claim requesting the return of their seized money, a federal district judge ruled that they lacked standing, thus ending their case and leaving the government in possession of their cash. Describing the legal process that led to this result as "onerous, unfair, and unrealistic," the D.C. Circuit reversed the district court.

"The pair has a right to contest whether the money is subject to forfeiture," the D.C. Circuit held. "Despite the government's best efforts, this will remain an adversary proceeding." Now that their standing to bring suit has been recognized, Rodriguez and Copeland will continue their legal battle to get their money back.

Critics of civil asset forfeiture should be heartened by this ruling. Not only did it vindicate the legal standing of innocent people fighting for the return of their own money, it shows that the lower courts are starting to heed Justice Thomas' call to arms against asset forfeiture abuse.

Neely Fuller Jr on Mentacide - Indoctrinate Blacks To Self Hate And Self Loath

House Armed Services Committee Advances $640 Billion Military Spending Bill [to kill non-whites]

From [HERE] Faced with a massive military spending increase proposal from President Trump, and a Budget Committee which expected to well exceed even that, the House Armed Services Committee has decided to outdo everybody by advancing its own $640 billion base budget.

The sequestration figure for the spending budget is $549 billion. The sequestration figures, of course, have always been circumvented at any rate, but President Trump’s $603 billion proposal was far above the usual levels of excess spending. Even then, it was quickly attacked by Congressional hawks as insufficient. The Budget Committee was expecting this to be settled somewhere around $621 billion.

Committee Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R – TX) insisted he wanted this even higher figure for awhile, but suggested he might be willing to tolerate a slightly lower final number, if it came with guarantees that spending in future years would remain high.

Ironically, Thornberry cited sequestration as one of the main reasons he thinks spending needs to be so huge now, intending to make up for the lower budgets of prior years, despite the plain fact that prior years of sequestration never actually happened, and “emergency” spending bills were always tacked on to well exceed the caps.

Supreme Court decides for Korean immigrant who received poor legal advice to plead guilty [& then get deported]

From [HERE] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Friday for an immigrant who had received poor legal advice from his counsel. The petitioner in Lee v. United States [SCOTUSblog materials] came to the US from South Korea in 1982 and found success as a businessman. In 2009 he was charged with possession of ecstasy with an intent to distribute. Concerned for his residency status in the US, Lee took the advice of his lawyer who told him he would not be deported if he pleaded guilty. Lee's attorney was incorrect and the conviction carried a mandatory deportation. In order to have his sentence vacated, Lee needed to show that he not only had ineffective legal counsel but that he was prejudiced because he took erroneous advice. The court recognized that "preserving the client's right to remain in the United States may be more important to the client than any potential jail sentence." In his opinion Chief Justice John Roberts considered Lee's three decades in the US, during which he had established two businesses and never once returned to South Korea, as well as his naturalized parents' dependency on his care. Roberts concluded:

Lee's claim that he would not have accepted a plea had he known it would lead to deportation is backed by substantial and uncontroverted evidence. Accordingly we conclude Lee has demonstrated a reasonable probability that, but for [his] counsel's errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented and was joined by Justice Samuel Alito except in Part One. Thomas asserted that overturning a guilty plea "where a defendant has admitted his guilt, the evidence against him is overwhelming, and he has no bona fide defense strategy" because his attorney had not "properly advised him of the immigration consequences of his plea" is not supported by the Sixth Amendment [text] or precedent. 

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Sup Court Disregards Exculpatory Information Illegally Withheld from Black Men by Prosecutors to Uphold Convictions

From [HERE] The US Supreme Court [official website] on Thursday upheld the convictions [opinion, PDF] of several men who robbed, raped, kidnapped Catherine Fuller in the District of Columbia in 1984. Twenty-five years after being convicted in Turner, et al. v. United States [opinion, PDF], Turner and several other defendants moved to have their sentences vacated on the assertion that the government violated the rule of law from Brady v. Maryland [opinion, PDF] by withholding exculpatory evidence.

Brady information “is any information in the possession of the government -- broadly defined to include all Executive Branch agencies -- that relates to guilt or punishment and that tends to help the defense by either bolstering the defense case or impeaching potential prosecution witnesses. It covers both exculpatory and impeachment evidence. The government is obligated to disclose all evidence relating to guilt or punishment which might be reasonably considered favorable to the defendant's case, that is, all favorable evidence that is itself admissible or that is likely to lead to favorable evidence that would be admissible, or that could be used to impeach a prosecution witness. Where doubt exists as to the usefulness of the evidence to the defendant, the government must resolve all such doubts in favor of full disclosure.See United States v. Safavian, 233 F.R.D. 12,15 (D.D.C. 2005).

The case was decided on the testimonies given by several members of the group, some of whom pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the government. The testimonies corroborated each other with minor inconsistencies. Each of the defendants who testified attempted a "not me, maybe them defense, namely, that he was not part of the group that attacked Fuller." Approximately 11 weeks before the trial, a prosecutor learned of notes that concerned the murder, which were taken during two interviews with Ammie Davis who had been arrested a few weeks after Fuller's murder. In an interview with the prosecutor, Davis stated she only saw one person in the vicinity where Fuller's murder took place around the time she was purportedly attacked. The prosecutor admitted to not disclosing the interview because Davis was "playful" and "not serious" and that he found her to be "totally incredible." The court found that the new evidence was "not material" and held that it would not have changed the verdict. "Considering the withheld evidence in the context of the entire record, however, we conclude that it is too little, too weak, or too distant from the main evidentiary points to meet Brady's standards." Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented stating, "Had the defendants offered a unified counternarrative, based on the withheld evidence, one or more jurors could well have concluded that the Government had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt."

The court agreed to hear the consolidated cases of Turner, et al. v. United States and Overton v. United States [docket files] in December and heard arguments [JURIST reports] in March.

New Census Report: the White Population is [genetic recessive] Decreasing while Latinos, Blacks & Asians Surge

Fear of Numerical Inadequacy Fuels Racism. White people are genetic recessive. In general, this means they cannot reproduce a white child when they have sexual relations with non-whites. The white "race" can be replaced or "genetically annihilated" through assimilation or social mixing with non-whites;

White plus Black equals Colored.

White plus Brown equals Colored.

White plus Yellow equals Colored.

The so-called "demographic decay" or fear of being replaced scares racists to death. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing explained that [among other things] numerical inadequacy drives white folks to practice racism - to survive and to maintain control of non-whites. [MORE]. Her color confrontation theory explained that the more the white population shrinks the worse its conduct toward non-whites will get. [90% of the world's population (7 billion) are non-white]. 

According to Dr. Welsing, racism is a system of white behavior and survival. In other words: what the White Collective is doing on the planet is engaging in racist behaviors—in economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and more—in order for them to survive. [MORE] and [MORE]. Horror commercial [above] from Cheerios in 2015 scared racists b/c it featured an interracial married couple & their non-white offspring.   

New Report Says Whites Continue to Vanish. From [NPR] America's diversity remains on the rise, with all racial and ethnic minorities growing faster than whites from 2015 to 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau says in a new snapshot of the national population. The agency also found the U.S. median age has risen to nearly 38.

Asian and mixed-race people are the two fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, the U.S. Census Bureau says. Both groups grew by 3 percent from July 2015 to July 2016. In the same 12 months, the non-Hispanic white population grew by just 5,000 people.

Non-Hispanic whites remain the only segment of the U.S. population where deaths outpace births, the agency reports.

"While all other groups experienced natural increase (having more births than deaths) between 2015 and 2016," the Census says, "the non-Hispanic white alone group experienced a natural decrease of 163,300 nationally."

The report adds new detail to a picture that's been coming into focus in recent years. Last summer, for instance, the Census Bureau reported a shift in America's youngest population, as babies of color outnumbered non-Hispanic white babies.

Non-Hispanic whites remain the largest group of Americans, at 198 million, the Census says, followed by Hispanics at 57.5 million and blacks or African-Americans, at 46.8 million. (We'll post the full ethnic breakdown at the bottom of this story).

In its population estimates released Thursday, the Census also detailed the aging of America's population, saying the median age rose in 95 percent of American counties between 2000 and 2016. Nationally, the median age rose by more than 2.5 years, from 35.3 to 37.9, in the same period.

The U.S. median age has risen 7 percent since 2000.

"Aging baby boomers will keep driving the growth in numbers of older adults in the U.S.," NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports. "Utah had the lowest median age, at almost 31. The county with the highest median age was Sumter County, Fla. — home to a large retirement community — where the median age was just over 67."

In some states, the rise has been stark: the median age in Maine, for instance, is now 44.6 — six years older than in 2000. It's one of five states where the median age is 42 or above; the others are New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida.

The youngest median ages were in Utah (30.8) and Washington, D.C., and Alaska (both with 33.9), the Census says.

Maine had both the nation's highest median age and the highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites, at 93.5 percent.

In terms of national diversity, here's the Census Bureau's rundown. We've reordered the agency's list to sort the groups by growth rate:

• The Asian population grew by 3.0 percent to 21.4 million.
• People who identified as being of two or more races grew by 3.0 percent to 8.5 million.
• The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander population grew by 2.1 percent to 1.5 million.
• The Hispanic population (including all races) grew by 2.0 percent to 57.5 million.
• The American Indian and Alaska Native population grew by 1.4 percent to 6.7 million.
• The black or African-American population grew by 1.2 percent to 46.8 million.
• The white population grew by 0.5 percent to 256.0 million.
• The non-Hispanic white alone population grew by 5,000 people, remaining at 198.0 million.

CIA Paid 2 White Doctors $80 Million to Devise & Implement Torture Program of Non-Whites in Secret Prisons

At the time of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the agency had no experience in detention or interrogation. But on September 17, Bush authorized the CIA to capture and detain members of al-Qaida. (His order said nothing about interrogation, much less torture.) Mitchell and Jessen, two psychologists with experience training U.S. troops to resist abuse in case of capture, were brought on to devise what they called a “psychologically based program” that would use “fear and despair” to make prisoners talk.

But neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in real-world interrogations — only in mock sessions conducted on volunteer U.S. service members with protections in place to ensure their physical and psychological safety. “Nor did either have specialized knowledge of al-Qa'ida, a background in terrorism, or any relevant regional, cultural, or linguistic expertise,” notes a Senate study of the torture program, the executive summary of which was released in 2014.

Rodriguez, who was charged with steering the CIA’s new and dangerous authorities, did little to ensure Mitchell & Jessen’s qualifications.

The CIA paid Mitchell and Jessen $1,800 per day to administer the torture of detainees. They ultimately earned millions for their work, both as individual contractors and through a company they created in 2005 to expand the program. By the time the CIA terminated its contract in 2010, it had paid Mitchell, Jessen & Associates more than $80 million in taxpayer money.

As Mitchell and Jessen were developing their torture techniques — referred to euphemistically by the government as “enhanced interrogation techniques” — the CIA wanted to ensure it could operate without the restraints of domestic and international law. In his testimony, Rizzo confirms that in the summer of 2002, after the CIA captured its first prisoner, he began a process to seek the formal commitment of the Department of Justice that CIA employees would not be prosecuted as a result of their brutal interrogations.

The Justice Department refused to provide the CIA with that assurance. (It also never prosecuted anyone responsible for the CIA torture program.)

Rizzo also confirmed that Mitchell and Jessen were given extensive latitude to develop the program without the CIA undertaking basic research into the effects of using abusive methods on prisoners.

Mitchell and Jessen’s techniques were built on a theoretical assumption that reducing detainees to a state of “helplessness” would make them compliant with interrogators’ demands. They based their theory on research into “learned helplessness” conducted in the 1960s on animals by psychologist Martin Seligman, who discovered that dogs that had been subjected to inescapable pain would eventually stop trying to avoid it. Seligman’s theory had never been tested on humans — because doing so would violate a host of laws prohibiting torture, cruel treatment, and human experimentation.

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Congressional Black Caucus rejects invitation to meet with Trump for photo-op

From [HERE] The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has rejected the invitation to meet with President Trump for a follow up meeting at the White House, according to a letter released by the chair of the committee, Cedric Richmond, on Wednesday.

Citing actions by the Trump administration "that will affirmatively hurt black communities," Richmond wrote that concerns discussed during a preliminary meeting with Mr. Trump on March 22 "fell on deaf ears."

"Given the lack of response to any of the many concerns we have raised with you and your administration, we decline your invitation for all 49 members of the Congressional Black Caucus to meet with you," Richmond said.

"I fail to see how a social gathering would benefit the policies we advocate for," Richmond added.

Mr. Trump's personal shenanigger and Step and Fetchit coordinator Omarosa Manigault extended an invitation to the 49 members of the CBC to return to the White House for a follow up meeting on June 9th, first reported by CBS News last week.

A CBC source told CBS News that the group was not interested in what they predicted would be another "photo-op."

Richmond specifically lists several efforts by the administration that would "devastate" the African American community, including 

Mr. Trump's 2018 fiscal budget, Attorney General Jeff Sessions plan to "accelerate the failed war on drugs," cuts to funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and the "effort to dismantle our nation's health care system."

Sources say that the CBC is not completely united in the decision to reject Mr. Trump's invitation for a meeting.

In March, the Vice Chair of the CBC Gwen Moore told CBS News that refusing to engage with the President was a "luxury" that she did not have.

We Have a Problem: US Elections are a Hoax [Shrinking White Population Must Rig Elections To Survive]

Not a Democracy. System of White Supremacy. From [HERE] Since the election of Obama in 2008 the country has undergone a remarkable right-ward turn. Anger over the election of a black president surfaced, exploding beyond all expectations. The Tea-Party was born and soon a strong majority of Republican politicians signed the pledge to work to flush the federal government down the toilet. Over the election cycles of 2010, 2012 and 2014 about a 1000 state legislatures seats were lost by Democrats, 69 house seats, 13 senate seats, and 12 governor-ships.

In 2010 the right-wing Supreme Court established Citizens United, steering the US squarely toward what Jeffrey Winters of Northwestern University, an expert in the study of oligarchies around the world, called a “civil oligarchy in which a tiny and extremely wealthy slice of the population is able to use its vastly superior economic brand of politics that serves first and foremost itself”.

Think tanks, front groups, legal organizations and armies of lobbyists concocted reasons why the US never should have become a democracy, and why the last 150 years have been long periods of massive federal and judicial unconstitutional overreach. Coordinating with and aiding politicians in Republican states, thousands and thousands of laws were launched attacking health care, civil rights, environmental protections, and voting rights just to mention a few. The Koch led groups of super-wealthy “investors” (they did not call themselves donors but investors) had a bigger payroll than the Republican Party in 2016. 1600 full time staffers in 35 states, covering 80% of the US population.

In 2013 the radicalized Supreme Court eliminated a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, enabling 24 Republican controlled states to institute voter prevention measures to varying degrees leading to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. This was another stunning decision made by the court and very much against the recent precedents of the Voting Rights Acts of 1970 and 1975. It prevented millions of Democratic voters in a number of Republican states from casting their votes, and resulted directly in the stolen election by Donald Trump. One study by the Nation estimated in an article May 8th that as many 200,000 Wisconsin voters were prevented from voting(Trump won by 22,000), and I expect there will be quite a few more articles surfacing over the next years, detailing the systematic Republican voter suppression in different states that almost certainly would have gone to Hillary Clinton, giving her the clear victory election experts had predicted. 

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Just a few days after the election Greg Palast published how the Crosscheck program in all likelihood led to the Trump victories in Michigan, Arizona, and North Carolina. The Crosscheck system alone blocked 1.4 million voters in heavily democratic districts. Trump won those 3 states by less than 280,000 votes combined. Greg Palast has estimated that 7.2 million voters were tagged due to the Crosscheck program instituted in Republican states. North Carolina and Ohio still refuse to divulge the names on their Crosscheck lists claiming that these individuals could be subjects of criminal investigations. In addition to the Crosscheck program there are more than half a dozen other ways Republican state officials can legally prevent Democratic voters from voting.

Exit polls are considered the gold standard for fair and accurate elections by the US Stare Department and other Western democracies as well. When elections in Peru, the Ukraine, and Serbia showed discrepancies between exit polls and the final vote counts the US and other nations cried foul, and claimed massive voter fraud. Exit polls in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin only to have the final tallies go the way of Donald Trump. Hardly a whimper nor a whisper was heard about this extraordinary fact, not even from Democrats, with their fresh wounds from the 2000 election in Florida and the 2004 election in Ohio. Nor from the so-called mainstream media.

Complicit Dems Could Care Less About Crosscheck & Do Nothing About Purged Black Votes. Watch them do nothing about the non-white votes crosschecked, purged & lost in the GA. 6th district congressional election on Tuesday. 

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Massa'bating Whore Steve Harvey told Black Man in Flint: “Enjoy your nice brown glass of water”

Stop Supporting White Supremacy. Mainstream media is mind control. Part of white supremacy is the annihilation of Black self respect. As explained by Amos Wilson, "the most powerful obstacle against the liberation of Afrikan peoples from White domination and exploitation is not the ability of Whites to use superior military or police firepower or their threat to use it against Afrikan insurgency, but is their ability to engage in unrelenting psychopolitical violence against the collective Afrikan psyche." [MORE] 'Their devastatingly ingenious use of it against the minds of Afrikan peoples which represent the greatest threat to Afrikan survival.' [MORE]  To this end, proxymoronic Blacks, showcase Blacks, Black probots and many other black on black ________ work in service of white domination for their masters.  

In Death of a Dark Nation, Anon states, 

"try to imagine a Jewish comedian using footage of Jews being bulldozed into mass graves as the backdrop for his comedy sketch. Would the Jewish audience be rolling in the aisles with laughter? Or would that comic be looking for a new career - and a new identity - in the morning?" 

Always promoting the ongoing smiling face, SNigger Steve Harvey, tells derogatory Black jokes like a racist because he works on their behalf. And you are the joke. Indulge and degrade yourself. This showcase Black would not be in heavy circulation if he was not promoting white supremacy/racism. As long as he acts like a fool, racists love him and their rewards will keep coming. He is the host of the American talk-variety show. It is produced by Endemol USA and is distributed by NBCUniversal Television Distribution in the United States and in Canada. The show is taped in Chicago, Illinois at the WMAQ studios. The show was renewed through 2016. With the show ending in 2017, Harvey has a new series called Steve set to premiere in September 2017. Harvey also hosted Celebrity Family Feud.

His morning radio talk show is syndicated through Urban One, which owns and operates 55 radio stations in 16 US markets. It is the largest African American-owned broadcasting company in the US, and the largest radio broadcaster targeting African American and urban listeners. As of 2014, the company under the previous name Radio One (until May 2017) was the ninth-highest earning African-American business in the United States. As you can hear from the clip above Urban One offers entertainment consistent with submission to and/or cooperation with the racist oppressive dynamic. Black on black degradation in service of racism/white supremacy. 

Coin-operated Negro. 

Anon further states,

'If we did not support black entertainers who degrade black people, they could not make money doing it. When our "comedy" ridicules our [oppression, like Flint Water crisis] heroes, like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, our religion, churches, pastors, our beautiful black mommas, and our skin, noses, lips, and hair, WE make it harder for every black man, woman, and child to get respect at home, at work, on the street, in the courts, at the mortgage company, and at the hands of law enforcement.

By supporting and defending black "entertainers" who degrade black people for profit, WE are making life harder for every black male who applies for a job and is denied one because he has been stereotyped as an irresponsible fool before he opens his mouth. WE are making life harder for our black mothers, daughters, wives, and lovers to get the respect they deserve, when they are publicly referred to as "bitches" and "hos" by us. Yet we — black people -- demand respect as "black people" even when it is obvious we DO NOT RESPECT ourselves?" [MORE]

According to Doc Blynd in FUNKTIONARY

Self-hatred - absence of knowledge of Self. 2) a projected walking corpse that appears as one's rejected sense of self, culture and ancestral heritage—acting as a mirror and a constant reminder of what one despises in his or her own colonized mind. Self-hatred is a feeling that should be dead—though un-tombed as an apparition—still haunts both our imagined selves as well as the imaagined selves of "others." Self-hatred is a mental disease—a falsification of cultural consciousness. Whoever loves his disease must be cured of love to be cured. (See: Black-on-Black Crime & Narcissistic Projection).

Sambo - a self-loathing Negro lacking self-knowledge. "A willing slave gets upset if you refuse to acknowledge his or her master. Usually when people say 'act responsibly,' what they mean is: 'cowtow to the conforming lies we call truths.'" -George Battailles. The old saying still holds true: "The value of a dollar, will never, ever drop as low as the standards of some miseducated self-hating Negroes to obtain it." (See: Sniggers, Mentacide, Self-Hate & Slavery)

Supreme Court Rules Poor Defendants Are Entitled to Mental Health Experts to Assist in Presenting Defense

From [HERE] On June 19, 2017, the Supreme Court (5-4) ruled in favor of Alabama death-row prisoner James Edmond McWilliams finding that he was denied his constitutional right to the assistance of a mental-health expert in evaluating, preparing, and presenting his defense, and sent the case back to the Eleventh Circuit to decide whether that error had substantial and injurious effect on his sentencing proceedings. The lower courts will determine if McWilliams' death sentence will stand in light of the decision.

McWilaims is a Black man who has been held on Alabama's death row for three decades. He argued he was entitled to an expert independent from prosecutors to gauge his mental health and possibly help him avoid execution.

Writing for the opinion for the Court, Justice Breyer explained that the Alabama courts denial of relief was contrary to a 1985 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Ake v. Oklahoma, which "clearly established that a defendant must receive the assistance of a mental health expert who is sufficiently available to the defense and independent from the prosecution to effectively 'assist in evaluation, preparation, and presentation of the defense.'"

In reaching the decision in this case, the Court explained that "Ake does not require just an examination. Rather, it requires the State to provide the defense with 'access to a competent psychiatrist who will conduct an appropriate [1] examination and assist in [2] evaluation, [3] preparation, and [4] presentation of the defense.'" Because McWilliams was denied the expert assistance to which he was entitled, the Court granted relief.

The conditions that trigger application of Ake are 1) defendant is an indigent defendant 2) his “mental condition” is “relevant to . . . the punishment he might suffer and 3) that “mental condition,” i.e., his “sanity at the time of the offense,” is/was “seriously in question.  If so, the Constitution, as interpreted in Ake, requires the State to provide the defendant with “access to a competent psychiatrist who will conduct an appropriate examination and assist in evaluation, preparation, and presentation of the defense.

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A Jim Crow Victory in GA? YOUR Citizenship Means Nothing If Your Votes Are UnCounted & You Can't Sit On a Jury

Voting in Racist System. From [HERE] and [HERE] Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in a high-stakes special election for a Georgia House seat on Tuesday.

The GOP [White[st] Party] Candidate won by 12,000 votes after 40,000 non-white voter registrations were "lost." What will the Democrats do about it? 

Stop bullshitting yourself.  

There are only a few ways that Americans can meaningfully exercise their citizenship; enlisting in the military, running for national office, voting and serving on a jury. However, as with this special [s]election in GA. Blacks and Latinos are routinely prevented from participating in this meaningless hoax phoney phranchise. 

As explained in FUNKTIONARY

voting hoax - “Help Slave America.” (See: Freedom Technology, Ph.F. Degree, NWO & University of Chocolate City)

voting power - an oxymoron. 2) a transitory form of illusory power. 3) the appearance of power without the juice. -

Voting only provides evidence of our complicity as imagined participants in an already-decided outcome. Dr. Blynd. and [MORE]

[MORE]

Racist Suspects in Congress Considering a bill to expand Jeff Sessions's power to escalate the war on drugs

From [HERE] Congress is considering a bill that would expand the federal government's ability to pursue the war on drugs, granting new power to the attorney general to set federal drug policy.

The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee chairs in both chambers of Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis. It would create a special legal category for these drugs, the first time in nearly 50 years that the Controlled Substances Act has been expanded in this way. And it would set penalties, potentially including mandatory minimum sentences, for the manufacture and distribution of these drugs.

"This bill provides federal law enforcement with new tools to ensure those peddling dangerous drugs, which can be lethal, are brought to justice," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is sponsoring her chamber's version of the bill with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), said in an emailed statement. "It also explicitly exempts simple possession from any penalties, instead targeting those who manufacture and traffic these drugs and opioids." 

The bill, introduced last week and known as the as the Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues (SITSA) Act of 2017, now moves to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs and where Feinstein is the top-ranking Democrat. The House bill is listed as HR 2851.

Under current law, all psychoactive substances are placed in one of five "schedules" designating the drugs' risk of abuse and medical potential. Schedule 1 is the most restrictive, reserved for drugs such as LSD, heroin and marijuana. Schedule 5 is the least restrictive category, which includes medications such as low-dose codeine cough syrup.

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The Murder of Mexican Journalists Points to U.S. Role in Fueling Drug War Violence

From [The Intercept] ONE MONTH AGO, the award-winning journalist Javier Valdez was pulled from his car and killed in broad daylight near his office in Culiacán, in Sinaloa state in Mexico. Valdez is the sixth journalist to be assassinated in Mexico this year, and his killing has sparked outcry and sent new shockwaves of fear through the country’s media.

The journalists being targeted in Mexico have something in common: a commitment to documenting political corruption and state links to drug trafficking. Valdez’s assassination follows a pattern of murder directed at silencing the messengers who are digging up truth and exposing the underbelly of the drug war.

Valdez was the co-founder of Ríodoce, the only independent paper still operating in Culiacán, which is the center of the Sinaloa Cartel and much of the drug war violence in the region. In February, Ríodoce published an interview with an envoy from Dámaso López (“El Licenciado”), formerly the right-hand man of the notorious drug lord “El Chapo” Guzmán. Lopez was apparently moving to take control of the Sinaloa cartel’s territory in a fight with Guzmán’s sons before he was captured by authorities last month. Guzman’s sons reportedly pressured Valdez to not publish the interview. Other journalists who were close to Valdez suspect involvement of Sinaloa and federal authorities in the killing. To date, there have been no arrests reported in the case.

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Gangster Government Snatches Rights During Crisis: Undocumented Muslims Unlawfully Detained for 8 Months Cannot Sue US Gov

The “hold-until-cleared policy" - For Non-whites Only. From [HERE] and [HERE] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 4-2 Monday in Ziglar v. Abbasi [SCOTUSblog materials] that non-white Muslim men detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks cannot sue top US officials. The three consolidated cases center on the arrest and detention of Middle Eastern men illegally present in the US when they were arrested for immigration violations. The men claimed that former US attorney general John Ashcroft, former FBI director Robert Mueller and a former Immigration and Naturalization Services commissioner confined them despite allegedly knowing they had no ties to terrorism.

In the weeks following the September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received more than 96,000 tips from members of the public. Some tips were based on well-grounded suspicion of terrorist activity, but many others may have been based on fear of Arabs and Muslims. FBI agents “questioned more than 1,000 people with suspected links to the [September 11] attacks in particular or to terrorism in general.” 

While investigating the tips—including the less substantiated ones—the FBI encountered many aliens who were present in this country without legal authorization. As a result, more than 700 individuals were arrested and detained on immigration charges. If the FBI designated an alien as not being “of interest” to the investigation, then he or she was processed according to normal procedures. In other words the alien was treated just as if, for example, he or she had been arrested at the border after an illegal entry. If, however, the FBI designated an alien as “of interest” to the investigation, or if it had doubts about the proper designation in a particular case, the alien was detained subject to a “hold-until-cleared policy.” The aliens were held without bail. 

Respondents were among some 84 aliens who were subject to the hold-until-cleared policy and detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York. They were held in the Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit (or Unit) of the MDC. The com- plaint includes these allegations: Conditions in the Unit were harsh. Pursuant to official Bureau of Prisons policy, detainees were held in “‘tiny cells for over 23 hours a day.’ ” 789 F. 3d, at 228. Lights in the cells were left on 24 hours. Detainees had little opportunity for exercise or recreation. They were forbidden to keep anything in their cells, even basic hygiene products such as soap or a tooth- brush. When removed from the cells for any reason, they were shackled and escorted by four guards. They were denied access to most forms of communication with the outside world. And they were strip searched often—any time they were moved, as well as at random in their cells.

Some of the harsh conditions in the Unit were not im- posed pursuant to official policy. According to the com- plaint, prison guards engaged in a pattern of “physical and verbal abuse.” Ibid. Guards allegedly slammed detainees into walls; twisted their arms, wrists, and fingers; broke their bones; referred to them as terrorists; threatened them with violence; subjected them to humiliating sexual comments; and insulted their religion. 

Respondents are six men of Arab or South Asian de- scent. Five are Muslims. Each was illegally in this coun- try, arrested during the course of the September 11 inves- tigation, and detained in the Administrative Maximum Special Housing Unit for periods ranging from three to eight months. After being released respondents were removed from the United States. [MORE]

In an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court noted:

If the facts alleged in the complaint are true, then what happened to respondents in the days following September 11 was tragic. Nothing in this opinion should be read to condone the treatment to which they contend they were subjected. The question before the Court, however, is not whether petitioners' alleged conduct was proper, nor whether it gave decent respect to respondents' dignity and well-being, nor whether it was in keeping with the idea of the rule of law that must inspire us even in times of crisis.

However, the court found that plaintiffs could not bring a Bivens [opinion] claim challenging the detention policy. The court remanded the claim against a jailer regarding detainee treatment to the lower court. The court also found that the officials were entitled to qualified immunity against claims under 42 USC § 1985(3) [text].

Justice Stephen Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elega Kagan and Neil Gorsuch took no part in the case. This is the third case where the court has ruled for Ashcroft [JURIST news archive] in suits against him and other top officials for conduct following the 9/11 attacks.