Former state attorneys general ask Supreme Court to ban Oklahoma execution drug cocktail

Jurist

More than a dozen former state attorneys general on Tuesday asked [press release] the US Supreme Court to rule Oklahoma's use of the three-drug execution cocktail unconstitutional. The attorneys general argue that this type of execution violates the constitutional rights of three death row inmates scheduled for execution. In an amicus brief [text, PDF] organized by the Constitution Project [advocacy website], the former state officials argued that Oklahoma's use of midazolam, a sedation drug, as a part of its lethal injection protocol does not properly induce unconsciousness. Officials claim that this may result in an extremely painful death, which would be a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The officials claim that there are other alternatives that can be used instead of the three-drug cocktail. On January 28, the court blocked Oklahoma from using midazolam until it can decide the case of the inmates, Richard Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole Sr.

New Mexico passes bill ending civil asset forfeiture

Jurist

The New Mexico legislature on Saturday passed a bill [text] that will end civil asset forfeiture in the state. The bill, HB 560, was passed in the senate by a vote of 37-0. Civil asset forfeiture is a police practice in which authorities can take an individual's property without charging that person for a crime. The bill abolishes this practice, and now before police may seize an individual's property they must convict that person of a crime.

The bill abolishes this practice, and now before police may seize an individual's property they must convict that person of a crime and prove that the property being seized was used in the commission of that crime. Additionally, the bill directs any monetary gains from the seizure of property to the state's general fund instead of the police budget. This is thought to remove any incentive police may have to seek out opportunities to seize property. The bill will now move to Republican Governor Susana Martinez's [official website] for a final signature.

New York and San Diego Police Departments Edit Wikipedia Entries on Alleged Police Brutality Cases

All Gov

Employees of at least two police departments have tried to make their fellow officers look better by editing the Wikipedia entries on police brutality in their agencies.

Notably, someone at New York Police Department (NYPD) headquarters edited the entry on Eric Garner, who died when placed in a chokehold by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, making numerous changes, such as:

• “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”
• “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”
• Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”

Kelly Weill of Capital New York also reported that someone at NYPD headquarters altered the entry relating to Sean Bell, an unarmed man shot to death by police officers, and that of Alexien Lien, who was tracked down by bikers and an undercover NYPD officer and beaten. In all, 85 IP addresses registered to NYPD headquarters were used to edit Wikipedia articles, Capital New York reported.

The NYPD has identified two officers who made edits, but said they’ll be lightly reprimanded for using city equipment for private business or face no sanctions at all.

Across the country in San Diego, a department employee has also altered Wikipedia entries to put a more police-friendly slant on articles. Daniel Weiss, listed as a dispatcher in San Diego police records, deleted whole sections of articles on brutality committed by members of his department using computer connections controlled by the city.

“Anything that was deleted was due to inaccuracies as stated in the comments,” Weiss told U-T San Diego. “Especially the ‘misconduct’ section, which had bad information and was not linked to the department in many circumstances.” Other changes were made anonymously, but Weiss claims not to have made those edits.

US Refuses to Seriously Tackle Police Brutality and Racism

CounterPunch 

The report released in early March by a panel President Obama appointed to examine serious shortcomings in police practices across America, including the shooting of unarmed people, mostly non-white, listed problems and proposed solutions that are hauntingly similar to those found in a report on police abuses released 47 years ago by another presidential panel.

The March 1968 report of the presidential panel popularly known as the Kerner Commission noted with dismay that many minorities nationwide regarded police as “an occupying force” – a presence that generated fear not feelings of security.

The March 2015 report from President Obama’s panel made a similar finding, noting that perceptions of police as an “occupying force coming in from the outside to rule and control the community” had sabotaged the ability of law enforcement to build trust in many communities.

Reactions to police brutality, particularly fatal encounters, triggered protests and riots that sparked both President Barack Obama and President Lyndon Johnson almost two generations earlier to appoint these two panels.

Sadly, the recommendations from President Obama’s panel could sink under the weight of the same forces that sank full implementation of the Kerner Commission proposals: systemic recalcitrance from all sectors of American society to reforms devised to remediate festering race-based inequities.

The Obama panel recommended “civilian oversight of law enforcement,” calling this step essential to “strengthen trust with the community.” The Kerner Commission report had similarly called for the establishment of “fair mechanisms to redress grievances” against police.

However, for decades, police unions, backed by “law-and-order” politicians, in city councils, state legislatures and Congress, have vigorously opposed independent oversight by civilians and even oversight from governmental entities.

Such opposition mounted by America’s national police union – the Fraternal Order of Police – early last year killed Obama’s nomination of a civil rights lawyer to head the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The national FOP in that case made it clear it resented any Justice Department monitoring of state and local police practices. Despite patterns of police misconduct that had led to what was at best only infrequent Justice Department monitoring, U.S. Senators – Republicans and Democrats – backed the national police union’s opposition to Obama’s nominee.

The Kerner Commission, which had examined race-based inequities beyond police brutality, called for a massive influx of resources to tackle poverty and discrimination.

That proposal from President Johnson’s panel, formally titled The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders because it was a wave of riots and uprisings in cities across the country in the 1960s that led to its creation, prompted immediate opposition from conservatives. Resources being poured into the war in Vietnam further crippled that proposal. [MORE]

The TSA “behavior detection” officers think they can spot a terrorist from our involuntary facial expressions.

Our [so-called] “Free Press”: The Influence of Money and Politics on Editorial Content

4th Media

There are many reasons not to trust the mainstream media (MSM). Most, if not all those reasons, have been analyzed by independent news outlets. The MSM is owned by private companies and financed by advertising, both of which have a clear influence on its editorial content and the overall agenda setting.

It has also been proven in the past, during the Church Committee, that the CIA, like other intelligence agencies, uses the mainstream media for propaganda purposes by planting stories and using journalism as a cover for agents. The mainstream media’s complaisance towards governments has also been exposed, namely with the New York Times’ yearlong silence on wiretapping under the Bush administration.

Recently, however, several stories from mainstream journalists have emerged, exposing the corrupt nature of the MSM, thus weighing in on the growing mistrust it inspires.

The influence of money and politics on editorial content

Former chief political commentator of the Telegraph Peter Oborne resigned from the newspaper because it would not publish articles on HSBC for fear of losing advertising revenues. The bank is well-known for its money-laundering for Mexican drug cartels as well as its involvement in tax evasion schemes.

In an opinion piece called “Why I Resigned From the Telegraph” he wrote:

“The coverage of HSBC in Britain’s Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril…

From the start of 2013 onwards stories critical of HSBC were discouraged. HSBC suspended its advertising with the Telegraph. Its account, I have been told by an extremely well informed insider, was extremely valuable. HSBC, as one former Telegraph executive told me, is “the advertiser you literally cannot afford to offend”…

Winning back the HSBC advertising account became an urgent priority. It was eventually restored after approximately 12 months. Executives say that Murdoch MacLennan [the chief executive] was determined not to allow any criticism of the international bank. “He would express concern about headlines even on minor stories,” says one former Telegraph journalist.

“Anything that mentioned money-laundering was just banned, even though the bank was on a final warning from the US authorities. This interference was happening on an industrial scale.” Peter Oborne, “Why I Resigned From the Telegraph,” Open Democracy, February 17, 2015)

When it comes to powerful lobbies’ influence on media content, the Zionist lobby is very well known for accusing journalists and editors of anti-Semitism and imposing its own propaganda. Even so-called progressive newspapers such as The Guardian are subject to Zionist propaganda. David Cronin writes about his experience:

I submitted an exposé of how the pro Israel lobby operates in Brussels. While waiting to find out if the piece would be used, I phoned Matt Seaton, who had taken over as comment editor. We had a pleasant conversation but Seaton stressed that he regarded the subject as sensitive.

I, then, modified the piece to make its tone less polemical. Still, it was not published…

Cronin decided to write about his experience when he realized that The Guardian was offering platforms to Israeli politicians and their propaganda:

“Daniel Taub, Israel’s ambassador to the UK … uses a quote attributed to Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, to hit back at aid agencies who accuse Israel of impeding Gaza’s reconstruction: “We will only have peace when our enemies love their children more than they hate ours.”

The inference that Palestinians hate Israelis more than they love their children is a racist caricature…

Taub’s article was the second one published by The Guardian in as many months from a senior Israeli political or diplomatic figure. In February, the paper gave Yair Lapid, until recently Israel’s finance minister, a platform to describe calls for a cultural boycott of Israel as “shallow and lacking in coherence.” (David Cronin, “How The Guardian Told Me to Steer Clear of Palestine,” Electronic Intifada, 11 March 2015)

Cronin’s experience is only one of countless stories about the infamous pro-Israeli bias of the mainstream media. As someone working for the Canadian public broadcaster CBC-Radio-Canada once told me: “The journalists are not the ones who are biased. They know exactly what’s going on in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s the big bosses who are scared of the Zionist lobby.”

“Non-official cover”: Journalists working for the CIA and the Mossad

What is non-official cover?

“Non-official cover” occurs when a journalist is essentially working for the CIA, but it’s not in an official capacity. This allows both parties to reap the rewards of the partnership, while at the same time giving both sides plausible deniability.

The CIA will find young journalists and mentor them. Suddenly doors will open up, rewards will be given, and before you know it, you owe your entire career to them. That’s essentially how it works. (Michael Krieger, “‘Non-Official Cover’ -Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media,” Liberty Blitzkrieg 8 October 2014)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s former editor Udo Ulfkotte recently published a book called Bought Journalists. How Politicians, Secret Services and High Finance Control the Mass Media (Gekaufte Journalisten), in which he explains how journalists manipulate the masses for powerful interests:

Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short. (“Ralph Lopez, Editor of Major German Newspaper Says He Planted Stories for the CIA,” Reader Supported News, February 04, 2015)

Ulfkotte’s book is a bestseller in Germany, yet mainstream journalists are not allowed to report on it. (Watch Ulfkotte’s interview on RT)

He says “the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.” In turn, when a CIA officer leaks to the press important documents showing how the agency tried to manipulate the public with fake intelligence, probably aimed at justifying another war, he’s sent to jail for “breaching public trust.”

In late January “a former CIA employee, Jeffrey Sterling, was convicted of giving classified information to a New York Times reporter”:

Sterling is accused of telling [New York Times Reporter James] Risen about a CIA operation that had provided flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in 2000. The charges are unproven.

But no one disputes that Sterling told Senate Intelligence Committee staffers about the CIA action, dubbed “Operation Merlin,” which Risen’s book later exposed and brought to light as dumb and dangerous.

While ostensibly aiming to prevent nuclear proliferation, the CIA risked advancing it. (Norman Solomon, “America’s Fake Intelligence on Iran: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower,” Global Research, January 05, 2015)

“Operation Merlin” was actually a CIA-Mossad plot. Gordon Prather asked back in 2008:

“What if CIA-Mossad hoped that the Iranians would at least put the “Operation Merlin” stuff into their files, perhaps even correcting the errors and building working prototypes, to be found by the IAEA at a later date, providing “evidence” that the Russians were helping the Iranians develop nuclear weapons? (Gordon Prather, “Operation Merlin II,” Antiwar.com, March 8, 2008)

When Sterling was convicted, US Attorney General Eric Holder claimed: “The disclosures placed lives at risk and they constituted an egregious breach of the public trust by someone who had sworn to uphold it.”

So the chief lawyer of the US, the man who represents the “justice system”, is clearly saying that those who disclose plots of fake evidence to justify war “breach public trust,” while the plotters who want to fool the public and international officials are the ones who “uphold it.” Absurdity is not strong enough a word to describe this.

Another book stirred some controversy recently, Au service de la République, (Serving the Republic) Roger Auque’s memoirs published posthumously.

Auque, a well-known journalist who worked for major French magazines as well as the French Canadian public network Radio-Canada, admitted: “I was paid by the Israeli secret services to lead operations in Syria, using reporting as a cover.”

Le Figaro, one of France’s leading magazines for which he worked, writes that “he also offered his services to the DGSE, (the French CIA) before becoming an object of interest for the CIA.”

Contrary to Ulfkotte who’s filled with remorse, the French reporter was “not at all ashamed of this revelation.”

These few examples show once again the importance of independent media and how the corporate mainstream media is nothing but a mouthpiece for powerful interests who do not want you to be informed but rather want to manufacture consent and keep you in the dark about important issues.

Colorado Eyewitness Identification Bill May Help Reduce Wrongful Convictions

In an op-ed published yesterday in the Denver Post, Innocence Project State Policy Advocate Amshula Jayaram and Executive Director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council Tom Raynes write in support of a bill that would require Colorado police to implement best practice eyewitness identification procedures. Senate Bill 58, which recently passed the Senate, will be taken up by the House Judiciary Committee this week.

The bill reflects what began as a year-long partnership and dialogue between the Office of the Attorney General, the Colorado District Attorneys Council, the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, and the Innocence Project. This partnership focused on creating a collaborative effort to minimize error in eyewitness identification practices and to ultimately reduce the rate of wrongful convictions due to current identification procedures.

Jayaram and Raynes write:

Eyewitness misidentification is much more common than people might think. According to research on archival cases, 35 percent of eyewitnesses make identifications that are wrong. Roughly 72 percent of DNA exonerations resulted from a wrongful conviction that involved misidentification, including cases wherein as many as eight witnesses misidentified the same individual.

Wrongful convictions not only harm the innocent, they also pose a serious threat to public safety. If investigators are focused on an innocent person, the real perpetrator remains free to harm others. Real perpetrators were found in 92 of the nation's 233 DNA exonerations that stemmed from a wrongful conviction involving misidentification. Those individuals went on to commit 102 additional violent crimes, many of which were rapes and murders. [MORE]

Make cop cameras automated [or identify and fire all racist cops]

Aljazeera

Starbucks will stop writing 'Race Together' on cups

Aljazeera

Starbucks baristas will no longer write "Race Together" on customers' cups starting Sunday, ending the most visible component of a diversity and racial inequality campaign that sparked widespread criticism in the week since it took effect.

The coffee chain's initiative will continue without the handwritten messages, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said.

The cups were always "just the catalyst" for a larger conversation, and Starbucks will still hold discussion sessions, co-produce special sections in USA TODAY and put more stores in minority communities as part of the Race Together initiative, according to a company memo from CEO Howard Schultz.

The campaign has been criticized as opportunistic and inappropriate, coming in the wake of national protests over several recent police killings of unarmed black men. On social media, some questioned whether Starbucks workers could spark productive conversations about race while serving coffee.

“Does the #RaceTogether conversation include #Starbucks discussing its own racial diversity?” tweeted Colorlines, a news site focused on racial justice issues. It reported that 86 percent of the Starbucks corporate board is white, while 40 percent of its workers are black.

Other users tweeted that they didn't have time “to explain 400 years of oppression to you and still make my train,” and made puns on adding “extra whip” to their lattes.

In his memo, Schultz said he expected skepticism. “I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you — let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Schultz wrote in a letter to staff and released by the company on Sunday. “We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters most.”

He said the campaign hopes to make sure that "the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few."

Schultz said Starbucks plans more “Race Together” activities, including efforts to expand into urban neighborhoods and hire 10,000 “opportunity youth” over the next three years.

Prisons Are Making America's Drug Problem Worse

Politico 

Today, Gordon Goodwin is in federal prison in Atlanta.  Not too many years ago, he was a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, on track for law school. He enjoyed tennis and mountain biking. Today, his future looks bleak—failed by prison drug treatment policies that even the Bureau of Prisons admits don’t work, policies opposed by science and medical professionals, including groups like the World Health Organization.

As criminal justice reform becomes a major topic of conversation in Washington, Goodwin’s journey from would-be law student to prison addict is a cautionary tale of how inmates in the bureaucratic federal system are set up to fail—and how those failures ripple through the prison system and waste taxpayers’ dollars at a time when both states and the federal government are looking to rein in spending.

Because, unfortunately, Gordon’s story—while remarkable—isn’t necessarily an outlier.

In 2009, as a 20-year-old history major at UNC-Chapel Hill, he had a bout of kidney stones and became addicted to oxycodone and other opioid painkillers after taking them as prescribed for only one week. By 2011, in an all-too-common transition, Gordon began using its cheaper, more accessible relative: heroin. He went in and out of treatment programs and tried to keep up with his coursework, but his life went into a downward spiral. He started to gamble compulsively, and with debts to repay and a heroin habit to support, he committed three bank robberies between November 2011 and May 2012. After the final incident, Gordon was arrested, pled guilty and received a sentence of 47 months in federal prison for bank robbery.

Gordon’s addiction did not disappear once he entered the Federal Correctional Institution in Beckley, West Virginia, a medium-security prison, in March of 2013. In an effort to end his worsening cravings, he completed a prison treatment program and drug education classes. Gordon and his mother, Diana, pleaded with federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials in writing and in person to give him a medication called Suboxone, a form of buprenorphine that his doctor had prescribed before he entered federal custody to block his craving for drugs. The officials refused. As a matter of policy, the BOP does not provide buprenorphine, methadone or other medication-assisted therapies (MAT) for opioid addiction—a policy that has had disastrous consequences for Gordon and the roughly 15 percent of all U.S. inmates that have a history of heroin addiction.

It’s a policy that even the Bureau of Prisons admits doesn’t work—and one with an obvious negative outcome.

Opioid dependence is a chronic, relapsing disease, and Gordon eventually found narcotics in prison. Drug-related incidents followed, including a failed urine test result that sent him to solitary confinement for 45 days and led to the loss of visiting privileges, including visits with his family, for one year. Gordon appealed those sanctions; “I have done everything I can to get better,” he said. The appeal was denied and because of his drug use he was transferred to a high security prison. Over the Christmas holidays, Gordon was stabbed by another prisoner and is now awaiting transfer to another unit, his future uncertain.  

After two decades of rapidly rising incarceration rates—rates that continued to rise even as crime sat at record historic lows—America today has nearly 2.2 million adult inmates in local, state and federal jails and prisons, including about 300,000 who have a history of heroin addiction. The BOP spends $110 million annually on drug treatment programs for approximately 80,000 inmates identified as dependent on narcotics. But for the 10,000 or so federal inmates dependent on heroin or other opioids, millions of those dollars are currently spent on outdated, ineffective approaches that wrongly prohibit medication-assisted therapies—approaches that, in other words,fail to help prisoners addicted to opioids during their sentence and ultimately return them afterwards to society as addicted as they were when they went into jail. [MORE]

Thai Farm Hands Worked to Death in Israel -[all day, 30 days a month for $500]

Pardons Elude Black Men Freed After Decades in North Carolina Prison

NY Times

In the days leading up to the one last summer when Henry L. McCollum left North Carolina’s death row, it seemed that inmates and staff members could not stop talking about what awaited him beyond Central Prison.

The man who had spent almost his entire adult life awaiting execution would be able to go out for fried chicken, his favorite. Maybe he could strike a movie deal. At the very least, Mr. McCollum remembers, people told him that he would be a man of considerable wealth once the state paid him the $750,000 he could seek under North Carolina law because he had been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for decades.

Mr. McCollum, 50, was released from prison last September after DNA evidence showed that he did not rape and murder a young girl in 1983. But since then, he and his half brother, Leon Brown, who was also exonerated and freed in the same case, have led anything but glamorous post-prison lives. Instead, because of legal decisions made to help accelerate their release, as well as Gov. Pat McCrory’s deliberate approach to granting what is known here as a pardon of innocence, both men have clung to a minimal existence, absent substantive remuneration, counseling or public aid in transitioning back to society.

“If the governor called me, I would tell him the reason why I need his pardon: I would tell him I deserve this pardon,” Mr. McCollum said. “I did 31 years in prison for a crime I did not commit. I could have given up a long time ago and told the state to kill me.”

So far, though, Mr. McCrory has not acted on the pardon applications of Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown, whose I.Q. scores were previously recorded in the 50s.

Because of the approach lawyers used to secure swifter releases for the two men, neither is entitled to wrongful conviction compensation until he gets a pardon.

The men were teenagers — Mr. McCollum was 19 and Mr. Brown, 15 — when they were arrested in Red Springs in September 1983 in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Sabrina Buie. They were convicted about a year later.

But Judge Douglas B. Sasser of Robeson County Superior Court concluded last year that “no physical evidence, either at the time of their arrest or at any time since, linked Mr. McCollum or Mr. Brown to the scene or the commission of this crime.” Judge Sasser also found that the case against the men, who are black, was built “almost entirely” on the inconsistent confessions that they quickly recanted.

DNA recovered from the crime scene was linked decades later to Roscoe Artis, who is serving a life sentence for another 1983 rape and murder in Red Springs. (Mr. Artis has not been charged in the death of Sabrina Buie.)

Mr. McCollum and Mr. Brown each received $45 when they left prison and have lived on charity since. They lived for a time at a home here, where Mr. Brown slept on a couch in one room and Mr. McCollum’s mattress and box spring were on the floor in another.

Without money for a car or any knowledge about how to drive one, the men walked to a grocery to buy subsistence fare like canned potatoes and pork and beans. Mr. McCollum, who was a janitor in prison, said he wanted to apply for a job but was reluctant until he had a pardon.

Mr. Brown, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, is far more reticent than Mr. McCollum, but he talked of starting a church or a radio ministry.

Both say that until Mr. McCrory issues them pardons, they cannot fully set aside what happened over about 31 years.

Theresa A. Newman, a co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke University Law School, said such sentiments were common among men who had been cleared by judges but not by governors. She said the mostly closed nature of the lengthy process could prove demoralizing.

“Just having some information would be very, very powerful, and I think it would hold these men up slightly,” said Ms. Newman, who is not involved in the McCollum or Brown case. “Why would they trust the state to do the right thing?” [MORE]

Federal judge orders prosecutors to detail D.C. police evidence problems

Washington Post

A federal judge in the District ordered prosecutors on Thursday to turn over more information to defense lawyers about a recently disclosed D.C. police computer problem that may have caused information to be withheld from attorneys in thousands of criminal cases.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan set a March 27 deadline for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to report on “the government’s understanding of the extent” to which the problem could affect any of about two dozen federal criminal cases pending before him and filed since 2011. Prosecutors were also told to explain decisions to disclose or not to disclose any piece of information that is found to have been withheld.

The orders apparently are the first by a judge of the U.S. District Court or D.C. Superior Court that address the issue. Federal prosecutors and D.C. police routinely appear before these courts.

Sullivan, a 1994 Clinton appointee to the District Court, did not elaborate on his reasoning in his orders, but he has led efforts in the D.C. federal court and the federal judiciary nationwide to ensure that prosecutors meet their constitutional obligation to turn over potentially helpful information to defendants.

In recent months, Sullivan similarly prodded prosecutors to detail the impact of the discovery that an FBI agent, Matthew Lowry, working on a Washington narcotics task force allegedly had stolen heroin from evidence bags, forcing the dismissal of cases against 28 defendants.

Cases covered under Sullivan’s new orders include some previously flagged by prosecutors because of Lowry’s involvement, including a 33-defendant alleged drug conspiracy.

Since 2009, Sullivan — who presided over the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of former Alaska senator Ted Stevens (R), in which attorneys from Justice’s Public Integrity Section concealed evidence — has pressed unsuccessfully for judicial rule changes that would require prosecutors to turn over all information favorable to defendants, not just what they decide at their discretion to be relevant.

Bill Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’ s Office, said, “We are reviewing the orders and have no further comment at this time.”

The court’s action came after U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. on Monday wrote to the heads of the Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association and the D.C. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as of the federal and local public defender services of the District, explaining that his office had recently been notified that some information recorded by D.C. police during criminal investigations was inadvertently omitted from final police reports.

Those reports, which may include witness accounts or evidence forms, are given to defense attorneys.

Prosecutors indicated that they had uncovered “a significant issue . . . regarding the preservation of police reports in the data management system presently maintained by the Metropolitan Police Department.”

The letter added that in “all cases, at whatever stage, all necessary disclosures will be made, and where a nondisclosure in a past case was sufficiently material, the USAO will review the disposition of that case.” 

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine has announced that his office will examine all its cases closed since Jan. 1, 2012, for problems related to the D.C. police computer program, called I/Leads, which has been in use since September 2012.After a police officer in one case insisted that he had included certain details that went undisclosed, Racine’s office discovered that some information filled out by police failed to download into final versions.

Utah considers resuming firing squad executions - that is, White People in Utah consider resuming firing squad executions

BBC

Lawmakers in Utah have proposed resuming the use of firing squads to carry out the death penalty if lethal injections drugs are not available.

US states such as Texas are struggling to obtain lethal injection drugs amid a nationwide shortage.

Other states are considering alternative methods after several inmates who received lethal injections took hours to die.

It is not clear if Utah Governor Gary Herbert will sign the measure into law.

The bill that passed the state senate on Tuesday night would reinstate the use of firing squads more than a decade after the state abandoned the practice.

The bill's sponsor, Republican lawmaker Paul Ray, said using a firing squad would be faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.

But opponents call firing squads a cruel practice from the state's Wild West days. If approved, Utah would become the only US states to execute inmates by firing squad.

Florida: Life Sentences for Juveniles Thrown Out - all must be re-sentenced

NY Times

The State Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that all of Florida’s juvenile offenders who received automatic sentences of life in prison must be resentenced under a law passed in 2014. The long-awaited ruling answers the question of whether the United States Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama, which effectively banned automatic life sentences for juvenile killers, applies retroactively. An estimated 250 state prisoners, 17 of them from Lee and Collier Counties, are serving life sentences for murders committed before they turned 18. Under Florida’s 2014 law, passed to conform with the Supreme Court decision, only juveniles who committed homicides after July 2014 were subject to a revised sentencing structure, which required a judge to consider several factors before determining a prison term. For about 20 years before the law’s passage, Florida mandated a life sentence for juveniles convicted of first-degree murder. After the law passed, Florida trial and appeal courts have grappled with whether juveniles who killed before July 2014 and received automatic life sentences should receive the same consideration. The state’s five appeals courts gave conflicting opinions. Justice Barbara J. Pariente wrote in the opinion handed down Thursday, “The patent unfairness of depriving indistinguishable juvenile offenders of their liberty for the rest of their lives, based solely on when their cases were decided, weighs heavily in favor of applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller retroactively.”