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Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that he does not support a halt to federal executions after Timothy McVeigh's is carried out next month, arguing that those who have committed "heinous crimes" deserve the ultimate penalty.

In his last moments of life, Robert Waters collapsed in front of the defense table in Courtroom 115 of D.C. Superior Court last Friday and pleaded for help."Get me to D.C. General!" the 54-year-old defendant shouted over and over, according to three witnesses. "I need air!" Struggling for breath while court went on around him, he was taken to a cellblock not a hospital, where he died.

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik has decided not to discipline the four officers who killed Amadou Diallo in a hail of gunfire in the Bronx two years ago, but will order them to undergo retraining in tactics, high-ranking police officials said last night.

The following letter was sent to Fox News Correspondent Rita Cosby. In it, McVeigh says, "I explain herein why I bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win and argument of right or wrong. I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation."

George W. Bush plans to name John P. Walters, a law-and-order conservative who was harshly critical of the Clinton administration's efforts against illegal narcotics, as the drug czar, Bush administration officials said today.

People who face additional prison time as repeat offenders do not have the right to go to federal court to challenge the validity of their earlier convictions, the Supreme Court ruled today in a pair of 5-4 decisions.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch on Tuesday denied Terry Nichols' request to silence Timothy McVeigh's former attorney. Matsch said it would be improper for him to stop the attorney, Stephen Jones of Enid, from commenting on Nichols' alleged role in the bombing plot.

An Oklahoma City police chemist gave testimony “that went beyond the acceptable limits of forensic science” or misidentified hair and fibers in at least six criminal cases, an FBI report states. The FBI is recommending a review of all criminal cases where chemist Joyce Gilchrist linked hair or fibers with a suspect or victim and the evidence “was significant to the outcome of the trial.

Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments today on whether legal immigrants convicted of certain crimes could be deported even if their convictions predated a 1996 law that mandated their expulsion.

A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled today that a police officer who observes someone breaking a law, even a minor infraction for which the maximum penalty is a small fine, can make a full custodial arrest without violating the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable seizure.

While he may be the most visible member of the group, Bud Welch is not alone in opposing the execution on moral and religious grounds.

President Bush will announce his first batch of judicial nominees early next month, and it will be a carefully designed assortment that will include several staunch conservatives as well as some women and members of minorities, administration officials and lawyers said today.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a challenge to the actions Congress took against legal aliens at the height of the national anti-immigrant fervor in 1996.At issue is whether Congress went too far in 1996 when it stripped the federal courts of their authority to review deportation orders. The justices will also consider whether legal immigrants can be removed automatically for offenses committed before the provision became law.

As of last year, nearly 900 sex offenders were locked away for indefinite terms, or as the courts put it "from one day to life." The laws have withstood major legal challenges. But where such laws are in use, states are facing an equally great challenge: sheer cost, a cost that only goes up as the number of sex offenders committed in civil trials rises.

A state judge ruled today that there was sufficient reason to believe that Michael C. Skakel bludgeoned his friend Martha Moxley to death on the night before Halloween in 1975, clearing the way for Mr. Skakel to be tried for murder before a jury later this year.

To speak out against the execution means going against the current, taking a minority position.But some, like the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Indianapolis, Daniel M. Buechlein, whose jurisdiction includes Terre Haute, have. The church opposes the death penalty and the execution of Timothy McVeigh because it can cause society more harm than good by feeding a demand for revenge.

An execution scheduled for Saturday may be the last for a while in this Wild West state. With an unusual coalition of philosophies that could only happen here, Nevada could become the first state to enact a legislative moratorium on the death penalty.

For those who turn to marijuana to alleviate the nausea that results from chemotherapy, the eye pressure from glaucoma and the weight loss from AIDS, there are several groups that buy and distribute the drug for patients. These marijuana clubs typically buy marijuana and sell it to patients who have registered with them.

A prosecution witness who has said repeatedly that he heard Michael C. Skakel confess to the 1975 slaying of Martha Moxley testified today about having used heroin just an hour before appearing in front of the grand jury that eventually charged Mr. Skakel with the crime. And two former Greenwich police officials testified that they had found no physical evidence directly linking Mr. Skakel to the Moxley killing.

Terry Nichols' lawyers asked a federal judge Monday to make Stephen Jones stop talking about the Oklahoma City bombing case. Jones, the Enid, Okla., lawyer who represented Timothy McVeigh in his Denver trial for the bombing, has told journalists recently that he doesn't believe McVeigh acted alone.

A federal judge in Alexandria ruled yesterday that felons have a constitutional right to DNA testing, and he ordered lab work for a Fairfax inmate serving a 25-year sentence for a rape he claims he did not commit.

The Supreme Court this morning delayed the execution of a Virginia man who was to be put to death tomorrow. The court agreed to decide if he received a fair trial since his attorney had also represented the victim in the case.

Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Hawk Sawyer told reporters McVeigh was given details last Friday about his execution, including the clothing he will wear, who he can invite to witness his death, his last meal and what will be done with his belongings and his body. McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 16 at 7 a.m. CDT (8 a.m. EDT) at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Researchers with the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) have confirmed for the first time in people that chemically blocking the brain's cannabinoid receptors -- proteins on the surface of brain cells -- cuts the intoxicating effects of smoked marijuana.

In a surprising vote in the state that leads the nation in putting inmates to death, a committee in the Texas Legislature today endorsed a resolution that would allow voters to decide whether to impose a two- year moratorium on executions while an independent commission examined the fairness of the capital punishment system.

Texas would take steps to give poor defendants a fairer shake in criminal courts under a bill passed Tuesday by the state Senate, but even its author admits it doesn't go far enough. For the first time, the state would require judges to provide court-appointed attorneys to indigent defendants within days of an arrest. The bill also puts up nearly $20 million -- compared to zero now -- in state money to help local judges pay more for defense attorneys and criminal-defense investigations for poor clients.

Macabre and grotesque, bureaucratic and bizarre, the preparations are underway for the May 16 execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.

Attorney General John Ashcroft is leaning toward approval of a closed-circuit feed of the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, which would allow members of the victims' families to observe the lethal injection, Justice Department officials said Monday. Ashcroft will announce a decision Wednesday.

But just as there are problems with lawyers who defend the poor at trial, there are problems with the lawyers appointed to file appeals. Some work for nonprofit organizations and are paid salaries. But many work on their own for low pay and with no supervision. Some have scant experience in criminal law.

Nearly four decades after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent defendants have a right to legal counsel, almost no part of New York City's plan for providing the lawyers functions as it was intended. More than most big cities, New York relies on private lawyers to represent defendants who cannot afford to hire their own.Judges, lawyers and defendants say the system is at the breaking point.

A murder defendant who cannot afford a lawyer can expect to have one appointed for him. That much is the law. But in New York City, there is some basic legal work an indigentdefendant cannot expect.a defendant facing life in prison may get a lawyer who spends as little as 20 hours on the case — half a week's work — and is paid as little as $693.

A defendant may not be sentenced to two mandatory, consecutive terms in prison for possessing a single firearm in an arrest for drug distribution and possession charges, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled.

In the long history of forensic science, prosecutors have found few weapons more powerful than the fingerprint. The whorls, arches, ridges and loops left on a surface by the skin's oil have long been considered virtually unassailable evidence tying a person to a crime.

The Canadian government today proposed rules that would allow terminally ill patients and people suffering from chronic illnesses such as arthritis and AIDS to buy, cultivate and use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

A bill approved unanimously last week by committees in the State Senate and House of Representatives would for the first time set statewide standards and provide $12 million in state financing for a system of representing indigent defendants in Texas, one of only four states that provides no money for that purpose.

Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco called today on Justice Peter G. Verniero to resign from the New Jersey Supreme Court, saying that even given "every benefit of doubt," he misled the State Senate about racial profiling in his confirmation hearings two years ago.

A state prosecutor in Texas has dismissed charges against 17 residents of a small town who were arrested by a drug task force that has been accused of focusing on blacks.

A state Senate committee yesterday approved a one-year moratorium on executions in Maryland, overcoming the objections of its own chairman, who vowed to work to kill the legislation in the full Senate.

Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco said tonight that he would consider urging Justice Peter G. Verniero, who is at the center of a State Senate inquiry into racial profiling by the state police, to step down from the State Supreme Court.

A bill to implement the medical marijuana amendment passed by Colorado voters in November won a preliminary vote in the House of Representatives on Monday. Under the bill each registered patient could have up to six marijuana plants in his or her home and up to 2 ounces of processed pot.

A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled today that because the constitutional right to counsel is "offense specific," the police can question a suspect without a lawyer present even if the suspect has already been charged with a closely related crime and is being represented by a lawyer.

Federal prison inmates will be limited to 300 minutes of telephone calls per month under a new policy launched yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which is hoping to crack down on abuse of phone privileges by some prisoners.

Dozens of court-appointed lawyers for the poor refused to take on new cases in Manhattan Family and Criminal Courts yesterday in a protest over pay rates. The move was the latest in weeks of demonstrations over an hourly pay rate that has not increased in 15 years.

The Supreme Court said on Monday it will decide whether states must prove sexually violent predators cannot control their dangerous criminal behavior before they can be committed for treatment.

A hospice at Angola is a new answer to a pressing question in prisons: what to do with dying inmates. Longer mandatory sentences, tough law-and-order policies that keep criminals behind bars even when they are physically no longer a threat to others, and a quadrupling of the nation's prison population over two decades have led to more dying prisoners.

April 18, 2001, 8:30 a.m., ... NACDL and American University set police misconduct conference

Behind the Blue Wall of Silence: Understanding Police Misconduct Across America. This full-day symposium is co-sponsored by NACDL and the American University Washington College of Law, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Black Police Association, and the Police Complaint Center. At American University Washington College of Law 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.Washington DC 20016

Congress Today

This week's schedule for the House and Senate, including Committee Meetings

Everything you need to effectively educate and lobby your elected officials about the Innocence Protection Act of 2001...from the Justice Project

Fax George W. Bush as he prepares to fill Drug Czar cabinet post.... Stop The War.Com , by (Lindesmith-DPF), the nation’s leading organization working to end the war on drugs, is urging George W. Bush to appoint a drug czar who will “think outside the box,” as Michael Douglas’ character pleads for in the movie Traffic. Join their effort!

Oppose This Amendment! Amending the Constitution is an extreme act that should be done only when there are no other alternatives available. The proposed victims' rights amendment would jeopardize the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial.

Before one more execution is carried out, the federal government and each state that imposes capital punishment have an obligation to ensure that the sentence of death will be imposed with justice, fairness and due process. To address this concern, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has introduced the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001" (S. 233). This legislation would impose a morotirum on federal executions while creating a National Commission on the Death Penalty to review fairness in the administration of capital punishment.

Read the proposed Grand Juror's Bill of Rights--then contact your elected officials and urge passage!

Roll Call's weekly news update covering events on Capitol Hill

The latest headlines from the political front, updated twice daily by The Hotline and the National Journal

Everything you need to effectively educate and lobby your elected officials about the Innocence Protection Act of 2001...from the Justice Project

Full text of S. 486, Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and others on March 7, 2001. An identical bill was introduced in the House.

Full text of S. 191, Bill to Abolish the Federal Death Penalty, Introduced in the Senate by Sen. Russ Feingold on January 31, 2001

These weeks are going to be filled with the white noise of an all-American circus. Any profiteer or publicity hound that can find his way to Terre Haute will do so, and will soon be dutifully showcased on TV for our delectation. But the false pieties of supposed leaders like John Ashcroft and those in the media who mimic his closure mongering are more offensive than the clowns peddling their tacky T-shirts. The circumstances that produce a Timothy McVeigh are not going to be eradicated by shutting down his interviews, banning his words or, for that matter, ending his life. o promote the fiction that such closure is attainable is, as our attorney general would put it, to be a co- conspirator in Mr. McVeigh's assault on America's public safety and upon America itself.

To think that we can deal with our drug problem by limiting supply is irrational. The real need is to reduce the craving. Study after study has shown that treatment of drug abusers is the best and cheapest way to do that. Yet treatment funds are scarce, and the heavy emphasis of our drug policy is on criminal punishment.

It is critical that Democrats and Republican moderates use every weapon at their disposal to force Mr. Bush and his Senate allies to a position of moderation on judicial appointments. Those weapons can include insistence on judicious use of the blue slip policy to secure a balanced array of nominees that includes centrists along with conservatives and a willingness to use the filibuster, if necessary, to block extreme appointments. As a general rule, the president's choices for judgeships deserve significant deference. But senators have a right to make sure that he does not use the appointive power to distort the balance of the federal judiciary for decades to come.

This provision could have the effect of cutting off students who are trying to overcome past troubles with drugs and pursue the education that will help them get ahead. They ought to get help, not hindrance.

What has the war on drugs done for Darryl Strawberry and Robert Downey Jr.?The war on drugs is really a war on people — on anyone who uses or grows or makes or sells a forbidden drug.

We are a nation of savages. Beneath those pompous robes of jurisprudence, we're nothing but cannibals. And, this time, the example has been set right from the top.

The political impulse to be tough on violent crime is understandable. The vengeful inclination to disregard it when the victims are serving time for crimes of their own demeans us all.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Vietnam War was the original reality show. Night after night around dinner time, Walter Cronkite would give the latest report from the front....The reality was shocking....Support for the war plummeted....It was a powerful lesson for future political leaders. If you want the American people to support government policies that involve killing, never let them see it.

Imagine having the impending joy of settling back for a long, leisurely ride on a slow-moving train explode with the terror of being jarred from your seat by a large, angry-looking man in dark military garb accompanied by a mean-looking dog growling viciously at your feet. The scene only could happen in a totalitarian state, you would assume. You'd be wrong. It is occurring in America 2001 -- most specifically, Albuquerque, N.M. -- where train passengers are unknowingly being profiled for profit.

If not for the efforts of a high-powered corporate lawyer, a specialist in mergers and acquisitions who was able to draw on the vast resources of his firm in New York City, Don Paradis would be dead. Mr. Paradis, now 52, was wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death by hanging in Idaho in 1981.

Thirty-eight years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that indigent defendants have a right to legal counsel, New York City's system for fulfilling that constitutional mandate is badly broken.

Despite the growing record of his mistakes as attorney general, Justice Verniero insists that he will not resign. His resistance has provoked calls for impeachment, and the acting governor could ask for censure. A better way to maintain confidence in the state's judiciary would be for Justice Verniero to step down immediately.

The Virginia General Assembly rightly rejected this week Gov. James Gilmore's destructive changes to its DNA bill. The bill was never great; it offered a very narrow exception to the state's rule against the courts'considering newly discovered evidence more than 21 days after a conviction. Virginia currently has one of the most obdurate criminal justice systems in the country. Defendants lack reasonable counsel, largely because the commonwealth declines to pay lawyers in complex cases adequate fees to conduct serious defenses. Ensuring that DNA testing is possible will not alone fix the system. It will, however, provide a stopgap for certain innocent individuals, as well as limit the state's ability to mask the defects in its justice apparatus.

By agreeing to revisit the question of whether the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment bars the execution of the mentally retarded, the Supreme Court has given itself the chance to reconsider and correct one of the Rehnquist court's most shameful decisions on the death penalty.

No single moment in the history of US criminal justice matches the destructive impact of the New York legislature's 1973 session. That was when Governor Nelson Rockefeller set the tone for a national wave of prison-packing schemes with the drug laws that bear his name.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has formally entered the Appeals trial of young Lisl Auman -- the girl who remains locked up in a cell at the Colorado State Prison for the Rest of Her Life with No Possibility of Parole for a bogus crime. Lisl is a living victim of a cold-blooded Political Trial that will cast a long shadow on Denver for many years to come -- she is the only person ever convicted in the United States for Felony Murder while in police custody when the crime happened. The NACDL brings a heavyweight presence to this case that will quickly level the playing field. Nobody needs a public fight with a team of Elite warriors from the NACDL. It will be like having to fight Joe Frazier every day for six months. There will be injuries, and there will be more than one trip to the Emergency Room this time. No more easy wins for the black hats. The worm is about to turn. That is also a good early bet. Take my word for it.

Caught between the War on Drugs and federal adoption law, growing numbers of women prisoners are facing the permanent loss of their children.

The Death Row Interview In a new book, Timothy McVeigh for the first time recounts his bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Here is NEWSWEEK’s exclusive excerpt from ‘American Terrorist’

America has toughened up on kids who murder and commit other crimes. Is it working?

"So defending the reviled, even those who are guilty, is not some mental trick, nor even a moral struggle for me. I don't lack imagination or willfully close my eyes to another's suffering. Rather, the reality of my clients -- their suffering, their fear -- is more vivid to me than that of the victims. My clients are the ones left exposed. They are the ones who are hated. They are the ones who desperately need my protection. Everyone else can look out for the victims. And they do, of course."

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