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City and county governments will spend at least $17.6 million next fiscal year investigating police misconduct and improving police operations, a figure that officials say could rise as the corruption probe grows.

A private juvenile prison criticized by federal officials for inhumane conditions will be converted into a lockup for adult convicts, the prison's owner said Wednesday. The move marks "the end of the experimentation with privatization of the juvenile facilities in Louisiana."

The Hawaii Senate passed a bill today to remove state-level criminal penalties for seriously ill people who use marijuana with their doctors' approval.

A black youth is six times more likely to be locked up than a white peer, even when charged with a similar crime and when neither has a prior record, says a new civil rights report contending racial bias exists at every step of the juvenile justice process.

Nationally known advocates against the death penalty scheduled to meet in Binghamton this weekend will tell you the law is unfair and falling from public favor. Officials elected to represent the Southern Tier say it's a useful part of the criminal justice system, although reform is necessary.

The federal judge presiding over the Branch Davidians' wrongful-death lawsuit denied the Justice Department's request to throw out most of the plaintiffs' claims Monday.

In light of the high price of repeat offenses in dollars and in crime, analysts and policymakers inside and outside the government are studying what happens after prison ends. More must be done, they believe, for inmates released into an often unforgiving world of scarce services and thin support.

Arguments over the tactics that the Justice Department used to seize Elián González from the home of his Miami relatives have divided not just politicians and people transfixed by an image of a gun-toting agent reaching for the boy, but have also split many former law-enforcement officials.

Inmates have a much smaller chance of being released on parole now than they did in the early 1990's, state figures show, and for the most violent inmates, the chance of early parole has almost been eliminated.

Federal agents staged a lightning raid Saturday morning on the home of the relatives of Elián González, removing the boy by force and reuniting him in Washington with his father.

More than 2,000 protesters marched about three miles from Brooklyn to City Hall to demand Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's resignation over his handling of fatal police shootings of unarmed black men.

Miranda's moment of truth, a richly symbolic test of whether this landmark of the Warren Court will survive the much more conservative era of the Rehnquist Court, arrived this morning in a crowded Supreme Court with the justices armed for battle. As theater, the argument was first-rate. As a predictor of the outcome of this case, which asks the court to weigh Miranda against a long-ignored 1968 federal law by which Congress sought to overrule it, the session was less satisfying.

The following are excerpts from the official transcript of the arguments today before the Supreme Court in Dickerson v. United States, as recorded by the Alderson Reporting Company.

The number of imprisoned American adults hit a record high of 1.86 million, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The United States may have matched or even surpassed Russia as the country with the highest rate of incarceration.

The Supreme Court today set aside the death sentences of two convicted murderers in Virginia, indicating in two separate decisions that despite sharp restrictions imposed on federal courts by a 1996 law, federal judges still have a significant role to play in reviewing the quality of justice administered by the states.

Castigating the Department of its self-interested approach to asset seizures under the civil forfeiture statutes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned a ruling that had upheld the government's seizure of $109,000 in the case of a fugitive and accused child abuser who founded an orphanage in Guatemala.

A federal appeals court has ordered a freeze on sex offender notifications in New Jersey until it has time to review the fairness of procedures being used by officials who issue the warnings.

Lockney, with only 2,200 residents, has become an unlikely constitutional battleground. The school board here enacted what is considered the toughest school drug testing policy in the nation. It requires that all junior and senior high school students take a mandatory drug test. A parent, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit in March asserting that the policy violated his and his son's Fourth Amendment rights prohibiting unreasonable searches.

Despite a sharp decline in juvenile arrests in recent years, even for serious felonies, more youngsters are now detained, awaiting trial, in New York City's juvenile jails than at any other time in a decade.

Their ranks are admittedly small, but their views seem incompatible with their political philosophy. Still, in recent weeks a number of prominent conservatives with tough law and order credentials have raised questions about -- of all things -- the death penalty.

The Florida Supreme Court on Friday voided most of a new law intended to speed death penalty appeals but promised to address the issue itself. The justices unanimously found that parts of the Death Penalty Reform Act of 2000, which was passed during a special legislative session in January, violate the separation of powers clause in the Florida Constitution.

President Clinton yesterday delivered the most vigorous and sustained defense yet of the scandals that have marred his administration, saying that he does not want or need a pardon for possible perjury charges and that he is still waiting for journalists to report that the Whitewater investigation "was a lie and a fraud from the beginning."

After years of complaints about abusive government conduct, Congress completed legislation today that would make it harder for the federal government to confiscate property from people before it actually brings charges in criminal cases.

Youth violence is falling, but more children are paying the price of public fears driven by high-profile school shootings -- harsher punishments for nonviolent or minor offenses -- says a new report.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has endorsed a moratorium on the death penalty, saying it isn't always applied fairly.

A federal judge has dismissed a $33 million lawsuit filed against a group of entertainment companies by the families of three victims in the Heath High School shootings.

4/6/2000...Europeans Baffled by U.S. Support of Death Penalty ...Los Angeles Times

If character can be judged by the company one keeps, Americans are running with what Europeans see as a dangerously rough crowd that still practices capital punishment.

Three men who spent years in jail waiting to die for murders they didn't commit came to the Capitol on Wednesday to seek a halt to all U.S. executions until stronger safeguards are in place to ensure innocent people aren't executed.

According to a recent poll, nine in ten Americans support genetic testing to resolve long-held claims of innocence

Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott Monday killed prospects that the Senate will quickly pass a spending package to help Colombia fight illegal drugs, even though the House passed such a measure last week.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the execution of Robert Glen Coe just 15 hours before he was to die by lethal injection early Wednesday. The court also stayed the execution of Philip Workman, set to die early Thursday. Coe claims he is insane and shouldn't be executed for raping and killing 8-year-old Cary Ann Medlin in 1979. Workman argues that there is new evidence showing that he did not fire the fatal shot that killed Memphis police Lt. Ronald Oliver in 1981.

FBI Director Louis Freeh expects to leave his job during the latter part of this year because of mounting financial pressures, and intermediaries are actively hunting for higher-paying jobs for him, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

In an emergency appeal, the Clinton administration asked a federal appeals court Monday to set aside a judge's finding that President Clinton committed a crime when he released letters from presidential accuser Kathleen Willey.

Hoang Duc Nguyen's 10-month prison sentence ended five months ago, but he is still behind bars. U.S. law says the 30-year-old immigrant must be deported, but the country he fled as a child refugee won't take him back. That's left Nguyen in a legal no man's land, and he isn't alone. An estimated 3,400 immigrants with criminal records are in similar holding patterns at Immigration and Naturalization Service detention centers and jails across the United States.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan – a death penalty supporter who prompted a flurry of activity after suspending executions in his state – lent his backing Thursday to federal legislation seeking stronger protections for capital defendants.

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

"A New Millenium: Time to Stop Tinkering with the Machinery of Death," Monday, April 10, 2000, Noon, Columbia Law School, New York City

On Monday, April 10, 2000, at Noon, Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., will be speaking at Columbia Law School (116th St. and Amsterdam), Room 104, in N.Y.C. on: "A New Millenium: Time to Stop Tinkering with the Machinery of Death" -- a speech calling for abolition of the death penalty, beginning with the Federal Death Penalty. All are welcome. Please come and bring friends and colleagues.

Innocence Protection Act Needs Your Support! Please contact these officials and request passage.

Text of the Innocence Protection Act

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, signed into law by President Clinton on April 25, 2000, has a strong legislative history. The following remarks by members of Congress are part of the legislative history of the bill and may be determinative when courts seek to interpret the new provisions.

Criminal defense lawyers assert compromises have tarnished the gains made by the new forfeiture reform bill.

Richard Troberman, Esq., Co-Chair, Forfeiture Abuse Task Force, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Submits his Analysis of the Forfeiture Reform Bill, S. 1931, Passed by the Senate Judiciary on March 23, 2000

The fact is, even on the assumption (which I share) that under applicable legal and moral principles Elián should ultimately be reunited with his father, the government's actions appear to have violated a basic principle of our society, a principle whose preservation lies at the core of ordered liberty under the rule of law.

The Senate is expected soon to take up a victims rights amendment to the Constitution. The laudable goal is to protect the interests of victims of violent crime in proceedings affecting them. But the amendment by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), now gaining support, threatens both prosecutorial interests and the rights of the accused. It should be rejected.

The Justice Department acted rashly and unwisely in ordering the raid....When contemplating the use of force in a custody case like this, where there is no immediate danger of violent criminal activity, the government must exhaust other remedies first, and insure that it obtains the unambiguous authorization of a court to take action.

Attorney General Janet Reno made three mistakes that discredited her office, disgusted the fair-minded and demeaned the United States. Mistake 1: I am the law....Mistake 2: Treating Elián as a hostage....Mistake 3. In the dead of night, nobody would see.

We want to feel safer in our neighborhoods and workplaces. But we are attacking only half the problem -- becoming a nation more intent on punishment than prevention. We'd rather build new prisons than new schools offering real alternatives to careers of crime. In our desire to convict and punish those truly guilty of heinous crimes, do we really want to condemn innocent people along the way by not advising them of their rights when they're arrested, and then not letting them appeal wrong convictions arrived at in this indefinable, "reasonable" manner? It is difficult to define precisely when and how we cross the line from a nation of blind justice to one of blind retribution and revenge.

To take a life...to play God or be his surrogate in the face of all we know about human error is an expression of titanic arrogance coupled with a casual indifference to human life. No criminals will be deterred. Nothing will be accomplished. The guilty will die, but occasionally so will the innocent. DNA has proved that. If politicians want to ensure that doesn't happen, all they have to do is abolish capital punishment. There's a test for that, too. It's called political courage.

As a constitutional and law enforcement matter, this should be an easy call. Much as the court wisely concluded 34 years ago, the Miranda warnings are an important safeguard for protecting the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination in the coercive atmosphere of police questioning.

Although supporters of hate-crime statutes refuse to admit it, such laws value some lives more than others and tend to criminalize personal beliefs. That's why we hope the Colorado Senate has the courage to step up and kill House Bill 1168.

Two million and counting. That's how many people are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails according to the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group that promotes alternatives to confinement.

Last week, a Texas jury recommended that Kenneth Payne, 29, spend 16 years in jail. Payne's crime? Stealing a Snickers bar from a Tyler, Texas grocery store on December 17, 1999. When Smith county Assistant District Attorney Jodi Brown was asked by the Associated Press how she could justify 16 years for the theft of a Snickers bar, Brown replied, "It was a king size." Retail price: $1.

Some bad ideas keep recycling back. The latest version of the so-called "victims' rights amendment" to the Constitution, a pandering and potentially disruptive measure, is being readied for a full Senate vote by the end of the month.

The Colombian aid package now faces review in the Senate. If it doesn't get waylaid there, the United States will spend more than a billion dollars to be drawn into a morally ambiguous foreign civil war to advance a drug war strategy that is a proven loser.

The battle to reform administration of the nation's deeply flawed death-penalty system gained momentum last week with the introduction of legislation in the House that would provide important new safeguards to lessen the chance of executing innocent people. Both supporters and opponents of the death penalty should be able to agree on a measure reducing the risk of executing the innocent.

Industrial hemp is one of the longest and strongest natural fibers in the plant kingdom. It is also one of the most versatile plants, with approximately 25,000 uses - ranging from paper to textiles to cosmetics. Industrial hemp is not a drug. The DEA's intrusion into the realm of agriculture is preventing American farmers from growing a crop that has the potential to help address the global depletion of forest resources, the harmful effects of petrochemicals, the excessive use of pesticides for fiber crops, and the economic depression of farming communities.

On the Web:

In their overkill against the underclass many cops have become gangsters and drug dealers themselves. It is time for a moral and political assessment of this quagmire in our cities. The fetishism of the market combined with the death of big government, as pronounced by President Clinton, leaves incarceration the emerging centerpiece of domestic crime policy. But there is an alternative to the garrison state for the poor. It would consist of greater community empowerment in both policing and investment decisions, with a particular focus on rescuing, educating and training at-risk youth. It would mean a major federal commitment of resources to the inner cities, already ruled out by neoliberal Democrats ...

TalkLeft Commentary

Action is needed now for hemp. Drug Czar Gen. McCaffrey is not satisfied with Janet Reno's confirmation that hemp products are legal for import under current definitions - he is trying to circulate amendments to the Controlled Substances Act to further restrict hemp. Please contact your Senators, Congressional Representatives, the President and Secretary of Agriculture ASAP.

I am not a radical. I will give careful and scrupulous consideration to surrendering my weapons as soon as all federal, state and local law enforcement have surrendered theirs.... To ever consider jettisoning the single most important tool for preserving democracy that a free people can have is sheer and simple folly.

The best we can do for victims is to decrease their numbers. Adding numerous procedural layers to our criminal justice system will not reduce the number of victims, nor will diverting scarce criminal justice resources into unnecessary and endless procedural sparring. It would be a pyrrhic victory indeed for the incumbent Congress and president to gain themselves a little extra advantage in one election cycle at the cost of immense, permanent damage to our precious Constitution.

Stupid Politician Tricks II: Reprinted from Free Us: Restoring Democracy and the Constitution

If you are a man who has difficulty controlling your sexual responses in public, beware. The eyes of Mississippi are upon you. The Southern state, long considered one of the most conservative in the United States, is considering a public-sex-and-nudity law with a provision that would make it illegal for sexually aroused men to appear in public. The bill, introduced by Republican state Sen. Tom King at the request of a constituent concerned about the behavior of patrons at strip clubs, defines nudity to include "the showing of covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state." Men who run afoul of the law could face up to a year in prison and a $2,000 fine.

How would Presidential candidate George Bush, Jr. fare under an experienced criminal defense lawyer's cross-examination about possible past cocaine usage?

It's the most revolutionary document in American history. Therefore a perfect place to begin a revolution in publishing. Ten unique pieces of digital content (eMatter) on the Bill of Rights today. Called American Perspectives, they are yours to instantly download, print and read. Free from MightyWords.com.

The Supreme Court has stopped four Virginia executions over the past 12 months. Last week, the justices ruled in favor of Terry Williams and another inmate and heard arguments in a third capital case from Virginia. By contrast, the high court has not taken a death penalty case from Texas, which has 15 times as many inmates on death row, since 1994.

Bliss Bites contain 8.0 grams of cannabinoid chocolate and 0.4 gram of crunchy bits of ibuprofen. After more than 10 years of research, the biochemical link between cannabinoids and ibuprofen is now known to science. Today, with our benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the false-positive link between marijuana tests and ibuprofen is not all that surprising.

This site commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam war's end. It features articles on the war's enduring effects and a screening of the documentary "Regret to Inform."

His body bent and mostly paralyzed, his breathing labored and painful, Terrence Stevens personifies the rigidity of New York State's 27-year-old drug laws. The much debated but never altered statutes call for sentences that are among the toughest in the nation. For Mr. Stevens, they are the equivalent of two terms. One is a life sentence, and the other might as well be. Muscular dystrophy will confine him for life. And his prison sentence is long enough that he might still be there when the disease immobilizes him.

When Benetton used convicted killers as models in its ad campaign, it cost more than the firm bargained for.

"As I have said, I believe this issue should have been handled through family court and with the family coming together," Gore said in a statement hours after armed federal agents seized Elian and took him to Washington DC to be reunited with his father.

"I strongly support this measure. Passage of this bill is long overdue, and I urge all Members to join me in voting to send it to the President for signing into law....Enactment of this bill will correct serious imbalances in the law regarding civil forfeitures--cases in which the government seizes property allegedly connected to a violation of law...This bill shifts the burden of proof to the government, where it belongs, so that it would be up to the government to show by preponderance of the evidence that an asset was sufficiently connected to a crime to be subject to civil forfeiture. While this is a somewhat less stringent requirement than in the bill as originally passed by the House, it is a great improvement over the current law."

Reads like a novel but much scarier because it's all true. A page-turner! Read a Chapter Excerpt

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