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With the 2000 Elections now behind us, TalkLeft continues to bring you updated crime-related political news from The Crime Line at CrimeLynx.Com

A man facing execution for a triple murder at a Houston bowling alley had his conviction reversed by a federal appeals court.

Three police officers found guilty of corruption in the worst scandal in department history had their convictions tossed out by a judge who said the courts shouldn't remedy the scandal with an unfair verdict.

A once-powerful House member and an Arkansas business executive ensnared in the corruption probe of a former Cabinet member are among 62 people granted Christmastime clemency by President Clinton.

A federal appeals court on Friday threw out the murder conviction of Wilbert Rideau, saying the celebrated prison journalist was the victim of racially biased selection of the grand jury that indicted him in 1961.

President-elect Bush nominated defeated Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft to be attorney general on Friday, choosing a conservative Republican who lost his re-election bid to a dead man.

Texas, the state with the largest prison system and the most executions this year in the history of the nation, spends only $4.65 per person for the defense of poor people charged with crimes, less than all but two other states, according to a report released yesterday by a foundation in Austin.

The Suffolk County, NY district attorney announced yesterday that he would review the cases of prisoners who might be cleared by DNA evidence, speeding up a state effort to use new technology to investigate criminal convictions that have been called into question.

The state of Hawaii announced its medical marijuana rules Tuesday, saying certified patients will be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana and grow up to seven plants.

The newly elected district attorney in Los Angeles County told his staff Tuesday to limit use of California's three-strikes law to serious cases only.

A federal jury convicted five policemen of civil rights violations Tuesday in the beating of a man they wrongly arrested on suspicion of murdering a fellow officer. The victim died in police custody after suffering an asthma attack.

The concept of felons' postconviction access to modern DNA testing is gaining ground in the face of front- page articles about miscarriages of justice in which dozens of inmates have been exonerated in recent years.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan lent his support to a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty Monday after receiving a petition signed by 3.2 million people seeking an end to state-sponsored executions.

In his two and a half years as warden of the prison in Huntsville Texas, Jim Willett has given the signal — raising his glasses — that has killed 84 people. "Just from a Christian standpoint, you can't see one of these and not consider that maybe it's not right," said Mr. Willett.

The case that thrust Minnesota housewife Sara Jane Olson (formerly known as fugitve SLA member Kathleen Soliah) unwillingly into the public eye is no closer to trial than it was after her friends and family posted $1 million for her bail in July 1999.

A jazz and rap radio station hip in area prisons has invited inmates to broadcast holiday wishes during a live call-in show. ''WMMT has always tried to serve groups of people who weren't represented in mainstream commercial media,'' said station manager Barry Rueger. ''These prisoners need to feel that there is a media outlet that is interested in their well-being.''

A federal judge has scheduled a hearing Dec. 28 for Timothy McVeigh to request an end to all appeals of his conviction in the Oklahoma City bombing, and to set a date for his execution. McVeigh will participate in the hearing by video conferencing from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

A federal complaint unsealed Thursday links mob informant Salvatore ''Sammy the Bull'' Gravano to a lucrative New York ecstasy ring with ties to Israeli organized crime. "'We caught an old dog trying to learn new tricks,'' U.S. Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Thursday. ''I own Arizona,'' Gravano reportedly told an informant.

An inmate who died of cancer on death row 11 months ago has been cleared by DNA in the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl, and an aide to Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday he is planning similar tests for other condemned prisoners.

Gore Beats Bush in the Numbers Again: 66.2 million people watched Gore concede in a nationally-televised address at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nielsen Media Research said on Thursday, while one hour later, only 63.4 million viewers watched Bush. Nielsen's estimate measured the total audience for ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Al Gore decided Wednesday to concede the country's overtime election, aides said, clearing the way for George W. Bush to become 43rd president and leader of a nation sharply divided along political lines.

The Supreme Court effectively handed the presidential election to George W. Bush tonight, overturning the Florida Supreme Court and ruling by a vote of 5 to 4 that there could be no further counting of Florida's disputed presidential votes.

Timothy McVeigh asked a federal judge to stop all appeals of his conviction in the Oklahoma City bombing and to set a date for his execution.

Eighty-four prisoners have been executed in the United States this year, a 14 percent decline from the 98 put to death in 1999, in what some experts believe is one sign of a new sense of caution and skepticism about the death penalty among both politicians and the public.

A former Clinton White House counsel suggested Sunday that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia may want to recuse himself from the Florida recount case because his son works for a firm that represents George W. Bush.

The White House declined on Sunday to discuss specific pardon requests, but campaigns on behalf of candidates are being waged with increasing publicity during Clinton's lame-duck period, traditionally a time for politically sensitive pardons.

Abandoning all pretense of unanimity, the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal and conservative members openly attacked each other yesterday over whether to stop the manual recounting of ballots in Florida.

Excerpts from a news conference yesterday in Tallahassee, Fla., held by David Boies and Ron Klain, lawyers for Vice President Al Gore, regarding the Supreme Court's decision to stop Florida recounts.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted George W. Bush's request to stop ballot recounts in Florida on Saturday, and agreed to hear the Republican's appeal of a Florida court ruling that had resurrected the campaign of presidential rival Al Gore. Oral arguments will be at 11:00 a.m. Monday.

False testimony by a federal drug task force agent led to the wrongful conviction of an Arkadelphia man in 1996, a judge said Friday in ordering the man's immediate release from prison, where he had served 4 1/2 years of a life sentence.

Excerpts from the Gore reply to an emergency motion filed Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Bush campaign to halt the manual recounts in Florida.

A divided Florida Supreme Court today breathed new life into Vice President Gore's presidential aspirations, ordering manual recounts of thousands of disputed ballots throughout the state. Ruling 4 to 3, the court also ordered state officials to certify 383 new votes for Gore that previously were rejected because they came from partial recounts of county returns.

Civil rights leaders and lawyers' groups praised President Clinton on Friday for postponing the first federal execution in 37 years, but pressed for a moratorium on all federal death sentences.

Concerned about the fairness of the federal death penalty system, President Clinton tonight delayed the execution of Juan Raul Garza for six months, leaving it to the next president to decide whether Mr. Garza, a confessed murderer, should be the first federal prisoner executed since the 1960's.

Attorney General Janet Reno opposed a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty in federal cases Thursday, despite new pleas for it generated by the impending first federal execution in 37 years. Clinton then discussed the case in a meeting with Reno, the deputy attorney general, White House chief of staff John Podesta and White House counsel Beth Nolan. >A previous Justice study found racial and geographic disparities in federal death sentences. Juan Raul Garza's lawyers cited it in his bid for clemency.

In a series of private meetings today, Attorney General Janet Reno and her advisers forcefully debated whether President Clinton should grant a reprieve to Juan Raul Garza, a federal inmate who is scheduled to die next Tuesday by lethal injection.

A New Jersey appeals court ruled today that four defendants convicted of drug offenses after traffic stops by state troopers could file new appeals or reopen their cases based on information about racial profiling that surfaced after their trials or guilty pleas.

President Clinton, who tried to avoid the stigma of smoking marijuana by saying he never ''inhaled,'' tells Rolling Stone magazine that people should not be jailed for using or selling small amounts of the drug.

A Texas appeals court Wednesday threw out a convicted killer's death sentence because the jury was shown a photograph of one of the murder victims lying in a casket next to her fetus.

For the second time in three days, the federal judiciary crafted a narrow ruling that avoided trampling on Florida courts while reserving the right to settle the disputed presidential election in the future.

The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Wednesday to reconsider the case of a death row inmate whose lawyer slept through portions of his 1984 murder trial.

Hoisting signs that said "This Is America -- Count Every Vote," about 2,000 demonstrators rallied today to support Vice President Al Gore's insistence on a recount of thousands of votes in Florida's presidential election.

Concerned that innocent companies could be penalized for inadvertently doing business with drug traffickers, an independent panel of lawyers chaired by Larry Thompson of Atlanta is recommending changes in the year-old ''drug kingpin'' law. Rachel King of the American Civil Liberties Union said the report's recommendations were ''excellent.''

Civil rights activists urged President Clinton on Tuesday to put a moratorium on federal executions while officials try to resolve "nagging questions" about racial and ethnic disparities in capital punishment.

The justices heard arguments on the constitutionality of state and federal wiretap laws that held a local activist, a talk show host and the radio stations liable for airing a secretly recorded telephone conversation in which a union negotiator seemed to threaten a bombing attack on school board members. Two local radio stations played the tape over the air. The Court's finding could define limits on telephone privacy and determine when news organizations may broadcast or print private phone conversations.

After yesterday's rulings, Vice President Al Gore's lawyers face new obstacles in what was already an extremely difficult fight to win the White House through a court-ordered recount.

The United States Supreme Court avoided a definitive ruling in the Florida election case today by stepping back from the brink of disunity and asking the Florida Supreme Court to clarify the basis of its Nov. 21 ruling that permitted recounts to continue past a statutory deadline.

Read the text of the U.S. Supreme Court Opinion vacating and remanding Florida Supreme Court ruling on vote recounts

Since 1973, 17 men have been executed in the United States for crimes committed as juveniles, including four this year, according to the Justice Department. A new report by the department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention said 74 other offenders are on death row for crimes committed before they turned 18.

U.S. Justice Department investigators are in Florida to examine allegations that thousands of black voters were prevented or discouraged from casting ballots in the presidential election. The move comes days after national NAACP President Kweisi Mfume blasted the federal agency for what he sees as foot-dragging in the case, and ordered the organization's battery of attorneys to prepare a federal lawsuit.

This week, nearly three decades after that raw era, Mr. Wahad, a former leader of the Black Panther Party, will present his case: that the Police Department framed him in the machine-gunning of the two officers on Riverside Drive in 1971.

A growing school of research — fueled by newly available DNA evidence — shows that witnesses as certain and credible as Ms. Weiner are very often wrong, and that there is little correlation between their certainty and their accuracy. Indeed, 65 of the 77 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence nationwide in the last decade resulted from witness errors, according to statistics compiled by the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in Manhattan.

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

On November 7, 2000, Oregon voters approved an amendment to the Oregon Constitution, requiring conviction before forfeiture of assets. Please try to get a legislator in your state to introduce it in the next legislative session.

Text of S. 2463, the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000

To institute a moratorium on the imposition of the death penalty at the Federal and State level until a National Commission on the Death Penalty studies its use and policies ensuring justice, fairness, and due process are implemented.

Action Alert, Stop the Execution of the Innocent

Text of S. 2073, the Innocence Protection Act

The advent of DNA testing raises serious concerns regarding the prevalence of wrongful convictions. The Innocence Protection Act will ensure that wrongfully convicted persons have an opportunity to establish their innocence through DNA testing.

Barry Scheck's Senate Judiciary Committee Testimony on Post-Conviction DNA Testing

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

Not many Americans will recognize the names of Dorothy Gaines and Kemba Smith on the list of people whose federal prison sentences President Clinton has just commuted. But they should be known because their stories challenge our vision of justice.

Spare me. If ever there was a time to question the legitimacy of an incoming administration, it is now.... What occurred is that a presidential election was stolen, first on the ground in Florida and then for good measure by a partisan Supreme Court whose right-wing majority cared more about its own retirement schedule than about the institution itself. If Bush wants to demonstrate real bipartisan leadership, he should begin by backing a constitutional amendment to assure that no successor can ever repeat this theft.

When Al Gore was in Vietnam he never saw much combat. Throughout his presidential campaign, though, he insisted he wanted to "fight" for every American. Well, Wednesday night, in his concession speech, Mr. Gore took a bullet for the country. The shot was fired at the heart of the nation by the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with their politically inspired ruling that installed George W. Bush as president.

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST. We're dropping in the polls on the question of our fairness, but we still need to anoint Bush president. It's best for us. We'll just have to work harder to hide the truth: that we are driven by all the same petty human emotions as everybody else in this town — ambition, partisanship, political debts and revenge.

President Clinton's decision last week to delay the execution of Juan Raul Garza for six months pending further study of troubling racial and geographic disparities in the federal death penalty system was a small but significant act of conscience. But the temporary stay fell short of the complete moratorium on federal executions that the evidence of unfairness the president cited in his remarks logically and humanely calls for.

Popular opinions on the severity of drug laws are a challenge to congressional wisdom, which, of course, is not the business of the courts. The disparity in the enforcement of the laws, however, may raise a justiciable issue for review by the courts. IIn the meantime, the old adage remains true: “The rich do the crime; the poor do the time.”

Investigations and lawsuits will eventually establish just how many black votes were suppressed or stolen. But it's already clear that the number easily exceeds Bush's current lead in Florida. We've been hearing a lot of media blather lately about the importance of bipartisanship and unity. Instead, the pundits should be investigating this theft. If Bush does take the oath of office January 20, he will take office as a fraud. And if he preaches bipartisan or racial healing, he is an even bigger fraud.

If the Republicans succeed in once again killing the manual count through their U.S. Supreme Court appeal, George W. Bush's victory will stand as a low point in the annals of American democracy

Blood is More Important Than Talent at the Court of George....Most of the reasons that this second Bush presidency appears either sinister or ridiculous result from its dynastic stucture. The essential problem with monarchy is that it puts power at the mercy of relatives and genetics. And this is precisely what hobbles the putative new Bush administration. Let's begin with the question of Jeb.

The U.S. Supreme Court is wrong to stop the counting in Florida -- its order denies Americans information they have a right to know before Congress picks the president in January.

Thousands of years of widespread use of marijuana have demonstrated its medical value; the extensive multi-million dollar government-supported effort (through the National Institute of Drug Abuse) of the last three decades to establish a sufficient level of toxicity to support prohibition has instead provided a record of safety that is more compelling than that of most approved medicines.

A precinct-by-precinct analysis conducted by the Miami Herald concluded just that, saying that in a less error-prone election Florida likely would have gone to Mr. Gore by up to 23,000 votes. No cost is too great to make sure that every vote counts and that every vote gets counted. As this presidential election has shown, a vote can be a terrible thing to waste.

Blacks turned out to vote in record numbers in Florida this year, but huge numbers were systematically turned away for one specious reason after another. The tactics have changed, but the goal remains the same.

As the Supreme Court acts as tourniquet to stop the flow of democracy and as a crusty circuit court judge slams into pulp the fingers that would actually count the ballots, evidence continues to emerge that George W. Bush will become president with voter blood left on the floor. On the strictest or most cowardly notions of ''no credible statistical evidence,'' the courts are blessing the ramrodding of this election by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. The blessings come despite even more evidence in the past week that black votes are being left on the floor.

We might ask ourselves what we are doing in the United States, and what grave decisions we will allow to stand on the basis of flimsy eyewitness identification. In The Hague, where no defendant fears execution, the case is built very slowly through a steady accretion of detail, witness by witness by witness. What is going on in Texas, where one woman who can say she saw a man for seconds in 1981 is enough to send him to his death?

Whoever wins the presidency will also inherit the Clinton administration's risky commitment to finance the so-called drug war in Colombia. With the passage last June of a $1.3 billion aid package -- most of which is military assistance -- President Clinton and Congress set the stage for American troops and helicopters to intervene in a civil war that has raged for nearly 40 years. The United States' intervention in Colombia has still not appeared on this country's political radar. It has the potential to turn into America's next military nightmare.

The election turmoil has yet to produce a legitimate president, but it has provided the nation with valuable civics lessons and illuminated many dark corners of our electoral infrastructure. It also has reminded us of the continuing importance of race in our national consciousness.

American voters split down the middle in picking a president this year. But on drug policy, a clear majority is emerging: Americans want to get smart on drugs.

The impeachment and removal of federal judges who issue rulings that are objectionable to some conservatives has been very seriously proposed by Representative Tom DeLay, one of the most powerful members of Congress, and other right-wing extremists in the Republican Party. Most Americans are unaware of these bizarre and dangerous proposals.

At this very moment Bush supporters in the Florida Legislature are polishing up a plan to meet in special session and choose the state's electors themselves, overriding the people's vote if it turns out to be for Vice President Gore. That would be ex post facto with a vengeance.

TalkLeft Commentary

Examine this frame of a videotape of Austin police officer Robert Merrill's custodial interview of a murder suspect (now facing a trial for first degree murder and a possible death sentence,) then take the short multiple choice test.

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 attorney general must soon decide whether to try to save a possibly innocent man from the electric chair -- or leave the case for an incoming administration unlikely to do so.

Supreme court justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her husband, John, a Washington lawyer, have long been comfortable on the cocktail and charity-ball circuit.So at an election-night party on Nov. 7, surrounded for the most part by friends and familiar acquaintances, she let her guard drop for a moment when CBS anchor Dan Rather called Florida for Al Gore. “This is terrible,” she exclaimed. John O’Connor said his wife was upset because they wanted to retire to Arizona, and a Gore win meant they’d have to wait another four years.

For these men, sentenced to death and then freed, the outside world has offered more misery than happiness.

In Tarrant County, the ability to afford an attorney is often the difference between serving a sentence behind bars or out in the community, a Star-Telegram analysis has found.

The U.S.-backed Plan Colombia will soon touch down in a region battered by civil war and reliant on the cocaine trade.

What's at stake in Florida is nothing less than the right to vote and to have it count. And once again an angry, elitist GOP is on the wrong side.

Eric A. Weinberger, Source: December 5, 2000, Baltimore Sun Op-Ed Page, Where Death Penalty Is Not Taken Lightly

"We might ask ourselves what we are doing in the United States, and what grave decisions we will allow to stand on the basis of flimsy eyewitness identification. In The Hague, where no defendant fears execution, the case is built very slowly through a steady accretion of detail, witness by witness by witness. What is going on in Texas, where one woman who can say she saw a man for seconds in 1981 is enough to send him to his death?

Eric A. Weinberger, whose hometown is The Hague, teaches in the expository writing program at Harvard University.

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