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The Supreme Court agreed Monday to clarify when state prisoners can get a federal court hearing to present evidence that they are innocent. The court said it will hear an appeal by a Missouri man convicted of murder after three relatives who he said planned to provide an alibi for him left the courthouse before they were to testify.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to clarify when some criminal defendants' guilty pleas can be thrown out because of the judge's failure to advise them of their rights. The court said it will hear the government's argument that it should be harder to get a plea tossed out if the defendant's lawyer did not object to the judge's error during the plea hearing.

More than three months after the state offered to pay for DNA testing for eligible death row inmates, none of the 201 prisoners facing the death penalty has applied for the tests...''No defense lawyer in his or her right mind would permit a death penalty client to participate in this lopsided program,'' said Greg Meyers, chief of the state public defender office's death penalty division.

Taking photos of customers and then checking the images against those in criminal files didn't start at Super Bowl XXXV. Casinos have used facial recognition technology for years as part of their never-ending quest to identify and catch cheaters. Three of Atlantic City's 12 casinos -- Trump Marina, Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza -- use it as part of their casino surveillance units.

21,000 inmates are in prison under New York's Rockefeller drug laws -- a set of statutes so uncompromising that even tough-on-crime Gov. George Pataki, the man who brought back the death penalty, wants to soften them.

Colin Larson has lived one of those dreams, the ones where you're accused of a crime you didn't commit and neither the police nor prosecutors will believe you. "In this society, innocent until proven guilty isn't exactly true," he said, even as federal prosecutors prepared their case against another man who has since confessed to the bank heist with which he was initially charged.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is facing a series of difficult decisions about some politically hot issues at the Justice Department, including the first federal execution in decades, a potential budget crisis that could lead to massive job cuts, the revamping of the troubled federal immigration agency, the Marc Rich pardon and the selection of a civil rights chief.

An obscure change in immigration law passed in the waning days of the Clinton administration could lead to legal status for as many as half-a- million illegal immigrants, but it could also lead to disappointment for millions more who have misinterpreted the change as a general amnesty.

More Americans went to prison or jail during the Clinton administration than during any past administration, the result of get-tough policies that led to more prisons, more police officers and longer sentences, a criminal justice think tank reports.

Condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh passed up his last chance for clemency because he did not expect to win a pardon and did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison, his lawyers said on Friday.

Michael Rene Pardue's three murder convictions were overturned more than six years ago, but he was kept in prison anyway because he kept escaping rather than do his time. On Thursday, he was finally ordered released after 28 years behind bars.

2/15/01....Ashcroft's No. 2: A Black Conservative Lauded by Liberals - Larry Dean Thompson...New York Times

55-year-old Larry Dean Thompson, whose selection by President Bush as deputy attorney general to John Ashcroft was announced today is a proudly conservative native of Mr. Ashcroft's Missouri. And yet he is deeply respected by Democrats and liberals here because of his impeccable legal credentials and his reputation for evenhandedness.

In a blistering 63-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark A. Pizzo Wednesday recommended tossing out secretly recorded conversations at the heart of a case against a couple who say their infant was abducted from her crib as they slept.

''Zero tolerance'' policies in schools can be unfair because a student found with aspirin in his pocket can get suspended as quickly as one with marijuana. Leaders of the 400,000-member American Bar Association probably will come out against such rules at the close of their winter meeting.

After his relentless campaign to treat drug abuse as a public health issue rather than as a criminal justice matter, New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson stands a chance to see his vision fulfilled.

Earl Washington Jr. walked out of prison Monday after spending 9˝ years on death row for a murder he didn't commit.

William J. Bratton, the former New York City police commissioner, endorsed Mark Green's campaign for mayor yestday coming to Mr. Green's aid as he sought for the second time in a week to burnish his anticrime credentials in his campaign to succeed Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

President Bush intends to appoint Larry D. Thompson, an Atlanta lawyer who is African American, to the high-profile post of deputy attorney general, a move designed in part to counter criticism that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is insensitive to race, administration sources said yesterday.

On Feb. 5 the Virginia Senate unanimously backed legislation that would wipe out the 21-day limit the state now places on condemned inmates to present new evidence of their innocence. The three-week deadline after sentencing is the nation's most restrictive. The measure now goes to the House of Delegates. A Senate committee, however, rejected a measure that would have suspended executions in Virginia while the legislature's investigative arm studies how the state imposes its ultimate punishment.

The allegations are of brutality, of shackled an defenseless prisoners being beaten by guards, of a cover-up that reached to the highest levels. The man testifying was a lieutenant at the federal penitentiary in this small Colorado town, and the judge listened intently. Guards regularly beat inmates, he said. Prison managers knew about the assaults. And most everyone involved was working together to cover up years of misconduct.

Timothy McVeigh wants to be executed on national television. The convicted Oklahoma City bomber does not object to victims’ watching him die on closed-circuit television. But, in a letter, he questioned how it could be done fairly.

Two former police officers who lied to federal investigators about the Abner Louima brutality case avoided jail time yesterday when a federal judge sentenced them both to probation.

From his perch as the director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which he believes will help uplift many needy people but particularly the most troubled teenagers, John J. DiIulio Jr. conceded today that he wished he had never become the 1990's intellectual pillar for putting violent juveniles in prison and condemning them as "superpredators....". "If I knew then what I know now, I would have shouted for prevention of crimes."

A man cleared by DNA evidence of a crime that landed him on death row will not be allowed to go to Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators and reporters after he is released.

Former White House counsel Jack Quinn told a congressional hearing on Thursday that President Clinton's controversial last-minute pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich was merited by the facts and was not the product of improper influence.

The law now has a high-tech nose to help it know when a driver is drunk. Passive Alcohol Sensors — known as "sniffers" by the cops who use them — look like ordinary flashlights, but they have special sensors that can detect faint vapors such as alcohol on the breath of a driver. The high-tech devices are virtually indistinguishable from the flashlights routinely used by police officers. The only difference on the outside: a bar graph on its side that lights up when alcohol vapors are detected.

The Bush administration is considering whether to create a national law enforcement panel to examine racial profiling, excessive use of force and a range of other issues that police officials say are undermining public trust in the nation's cops.

A California appeals court today struck down a main provision of a new measure that allows prosecutors to charge youths as adults in certain serious crimes. The panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled 2 to 1 that the provision violated the Constitution's separation of powers clause by taking power from judges and giving it to prosecutors, who are part of the executive branch.

The number of court-approved wiretaps is higher than ever. The most recent report by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts says 1,350 full- scale wiretaps were authorized by state and federal courts in 1999, a 2 percent increase over 1998.

A judge in Detroit has dismissed first-degree murder charges against a man who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he says he didn't commit.

Lawyers for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols were headed back to federal court Wednesday to ask a judge to throw out their client's conviction and life sentence.

A former federal prosecutor pleaded guilty Tuesday to interfering with the post-Waco investigation by withholding information about the FBI's use of pyrotechnic gas canisters on the day of the deadly 1993 inferno.

In Maryland, a "mandatory" sentence need not be mandatory at all. Those same lawmakers had already created a loophole that allowed judges to review -- and reduce -- any mandatory sentence at the request of convicts. The review process was created in 1999 at the behest of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr. (D-Prince George's), who has made his living as a defense lawyer since 1964.

The failure of U.S. banks and regulators to track transactions with foreign banks enables criminals to route billions of dollars from drug sales, Internet gambling, tax evasion or other illegal activities into the United States each year, a new Senate subcommittee report concludes.

New Jersey's attorney general today agreed to pay nearly $13 million to settle a lawsuit arising from the state's most explosive racial profiling incident, in which several young minority men were shot and wounded by state troopers in a 1998 traffic stop.

Thirty-three years, two months and five days. That is how long Peter Limone sat in prison, pinned by a murder conviction that just last month, after many appeals, was finally vacated.

John Ashcroft, sworn in quickly by Justice Clarence Thomas after being confirmed by the Senate as attorney general, is close to filling senior posts at the Justice Department. The leading contender for deputy attorney general, the chief operating officer of the department, is Larry D. Thompson, who was a United States attorney in Georgia during the Reagan administration.

The number of state prisoners in New York is declining for the first time in 27 years, according to officials of the State Department of Correctional Services. Officials in the Pataki administration attributed the trend to new policies that grant early release to more nonviolent felons.

On the first anniversary of Illinois' death penalty moratorium, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold on Wednesday introduced legislation to halt all federal executions and to urge states to do the same.

The Senate approved John Ashcroft as the next attorney general of the United States today, but not before many Democrats voted against him in hopes of sending a message to President Bush, and perhaps Mr. Ashcroft himself.

A divided Senate clashed bitterly yesterday over President Bush's nomination of John Ashcroft to be attorney general in a debate that showed deep rifts between the parties on some of the nation's most polarizing social issues, including race, abortion, religion, gun control and gay rights.

Kennedy family nephew Michael Skakel will be tried as an adult for the 1975 murder of teen-ager Martha Moxley, a judge ruled Wednesday. Judge Maureen Dennis ruled that adult court was the proper venue for the trial, in part because the state has no juvenile facility where it could send Skakel, now 40, if he is convicted.

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

This morning the St. Louis Association for Retarded Citizens, the Missouri Catholic Conference, and Amnesty International held a press conference urging Governor Bob Holden to grant clemency in the case of Antonio Richardson. Antonio is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on March 7th. At the time of the crime, Antonio was a borderline mentally retarded, neurologically impaired, 16 year-old; if executed, he would be one of the youngest offenders executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1973. He was convicted of participating in the rape and deaths of two young women, and has now all but exhausted his avenues of relief. Please consider writing a letter to Missouri Governor Bob Holden protesting the imminent execution of Antonio Richardson

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.

Canadian justices will rule in the coming year whether to return Renee Boje to America to face a mandatory 10-year prison sentence for being present at a medical marijuana grow operation, or whether to grant her political asylum in response to the severity of America's cannabis laws. She fled the U.S. in 1998, at the advice of her lawyer. Renee Boje is asking her fellow American citizens to urge Canada to grant her petition for refugee status.

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

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

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

Introduced in Congress January 3, 2001, H.R. 17, The Younger Americans Act, will help coordinate and fund youth-mentoring, community service through volunteerism, structured academic and recreational opportunities, and other activities aimed at fostering the positive educational and social development of teens and pre-teens.

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.

DNA evidence and post-conviction investigations have proven that shocking numbers of innocent men are on death row. Many...were abused as children. FBI statistics show that over the last 20 years the homicide rate in states with the death penalty was 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states that don't have it.And, by every measure, capital punishment is disproportionately imposed on the poor and minorities in America.

For years, lawyers and judges have been warning of a growing problem in New York's justice system — the dwindling number of competent attorneys willing to work for the low rates the state pays for representing poor people in New York City's criminal and family courts. Now, thanks to Albany's inattention, the problem has escalated into a crisis that Gov. George Pataki and legislative leaders can no longer ignore. A flat $75 hourly rate for felony and Family Court cases and $60 for nonfelony cases is eminently reasonable.

Bush's foreign policy so far has made three mistakes and missed one opportunity.

While U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and others -- including the families of some Oklahoma City bombing victims -- have been courageously seeking to prevent the renewal of federal executions, the bloodlust of President George W. Bush and equally wrong-minded politicians is such that they are unlikely to prevent the renewal of federally funded murder.

Prisons have shifted their emphasis from rehabilitation to punishment in recent decades so returning inmates have less training or jobs skills. Without jobs and skills, ex-inmates will either get work in the booming underground economy and eventually return to prison, or wind up on the public dole or homeless. Either way, their communities will suffer.

Because of the intense scrutiny and criticism of the pardons of Marc Rich and his partner Pincus Green and because legitimate concerns have been raised, I want to explain what I did and why.

If you read about Earl Washington Jr., the Virginia man freed this week after serving 17 years in prison, much of it on death row, for a rape and murder he did not commit, you will come across some version of the phrase "exonerated by DNA testing." This is not the full story. What's missing is the phrase "almost murdered by the police."

Asset forfeiture is one of the scandals of the war on drugs. That some police have abused this power is beyond doubt....it is still an illegitimate power that invites abuse. The Legislature should take it away.

The juvenile-justice system is supposed to concentrate on reforming youthful offenders, not letting them rot behind bars--a sensible approach, since they are unformed and far more susceptible to change than veteran adult criminals. Rehabilitation also recognizes the obvious: Children are less blameworthy than adults because, through no fault of their own, they lack the maturity and self-control that we expect of their elders.

The recent clash between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Los Angeles Police Department over the rights of our city's homeless to live on the streets of skid row exemplifies the limited options facing tens of thousands of our most desperate citizens. Under the LAPD's approach, homelessness is criminalized.

In the heat of the controversy over the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Groups, John DiIulio, the office's director, has been lauded as a man of intellect and science. But for those of us who have followed the politics of crime and punishment for the past decade, no single person has been more closely identified with unsound crime analysis and punitive imprisonment policies than John DiIulio.

Recent weeks have brought an alarming series of incidents in which rogue police officers in Nassau and Suffolk Counties have been accused of abusing their authority by asking women drivers to strip or perform sex....Clearly it is time for responsible authorities at the highest level — Gov. George Pataki, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the leaders of the Legislature — to take a searching look at how New York's 500 separate police operations conduct their business.

If the government is committed to "what works" as its guide for criminal justice policy and crime reduction, then it must bite the bullet and face down public ignorance and vindictiveness which now places prison as the main option, and all else as an alternative to prison. It should again be a last resort.

It's a crapshoot if you're condemned by the government to die and you happen to be innocent — a crapshoot with tremendously long odds. You may convince some court of your innocence on appeal. Most likely you won't.

When Alex White Plume planted a field full of industrial-grade hemp, he hoped that his crop might lift his family and community out of poverty. Then the DEA came to Pine Ridge.

The fortress at the Federal Corrections Complex in Florence, Colorado suggests military efficiency. Behind the walls, however, the operation -- measured by some fundamental standards -- is considerably more sloppy. Prisoners keep murdering each other at the United States Penitentiary's maximum-security section. The penitentiary in Florence is Colorado's other death row.

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