TalkLeft Top News

Inside the Republican convention halls, the speakers will address a crowd of overwhelmingly white, predominantly male, and mostly middle-aged delegates. ''These are the activists' activists. They are the cream of the crop of the people who run the party,'' said Larry Sabato, a government professor at the University of Virginia. ''The delegation is not a mirror of America, it's a mirror of the elite in America.''

Thousands of activists rallying for everything from animal rights to universal health care tried to draw attention to their causes Saturday in mostly peaceful demonstrations the day before the start of the Republican National Convention.

As Philadelphia prepares to host the Republican national convention, which is to confirm Mr. Bush as the party's presidential candidate, the good life that the Texas Governor wants for all remains decidedly elusive in Kensington and much of blighted, crime-ridden North Philadelphia.

Prosecutors say they have no evidence that anyone in the Clinton White House misused FBI background files of former Republican appointees even though a key figure in the controversy admitted he lied to Congress and a federal grand jury.

A key figure in the widening police scandal was arrested at gunpoint and charged with attempted murder in the shooting of a gang member who is now paralyzed. Officer Nino Durden, whose former partner is at the center of the corruption probe, was also charged Friday with robbing a suspected drug dealer at gunpoint, filing false police reports and committing perjury.

The number of search warrants seeking citizens' online data has soared during the past several years, a USATODAY.com study shows. Since 1997, there has been more than an 800% increase in warrants aimed at discovering the identity and activities of America On Line subscribers.

Prosecutors in Southern California plan to offer free DNA tests to some inmates even though the results might overturn convictions, USA Today reported.

Six more officers on this city's beleaguered police force have been charged with misconduct by the department for allegedly shooting and then framing unarmed suspects, the latest sign that the massive corruption scandal that erupted here last fall keeps getting worse.

Three newspapers and CBS News said Wednesday they would pay for new DNA tests on evidence from a 1981 Georgia murder case to explore whether Ellis Wayne Felker, the man executed for the crime, was innocent.

Death Row inmates and their supporters are urging prison officials in California and several other states to reinstitute contact visits, saying it is cruel to strip condemned prisoners of their only physical contact with the outside world.

Prosecutors are calling for the pardon of a Texas man convicted of rape and imprisoned 10 years ago, citing new DNA evidence and witnesses in a case twice upheld by the state's highest criminal court.

White defendants in federal capital cases are more likely than blacks to negotiate plea bargains that spare their lives, according to an analysis of 146 cases prosecuted since Congress reinstated capital punishment.

A largely overlooked U.S. Supreme Court decision has called into question the sentences of tens of thousands of federal prisoners and threatens to swamp prosecutors and the court system with thousands of appeals.

A man who spent 14 years behind bars for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl was freed by DNA evidence Friday.

The Republican-controlled Senate's record of holding up President Clinton's minority and female judicial appointments shows racist and sexist tendencies, the Congressional Black Caucus charged Wednesday.

Al Gore upped the ante today in his self-described bid to be “a law enforcement president” by proposing to hire 10,000 new prosecutors in communities nationwide.

Activists who have set their sights on this summer's Democratic National Convention scored a victory Wednesday when a federal judge said city officials must give protesters better access to the convention site.

The national debate over the death penalty took an odd turn today when Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas each discussed what to do in the hypothetical case of a pregnant woman facing the death penalty.

Newjack," Ted Conover's book about the year he spent working a corrections officer in Sing Sing, is considered prison contraband in New York State. Inmates are forbidden to have it in their cells, and it is not available in prison libraries.

A federal judge on Monday cleared the way for an Oakland club to distribute marijuana for medicinal purposes, saying the government hasn't proven why seriously ill patients should be denied the drug.

From Washington Heights to Jersey City to Hempstead on Long Island, there are hundreds of con artists who prey on the New York region's illegal immigrants, whose ignorance of the legal system is matched only by their desperation, according to law enforcement officials. These profiteers, who often pose as lawyers, have been around for decades, adjusting their schemes as immigration laws change.

If Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's political future were still as bright as it once was, the photo showing her grinning as she frisked a young black man might have done some real damage....what the photo really brought into focus was how far Mrs. Whitman's political star had fallen since the picture was taken in 1996.

With $25 and a doctor's note, sick people can get an official city ID card entitling them to use marijuana, the city's maverick district attorney proudly announced Friday. The program shields card-holders caught with the drug from local prosecution -- though marijuana possession remains illegal under federal law.

A religious leader forcefully challenged George W. Bush on Friday for allowing an execution in Texas, saying the governor ''missed an opportunity to show some of this compassion'' he talks about in his presidential campaign.

After a quarter century of toughness toward criminals, a movement is growing nationwide to emphasize treatment for nonviolent drug offenders and other forms of alternative sentencing rather than simply lock them up. The move is being driven by the need to deal with the social and economic costs of burgeoning prison populations, and the belief that the get-tough approach hasn't helped alleviate the nation's core drug problem.

Philadelphia's police chief and mayor have promised a thorough investigation into Wednesday's videotaped beating of Thomas Jones, and the Justice Department opened a separate inquiry into whether Jones' civil rights were violated.

An advisory jury decided Friday after two and one half hours of deliberation that the government does not bear responsibility for the deaths of 80 Branch Davidians during the cult's 1993 standoff with federal agents. A federal judge will deliver the final verdict.

All decked out in bunting and civic pride for the forthcoming Republican National Convention, this city today suffered the ignominy of seeing its police on national television beating and kicking a man accused of stealing a police car and shooting at an officer during a running gun battle through the streets.

A federal grand jury has indicted three Kokomo police officers for violating the civil rights of a man they allegedly held down and struck in the head and body after an arrest.

Charles Bakaly III, who was spokesman for the independent counsel, was responsible for ''false and misleading'' statements to a federal court at the height of President Clinton's impeachment trial, a prosecutor asserted Thursday.

Martha Barnett became the second woman president of the 400,000-member American Bar Association. Ceremonially accepting the gavel, she vowed to champion the ABA's drive for a national moratorium on executions, calling on attorneys in every state to carry the issue to their lawmakers and governors.

The FBI has deployed an automated system to wiretap the Internet, giving authorities a new tool to police cyberspace but drawing concerns among civil libertarians and privacy advocates about how it might be used.

After enduring two years of criticism for the racial profiling practices of her state troopers, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman is suddenly struggling with a self-inflicted public relations problem: a photo of the governor herself, grinning as she frisks a black man.

The Clinton administration is planning to postpone the first federal execution in nearly 40 years because of a lack of clemency procedures and concerns about racial and geographic disparities in death penalty cases, administration officials said today.

Kenneth Starr's former spokesman Charles Bakaly has been charged with criminal contempt and ordered to stand trial next week in a case involving news leaks during the Monica Lewinsky investigation.

William Gregory smiled as he walked out of the Judical Center yesterday a free man after DNA evidence showed that hairs found in a stocking mask - key evidence in his rape conviction - were not his. William Gregory became the first convict in Kentucky and the 74th in the United States and Canada yesterday to be released from prison because of new DNA evidence.

Harold Comer said he knew he had a conflict when a judge appointed him to defend Hank Skinner, a small-time crook he had previously prosecuted as an assistant district attorney in Gray County, but he took the job anyway. Skinner, now on death row in Texas, and his lawyers, say Mr. Comer and the judge were political allies and that Mr. Comer was appointed to the case to help him make enough money to retire a $90,000 tax debt. They say Comer did not adequately defend Mr. Skinner.

"The balance in the federal grand jury process has shifted so dramatically in favor of the prosecution that it has been noted, time and again, that `a good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,' " said an new report by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, written by 20 lawyers, including three former U.S. attorneys.

In a dramatic break from the practices of most law enforcement agencies, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca expects to revamp his internal affairs division by adding six civilian attorneys and a panel of retired judges to add credibility and independence to internal investigations.

A new report by the Advancement Project, an advocacy group led by civil rights lawyers, contends that school administrators using zero tolerance policies have punished black and Latino students more strictly than they might have previously. The report suggests that "zero tolerance" policies have exacerbated a long-standing pattern of black students being suspended and expelled from school more frequently than white students. That disparity has persisted for at least 25 years, though no national study has ever conclusively shown racial discrimination to be the cause.

August 1, 2000...The Philadelphia Shadow Convention

A new anti-war movement -- a movement to end the war on drugs and demand that the country's drug policies be based on common sense, science, public health and human rights. Tuesday, August 1, 2000: PHILADELPHIA 10 AM – 10 PM, Annenberg Center, University of Pennsylvania, 3680 Walnut Street @ 37th Street. Register by visiting The Drug Policy Foundation or calling 212-548-0611.

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

Summary of S. 2463, the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000, introduced in the Senate on April 26, 2000. The bill's stated purpose is 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.

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

Action Alert, Stop the Execution of the Innocent

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

Text of S. 2073, the Innocence Protection Act

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

By any rational test the war on drugs, with its use of the criminal law and harsh sentences to solve the problem, is a costly failure....In the face of this political and social disaster the Republican and Democratic parties offer: silence....But the silence is about to be broken. In tandem with the Republican National Convention starting Monday in Philadelphia, and later with the Democrats, there will be shadow conventions that discuss the failed war on drugs and two other issues that the major parties have not solved: campaign finance and the gap between rich and poor.

Until now, routine government surveillance of private conversations was limited as much by practicality as by legal constraints. Now that it is feasible to eavesdrop electronically on an unlimited scale, the laws have to be strengthened to prevent monitoring of all online communications simply because technology makes it easy.

In Congress, Mr. Cheney was way, way out there, always willing to pony up money to guerrillas in Nicaragua and Angola but not to poor women whose lives were endangered by their pregnancies....A ticket with two rich white Texas oilmen who went to Yale, avoided Vietnam and act more moderate than they are? For the Bushes, that's a perfect fit.

Despite growing evidence that our system of capital punishment is arbitrary and fraught with error (not to mention primitive and irrational), the issue has failed to provoke much response from the major--or minor--presidential candidates. The Texas governor thus far has paid little price for his oft-repeated statement, "I'm confident that people who have been put to death [in Texas] have been guilty of the crime charged.".... Momentum seems to be swinging away from the savagery of state-sanctioned killing to a more civilized understanding of justice. It's time the candidates got into the swing of things.

Justice Richard Braun of the New York State Supreme Court ruled last week that New York City was obliged to help mentally ill prisoners in the city jails obtain continuing treatment when they are released. The Giuliani administration is expected to appeal the decision, but doing so would be a waste of time and resources. The city should instead be devoting its energies to making sure that these inmates get the help they desperately need.

Lots of Democrats all over the country are a-twitter over Ralph Nader.... Of course, I agree with him; of course, he's right. But what about the court, what about Roe, what about the environment if Bush wins?...I have a few modest suggestions that I think may help.

A Democrat in the White House is no guarantee of a liberal on the Supreme Court. Truman put up four, all of them awful. By contrast, Eisenhower nominated the great liberal William Brennan, and Gerald Ford picked John Stevens, the court's current liberal champion, and indeed, the only justice to rule against two oil companies in one of the recent batches of Supreme Court decisions. Nixon's nominee, Harold Blackmun, wrote the Roe v. Wade decision. Twenty years later, Bush Sr.'s nominee, Souter, wrote the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision in 1992 reaffirming the ``essential holding'' of Roe v. Wade, and arguing that ``choice'' was now installed in the national culture. The court echoed that view in its recent upholding of the Miranda rule.

For most of my life, I have not trusted the police. As I watched the videotape of Wednesday's police takedown of Thomas Jones in Philadelphia, I could see all my reasons for distrust in living color.

The 3.8 million registered voters in Massachusetts will be asked on Nov. 7 to amend the state Constitution to prohibit incarcerated felons from voting. The proposal is mean-spirited and goes against all the best thinking of authorities on corrections.

The sickening sight of Philadelphia police officers caught on videotape punching, kicking and stomping on a man who had already been shot five times brings to mind the vicious beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers in 1991. Philadelphia's police commissioner, John Timoney, says such comparisons are unfair. There are clear differences in the two cases. But they both show officers out of control and using excessive force to settle a score with a suspect.

Despite growing doubts about the propriety of capital punishment, seven of every 10 Americans still support it. But even if the support were much higher, it would still be difficult to justify the death penalty, in theory and in practice. Capital punishment serves no useful purpose. It is cruel, vindictive and inequitable. It assigns to the condemned a level of rationality they do not possess. It is final and irreversible. The society that administers it sinks to the level of the condemned killer when it should rise splendidly above it.

The recent conviction of 10 Iranian Jews in Iran on charges of spying for Israel is a brazen violation of international human rights standards and the due process of law. President Clinton and leaders of the European Union have rightly called on the Iranian government to overturn these unjust convictions.

Roy Criner, a Texas logger, is serving a 99-year sentence for the brutal rape of a 16-year-old girl, despite strong evidence that he didn't do it. Two DNA tests - one of them ordered by the prosecutor who won the conviction in 1990 - prove that the semen taken from the victim's body wasn't Criner's. So when does Criner come home to his family?

Between now and the Nov. 7 election, Texas is scheduled to execute 15 people, almost one a week. The death penalty, with all its noisy, soul-searching furor, will be Bush's campaign ghost.

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.

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.

Did the White House drug office go too far in trying to stop the spread of medical marijuana initiatives?

Thousands of women, often guilty of little more than lousy judgment, are serving long prison sentences as drug "conspirators."

Inmates with e-mail? It could happen at some state prisons experimenting with technology behind bars.

When the commander of U.S. anti-drug efforts in Colombia got involved in drug running, Congress should have rethought its massive military aid bill -- but it didn't.

Abortion, gays, prayer, parochial schools, criminal rights—in one close call after another, the high court’s dramatic rulings altered the landscape. Inside a divided court, and how the next president will shape it.

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

Order Your Copy Today!

  Start your Amazon purchase here and help support this site!

Talk Line 2000 Archives

About TalkLeft  

All Content Copyright © 2000, Crimelynx^® Inc.  All rights reserved.