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In its second decision this week affirming the rights of immigrants, the Supreme Court ruled today that the government may not detain deportable aliens indefinitely simply for lack of a country willing to take them.

David Feige, a lawyer who defends indigent clients, has become something of a lone crusader on a single issue: he wants the police to adopt a different method for lineups, one, he says, that is far less likely to result in false identifications.

A troubling self-portrait has emerged a year after hundreds of police agencies began investigating the use of racial profiling by their officers, and a growing number of departments are responding with policies to discourage harassment of innocent minority travelers.

The World Court faulted the United States on Wednesday for violating international rights of two German-born brothers executed in 1999 and ordered Washington to reconsider convictions in any similar cases.

Lawmakers should ban the execution of mentally retarded and juvenile killers, raise and enforce standards for defense lawyers and let juries impose life sentences without parole, a nonpartisan panel of judges, former prosecutors and victims advocates say in a report to be released today.

David Brock, who made his name trashing Anita Hill after the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, now says he lied -- and he's sorry. The formerly right-wing author, in a forthcoming book, says he "lost my soul" in printing allegations he knew to be untrue.

Despite objections from defense lawyers, a judge issued a gag order Tuesday in the case of a Clear Lake mother accused of drowning her five children.

The Supreme Court offered hope today to many immigrants who face the threat of deportation because they have been found guilty of crimes. In 5-to-4 decisions that addressed two cases from New York and Connecticut and will probably have an effect far beyond those states, the justices ruled that such immigrants cannot be deported without a court hearing despite 1996 legislation to the contrary.

After four years of executing criminals at a rapid pace, the use of the death penalty in the state of Texas has markedly slowed in the first half of this year. The punishment has been carried out in the Texas death chamber eight times in 2001, compared with 23 by this time in 2000.

A Texas mother said to be suffering from postpartum depression and who confessed to drowning her five children in a bathtub is in a ``deep psychotic state'' and on 24-hour suicide watch in jail, said her lawyer on Monday.

In many other Western countries, new mothers accused of killing young children are afforded legal protection that takes into account her mental condition. Special infanticide statutes in 30 countries rule out murder charges and typically impose sentences of probation and counseling, experts say. In the United States, however, laws make no special allowances for a new mother who kills her child while suffering from postpartum depression.

The scientific consensus in favor of needle exchanges has steadily solidified. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued findings that needle-exchange programs, which now number more than 130 in at least 31 states, "are an effective public health intervention that reduces transmission of H.I.V. and does not encourage the illegal use of drugs."

More than half of all African American men report that they have been the victims of racial profiling by police some time in their lives, according to a survey by The Washington Post, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.

President Bush is leaning toward naming San Francisco U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller III as the next director of the FBI, but officials have some reservations about whether Mueller has the "star power" needed to turn around the troubled agency, administration sources said yesterday.

Death penalty opponents, and many criminal justice experts, said that Ashcroft and the Bush administration are playing politics with the death penalty by focusing on statistics that support their position while ignoring those that undermine it.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Juan Raul Garza's two appeals today, and a request for clemency was denied. Garza faces execution Tuesday morning.

A clemency request letter was sent to George W. Bush today from the attorneys for Juan Raul Garza, scheduled for execution Tuesday, June 19, 2001.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have banned the execution of mentally retarded killers, saying it would be wrong to take the decision out of the hands of juries. Perry, a Republican who replaced President George W. Bush as governor of the U.S.' top death penalty state, rejected the bill 12 hours before it would have become law without his signature at 1 a.m. Monday EDT.

Thirty prisoners on Alabama's death row have no lawyers to pursue appeals, by far the largest such group in any state. At a time when some other states are considering suspending executions, debating racial disparities in capital convictions or examining the wisdom of executing mentally retarded prisoners, Alabama officials remain firmly opposed to changes in the state's death penalty system.

A Mexican man scheduled for execution in Oklahoma this week was granted a 30-day stay following a personal plea on Saturday from Mexican President Vicente Fox to Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating.

A mentally disabled man once known as one of Florida's most prolific serial killers, was released early on Saturday after 22 years in prison, cleared by DNA testing that did not exist when he was convicted.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law indigent defense and racial profiling bills on Thursday. Both seek to improve the criminal justice system, criticized for its treatment of minorities and the poor.

The state of Ohio, facing protests internationally and at home, prepared on Thursday to execute a man depicted by his lawyers as too mentally ill to understand what was happening to him.

The Justice Department said today that it would undertake a comprehensive study of the federal death penalty to determine whether the system is racially or ethnically biased.

The U.S. violent crime rate, which has been falling steadily for years, declined by 15 percent in 2000, the largest annual decrease since the survey started in 1974, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

- Joining a rising number of states that prohibit the execution of individuals who are mentally retarded, Gov. Jeb Bush extended the ban to Florida today under a bill he signed into law.

Responding to notorious cases of innocent people being convicted of crimes on the basis of false testimony, Gov. George E. Pataki plans to propose the creation of a crime of aggravated perjury, applicable only to testimony in criminal cases, and punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Lawyers for Juan Raul Garza, who is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, filed a petition today with the Justice Department criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft's conclusion in a study last week that federal death sentences have been imposed without racial or ethnic bias.

A Saudi man will spend the rest of his life in prison for helping carry out the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya after jurors disagreed on Tuesday about whether he should be executed, with some saying lethal injection was too humane.

Amnesty International called the execution of Timothy J. McVeigh a triumph of vengeance over justice. The Council of Europe called it "sad, pathetic and wrong."

The Supreme Court today reiterated the right of privacy in the age of technology, ruling in an Oregon drug case that the police cannot use a heat-seeking device to probe the interior of a home without a search warrant.

Anthony Faison and Charles Shepherd are the fourth and fifth men, wrongly convicted or accused of murder, to walk to freedom on a bridge built by Michael Race, private investigator.

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh , scheduled to die within 48 hours for the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil, is ``sorry people had to lose their lives'' in the blast, the Buffalo News will report on Sunday, quoting his recent letters to two reporters.

Less than two days before he is to be put to death, Timothy McVeigh is "doing very well" and wants the execution to take place, his lawyer told CNN Saturday.

After growing explosively for three decades, the nation's prison population has begun to stabilize, according to new government figures.

Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh today abandoned legal efforts to stave off his execution and began preparing to die after a federal appeals court denied his emergency plea for a delay.

A federal appeals court today rejected Timothy J. McVeigh's request for a stay of execution, and his lawyer said afterward that Mr. McVeigh would now abandon all efforts at a postponement.

Timothy McVeigh's attorneys charged on Tuesday in a reply brief that the government withheld evidence that others besides McVeigh and Terry Nichols were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy and that federal officials knew about the plot beforehand.

Opening a new chapter in a case that the F.B.I.has been trying to close for years, a federal appeals court here ruled today that a sharpshooter for the agency could be tried on state charges of manslaughter in the death of a woman during a standoff in 1992 in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Government prosecutors asked a federal judge today to deny any further delays in carrying out Timothy J. McVeigh's execution, which is scheduled for Monday. A hearing will be held before Judge Richard P. Matsch in Denver on June 6, 2001.

The Supreme Court today overturned the death sentence of a retarded Texas man, Johnny Paul Penry. Although the court did not directly address the broader issue of whether a mentally retarded person should be executed, the justices ruled 6 to 3 that jurors in Mr. Penry's case received flawed instructions about how they should consider his retardation.

The decision by the Supreme Court today to overturn the death sentence of a convicted murderer, Johnny Paul Penry, perhaps the nation's most famous mentally retarded inmate, has intensified the fight in Texas over legislation that would ban the execution of murderers who are retarded.

The Supreme Court yesterday asked the federal government to respond to Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols's request for a hearing on whether newly revealed FBI documents might have had an impact on the outcome of Nichols' trial. The unusual order suggests the high court may have new interest in Nichols's case.

With slightly more than two weeks left before the scheduled execution of convicted murderer and drug kingpin Juan Raul Garza, death penalty opponents today accused the Bush administration of stalling a government study of racial and geographic disparities in capital punishment procedures.

The bill allowing people with chronic or debilitating illnesses to grow their own marijuana for relief has been approved by the Senate. It will go to the Governor for approval.

A border-line people: O'odham Indians, who call both Arizona and Mexico home, are finding their way of life threatened by heightened border policing.

Lawyers for Timothy J. McVeigh today asked the federal judge who sentenced him to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing to grant him a stay of execution, saying that Mr. McVeigh wanted to hold the government responsible for failing to produce thousands of pages of evidence at his trial.

Texas, which leads the nation in executions and endured withering criticism of its death penalty system during the presidential campaign last year, is poised to make significant changes in its criminal justice laws and so, supporters of the overhaul say, create a fairer system of capital punishment.

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

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

Ms. Berenson, a native New Yorker, has already been imprisoned under harsh conditions for more than five years, and her case was manipulated by the corrupt Fujimori regime. President-elect Alejandro Toledo and the Supreme Court should acknowledge this history, and end her prison ordeal.

The United States will someday ban the execution of the retarded, and probably — in the long term — all other individuals as well. Texas Governor Rick Perry could have given us a big push in that direction, but chose not to.

Next time Ashcroft is before Congress, let him speak of the cracks in the base of our justice system, addressing policies that result in 100 black men arrested for every one black man who graduates college. Until we have invested in repairing those cracks, there will continue to be racial bias in the death penalty.

In another deplorable development, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has followed the wrong Bush brother's lead. Instead of signing a law barring the execution of the mentally retarded, as Jeb Bush did in Florida last week, he vetoed one passed by the Legislature in Austin, taking his cue from his predecessor, President Bush, who opposed similar legislation as governor.

Only a small portion of the condemned in this country are mentally retarded. The president would show real compassion and principle by protecting this population from a practice considered barbaric in the rest of the civilized world.

In setting a sound legal standard, Justice Scalia and his colleagues have given basic privacy rights important protections against the misuse of high technology.

We are also heartened by the declining level of support for capital punishment registered by opinion polls in recent years, and the continuing effort in some states to impose a moratorium on further executions.A broad reconsideration of the death penalty is required nationwide. It is an unfairly administered punishment whose claims as a deterrent have been largely discredited. It is also, as President Bush is learning, a foreign policy liability.

Apart from Timothy McVeigh, there are only two other white prisoners among the 21 men under federal death sentence. One purpose of Mr. Ashcroft's report is to prepare the way for the execution of Juan Raul Garza. Ashcroft should not break his pledge to the Senate or carry out executions in the face of what continues to be powerful evidence of discrimination.

The ruling handed down Wednesday by Federal Judge Richard Matsch denying Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's request for a stay of execution is a flagrant attack on the constitutional principle of due process with ominous implications for basic democratic rights.

Another child has been lost to the adult prison complex. Nathan Brazill, the 14-year-old boy convicted of murdering his teacher in West Palm Beach, is a victim of our judicial system. Worse yet, the media sheds a misleading light on violent crime, and juvenile crime in particular.

Although this week's 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision overturning the death sentence of a retarded Texan named Johnny Paul Penry was decided on narrow legal grounds, it was nonetheless a significant victory for common sense and decency.

Fairness should not be left to a prosecutor's discretion, but rather needs to be a requirement of law. If the disclosure of material to the defense, a process known as discovery, is to be a "tool for the truth," then the requirements and fairness need to come from congressional legislation. Letting prosecutors decide who gets what, and when, and when it will be considered important to the defense is a one-sided process that flies in the face of a fair democratic system.

McVeigh's execution was troubling on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. It was alarming to watch the procedural impatience, the official "just get it over with" mentality, despite defense lawyers' not having had a chance to go through more than 4,000 pages of FBI documents that no one disputes ought to have been turned over before McVeigh's trial.

No one better understands the arbitrariness of the death penalty than Juan Raul Garza. A Hispanic man sentenced to death in Texas for three drug-related murders, he is scheduled to be executed on June 19. . Had Garza been white or had he committed his crimes somewhere other than Texas, he probably would not be on death row today.

Bush seems to be against social promotion everywhere except on death row. In fact, Bush is apparently such a believer in the sliding-scale concept of intelligence that he has generously extended it to the mentally retarded on death row. They get to die for the privilege.

I am an ex-con. I spent 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in 1994 to tax and mail fraud charges resulting from the Whitewater investigation. I figured that, with those skills and experience -- not to mention the support of my friends and family -- I would be able to start over and renew my life as a contributing member of society once I had paid my debt to it and got out of prison. I soon learned, as have millions of other Americans, that I carry a mark that keeps me behind bars, even on the outside.

Beyond the celebrity circuit, though, the death-penalty issue is raising the potential for an unusual coalition. The underground cultures of roots-rock and hip-hop are alive with activity that could grow into an artist-driven movement.

Forced to hand down harsh sentences that defy their consciences, many federal judges are speaking out against a system that makes them do "ungodly things."

In a secret meeting with a Newsweek reporter, the New Yorker discussed her most recent conviction in a Peruvian court.

Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff recently named money laundering and the peso exchange as a top priority, prosecutors say. Last month, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission officials also announced an effort to combat money laundering in the securities industry.

In a stunning switch, the convicted murderer's new lawyers now passionately claim he's completely innocent and that the real culprit was a mobster hired by corrupt Philly cops to kill one of their own. If the judge doesn't buy it, their client could die.

Although Bush says they shouldn't be executed, his Texas record shows otherwise, fueling the division between America and Europe over the death penalty.

Court files, police records and interviews reveal that Prince George's homicide detectives extracted false confessions from four men using coercive interrogation room tactics that defense lawyers and court testimony described in dozens of other cases. First of a four part series.

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Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer. Reads like a novel but much scarier because it's all true. A page-turner!

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