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For the first time in more than 100 years, New York jurors deliberating the fate of criminal defendants will no longer have to be sequestered overnight in state-financed hotel rooms, under the watch of armed, uniformed court officers.

A decision will be made by Friday whether to ask a judge to postpone Timothy McVeigh 's execution, a lawyer for the convicted Oklahoma City bomber said on Monday.

On May 18, a Texas judge ordered 21 registered sex criminals to post signs on their homes and automobiles warning the public of their crimes, and the results were almost immediate. One of the offenders attempted suicide, two were evicted from their homes, several had their property vandalized and one offender's father had his life threatened, according to court testimony.

An Oklahoma criminalist revealed for the first time in February that a co-worker disagreed with his laboratory findings that helped send two innocent men to prison in 1988, The Oklahoman has learned.

One of the newly discovered F.B.I. documents handed over to lawyers in the Oklahoma City bombing case was a report about a witness on the day of the bombing whose testimony at trial was later discredited. The witness's credibility came under attack, in part, because lawyers on both sides did not know about the document, a person familiar with the case said.

The Texas legislature approved a bill on Saturday that would ban the execution of convicted killers who are determined to be mentally retarded.

A Queens man charged with killing an off-duty police officer 14 years ago was found not guilty of the charges yesterday in State Supreme Court in Queens. The verdict was a big setback for the authorities, who had created an elaborate undercover operation to catch the man.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced yesterday that the Justice Department has turned over nearly 900 additional pages of documents that hould have been given to defense attorneys for Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh attorney Rob Nigh said the documents turned over in the last two weeks include statements from witnesses that would have been helpful to McVeigh's defense during his trial and sentencing, and he predicted they could help McVeigh win another delay in the case.

Attorneys for Robert P. Hanssen, the former FBI agent accused of spying for Moscow, are planning pretrial motions against any Justice Department decision to seek the death penalty for him, according to lawyers familiar with the case.

It was the shopping, argued Elizabeth Roach's lawyer that propelled her to steal nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the consulting company she worked for by padding her expense accounts. On Wednesday, a federal judge agreed. Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of Federal District Court spared Ms. Roach from going to prison, reducing what could have been an 18-month jail sentence because he said she was using her shopping addiction to "self- medicate" her chronic depression.

Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont said today he would leave the Republican Party, a move that would vault Senate Democrats into majority status and weaken President Bush as he tries to turn his goals into legislation.

The Bush administration has widened its search for a new F.B.I. director to include Sterling Johnson Jr., a federal judge in Brooklyn who, if selected and confirmed, would be the first black to head the bureau, law enforcement officials in Washington and New York said today.

FBI ratings have suffered in the wake of a string of embarrassing mistakes, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether the main federal law aimed at keeping children from viewing pornography on the Internet would violate the constitutional guarantee of free speech.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday, in a case weighing the rights of journalists against the personal right to privacy, that news organizations cannot be punished for broadcasting or publishing important information passed on to them by someone who obtained it unlawfully.

In Maryland, it has become increasingly likely that lifers in the state will die behind bars. That's mainly because of a 1995 decision by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) to sign parole papers for lifers only when they are terminally ill. The new policy, prison experts say, raises issues more profound than dollars and cents. They are questions about life and death, retribution and redemption, and how these things are affected by the pull of politics.

The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked along party lines today on the selection of Theodore B. Olson to be solicitor general, with Democratic opponents complaining that Mr. Olson had earlier misled the committee about his involvement in anti- Clinton activities.

For the second time in a month, a schizophrenic who murdered an Ohio delicatessen owner had his execution halted minutes before he was to die after a court ordered a delay on Tuesday.The central issue in his case has been whether his mental illness allows him to comprehend what is happening to him.

FBI field offices across the country yesterday assured top officials that they have no more records related to the Oklahoma City bombing case, meeting a 9 a.m. deadline set by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh after several more items trickled in from the Baltimore field office last week, officials said.

U.S. senators grilled departing FBI Director Louis Freeh on Tuesday about the blunder of the misplaced materials that delayed Timothy McVeigh's execution as the FBI found even more documents that must be given to the convicted Oklahoma City bomber's lawyers.

Jeremy Sheets, a 27-year-old Nebraska man who has spent four years on death row will walk out of prison a free man after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a state court decision throwing out his conviction, attorneys involved in the case said Tuesday.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the federal government can shut down California marijuana cooperatives that distribute the drug to people who say they need it to combat the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation came under scathing criticism today from Capitol Hill, with Democratic and Republican lawmakers describing the mishandling of documents in the Timothy J. McVeigh case as the latest in several fiascoes that appeared to reflect deep problems within the agency.

Texas, which has executed more convicted murderers in the last two decades than most nations of the Western world, is considering a surprising array of capital punishment reforms that could reduce the number of death sentences imposed here, lawmakers said.

After 14 years of waiting, two Brooklyn families had something to celebrate yesterday. Two men, Anthony Faison and Charles Shepherd, were expected to be released from prison today after being convicted in the 1987 murder of a livery driver, a crime it has become increasingly clear that they did not commit.

Six days before Timothy McVeigh was scheduled to be executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, the Justice Department yesterday gave his attorneys thousands of pages of FBI documents that officials said were mistakenly withheld before McVeigh's 1997 trial.It is not yet known whether Mr. McVeigh will seek a stay of execution based upon the disclosure.

President Bush plans to expand the nation's drug treatment programs after the completion of a four-month-review that he launched yesterday in what advocates for the addicted called a landmark step toward addressing a chronic shortage of treatment.

Unlike the Clinton administration, which supported the death penalty but never carried it out, the Bush administration has signaled that it fully intends to resume regular federal executions for the first time in nearly four decades.

The Senate Judiciary Committee today postponed voting on the nomination of Theodore B. Olson, President Bush's choice to be solicitor general, in order to investigate material suggesting that Olson failed to fully disclose his role in the controversial "Arkansas Project" in testimony to the panel.

George W. Bush today nominated John P. Walters, a law-and-order conservative, as his drug-policy director.

President Bush is expected to name Representative Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican with a long interest in drug issues, as the new head of the Drug Enforcement Administration,officials said.

New York State's highest court ruled today that experts' testimony on the reliability of eyewitnesses could be admitted at a rial, a decision that legal scholars said could have a major impact on criminal prosecutions in the state.

With defense lawyers maintaining that state and local officials have a conflict of interest and so should remove themselves from the investigation of the police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, Gov. Frank Keating said today that he would consider appointing an independent prosecutor, although he denied any conflict.

Today, after maintaining his innocence throughout the 15 years he spent behind bars, Jeffrey Pierce was freed because DNA testing refuted the crucial testimony against him from an Oklahoma City police chemist long accused of shoddy work and now the focus of one of the most wide-ranging investigations into a police laboratory.

The execution of Mr. McVeigh for the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that left 168 people dead is, of course, an important event for the nation and the news media, and an army of journalists — 1,600 have asked for credentials — will soon descend on Terre Haute to record it.Yet many news people are grappling with the question of what exactly so many of them will be doing in Terre Haute that morning.

Beyond the opinion polls and the McVeigh execution, many Americans are having second thoughts about their system of justice in death penalty cases. Moratorium laws have been introduced in a record 16 states. A new ABC News poll found that 51 percent of Americans supported a nationwide moratorium on executions.

To state officials, Billy Johnson, a twice-convicted rapist, looked like a prime candidate for using a new law to brand some ex-convicts as sexual predators. Passed in 1999, the law allows the state to ask a jury to require continued supervision and treatment for a convict even after they serve their prison time. Last month, Mr. Johnson became the first person whose case was scrutinized by a jury under the state's "civil commitment law." The state lost.

Celebrity novelist Gore Vidal confirmed he will watch at the bomber’s request. Vidal said his association with McVeigh began when the bomber wrote him about Vidal’s 1998 article in Vanity Fair about “the shredding” of the Bill of Rights. “We’ve exchanged several letters,” the author said. “He’s very intelligent. He’s not insane.”

Democrats said they will not agree to confirmation votes for Theodore B. Olson as solicitor general and Larry Thompson as deputy attorney general to pressure Republicans to restore what they described as the long-standing power of individual senators to block judicial nominations from their home states.

First a juror, and then an investment banker and a civil rights advocate who are opposed to New York's harsh drug laws have tried to post bail for a man in jail awaiting retrial on charges that he sold $10 of heroin. A Manhattan judge blocked that effort for the second time yesterday, ruling that the defendant would have no incentive to return to court if strangers were allowed to post bail.

In Washington on Tuesday, conservative and liberal members of Congress demanded that the federal government explain its need for so many secret operations related to the anti-drug mission in the Andean region. And if answers are not forthcoming, some members of Congress warned, future funding might not be forthcoming either.

Under a law passed in 1998, but that is being fully enforced for the first time by the Bush administration, students convicted on drug charges become ineligible for federal financial aid and loans for one year after a possession conviction, or for two years after a conviction for selling drugs, unless they undergo a rehabilitation program that includes two random urine tests. Repeat offenders can face permanent loss of federal assistance to attend college. No other crime carries such a provision.

Overwhelming support for the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh masks this reality: Public approval of capital punishment has declined while the proportion of Americans who favor replacing the death penalty with life in prison has increased in recent years, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Life without parole would be added to the punishment options in capital murder convictions, giving juries one more option in death penalty cases, under a bill approved Wednesday by the Senate.

Gov. James S. Gilmore III approved a new right today for death row inmates, adding Virginia to the growing list of states that give the condemned access to DNA testing long after their convictions.

From 1980 to 1993, Joyce Gilchrist was involved in roughly 3,000 cases as an Oklahoma City police laboratory scientist, often helping prosecutors win convictions by identifying suspects with hair, blood or carpet fibers taken from crime scenes. But Ms. Gilchrist is now the subject of an investigation ordered this week by Gov. Frank Keating to re- examine all of her felony cases after her credibility was bluntly denounced by a Federal Bureau of Investigation report that found she had misidentified evidence or given improper courtroom testimony in at least five of eight cases the agency reviewed.

"This is a recording of the execution of Ivon Ray Stanley, EF103603. July the 12th, 1984." So begins the official audio record of one of 23 electrocutions that were carried out in Georgia from 1983 to 1998, all of which were tape-recorded by prison staff, and excerpts of which will be broadcast for the first time nationally today on public radio.

The D.C. Superior Court judge, a defense lawyer and some court officers who watched defendant Robert L. Waters Jr. collapse in court never gave a serious response to the dying man's pleas for help and later joked about his death in the cellblock, a transcript of the hearing shows.

Last week federal judge U. W. Clemon, wrote a blistering ruling ordering the state prisoners removed from the Morgan County Jail by mid-May and the jail cleaned. Judge Clemon's strong language has shaken up one of the country's most overburdened corrections systems. "To say the Morgan County Jail is overcrowded is an understatement," he wrote. "The sardine-can appearance of its cell units more nearly resemble the holding units of slave ships during the Middle Passage of the 18th century than anything in the 21st century."

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

The political establishment wants to use the McVeigh execution—the first federal execution in 38 years—to rehabilitate the practice of capital punishment, which has begun to lose support among Americans in recent years, due in part to revelations of wrongful convictions of death row inmates. Capital punishment is a barbaric practice that has been outlawed in the majority of the advanced industrialized countries in the world. The American people will be no better protected by putting McVeigh to death than by locking him up for life.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt's most prominent advocate of democracy and human rights, has been convicted by a Cairo court so impatient to pronounce sentence that it did not wait for defense lawyers to complete their case.

To send 14-year-olds directly to adult prisons for a quarter-century is to give up on them. It may even ensure that they become lifetime criminals.

Tens of thousands of prisoners around the country are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, making prisons one of the most potentially dangerous incubators of the epidemic. The infected inmates need health care that is often unavailable in prison, and their fellow prisoners need protection from contracting the virus.

The Supreme Court's unanimous verdict against a California cooperative set up to supply marijuana to qualified patients need not terminate all efforts to help those who have no reasonable alternative treatment. The verdict simply shifts the onus to individual patients or to compassionate state governments to obtain marijuana for medical purposes and test the limits of federal intransigence.

They got the wrong guys. Again....There is little or no effort being made to protect the innocent against these kinds of utterly unsubstantiated lies. Worse, when evidence is brought forward that makes it clear that a case has been built on lies, the knee-jerk reaction among criminal justice officials is to cover it up.

So do we send Nathaniel Brazill away for 70 years, or do we release him at 18 or 21? There may be a way to avoid these extremes. First, juvenile court judges, not prosecutors, should decide whether children charged with serious crimes should be charged as adults or minors.

Too often, forensic laboratories are run by law enforcement officers in lab coats. The laboratories cannot be allowed to operate as arms of police departments and prosecutors' offices. They need to be independent agencies, serving as fact finders for both the prosecution and the defense.

The Bush administration has been sending disappointing signals to those who had hoped the new team might fashion a better balance between military interdiction of drug producers abroad and treatment for drug addicts at home. President Bush's reported plan to nominate John Walters as chief of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy suggests a clear preference for military and law enforcement strategies.

Legislators should approve a capital punishment study and a resolution to allow voters to support or deny a moratorium. It's unfortunate, however, that the governor and legislators have not been politically brave enough to call for the moratorium themselves.

The Bush administration is expected to nominate an old-fashioned policy hawk as the country's new "drugs tsar" despite debate on the effectiveness of America's war on drugs.

Clarence Thomas says marijuana has no medical use. Maybe he'd like to try my cancer

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has formally entered the Appeals trial of young Lisl Auman -- the girl who remains locked up in a cell at the Colorado State Prison for the Rest of Her Life with No Possibility of Parole for a bogus crime. Lisl is a living victim of a cold-blooded Political Trial that will cast a long shadow on Denver for many years to come -- she is the only person ever convicted in the United States for Felony Murder while in police custody when the crime happened. The NACDL brings a heavyweight presence to this case that will quickly level the playing field. Nobody needs a public fight with a team of Elite warriors from the NACDL. It will be like having to fight Joe Frazier every day for six months. There will be injuries, and there will be more than one trip to the Emergency Room this time. No more easy wins for the black hats. The worm is about to turn. That is also a good early bet. Take my word for it.

Prosecutors face a gamut of tough decisions when the death penalty is an option. Critics say varying standards for decision-making can be unfair to defendants.

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