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Officials are investigating allegations that Immigration and Naturalization Service officers at a Miami detention facility had sexual contact with detainees.

A federal judge Friday set an Aug. 5 execution date for convicted killer Juan Raul Garza, who would become the first federal prisoner put to death in almost four decades.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has asked Gov. Gray Davis to place a moratorium on executions in California and conduct a study on how the death penalty is carried out in the state.

The wrongful death suit blaming the government for the fire that ended the 1993 Branch Davidian siege will be decided by a jury and not a federal judge alone. Attorneys representing the Davidians and families of sect members who died in the siege hailed the judge's move.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a former boxer whose release after 19 years in prison inspired a movie, insisted Friday that Texas death-row inmate Gary Graham "has clear evidence of his innocence" and should not be executed next month. "We have tried endlessly to get courts to hear this evidence. They have refused," his lawyer, Richard Burr said. "I think it's one of the most compelling cases of innocence in the country."

A Texas death-row inmate scheduled to be executed next week has cleared a major hurdle toward winning a new round of DNA tests that he says would exonerate him. A state district judge in Central Texas recommended that Ricky McGinn, whose execution is set for Thursday, is entitled to further tests of key genetic evidence using more sophisticated technology than was available at his trial five years ago.

Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush said today he supports the use of DNA testing if it can "erase any doubts" about a murder case but he still stands firm in favor of the death penalty.

When the stakes are capital punishment, how much evidence is enough? As the pace of executions grows, prisoners in most states go through the courts without access to DNA tests, the modern equivalent of fingerprints. A new debate about the fairness of a death sentence.

Bush never has used his constitutional power to halt an execution for up to 30 days. Death penalty opponents have hammered at Bush and his state for what they contend is an unfair system that may be responsible for executing innocent people. Bush, however, has been consistent.

Using secret evidence to send someone to jail may be unconstitutional -- except in immigration courts, where foreigners or immigrants have been imprisoned for years on the basis of classified hearsay, federal judges have found.

Police across the country sidestep state laws to ensure that millions of dollars seized in drug raids and traffic stops remain in police hands, The Kansas City Star reports.

In the name of free speech, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that shielded children from sex-oriented cable TV channels. By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court said Congress cannot require cable operators to restrict sexually explicit programming to overnight hours as a way of minimizing the chance that partially audible or visible snippets reach children.

Four months after he rekindled the death penalty debate by imposing a moratorium on executions in Illinois, Republican Gov. George Ryan now says he strongly doubts any inmates will be put to death while he remains in office.

Judges are chafing under New York State's Rockefeller-era drug laws, which mandate a 15-year-to-life minimum sentence for selling two ounces or more of drugs or possessing at least four ounces. That's stiffer than the minimum sentence for manslaughter or rape and it applies to first-time drug felons. Albany's Big Three -- the governor, the Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker -- have each called at different times for loosening the laws, but that rough consensus has been frozen in place by conflicting political agendas.

Reflecting a mounting national unease over the death penalty, New Hampshire's generally conservative Legislature today became the first in the country to approve a bill banning capital punishment since the Supreme Court allowed executions to resume nearly 24 years ago.

Calling the federal grand jury system unfair and abusive, a panel of legal experts today asked Congress to institute reforms to remove it from the "unrestrained power of prosecutors."

In all, 86 people have been exonerated of capital crimes since that ruling, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. All of the cases -- including 13 in Illinois, where the governor barred executions pending an investigation -- figure in a growing national debate over the fairness of capital punishment. Jack Mazzan could go back to prison if he loses at a retrial scheduled for July. But if he is cleared, he'll walk away after having spent more time at death's door than anyone in this country to successfully appeal a capital murder conviction since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976

The Supreme Court's latest decision striking down portions of the Violence Against Women statute represents a convergence between the court's focus on a Congress of limited powers and its newly found solicitude for state sovereignty, the focus of other recent federalism decisions that have carved out new immunities for the states from federal court lawsuits or federal policy "commandeering."

The rate at which women were attacked or threatened with violence by husbands and boyfriends declined 21 percent during the mid-1990s, and the number of men murdered by wives or girlfriends plunged 60 percent from 1976 through 1998, the Justice Department reported today.

As anyone who has watched Al Gore over the years knows, some of his positions on various topics have a way of evolving. As the vice president himself has acknowledged, this has been true on abortion and gun control. There now seems to be another example: medical marijuana.

Declaring that "the Constitution requires a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local," the Supreme Court today invalidated a six-year-old provision of federal law that permitted victims of rape, domestic violence and other crimes "motivated by gender" to sue their attackers in federal court.

Electroshock devices to restrain prisoners, "excessively harsh'' prison conditions and police ill-treatment of civilians were cited by a U.N. human rights panel Monday in its first-ever report on torture in the United States.

Gov. George W. Bush has said he is certain that the 127 people who have been executed in Texas during his tenure were all guilty. But here in Texas, which under Mr. Bush has executed more people than any other state, some of the officials who administer the death penalty, reviewing the case records, considering inmates' appeals and weighing final pleas for clemency, said in interviews that they believed Texas ran the risk of executing an innocent person.

The New York Times examines five cases in Texas which resulted in executions.

In his Republican presidential campaign, Gov. George W. Bush, a strong proponent of "swift and sure" capital punishment, has repeatedly said he is "absolutely confident" that Texas's death penalty system works fairly. Yet a review of the state's death penalty files shows that the legal proceedings of many capital defendants were poorly handled by lax, inept or inexperienced lawyers.

Al Gore said Thursday that there are better alternatives to the medical use of marijuana because ''the science does not show ... that it is the proper medication for pain.''

Attorney General Janet Reno yesterday said more Americans are falling victim to fraud on the Internet every day, prompting her to open a "one-stop shopping" center to identify Internet fraud schemes.

The Justice Department stands ready to file a police misconduct lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, U.S. officials said Monday, but will give city authorities time to try to work out a voluntary settlement instead.

Serious crimes reported to the police dropped in 1999 for an eighth consecutive year, down 7 percent from the year before and the longest-running crime decline on record, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported today.

New Yorkers will soon be able to buy hypodermic needles without a prescription, a move aimed at inhibiting the spread of the AIDS virus.

Presidential candidate Alejandro Toledo promised Wednesday that an American woman serving a life sentence in a Peruvian prison for terrorism will not go free if he is elected in the May 28 runoff vote.

Vice President Gore today proposed a range of crime-fighting initiatives--from mandatory drug testing and treatment for prisoners to expanding the number of new federally funded police officers--and attacked the crime fighting record of his GOP rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Hoping to make inroads on a traditionally Republican issue, Al Gore plans to propose expanded drug treatment programs for convicted felons and continued federal funding of a program to put police officers on the nation's streets.

President Clinton is renewing his criticism of the Republican-led Senate for its slowness in confirming dozens of his judicial appointments, particularly those of women and minorities.

Senate Republican leader Orrin Hatch acknowledged today that Congress might never hold hearings on whether the government used excessive force to seize Elián González and return him to his father.

Nothing tarnishes the legal system more than the imprisonment of an innocent person. Whatever the reason — a mistaken eyewitness, ineffective attorneys, police mistakes or misconduct or even bad science — there are people behind bars or on death row for crimes they did not commit. An investigative team recruited from within the criminal justice system, including a seasoned judge, a skeptical prosecutor and an adversarial defense attorney, explore two murder cases and consider whether our justice system prevailed or failed to protect the innocent in WAS JUSTICE DENIED? , premiering on TNT, Tuesday, June 20 at 8 p.m. ET. (Repeats at 11 p.m. ET.)

Congress Today

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

May 23, 2000...Hearings on Secret Evidence Repeal Act, H.R. 2121, are scheduled before the full House Judiciary Committee. For More Information on the Secret Evidence Repeal Act.

Please fax your Congressperson and urge support for this Act.

Text 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.

Innocence Protection Act Needs Your Support! Please contact these officials and request passage.

Text of the Innocence Protection Act

Action is needed now for hemp. Drug Czar Gen. McCaffrey is not satisfied with Janet Reno's confirmation that hemp products are legal for import under current definitions - he is trying to circulate amendments to the Controlled Substances Act to further restrict hemp. Please contact your Senators, Congressional Representatives, the President and Secretary of Agriculture ASAP.

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000, signed into law by President Clinton on April 25, 2000, has a strong legislative history. The following remarks by members of Congress are part of the legislative history of the bill and may be determinative when courts seek to interpret the new provisions.

Richard Troberman, Esq., Co-Chair, Forfeiture Abuse Task Force, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Submits his Analysis of the new Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill

New York State's inflexibly draconian drug laws, enacted under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1973, have helped propel the state prison population to a fivefold increase between then and 1999. Some 22,300 drug offenders are currently confined in state prisons. Many of these inmates are nonviolent users or small-time sellers who were dispensing drugs to support their own addictions. The annual budget cost of this incarceration is a staggering $700 million. But the human costs are even more horrendous. Excessive prison sentences destroy families for no good reason and prevent nonviolent offenders from leading productive lives.

For those who contend that capital punishment is not now, nor has it ever been, a deterrent to violent crime, the death penalty is the cruelest example of human rights violations in the United States today. Social scientists have long established that the death penalty is injudiciously meted out. An African-American defendant found guilty of the identical crime of a white defendant is statistically at least four times more likely to be given the death penalty....But we must take the struggle to halt capital punishment to the next level. We should challenge elected officials who are soliciting our votes in the fall 2000 elections to have the political and moral decency to support the death penalty moratorium. In the words of Supreme Court Associate Justice Harry Blackman, we must halt once and for all the "machinery of death."

Whoever coined the phrase "facts are stubborn things" has apparently never come across drug war advocates - a self-righteous bunch, undeterred by trivial matters of fact.

The contrasting positions of the governors of Illinois and Texas on the death penalty speak well for George Ryan. Not so for George W. Bush. Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes could see to it that if the state of Georgia must exercise the death penalty, it does so in a way designed to minimize the margin for fatal errors. In preparing his legislative agenda for next year, Barnes should insist on two funding priorities: for competent legal counsel for defendants who can't afford their own attorneys and for DNA testing for those death row convicts who have legal justification.

In her first outing as a candidate for elective office, Hillary Rodham Clinton has demonstrated a firm grasp of a basic rule of politics. That is the one about never interfering when your opponent is being engulfed with bad news. Indeed, Mrs. Clinton has campaigned with such quiet decorum during Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's travails that the public may be tempted to overlook the accomplishment represented by her formal nomination yesterday.

In 1973, under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, New York enacted some of the toughest, most rigid drug laws in the nation. At the time it was thought that imposing long, mandatory sentences on drug pushers would stop the illegal drug trade. But 26 years of experience has shown that those expectations were completely baseless. Not only have the laws failed to increase public safety or stem the traffic in drugs, but they have filled state prisons with nonviolent drug offenders at huge public expense, clogged the court system and created new problems for communities and families already burdened by drug addiction.

America's execution of the death penalty -- wordplay intended -- has long been flawed. Racial bias, the execution of teen-age and mentally retarded killers, and the railroading of poor suspects have finally combined to make the death penalty moratorium a hot issue in this election year.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in 1995 that more than 55 percent of federal drug defendants were the lowest level offenders: couriers, "mules," bodyguards, or street-level dealers. The Justice Department is not going after the high-level traffickers. The imprisonment of most our 84,000 federal drug prisoners is doing very little to solve America's drug problem. The arbitrary application and non-application of mandatory sentences is a stench in every federal courthouse.

Congressional misgivings about the nation's profoundly flawed death penalty system may lead to important reforms. In three new decisions, meanwhile, the Supreme Court has signaled that while federal courts retain a role in correcting death penalty injustices, their room to do so has been limited by a 1996 law intended to speed executions. It is Congress's responsibility to undo that damage by minimizing the chances of unfairness and mistakes.

The National Guardsmen were walking up a hill when they suddenly wheeled around and fired into a group of unarmed students. That was how four students died at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. To see the site is to know that the guardsmen were not under threat. Criticism is valuable because it helps to correct public policies. That is a great advantage of open societies. But the system works only if those in charge are wise enough to recognize when a policy, however well intentioned, has gone wrong. The Vietnam War and its leaders are a monument to the failure of that necessary wisdom.

The war against marijuana took two interesting, and very divergent, turns last week. In Ukiah, California, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors placed a measure on the November ballot to decriminalize the personal cultivation and use of marijuana. In Sacramento, the Assembly Public Safety Committee voted to reimpose California’s “Smoke a Joint, Lose Your License” law...Mendocino County has learned the hard way and is finally on the right track. Threats and bullying don’t work. Lose your home. Lose your freedom. And now lose your license. Too bad the politicos in Sacramento seem once again to have lost their minds.

The two most important reforms for crime-fighting can also help to reduce police brutality. One is training in effective police methods.The other reform is to show police that their first job is to earn the trust of citizens, something that is essential because most crimes are solved when people in the community come forward with information. To do this, the police should represent the nation's ethnic mix.

TalkLeft Commentary

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.

A special two-part report on police and drug money seizures which finds that across the country, police and highway patrols are evading state laws to improperly keep millions of dollars in cash and property seized in drug busts and traffic stops.

5/18/2000... Smoke a Joint, Lose Your Loan ...by Jake Ginsky, MoJo Wire

Starting this July, a new law will cut off federal financial aid to students convicted of drug offenses

Martin Draughon can't surf the Internet, or even click a mouse. A condemned murderer, he lives in a 60-square-foot cell on Texas' death row, where Internet connections and computers are banned. Yet the 36-year-old Draughon, with the help of a death-penalty opponent in Denmark, has a Web site. After reading about Draughon in a Danish newspaper, Niels Graverholt created a site for him in 1996. Currently, hundreds on death row and other prisoners boast their own Web addresses, which, due to widespread prohibitions on Internet usage in prison, are set up by supporters outside prison walls.

Did execution-happy George W. Bush sign off on the lethal injection of an innocent man?

many Californians are having doubts about the state's three-strikes law, which is the toughest in the nation. There are bipartisan efforts in the California Legislature and among voters to relax the strictest parts of the anti-crime measure, which sends criminals to prison for 25 years to life for a third felony conviction. Facing a barrage of stories about criminals being packed off to decades spent in prison for swiping pizzas, stealing bicycles or shoplifting, lawmakers and other advocates for change are looking to soften the impact of the law.

The US is strong-arming Colombia into unleashing the latest weapon in the war on drugs: a powerful new herbicide. But along with killing coca plants, the toxic fungus may pose serious dangers to the environment and human health -- threats so compelling that Florida has suspended plans to test the fungus for its own anti-drug efforts.

The controversial use of force to seize Elián González is just business as usual in the war on drugs...In the debate over the federal government's use of force to return Elián González to his father, the left and right have magically swapped sides....All over the country, in small and midsize cities, police departments are adopting militaristic, SWAT-like approaches to crime.

Bliss Bites contain 8.0 grams of cannabinoid chocolate and 0.4 gram of crunchy bits of ibuprofen. After more than 10 years of research, the biochemical link between cannabinoids and ibuprofen is now known to science. Today, with our benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the false-positive link between marijuana tests and ibuprofen is not all that surprising.

5/2/2000.. Gore Proposes Mandatory Drug Testing Before Release from Prison

"I believe that we should demand that criminals get clean before they get out of jail." Source: Associated Press

5/12/2000...Gore Doubts Marijuana is Effective Pain Reliever

Vice President Gore today backed away from his earlier support of medical marijuana, saying he sees “no reliable evidence” that it is an effective pain reliever.

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