TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - The Trump Jr, Flash-Fire

"How are Trump Jr. revelations resonating politically?" PBS NewsHour 7/12/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  How are Americans on both sides of the aisle reacting to revelations about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer?  Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union and Karine Jean-Pierre of MoveOn.org join Judy Woodruff to discuss how the developments are shaping what lawmakers and voters think.

"Trump legal team distances president from son's meeting with Russian lawyer" PBS NewsHour 7/12/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  How do the bombshell revelations in Donald Trump Jr.'s emails affect the Russia investigation?  That was the big question across Capitol Hill, after it was revealed the President's son tried to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton, provided by the Russian government.  John Yang reports on how lawmakers and others are responding.

"Did Donald Trump Jr. break the law? Two legal experts weigh in" PBS NewsHour 7/12/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Donald Trump Jr.'s release of his Russia-related email exchange reignited a legal debate about whether members of the Trump campaign engaged in unlawful activity.  Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer and Jed Shugerman of Fordham Law School join Judy Woodruff to offer different perspectives on the legal questions surrounding the controversy.

LAW - Faulty 'Science'?

COMMENT:  The title of this article is unfortunate and not accurate.  Science itself is rarely 'junk' just because an instance is shown faulty.  Science is done by human beings and we are faulty.  When a scientific procedure is not correctly followed, the result is faulty.  But the science is NOT junk.

"‘Junk science' law exonerates woman of murder" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2016

ALISON STEWART (NewsHour):  This past April, we brought you the story of Sonia Cacy, a 68-year old Texas woman who in 1993 was convicted of the murder by arson of her uncle, Bill Richardson, and who has been in legal limbo for the past 17 years.

Cacy maintained her innocence through her trial and conviction, even after the case's toxicologist produced evidence that her uncle had traces of gasoline on his clothes.

Did you have anything to do with the fire that occurred on November 10, 1991?

SONIA CACY, convicted felon:  No.  I did not.  I did not ever, anything.  No.

ALISON STEWART:  Later evidence found the toxicologist's report was faulty and that the fire was started accidentally.  Cacy was released from prison on parole, but was never exonerated and had to report to a parole officer once a month for 17 years.

SONIA CACY:  It's a big burden because you can't even get a place to live.  Everybody does your background.  Where you're living, where you're gonna work.

ALISON STEWART:  The Innocence Project of Texas filed a motion to reopen Cacy's case under the “Junk Science Law”, a new law in Texas that makes it possible to appeal a case if there is scientific evidence that was not available at the time of the conviction or there is new evidence that contradicts what was used to convict.

GARY UDASHEN:  Sonia is a real, live example of somebody whose life was really destroyed based upon bad scientific testimony in court.

Last Wednesday, Texas's Court of Criminal Appeals found Cacy not guilty of the death of her uncle, fulfilling her dearest wish for her and her family.

SONIA CACY:  My hopes for the future are to get everything like this over with and to be exonerated before I die, and it would be really nice for my children.

U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL - Donald Verrilli

"Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who beat back legal challenges to Obamacare, steps down" PBS NewsHour 6/28/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  As the Supreme Court wraps up a very busy term, there’s a familiar face who won’t be returning to argue cases before the court next fall.  Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, the Obama administration’s top lawyer who defended Obamacare and argued for immigration reform, sat down recently with Judy Woodruff for an exit interview.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Don Verrilli, thank you very much for talking with us.

DONALD VERRILLI, Outgoing Solicitor General:  Thank you, Judy.  It’s great to be here.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So you have been the Solicitor General for the past five years for a Democratic administration arguing cases before a majority conservative Supreme Court.  How do you think it’s gone, on balance?

DONALD VERRILLI:  Well, on balance, pretty well.  We have won some, we have lost some, but I think we have won most of the big, important cases, health care, marriage equality.

I think on most of the cases that really matter as an historical — from an historical perspective, we have done pretty well.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So you would argue the administration has done better than the conservative point of view?

DONALD VERRILLI:  Well, I guess what I would say about that is that we managed to persuade a court, a majority of whose members, before Justice Scalia passed away, you would say are conservative, that we had the right answer on the law on the big cases.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, just last week, the justices handed down a decision on the President’s immigration plan, which you argued.

It’s being seen as dealing a pretty significant blow to this President’s legacy.  How do you see what happens going forward on immigration after that decision?

DONALD VERRILLI:  Yes.

So, about the decision itself, you know, whether one agrees with the position of the administration or whether one disagrees with the position, I think probably everybody would agree that it isn’t ideal to have that question left in limbo with a 4-4 tie, affirming a divided vote of a lower court.

I don’t think anybody thinks that’s an ideal outcome here.  And what that I means, I think, is that the legal question remains open for the future about the President’s authority, and then the question as a policy matter about what we’re going to do about the significant problem that the — this policy was trying to address, what we’re going to do about that remains open for the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So many unresolved questions.

DONALD VERRILLI:  Yes.  I think very little was resolved by this.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And we know there was another important ruling the court handed down last week on affirmative action, another case you argued.

Were you surprised by Justice Kennedy, the majority opinion essentially in favor of using race as some consideration in college admissions?

DONALD VERRILLI:  Well, we were very pleased that the court, Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the court, accepted the argument that we put forward on behalf of the United States and accepted the argument that the University of Texas put forward.

And I think I was a little bit surprised that it was as definitive as a victory as it was.  I had thought there was some chance that the case might be sent back to the lower courts for more factual development, but it was a definitive victory.

BROKEN JUSTICE - The Obama Fix and U.S. Senate Fix

"An inside look at the Obama administration’s criminal justice reforms" PBS NewsHour 4/28/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Top senators revealed a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill on Thursday that includes changes to sentencing guidelines for some offenders and the creation of reentry programs for newly released prisoners.  The move comes as the Obama administration is pushing its own series of initiatives.  Judy Woodruff talks to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates for more on that effort.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  On Capitol Hill today, a group of top senators unveiled a bipartisan bill to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.

Among other things, the legislation would reduce prison sentences for some nonviolent drug offenders, and create programs to help offenders reenter society.  The move comes at the same time the Obama administration is pushing a series of criminal justice initiatives.

Spearheading that effort is Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, who joins us now.

Deputy Attorney General Yates, thank you for being with us.

SALLY YATES, Deputy Attorney General:  Well, thank you for having me.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, tell us what the thrust of the administration’s criminal justice reform efforts are.  What are you trying to fix?

SALLY YATES:  Well, we’re trying to accomplish a number of things.

First, with the sentencing reform bill, we’re really trying to bring proportionality back to sentencing, and specifically for lower-level nonviolent drug offenders.  And then with our Reentry Week this week, we’re really trying to highlight the importance of assuring that those who are returning from prison have just those basic tools they need in order to be able to be successful.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, what are some examples of that?  What are some things that they need that they aren’t getting right now, most of them?

SALLY YATES:  Well, just imagine right now that you’re leaving prison.  You may or may not have a family to go back to.  Particularly if you were incarcerated a long way from where your family lives, your wife may have divorced you at this point, so you may or may not have a family to go back to.

And you may or may not have had a chance to stay in touch with your children during this time as well.  It’s expensive for people to travel.  So, you have got to find a place to live.  Public housing is difficult.  Some public housing operations will not allow convicted felons.  Then you have got to find a job.  And finding a job is really difficult at all right now, but just imagine if you have to add convicted felon to your resume.

SAN DIEGO - Abuse of Law, Guilt by Association

"Guilt by Association:  Facebook Pics Could Help Send a Young Man to Prison for Life" by Sara Libby, Voice of San Diego 3/4/2015

SUMMARY:  District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is using an obscure criminal statute to prosecute a group of San Diego men.  The DA has admitted that some of the men had nothing to do with the underlying crimes at the heart of the case – a series of shootings by Lincoln Park gang members in 2013.  Rather, they’re charged with conspiracy for belonging to the same gang as the shooters.

Aaron Harvey was leaving his Las Vegas apartment to get some food one day in July 2014, when, suddenly, “man, Seal Team 6 came out of nowhere, pretty much.  Guns drawn, dogs, helicopters.”

It was the U.S. Marshals, who’d come to take Harvey back to San Diego.

“They told me that I was wanted for murders in the state of California,” Harvey said.  “I laughed.  I started laughing.  I told ‘em, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy.'”

Harvey isn’t charged with murder, though.  That’s precisely why his case is so controversial.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is using an obscure criminal statute, Penal Code section 182.5, for what appears to be the first time ever in California to prosecute a group of 15 San Diego men, including Harvey.  The DA has admitted that some of the men had nothing to do with the underlying crimes at the heart of the case – a series of shootings by Lincoln Park gang members in 2013.  Rather, they’re charged with conspiracy for belonging to the same gang as the shooters.  For that, they could go to prison for life.

It’s guilt by association, basically, and if federal law is any guide, it’s perfectly constitutional.

The law says a person who “willfully promotes, furthers, assists, or benefits” from a gang crime can be charged with conspiracy.  The benefit Harvey received out of the shootings, according to the DA, is street cred.  If someone in the gang commits a crime, the reasoning goes, the whole gang gets a boost to its reputation.

“They’re saying I benefited because my stature, my respect, went up.  I didn’t even know I had any stature.  I don’t understand how someone can benefit from something they don’t even know exists,” said Harvey.  “It’s not a quantifiable thing, there’s no measure for stature.  They’re the ones quantifying it.”

Most of the attention on the case so far has centered on the rapper Tiny Doo, whose real name is Brandon Duncan.  Because some of the evidence tying Duncan to the Lincoln Park gang includes his own lyrics, his case has pulled at the heartstrings of everyone from music critics to legal scholars – “Rapper Tiny Doo facing long prison sentence over lyrics” reads one typical headline.

Harvey’s case has none of those sexy First Amendment issues.  Much of the evidence being presented against him isn’t rap lyrics but Facebook posts that prosecutors say link him unmistakably to the Lincoln Park gang.  But he, like Duncan, has no criminal record and is facing up to life in prison if convicted.

Harvey insists he’s no gang member – just a victim of living in a gang-heavy neighborhood, and thus, falling into the state’s gang database by virtue of having been seen in gang territory and socializing with other gang members, i.e., his friends and neighbors.

Being documented as a gang member isn’t a crime on its own.  But if Dumanis is successful, she’d effectively make it one – because anyone documented as a gang member could be held responsible for the crimes of any other member, so long as the crime benefited the gang somehow.

“This is not the American justice system.  We attach personal liability to things.  You’re not guilty by mere association or mere membership,” said Edward Kinsey, Harvey’s lawyer.  “It’s just wrong.  If they can get away with this, I fear for our future as free citizens.”

“This is as draconian a conspiracy law as you’ll see anywhere in the United States,” said Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.  “It exploits it to the absolute maximum, but it’s not unconstitutional.  It’s just unbelievably tough.”

Harvey’s trial is set for April 20.

=====
Harvey moved to Las Vegas in 2013, he said, after one encounter with San Diego police became the last straw.  He was stopped outside his home and searched.  An officer found his EMT card in his wallet, Harvey said, and told him they’d have to call his boss and tell him he was a gang member.

He said he was so spooked by the encounter, he decided to move to Nevada, where two of his sisters live.  He made money as a club promoter while he studied to become a Realtor.  He said he’d passed the required classes and was studying for the real estate exam when he was arrested – forfeiting the money he’d spent on books and courses.

Harvey says San Diego police stopped and questioned him more than 50 times while he was growing up in Lincoln Park, and that he was routinely handcuffed, or placed in the back of a police patrol car in many of those instances, then released without being charged with a crime.

“In the process of those stops, there were never any crimes being committed,” Harvey said.  “Nobody called in, saying, ‘Oh there’s a disturbance.’  They’re just stops.  Stops of me in front of my grandmother’s house, walking through the neighborhood, to the store, whatever.”

To hear Harvey and his supporters tell it, his case is at best a misunderstanding.  At worst, it’s the product of a system that’s stacked against young men in poor, gang-ridden neighborhoods.

Harvey says his classification as a gang member was cemented just after he turned 18, largely because of information collected during those police stops, including photos of him outside his family’s home and his grandmother’s home, also in Lincoln Park.

To Harvey and his parents, Aaron’s inclusion in the gang database paints a wildly misleading picture of their family.  Once people hear “gang member,” they won’t see that Aaron comes from a two-parent family, that Kelly, his mother, and Dwayne, his father, have been married for about 30 years.  They won’t see that Aaron finished high school and attended college at Washburn University on a football scholarship until one too many shoulder injuries forced him off the team (“He washed out of Washburn,” Dwayne says with a chuckle).  They won’t see that Aaron’s grandparents moved to Lincoln Park in the 1950s, establishing a legacy in the neighborhood that the family is proud of.

“Aaron’s no angel.  I’ve been up at the school a bunch of times before when they’d call me because of stuff he was doing,” Dwayne Harvey said.  “But it was always for ‘Dennis the Menace’-type stuff.”

According to the state, a person can be entered into the CALGANG database if he or she meets any two criteria from a list that includes:  Admitting to being a gang member,  being arrested alongside known gang members, being ID’d as a gang member by a reliable source, being seen affiliating with documented gang members, displaying hand gestures affiliated with a gang, frequenting gang areas, wearing gang dress, or having gang tattoos.

It’s easy to see, then, why advocates and community leaders think a young person could be condemned by circumstance — entered into the database, and made to suffer all the consequences that come with it, simply for living in a certain neighborhood and for socializing with other people who live there.

The fact that Harvey has no criminal record has attracted advocates and local leaders to his cause.  His case has crossed Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s radar, and the lawmaker plans to meet with Dumanis to express concern about her office’s use of Section 182.5.

Dana Greisen, head of the district attorney’s gang prosecution unit, says the idea that someone could make it into the database simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or for something vague like wearing a red shirt, is absurd.

Much of the evidence tying Harvey to the Lincoln Park gang was gathered from social media.

“In every type of crime that gang members involve themselves, they’re using the internet,” said Greisen.  “So, they’re posting pics of themselves with firearms, recruiting and advertising girls for prostitution, making statements in posts, songs, etc. that are threatening real neighborhoods, real people, so that when they walk into those neighborhoods, they can do whatever they want.  It’s kind of the Wild West on the internet right now.”

The district attorney’s office said it has included “numerous Facebook posts” in its case against Harvey, in which he’s “throwing up gang signs representing the Lincoln Park Bloods.  Also numerous pictures with Aaron Harvey and numerous Lincoln Park Gang members who are throwing signs for ‘Crip Killer’ and ‘Lynch Mob’ a subset of Lincoln Park Bloods, and numerous references and posts related to the Lincoln Park Gang.”

“It’s not a guessing game.  They’ve made it as obvious as they possibly could.  The social media stuff is in our face, in their rivals’ faces in no uncertain terms,” Greisen said.  “People talk to their girlfriends and the media and say they’ve never been a gang member, that this is all just a big misunderstanding.  And then you look at the evidence, and it’s not a close call.”

While it’s true Harvey has no criminal convictions to his name, it’s hard to believe, as he contends, that he had no idea police had documented him as a gang member until he was charged in this case.

Harvey was tried on of a single count of drug possession in 2010.  In that case, prosecutors were allowed to present evidence tying Harvey to the Lincoln Park gang.  The exhibit list from the trial includes things like “Waist belt with ‘Lincoln Park’ written on one side” and “Red polo shirt with the defendant’s known street moniker written on the front.”

A jury took just over an hour to find Harvey not guilty.

=====
Like any criminal case, the district attorney’s office and Harvey couldn’t be further apart in their versions of reality.  Either Harvey is a hardcore gang member who was helped terrorize a community, or he’s a young man who just wants the police to leave him alone to get his real estate license.

But both sides seem to agree on at least one thing:  Using the law in this way is new, and it could have big consequences if it works.

Section 182.5 was created as part of Proposition 21, a 2000 voter-approved package of criminal justice reforms.  Pushed by former Gov. Pete Wilson, most of the reforms targeted juvenile offenders, and made them eligible in some cases to be tried as adults.

Harvey’s case marks the first time Section 182.5 has been used in San Diego, according to the district attorney’s office, and possibly the entire state.

“It’s the first time this statute has been used at any significant level,” said Greisen.  “We’ve spent many hours in regard to what this law says and what evidence we need in order to prove it.  Literally thousands and thousands of docs retrieved, numerous witnesses involved in the case, years of documentation, wiretaps, etc., has gone into this.”

The California penal code is both gratuitously complicated and extremely harsh, said Weisberg, the Stanford law professor.  “Prosecutors are situated to take advantage of those things more than any other participants in the system.  They know how to work the penal code,” he said.

Greisen said the DA’s office believes a higher court will ultimately have to weigh in on the law.  But federal law has a similar version of the statute, RICO, which has been used to criminalize gang membership.

Even if a jury takes prosecutors at their absolute word, and believes Harvey is a member of the Lincoln Park gang, the conspiracy charge could still be a tough sell without evidence he knew about the shootings.

“There’s always the risk a jury will nullify a charge even when it’s legally sound because they think it’s too draconian,” said Weisberg.  “Or if they’re bothered by the vagueness of the statute they’re being asked to enforce, they may just acquit.  It’s a huge gamble.”

As you might imagine, Harvey doesn’t care much for being part of a trial balloon that could land him in prison for life.  He’s spoken to the City Council’s public safety committee and to a class at San Diego City College, warning against what he says are the dangerous implications of the law.  The last time I met with him, he was about to meet with a group that’s organizing an effort to repeal Prop. 21.

“This is about a penal code that is so unjust, that if we are convicted, we will be used as a model throughout the state that will have the capabilities of annihilating and eliminating communities,” Harvey said at a press conference last week.

Though he says he moved to Las Vegas to escape the constant questioning by San Diego police, his arrest, counterintuitively, has convinced him to stay in San Diego for good.

“They have created a young activist now,” Harvey said.  “I am going to be actively involved in my community.  Not just in my community that I grew up in, but hopefully all communities across the state.  I even plan on going to law school.”

He pauses for a moment, then corrects himself.  “Not planning.  I am going to law school.”

PS:  Could Harvey be 'guilty' because he's black..... NAA....

TRIALS - Power of Confessions

"True or False, the Power of Confessions is Great" by Joe Sexton, ProPublica 1/29/2015

Over the next several months, defense lawyers for Pedro Hernandez will seek to undercut the central evidence against him, his videotaped confession to having killed 6-year-old Etan Patz.

They will depict the confession as inaccurate when set against the known facts of the infamous 1979 missing child case.  They will portray Hernandez, a onetime bodega clerk in the Manhattan neighborhood where Patz lived, as mentally ill.  They will paint the detectives who gained the confession as manipulative and coercive.

It's a daunting assignment, but here's what may well be scaring the lawyers the most:  They could succeed in every aspect of their attack on the reliability of the confession and still not win an acquittal.

Such is the power of confessions, true or false, for American juries.  A nascent body of scholarship, driven in part by an escalating number of wrongful convictions in cases with false confessions, has begun to document just how persuasive confessions can be.

Of course, the power of confessions owes in part to the fact that they very often are true.  Certainly, that is the argument Manhattan prosecutors will make as they seek to hold Hernandez responsible for a case that has haunted the city, and parents nationwide, for decades.  Prosecutors say Hernandez's claims that he strangled the young boy after luring him from his school bus stop are credible, and that any mental health issues he suffers from are not serious.  They also argue that the confession is supported by the accounts of others who maintain Hernandez told similar stories of killing a child over the years.

But false confessions – including those questioned at trial by effective defense lawyers – also have proven to carry extraordinary weight with juries.  Several studies, using mock jurors and sophisticated analysis, have demonstrated that confessions outweigh the value of eyewitness and character testimony.  And in at least one case, according to a 2010 study, prosecutors chose to believe a confession even when the accused seemed categorically cleared by DNA evidence.

That 2010 study, which appeared in Cornell Law School's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, produced and reflected on some fascinating insights into the otherwise under-examined universe of juror belief and behavior.

• Jurors believe they can better judge a confession's truthfulness if it has been videotaped, as opposed to audiotaped or written out (Hernandez's confession was videotaped.)  Still, barely 40 percent of jurors interviewed were confident they could determine whether a videotaped confession was truthful.  The study also remarked that jurors were more likely to regard a videotaped confession as truthful if the tape involved only the accused.  They were less inclined to accept the confession when the tapes included the accused's interrogators.

• Jurors tended to believe that police officials were better equipped to evaluate confessions than ordinary citizens, even though a 2005 study showed police actually performed less well than college students in a lie detection experiment.  In the 2010 study, non-white jurors were less inclined to regard police as better suited to assessing the truthfulness of confessions.

• The 461 mock jurors used in the study said there was a better than 50-50 chance that a jury "would convict a suspect who falsely confessed to a murder, even when there was no other evidence that he or she was guilty."

On Thursday, the judge in the Patz case was still working to seat a jury.  To date, Judge Maxwell Wiley has kept aspects of the case out of public view.  The questioning of some jurors has taken place in secret, and the content of those interrogations kept under seal.  The actual videotaped confession, while having been played in open court, has also been kept from the public and news organizations.  And at least two hearings on what evidence will be admitted during trial have also been kept under seal, including one on Thursday.

Not surprisingly, then, the lists of witnesses to be called by both sides have not been made available.  And thus whether Hernandez's defense team plans to call expert witnesses to testify on the phenomenon of false confessions is unclear.  The value of such testimony, however, was endorsed by the state's highest court in 2012.

"That the phenomenon of false confessions is genuine has moved from the realm of startling hypothesis into that of common knowledge, if not conventional wisdom," ruled Judge Susan P. Read of the New York State Court of Appeals.

Hernandez's confession, again, might well be accurate.  If so, and he is convicted, it will be a significant accomplishment for prosecutors who have kept an open file on the case since Patz went missing on his first day of going to school alone.

But in the nearly three years since Hernandez's highly publicized arrest, some experts and law enforcement officials have expressed doubts about the confession's reliability.  Hernandez, as well as the circumstances of his confession, raise the array of red flags looked for when assessing potentially false confessions:  a history of mental illness; a long interrogation (it lasted over the course of 36 hours, much of it not recorded); the crime having been recently the subject of widespread media attention (weeks before Hernandez confessed, a development in the Patz case had been front page news in New York).

Hernandez's trial is expected to last two to three months.  The confession will be played, maybe played repeatedly.  And the jury will have to decide what to make of it.  And when they do, there will be more material for experts on confessions to study.  On how juries regard them, on how judge's handle them, on how expert testimony can help the process or not.

"In the area of interrogations and false confessions" the 2010 study said, "there has been relatively little research exploring the beliefs and abilities of key actors in the legal system such as judges, police and jurors."

UGANDA - The Ultimate Anti-Gay Law

"Uganda gays face life in prison under law" PBS NewsHour 6/15/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  For gays living in Uganda, just walking outside of their homes can be dangerous.  And today, long-standing prejudice has been institutionalized into law with the country’s “Anti-Homosexuality Act,” which calls for harsh sentences for gay acts.  Offenders convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” face life in prison.  NewsHour Weekend special correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Kampala.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL (NewsHour):  For Geoffrey Ogwaro this, is a risk, just being out of his house.  He is a gay activist, he lives in Uganda and that, he says, is dangerous.

GEOFFREOY OGWARO:  You don’t know what’s going to happen to you next.  You’re more careful, instead of living your life freely as a Ugandan you’re more cautious of the places you go to.  Who you invite to your house.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL:  Pepe Onziema is also active in the gay community in Kampala.  He is extremely careful.

PEPE ONZIEMA:  Many people know my face.  I actually don’t go to the city because I’ve been attacked on the streets many times.

MARTIN SEEMUNGAL:  The attacks are sometimes lethal.  This man was accused of being gay, he was beaten to death by a mob.

TRAFFIC CAMERAS - Good Traffic Enforcement or Violation of Due Process?

First, just what is the difference between a traffic LEO sitting at a corner watching for red-light-runners and a traffic camera doing the same thing?  The traffic camera is always there, not off chasing a violator or home in bed.  Also, traffic tickets have always been a cash-cow for cities.

"Do traffic cameras save lives or violate due process?" PBS NewsHour 5/17/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Ten years ago, only a few dozen communities had red-light or speed-enforcement cameras.  Today, hundreds do.  On Saturday, we take a look at a debate in Ohio.  Camera advocates say the technology saves lives.  Opponents say the devices are profit-centers for municipalities and camera manufacturers and a violation of due process.

RICK KARR (NewsHour):  Drivers who run red lights kill nearly seven hundred people every year nationwide.  Sue and Paul Oberhauser refuse to call those crashes “accidents.”

PAUL OBERHAUSER:  Most of those are intentionally people think they going to get away with it and they run the red light.  They never think they’re going to kill a person.

RICK KARR:  Their daughter Sarah was killed by a driver who ran a red light in 2002.  She was thirty-one years old and a mother of two, a high-school chemistry teacher and basketball coach in Oxford, Ohio.  She was on her way to a teacher-training workshop on a Saturday morning when her light turned green.

SUE OBERHAUSER:  There was a young man who was 21 years old.  And he ran the red light going 55 miles an hour.  And he T-boned her car and Sarah was killed instantly.

RICK KARR:  The Oberhausers believe there’s a way to prevent crashes like the one that killed their daughter: automated cameras that keep an eye on intersections 24/7.  So even when police aren’t there, drivers think twice before running a light.  And the proof that they work, according to the Oberhausers, is a forty-minute drive from their farmhouse in Ohio’s state capital.

RICK KARR:  The City of Columbus installed its first red-light camera at this intersection in 2006.  Since then, it’s put cameras at more than three dozen other intersections.  And at those locations, side-impact collisions are down by 74 percent.

AMERICA - The 'We Don't Have to Follow the Law' Quacks

As you can see, by my choice of Post Title, what I think of this type of people.  The type that thinks they don't have to follow any law they disagree with.  As a taxpayer, Bundy had better pay for the use of my (public) land.

"Land dispute between rancher and government inspires ideological standoff with armed protesters" PBS NewsHour 4/18/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now to a story that takes us out to the Western U.S., to Nevada, where a standoff between the federal government and a local cattle rancher involving an armed militia almost turned violent.

Hari Sreenivasan is in our New York studio with this report.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Armed militiamen pointing guns at federal officials over cattle.  For more than 20 years, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has refused to pay fees for grazing cattle on public lands, some 80 miles north of Las Vegas.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management says Bundy now owes close to $1 million.  He says his family has used the land since the 1870s and doesn’t recognize the federal government’s jurisdiction.  Last year, a federal judge ordered Bundy to remove his livestock.  He ignored the order, and two weeks ago, BLM agents rounded up more than 400 of his cattle.

Last weekend, armed militia members and states’ right protesters showed up to challenge the move.

FMR. SHERIFF RICHARD MACK, Graham County, AZ:  I came here because I don’t believe the BLM has any authority whatsoever.  They have no law enforcement authority in Clark County, and they have no business whatsoever destroying the pursuit of happiness of one of our friends and brothers.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Rather than risk violence, the BLM did an about-face and released the cattle.  But the dust-up has put longstanding disputes over Western range rights squarely in the spotlight.

Last night, Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid blasted the protesters.

SEN. HARRY REID, D, Nev.:  So, these people, who hold themselves out to be patriots, are not.  They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists.  And I think that we are a country that people should follow the law.

BROOKLYN - Righting an Injustice

"Brooklyn DA Moves to Free Man after Long-Buried Evidence Surfaces" by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica 4/7/2014

Jonathan Fleming has served more than 24 years in prison for a 1989 murder.  Now it has emerged that law enforcement had evidence all along showing he was in Florida at the time of the shooting.

At a hearing tomorrow in Brooklyn Supreme Court, District Attorney Kenneth Thompson is expected to consent to the release of Jonathan Fleming, who has served more than 24 years in prison for a murder that an emerging pile of evidence suggests he did not commit.

The dramatic turn reverses years of steadfast opposition from the District Attorney's Office, which vigorously fought Fleming's appeals for two decades.

Even after extensive exculpatory evidence surfaced during a joint review by former District Attorney Charles "Joe" Hynes' Conviction Integrity Unit and Fleming's attorney, Anthony Mayol, efforts to free Fleming appeared to have stalled.

"It's an amazing feeling for everyone involved," Mayol said of Fleming's sudden impending release.  "We spoke to [Fleming] before it was officially confirmed, and to the extent he believes it's going to happen he is elated, overjoyed, and relieved.  He is beside himself with happiness."

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office confirmed that Fleming, 51, would likely be released tomorrow, but declined further comment.

That will effectively bring the case against Fleming to a close.  According to a source in law enforcement, Thompson intends to dismiss charges against Fleming "in the interest of justice."

Fleming's quest to prove his innocence got a boost from Taylor Koss, the former deputy chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, who agreed to help with Fleming's exoneration effort late last year.  Koss was also a central figure in Hynes' decision to release David Ranta, an unemployed printmaker wrongly convicted of killing a Brooklyn rabbi in 1990.

Over the last year, investigators for Fleming and the unit discovered a range of evidence casting doubt on Fleming's guilt and supporting his long-held assertion that he was in Orlando, Fla., visiting Disneyworld with his family when 22-year-old Darryl "Black" Rush was shot to death on August 15, 1989.

Investigators found a receipt showing that Fleming had paid a phone bill at a hotel in Florida just hours before the murder took place; an Orlando police report confirmed that several hotel employees remembered Fleming being there.

The team also found evidence supporting the claim that a key witness had only agreed to testify against Fleming to avoid criminal prosecution, unearthing a command log from the 90th Police Precinct showing the witness had been arrested prior to Fleming's trial.

None of that material was turned over by prosecutors at Fleming's original trial in the summer of 1990.  Asked about the phone receipt, a detective testified that he had "no recollection" of it.

In an interview with ProPublica, Koss said he was "disgusted" when he learned that prosecutors hadn't turned over the phone bill receipt, especially given that Fleming's defense attorney had specifically asked for it.

The push to free Fleming appeared to gain crucial momentum last November, when a member of Hynes' conviction integrity unit traveled to South Carolina with Fleming's private investigators to speak with a man suspected of being the getaway driver.  Not only did he tell them that Fleming wasn't involved in the shooting, he also implicated another man.

"It was an amazing day," said Kim Anklin, a private investigator for Fleming.

But that very night, Hynes lost his bid for re-election, raising concerns that he wouldn't make a decision on what to do with the new evidence before leaving office.  The next month, the head of the Conviction Integrity Unit resigned, telling Fleming's attorneys that the decision on whether to release Fleming had would rest with Hynes.  Hynes never acted, however, effectively punting the decision to Thompson.

As months passed in silence, Fleming's attorneys grew frustrated with Thompson, complaining that he had not communicated how the District Attorney's office would proceed.  On Monday, Mayol said his annoyance with the process had given way to joy.

"The disappointment in the delay goes out the window when you know that your client is going to be vindicated and set free," Mayol said.  "He's waited a long time for this and the paramount focus for me is him getting out."

Fleming has acknowledged that at the time of the shooting he was a drug dealer in Williamsburg.  He had a criminal record, but he always maintained he had nothing to do with Rush's murder.

At Fleming's original trial, the prosecution's case was based primarily on testimony from a single witness who said she had seen the crime and fingered Fleming as the shooter.

Fleming's defense attorney countered with several pieces of evidence to argue that Fleming was in Florida at the time, including plane tickets and video footage of his client enjoying time with his family there.  Several relatives who accompanied Fleming on the trip testified on his behalf.  Fleming's uncle said he picked him up from the airport when he returned on August 16, 1989.  The murder took place at approximately 2:15 a.m. on August 15.

But the assistant district attorney who handled the case, James Leeper, pointed out that there was no footage of Fleming in Florida on August 15, and it was possible that Fleming could have flown to New York, shot the victim, and then flown back to Florida.  Fleming's defense attorney stipulated to that being a possibility, even though Leeper had no evidence proving it.

Not long after Fleming was convicted in July 1990, the eyewitness recanted, saying she only testified because she was threatened with jail time if she didn't cooperate.  Judge Albert Koch, who presided over the trial and the initial appeal, didn't believe the recantation, however, and affirmed Fleming's conviction.

Fleming has filed numerous appeals since then, but each was defeated by the District Attorney's office.

Last week, in preparation for a hearing later this month, Mayol and Koss sent a letter to the New York State Board of Parole that laid out all of the exculpatory evidence, including sworn statements from new witnesses implicating another shooter.

In the last three years, the parole board has granted parole to at least two other Brooklyn men based on newly discovered evidence.

That won't be necessary for Fleming.

"Thank goodness we don't have to go to the parole board," Koss said.  "To me this was never about getting him paroled, this was about getting a consent to release, this was about getting the indictment dismissed, not 'you are a convicted felon out on parole, but you are an innocent man.'"

MEXICO - The Arrest of Sinaloa Drug Cartel Boss

"Mexicans express hope and skepticism about significance of ‘El Chapo’ arrest" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 2/24/2014

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  The arrest over the weekend of the head of one of the world’s most sophisticated narcotics networks proved a major victory for both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement.

But both sides now want to prosecute him.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  Mexican marines led Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman away in handcuffs on Saturday, thus ending a 13-year hunt for one of the world’s most dangerous men.

JESUS MURILLO KARAM, Attorney General, Mexico (through interpreter):  This arrest is the product of an operation that’s been worked on for several months in coordination with all federal government agencies. And the arrest was impeccably achieved.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Only two days earlier, Guzman was surrounded by troops at his ex-wife’s home in the western city of Culiacan, capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa.  He got away through a trapdoor under the bathtub, and managed to escape through a network of tunnels and the city’s sewer system.

U.S. drug agents and Mexican troops, acting on wiretaps and other information, pursued him 135 miles South, to this luxury condominium in the seaside resort of Mazatlan.  There, just before dawn Saturday, they stormed into Guzman’s room and captured him without firing a shot.

In Washington today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney praised the joint effort.

JAY CARNEY, White House Press Secretary:  This is a significant achievement in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking.  The U.S. and Mexico have a strong security partnership and we will continue to support Mexico in its efforts to ensure that cartel leaders are put out of business.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Guzman was formally charged Sunday with drug trafficking in Mexico.  He faces indictments in the U.S. as well, and federal prosecutors in New York and Chicago already are asking for his extradition.

It’s not the first time behind bars for the 56-year-old Guzman, nicknamed El Chapo, or Shorty.  In 2001, he escaped from a high-security Mexican prison before he was halfway through a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking and murder.

Over the years, he built the Sinaloa cartel into Mexico’s most powerful drug operation, wiping out rivals in a reign of brutality that killed tens of thousands of people.  In Mexico City this weekend, word of his capture brought both hope and skepticism.

FRANCISCO ALCOCER, (through interpreter):  I think that it’s something very good.  I think it’s an excellent achievement from this government that is giving us results.  I think not just for Mexico, but for many countries, it’s an important arrest.

RAMON TORRES, (through interpreter):  It’s very difficult.  The cartel is quite organized and has a presence in many states in the country, so it’s difficult to say that just with the capture of El Chapo the cartel will fall apart.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Guzman now joins Miguel Angel Trevino, who was head of the Zetas, a rival cartel, and was arrested last summer.  Those are major gets for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who had said he’d rebalance the all-out war against cartels with a new emphasis on the economy and education.

"Arrest of cartel leader Guzman, ‘face of Mexican impunity,’ sends message" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 2/24/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Under Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel rose to dominate or destroy rivals on the U.S.-Mexican border.  Jeffrey Brown looks at how the arrest affects the drug trade with former Mexican intelligence official Alejandro Hope and Sam Quinones of the Los Angeles Times.

CANADA - New Vancouver Drunken-Driving Law Cuts Deaths 50%

"Vancouver law cuts drunken-driving deaths in half" PBS Newshour 1/5/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New drunken-driving laws in British Columbia have led to a dramatic decrease (roughly 50%).  Officials ramped up penalties on drivers who tested at a lower blood alcohol level (.05, as opposed to the current .08 legal standard) and authorized police to immediately impound cars.

OPINION - U.S. District Court NSA Case Decision

"Judge on NSA Case Cites 9/11 Report, But It Doesn’t Actually Support His Ruling" by Justin Elliott, ProPublica 12/28/2013

Excerpt

In a new decision in support of the NSA's phone metadata surveillance program, U.S. district court Judge William Pauley cites an intelligence failure involving the agency in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.  But the judge's cited source, the 9/11 Commission Report, doesn't actually include the account he gives in the ruling.  What’s more, experts say the NSA could have avoided the pre-9/11 failure even without the metadata surveillance program.

We previously explored the key incident in question, involving calls made by hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar from California to Yemen, in a story we did over the summer, which you can read below.

In his decision, Pauley writes:  "The NSA intercepted those calls using overseas signals intelligence capabilities that could not capture al-Mihdhar's telephone number identifier.  Without that identifier, NSA analysts concluded mistakenly that al-Mihdhar was overseas and not in the United States."

As his source, the judge writes in a footnote, "See generally, The 9/11 Commission Report."  In fact, the 9/11 Commission report does not detail the NSA's intercepts of calls between al-Mihdhar and Yemen.  As the executive director of the commission told us over the summer, "We could not, because the information was so highly classified publicly detail the nature of or limits on NSA monitoring of telephone or email communications.”

To this day, some details related to the incident and the NSA's eavesdropping have never been aired publicly.  And some experts told us that even before 9/11 -- and before the creation of the metadata surveillance program -- the NSA did have the ability to track the origins of the phone calls, but simply failed to do so.

Note that the above argument does NOT prove the judge was wrong.  The current metadata collection program is a tool that IF it had existed before 9/11 MAY have made it easier to find al-Mihdhar in California.

The current program exists because our national security teams realized that we need a way to back-track phone calls between those who wish the US harm.  The current program is very bulky, and finding links between wrong-doers is like finding a specific needle in a stack of needles, but it's better than nothing.

NSA - Bulk Collection of Metadata 'Likely' Unconstitutional?

"Judge rules NSA's bulk collection of phone records is likely unconstitutional" PBS Newshour 12/16/2013

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  In the first legal setback for the National Security Agency since the disclosures by Edward Snowden, a federal judge ruled today that its phone metadata collection program is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appeared to breach the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and that the Justice Department failed to show that the mass collection helped stop terrorist attacks.

In a statement provided to reporter Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden reacted to the ruling, saying -- quote -- "Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights.  It is the first of many" -- end quote.

Well, joining me now to discuss the ruling, the lawsuit that prompted it, and what it means for the NSA's program is reporter Josh Gerstein of Politico.

Welcome back to the program, Josh.

Tell us about what was behind this lawsuit, who is behind it and so forth.

HIV - Laws That Provide Disincentive For Testing

"Sex, Lies and HIV:  When What You Don’t Tell Your Partner Is a Crime" by Sergio Hernandez, ProPublica 12/1/2013

Excerpt

Nick Rhoades was clerking at a Family Video store in Waverly, Iowa, one summer afternoon in 2008 when three armed detectives appeared, escorted him to a local hospital and ordered nurses to draw his blood.  A dozen miles away, his mother and stepfather looked on as local sheriff’s deputies searched their home for drugs — not illegal drugs, but lifesaving prescription medications.

Lab results and a bottle of pills found in the Rhoades’ refrigerator confirmed the detectives’ suspicions: Nick Rhoades was HIV-positive.

Almost a year later, in a Black Hawk County courtroom, Judge Bradley Harris peered down at Rhoades from his bench.

“One thing that makes this case difficult is you don’t look like our usual criminals,” Harris said.  “Often times for the court it is easy to tell when someone is dangerous.  They pull the gun.  They have done an armed robbery.  But you created a situation that was just as dangerous as anyone who did that.”

The judge meted out Rhoades’ sentence: 25 years in prison.

His crime: having sex without first disclosing he had HIV.

Officially, the charge, buried in Chapter 709 of the Iowa code, is “criminal transmission of HIV.”  But no transmission had occurred.  The man Rhoades had sex with, 22-year-old Adam Plendl, had not contracted the virus.

That’s not a surprise, because Rhoades used a condom.

And medical records show he was taking antiviral drugs that suppressed his HIV, making transmission extremely unlikely.  A national group of AIDS public health officials later submitted a brief estimating that the odds of Rhoades infecting Plendl were “likely zero or near zero.”

After his lawyers petitioned the court, Rhoades’ prison sentence was changed to five years’ probation.  But for the rest of his life — he is 39 — he will remain registered as an aggravated sex offender who cannot be alone with anyone under the age of 14, not even his nieces and nephews.

Rhoades’ is not an isolated case.  Over the last decade, there have been at least 541 cases in which people were convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, criminal charges for not disclosing that they were HIV-positive, according to a ProPublica analysis of records from 19 states.  The national tally is surely higher, because at least 35 states have laws that specifically criminalize exposing another person to HIV.  In 29 states, it is a felony.  None of the laws require transmission to occur.

Defendants in these cases were often sentenced to years — sometimes decades — in prison, even when they used a condom or took other precautions against infecting their partners.  In 60 cases for which extensive documentation could be obtained, ProPublica found just four involving complainants who actually became infected with HIV.  Even in such cases, it can be hard to prove who transmitted the virus without genetic tests matching the accused’s HIV strain to their accuser’s.

People with HIV have even done time for spitting, scratching or biting.  According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spitting and scratching cannot transmit HIV, and transmission through biting “is very rare and involves very specific circumstances” — namely, “severe trauma with extensive tissue damage and the presence of blood.”

Many law enforcement officials and legislators defend these laws, saying they deter people from spreading the virus and set a standard for disclosure and precautions in an ongoing epidemic.

“Shifting the burden of HIV disclosure from the infected person, who is aware of a known danger, to one who is completely unaware of their partner’s condition smacks of a ‘blame the victim’ sort of mentality,” Jerry Vander Sanden, a prosecutor in Linn County, Iowa, wrote in an email to ProPublica.  “It would be like telling a rape victim that they should have been more careful.”

Even many people with HIV support the laws.  In a recent survey of HIV-positive people in New Jersey, 90 percent said that people with the virus bore most of the responsibility to protect their partners.  More than half approved of the kind of laws that resulted in Rhoades’ sentence.

But some health and legal experts say using criminal penalties to curtail the epidemic could backfire and fuel the spread of HIV.  According to the CDC, 1.1 million Americans are currently living with HIV, but one-fifth of them don’t know it.  And studies show that about half of newly infected people got the virus from those who didn’t know they had HIV.  So relying on a partner to know, let alone disclose, their HIV status is a risky proposition.

The laws, these experts say, could exacerbate this problem:  If people can be imprisoned for knowingly exposing others to HIV, their best defense may be ignorance.  Such laws, then, provide a powerful disincentive for citizens to get tested and learn if they carry the virus.

DETROIT - Is There Proof the City Met All Requirements For Bankruptcy?

"Detroit bankruptcy eligibility case goes to trial" PBS Newshour 10/23/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July, and now it must prove to a judge that the conditions necessitate that protection.  But some pension funds, unions and retirees are fighting the filing.  Jeffrey Brown gets an update from Matthew Dolan of The Wall Street Journal on Detroit's finances.

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):   Next: a pair of dispatches from Detroit at an important moment, starting with a key trial over the city's bankruptcy filing.  Detroit's leaders say the city is $18 billion in debt, forcing a move to Chapter 9.  But they also must persuade a judge the city has met all of the requirements to do so.  And opponents say that's not the case.

Jeffrey Brown has more.

WALL STREET - JP Morgan Chase's $13 Billion Penalty

"J.P. Morgan's $13 billion penalty" PBS Newshour 10/20/2013

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  JP Morgan Chase reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to pay a $13 billion fine in the largest settlement paid by a financial firm to the U.S.  Bloomberg News reporter Dawn Kopecki joins Hari Sreenivasan to talk about the record settlement and J.P. Morgan’s brushes with the Department of Justice.

For more on this we are joined now by Dawn Kopecki, she is a banking and finance reporter with Bloomberg News who has been following the Chase story for some time, so besides the thirteen billion dollar number, why is this so significant?

Note that this ONLY settles JP Morgan's DOJ problem, they still face civil suits.

NEW ORLEANS - Danziger Bridge Convictions Overturned

"Danziger Bridge Convictions Overturned" by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica 9/17/2013

A federal judge on Tuesday overturned the convictions of five New Orleans police officers tied to the shooting of unarmed civilians during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, finding that prosecutors in the case had engaged in “grotesque” misconduct.

In a blistering and meticulously detailed 129-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt found that federal prosecutors in New Orleans had anonymously posted damning online critiques of the accused officers and the New Orleans Police Department before and during the 2011 trial, a breach of professional ethics that had the effect of depriving the officers of their rights to a fair trial.

The judge granted the officers’ request for a new trial.

“Re-trying this case is a very small price to pay in order to protect the validity of the verdict in this case, the institutional integrity of the Court, and the criminal justice system as a whole,” Judge Engelhardt wrote.

The judge’s decision nullifies – at least temporarily – a key success in the U.S. Department of Justice’s half-decade effort to clean up the troubled New Orleans Police Department.  Four of the five officers had been accused of firing on a group of civilians on or near the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, killing two people and seriously injuring others; a fifth officer had been charged with covering up the shooting.

The judge’s ruling excoriated two former top attorneys in the federal prosecutor’s office in New Orleans, as well as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who had played a role in the case.  The prosecutors posted comments about the Danziger case on NOLA.com, the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as the case was still unfolding.  The comments included a variety of attacks on the police department, calls for guilty verdicts and encouragements to other anonymous commentators to take apart the defense being offered by the five officers.

Engelhardt wrote that he was unaware of any other case in which “prosecutors acting with anonymity used social media to circumvent ethical obligations, professional responsibilities, and even to commit violations of the Code of Federal Regulations.”  He called the behavior of prosecutors “bizarre and appalling.”

The Justice Department, in a statement, said it was disappointed in the judge’s action.

“We are reviewing the decision and considering our options,” the statement said.

Judge Engelhardt’s ruling sets the stage for another round of trials for former detective Arthur Kaufman, who was charged with directing an extensive cover-up, as well as former officers Anthony Villavaso, Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, and Robert Faulcon, who were accused of firing on the civilians.  Judge Engelhardt had overseen the trial and sentenced the officers to prison terms ranging from 6 to 65 years.

Lawyers for the officers subsequently asked the judge to overturn the conviction, saying the prosecutor’s office had “engaged in a secret public relations campaign” to inflame public opinion against the officers and to secure their convictions.  The judge did not find evidence of an organized campaign, but said the conduct of the individual prosecutors had wound up having the same effect.

Two of the prosecutors involved in the online posting, Sal Perricone and Jan Mann, resigned after their conduct became known.  The D.C.-based Justice Department lawyer implicated in the scandal, Karla Dobinski, is a veteran of the Civil Rights Division.  It is unclear whether her employment status has been affected by the revelations.

News that some federal prosecutors in the New Orleans office had improperly posted comments online first broke in 2012, and ultimately cost Jim Letten, the office’s top official, his job.  The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility launched an investigation.

But Judge Engelhardt’s ruling called into question just how vigorous and comprehensive a probe that has been.

OPINION - Changes Have Taken Place Under the Obama Administration

"Eric Holder steps up, digs in, and breaks out" by Steve Benen, Maddow Blog 8/30/2013

We talked yesterday about Attorney General Eric Holder giving officials in Colorado and Washington a green light on their state measures legalizing recreational use of marijuana, but the story, which Rachel explored in more detail last night, got me thinking about Holder's tenure.

For a typical conservative, I suspect the Attorney General would top the list for his or her least favorite member of President Obama's cabinet.  Holder is truly reviled on the right, to the point that calls for his resignation have come from the RNC, many Senate Republicans, and at last count, 122 House Republicans.

But once we get past the partisan sniping and consider the policy breakthroughs, Eric Holder appears to have quietly positioned himself not only as a progressive champion, but as one of the more accomplished attorneys general in recent memory.

Think about some of the recent policies Holder has chosen to tackle:  voting rights; sentencing reforms; condemnations of "Stand Your Ground" laws, and of course the drug policy announced yesterday.  These are critically important law-enforcement policies, some of which have been neglected and ignored by officials in both parties for years, long in need of leadership -- which Holder is now providing.

Even when the Justice Department arguably went too far in subpoenaing reporters' phone logs as part of a leak investigation, it was Holder who soon after approved reforms to make it more difficult for this to happen in the future through higher search-warrant standards, and ensuring more advance notice for news organizations.

The A.G. isn't just breaking sharply with Justice Department practices in the Bush/Cheney era; Holder is changing the trajectory of regressive policies that have gotten worse for decades.

This certainly isn't to say his tenure has been flawless, but the political world generally only focuses on Holder when Republicans are attacking him, and that's a shame.  On a variety of key areas, the Attorney General seems wildly underrated.

"Feds cede ground to states in pot decriminalization" The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC 8/29/2013

Rachel Maddow reviews a number of changes that have taken place under the Obama administration that seemed previously impossible, including same-sex marriage, a reduction in the prison population and health care reform - and now, in small steps, a dialing back of the so-called war on drugs.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GAY MARRIAGE - Look at the 'State of the Union'

Pun intended.

"States Grapple With Same-Sex Marriage Rulings Via Bills, Ballots and the Bench" PBS Newshour 8/20/2013

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour):  The June decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Proposition 8 didn't end the debate over gay marriage.  The issue is still on the docket in courthouses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, up for debate in state legislatures, and on the ballot.

For an update, we turn to John Eastman, a Chapman University Law School professor and chairman of board of the National Organization for Marriage, and James Esseks, the director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender and AIDS Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

James Esseks, did the twin decisions of the Supreme Court on DOMA and Prop 8 change the legal strategy, change the landscape that faces both pro-legalization and anti-legalization forces?

JAMES ESSEKS, American Civil Liberties Union:  Well, it didn't change the doctrine or the strategy.

What it does -- but it reinforces what we're already doing.  That is, we have gotten to the place we're at right now, which is 13 states plus the District of Columbia, that allow same-sex couples the freedom to marry, through three different means.

We have got it through some court decisions.  A bunch of state legislatures, seven state legislatures passed those bills.  And then the people voted for the freedom to marry last fall at the ballot in three states.  And our way forward is really more of the same.  We're going to go to the state legislatures.  We're going to go to the ballot and where appropriate we're going to go to court.