Monthly Archives: September 2009

No Camping Here

Posted on September 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

In a sort of deja vu moment for Georgia, courtesy of its neighbor to the east, Florida, controversy has erupted over an encampment of sex offenders in Cobb County (north Georgia).  After the Associated Press reported on the existence of the camp yesterday, officials in Georgia ordered the camp dismantled and moved citing “liability issues.”  I don’t think it would be a surprise to discover more camps like this one in Georgia or other states with strict sex offender residency laws.  Again, one has to wonder about the wisdom of segregating any and all sex offenders from the general population.  Why not designate an island in the mold of Guantanamo and shuttle all our country’s sex offenders there?  Again, one must ask what our government officials are aiming for with their sui generis policies on sex offenders.  Obviously, it isn’t reintegration into society or rehabilitation.  Then what is the point of having them released from jail at all?  Does allowing a convicted sex offender to linger on the outskirts of society make him or her any less dangerous than with a policy of perpetual banishment?

The AP article can be found here.  Today’s story on the closing of the camp can be found here, courtesy of the AJC.

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Posted in Atlanta News, Bad Politics, Civil Rights, Georgia News, Social Justice

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“We F****ed Up”

Posted on September 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

Scott Greenfield over at Simple Justice picked up a story on Anthony Arambula who was shot in the back 6 times by the police who mistook him for a robber.  Of course, the cover up, as they say, is often worse than the crime.  And here, the police apparently tried everything short of bribing witnesses to cover up their tracks.  The incident took place in Maricopa County which also happens to be playground of infamous Sherrif Joe Arpaio.

According to the report of the incident by Courthouse News Service:

A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer’s partner saying, “That’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I got your back. … We clear?” The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting.

In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder “crashed through the front window” of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of their son’s bedrooms.

Anthony, worried about his son who was still in his bedroom, says he “held the intruder calmly at gunpoint” and called 911.

Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas’ window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers.

Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator – twice when he was on the ground. 
The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, “You just killed … you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there.”

The entire Courthouse News Service article can be found here, Steve Greenfield’s take, here.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Police Corruption, Social Justice, U.S. News

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Making of a Terrorist Part II

Posted on September 22, 2009 | Leave a comment

Another month, another terror prosecution.  This one involves Najibullah Zazi, his father Mohammed, and an imam, Ahmad Wais Afzail.  Prosecutors are alleging in characteristically vague fashion that the Zazis had plans to execute a London-style bombing of mass transit vehicles in New York and perhaps elsewhere.  Two of the more notable pieces of evidence that have been recovered from the Zazis are a scale (yikes!) and bomb-making notes (double yikes!).  The legal blogosphere has been abuzz about the decision of the younger Zazi to speak to the Feds which ultimately netted him several false statement charges.  No surprise there.  Even though his attorney, Arthur Folsom, has had minimal federal criminal defense experience, he should have known better.  At the very least, he could have conducted his own investigation to see what information the Feds might have had (yes, he’d probably have a hard time doing this, you know, state secrets, FISA, all that) on Zazi before serving his client up on a platter as he did.  Mr. Afzail, in contrast, is being represented by Ron Kuby, a well-known criminal defense and civil rights attorney in New York who’s clients in a quasi-partnership with William Kunstler, included Colin Ferguson (LIRR shooter), Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, and other unsavory characters.

TalkLeft has great coverage of the Zazi matter.  It’s author is a criminal defense lawyer based in Denver, where the Zazi’s are currently being held and will eventually be prosecuted.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Social Justice, U.S. News, Uncategorized

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Back to Square One

Posted on September 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

There is new news In the continuing saga of the infamous Julia Tuttle Causeway turned homeless shelter.  As reported today in the Miami Herald, a judge has rejected the ACLU’s attempt to block enforcement of the sex offender law that was responsible for creating the controversial shantytown of registered sex offenders who, because of the law’s restrictive provisions, were prohibited from living elsewhere.  It is interesting to see the spin the ACLU used in its argument before the court – that, it sought to block enforcement of the law because only then would officials be able to properly and effectively track the whereabouts of sex offenders.  I would argue that this is precisely the ill that has to be remedied.  But what do I know?

The story in the Herald can be found here.

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Posted in Bad Politics, Civil Rights, Social Justice, U.S. News

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The Machinery of Death is Sputtering

Posted on September 12, 2009 | Leave a comment

I came across two death penalty-related stories recently, both of which confirm what has been a widely-held belief among death penalty opponents for many years: our scheme of capital punishment is inherently flawed.

In the September 7, 200p issue of the New Yorker is the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, an inmate on Texas’ death row who was convicted of burning his three children to death in their home.  The article’s long but well worth the read.  It’s hard for me to pluck out an excerpt  mostly because of how well the story is written; it’s the kind of reporting that put the New Yorker on the map of journalistic excellence.  The reporter, David Grann, does devote one section of the story to a general survey of death penalty jurisprudence in the U.S., which he ends with the following Scalia anecdote:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in 2006, voted with a majority to uphold the death penalty in a Kansas case. In his opinion, Scalia declared that, in the modern judicial system, there has not been “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

Is a feature length story in a national magazine on a wrongful execution the equivalent of “shouting from the rooftops”?  How many more of these stories do we need before people like Scalia come to their senses?

In another story, Anthony Caravella of Broward County, Florida, was released after DNA tests cleared him of wrongdoing in a 1983 rape and murder case.  Caravella has spent 26 years in jail and had confessed to committing the crimes, but only after, according to his attorney, he was coerced to do so by the police.  Prosecutors had initially sought the death penalty against Caravella but were rebuffed in their efforts by the jury (11-1 against the death penalty).  Caravella has an IQ of 67 and his conviction rested largely on his own admissions of guilt.

The Miami Herald has the story here, the Sun-Sentinel has a timeline of the case here.

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Posted in Civil Rights, Criminal Law, Death Penalty, Social Justice, U.S. News

The Morally Ambivalent Justice

Posted on September 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

Ronald Dworkin has a great piece in this week’s New York Review of Books on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.  In it he criticizes the modern myth that judges are only supposed to apply the law rather than make “controversial judgements of political morality” – a point that I have made in the past.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Sadly, practically everyone concerned in judicial confirmation hearings—senators and nominees—has an overriding interest in embracing the myth that judges’ own political principles are irrelevant. Sotomayor was, of course, well advised to embrace that myth. Her initial statement, and her constant repetition of it, made her confirmation absolutely certain; she could lose the great prize only by a candor she had no reason to display. She was faced by a group of Republican senators who had no interest in exploring genuine constitutional issues but wanted only to score political points, if possible by embarrassing her but in any case to preen before their constituents. They scoured her record of extrajudicial speeches for any sign that she actually doubts the myth so they could declare her a hypocrite who is not faithful to the law after all.

Democratic senators had no wish to challenge the myth either. They only wanted to protect her from questions that might supply ammunition to her opponents, so they offered her endless opportunities to repeat her empty promise to follow the law. Only President Obama, in a remarkably candid statement, seemed to challenge the myth. The law, he said, decides 95 percent of the cases but that leaves 5 percent to be decided in the judge’s “heart.” Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona asked Sotomayor if she agreed with Obama on this point. No, she roundly declared, I do not.

So the minuet was choreographed, and any illumination ruled out, before the hearings began. Both supporting and opposition senators asked Sotomayor whether she approved of recent Supreme Court decisions they believe of particular concern to their constituents: about abortion, of course, but also gun control, the president’s power to defy Congress, his power to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely, and the permissibility of a city taking private property for private development. They wanted to be seen as knowledgeable and concerned by what worried voters.

You can find the entire article here.

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Posted in Bad Politics, U.S. News, U.S. Supreme Court

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