Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones, Scandals | Tags: Charles Dyer, Oath Keepers, Tea Party
The Tea Party movement has produced its share of interesting characters. Chief among them is Charles Dyer, who’s YouTube videos (codename: july4patriot) have made the ex-Marine a hero of the anti-government extremists who say they will fight back against the US government if it threatens the right to bear arms or declares Martial law. Dyer’s die hard supporters were shocked last month when he was arrested on child rape and illegal weapons charges. So shocked, in fact, that they have said that he was set up by the US government. They call him “the 1st POW of the 2nd American revolution” due to his flagrant statements against the Department of Homeland Security and American leadership:
Dyer was already a notorious figure. As an active-duty sergeant in the Marine Corps, he posted incendiary videos on YouTube under the handle July4Patriot. Clad in a skull mask, he warned of grave threats to the republic and called for armed resistance against the American government. In one clip, referring to an April 2009 Department of Homeland Security report (pdf) on domestic extremism, Dyer exclaimed, “With DHS blatantly calling patriots, veterans, and constitutionalists a threat, all that I have to say is you’’re damn right we’re a threat. We’re a threat to anyone that endangers our rights and the Constitution of this republic.” He invited viewers to join him at his makeshift training area—”I’m sure the DHS will call it a terrorist training camp.”
Dyer will face trial in April, and depending on the outcome, this could be yet another call to arms for the increasingly militant Tea Party movement.
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones, Race | Tags: cocaine, drug policy, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, FAMM, Len Bias, mandatory minimums, Obama
Mandatory minimum laws apply to an array of crimes, the most controversial of which is drug sentencing. Essentially, thanks to mandatory minimum laws, which were implemented in 1986 after basketball star Len Bias overdosed on crack cocaine, require judges to determine a defendant’s sentence without considering outside mitigating factors. In the most controversial example, crack cocaine users (who are predominantly black) receive a punishment 100 times more harsh than powder cocaine users (typically white). Back in October, the Obama administration asked the US Sentencing Commission to review the minimums. I called the leadership of Families Against Mandatory Minimums about the story:
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) argues that the requirements have not achieved their intended purpose of reducing crime and scaring minor criminals into giving information about the most flagrant offenders in return for lighter sentences. As any self-respecting fan of The Wire knows, those at the bottom of the drug pyramid don’t get details about what goes on up top. So while the drug kingpins have an avenue through which to reduce their sentences, says Jennifer Seltzer-Stitt, FAMM’s federal legislative affairs director, “[minor users] who don’t have anyone to trade get longer sentences.”
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Economy, Mother Jones | Tags: capital punishment, death penalty, executions, Rick Perry, Texas
For Texas, the nation’s leader in legal killing, abolishing the death penalty would be an economic slam dunk. Perry, who once suggested that his state should secede from the Union, showed he was a fiscal conservative when he refused to take bailout funds for unemployment benefits. Of course, barely a month later, he had to ask the government for a $170 million loan to cover (you guessed it) unemployment. The Death Penalty Information Center released a report in October that found that Texas could save a bundle by scaling back its execution program. Perry missed the memo:
But the swashbuckling politician—who in April suggested that Texas could secede from the Union—has only reaffirmed his embrace of the death penalty. “Our process works, and I don’t see anything out there that would merit calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty,” he said on Tuesday. As Zack Roth notes, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s top challenger for governor in 2010 and a strong supporter of the death penalty, has criticized Perry on the issue. Still, she hasn’t commented on the death penalty’s economic or ethical dimensions, instead charging that Perry’s handling of the Willingham case is “giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty.”
Filed under: Civil Rights, Crime and Justice, Mother Jones | Tags: Alabama, Arizona, George Wallace, Immigration, Joe Arpaio
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to show the US government who’s boss. In October, the justice department tried, however ineffectively, to rein in the controversial law enforcer by barring his office from making immigration arrests in the field. Of course, Arpaio vowed to disobey. This reminds me of another American hooligan George Wallace, the governor who famously blocked African American students from entering a school in Alabama. Arpaio certainly seems to fit that mold:
The statute currently in question is section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which enables local officials to enforce immigration laws with the approval of the Department of Homeland Security. Jennifer Allen of the Tucson-based Border Action Network explains that either party can opt out of the agreement, as DHS did partially earlier this week. So, she said, it is now illegal for Arpaio to continue his immigration raids without the approval of DHS. “There are no state-level laws that say you can set up a check point in a predominantly low-income Latino neighborhood and start pulling people over left and right for insignificant pretenses.”
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones | Tags: death penalty, lethal injection, Ohio, Romell Broom
October 6, 2009
October saw a set of botched state execution that drew the institution of lethal injection into serious question. The most famous victim was Romell Broom, who was punctured 18 times over two hours as guards struggled to find a suitable vein for the poison. Finally, a judge intervened to stop the execution. Critics have said that such cases amount to cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of guards who are not qualified to perform medical procedures. But involving doctors brings up what one expert calls a “hippocratic paradox.” Instead of “do no harm” doctors are reportedly being asked to help end lives. Ohio State University professor of surgery Jonathan I. Groner broke it down for me:
Citing the “Hippocratic paradox” of state-sponsored executions, Groner notes that the guards administering Broom’s lethal injection were picked because they serve as volunteer emergency medical technicians. However, they do not have nearly as much experience with IVs as fully-trained medical personnel, he says. “Part of the Hippocratic paradox problem is matching the least experienced people with the most difficult patients,” he told Mother Jones. “You risk torturing the patient.”
This adds to the troubling shift toward the “medicalization of killing,” says Groner. And he worries that Strickland’s decision to determine alternative modes of lethal injection could blur the lines between medicine and execution even further. “The trap is that to get it done right, you need more expertise. And that means more medical involvement,” he said.
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones, Scandals | Tags: Bush administration, Eric Holder, interrogation, Obama adminstration, Torture
August 10, 2009
One of the reasons Democrats were so excited to see Obama in the Oval Office was that he has pledged to demand some accountability for government officials who participated in torture under the Bush administration. But even after Obama’s first few months, it became deafeningly clear that his torture initiatives would be even more toothless than expected. In August, Attorney General Eric Holder caught fire when he proposed a torture probe would not target the authors of the so-called torture memos or Bush administration officials who knew what was going on. Instead, the probe would only hold accountable those soldiers who went beyond the interrogation tactics approved by the Bush administration. I reported the response of the human rights community for MoJo. Here’s an excerpt:
Opinions were divded among human rights and civil liberties groups about the merits of this approach. On the one hand, Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, thinks that a probe that lets the authors of the interrogation policies off the hook would be more destructive than constructive. “An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all,” he told the Los Angeles Times….
But Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, is more optimistic about the proposed inquiry. He agrees that the investigation should not be confined to low-level interrogators because “if we end up having scapegoats as responsible people instead of those who authorized and solicited torture, then it would be an abdication of our international legal responsibility.” But he thinks it would be possible to start with those who overstepped the rules of interrogation and cast a wider net later—that is, if federal investigators follow where the evidence leads and investigate accordingly.
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones | Tags: activists, Iran
July 27, 2009
On July 25, activists gathered in 110 cities worldwide in solidarity with the Iranians who were mistreated following Iran’s June election, which many criticized as illegitimate. With my co-worker Tay Wiles, I visited San Francisco’s city hall to speak with activists and city officials in attendance. We produced the following video to accompany our report:
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones, Race | Tags: Genocide, restorative justice, Rwanda
July 17, 2009
Back in July, the US loaned Rwanda $44 million to continue its multi-layered restorative justice system that was implemented to help the central African country come to terms with the 1994 genocide which killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Unfortunately, as I wrote for Mother Jones, this admirable goal has so far not lived up to its potential because the Tutsi-led government has too often used it for revenge rather than justice. A preview:
Gacaca, literally “on the grass,” is a restorative system which allows perpetrators responsible for crimes including isolated murder and destruction of property during the genocide to decrease their prison sentences if they plead guilty, apologize, and agree to supplement their shortened jail time with community service. But the gacaca courts have been instructed by the RPF to focus only on crimes that occurred during a limited timeframe, most of which were committed by Hutus. During the protracted civil war that preceded the genocide, though, The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army was also responsible for murder, rape, and destruction of Hutu property. Also, gacaca judges are untrained and elected by the community, which raises concerns about international standards of due process and impartiality.
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Mother Jones, Supreme Court | Tags: SCOTUS, Supreme Court
June 30, 2009
The Supreme Court’s 2008 term ended in June with a flurry of decisions that emphasized the Court’s ideological rift. Five of the rulings were particularly troubling for their denial of prisoners’ rights, approval of environmental hazards, and corporate favoritism. I summarized the issues and rulings behind the five most troubling SCOTUS rulings of the 2008 term. One tricky decision was Ashcroft v. Iqbal:
The Upshot: In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that Javaid Iqbal, one of the hundreds of Muslims rounded up after 9/11 and allegedly subjected to harsh treatment, could not challenge his detention in Court because he could not prove he was mistreated. In effect, the ruling increased the pleading requirements for prisoners, which could make it more difficult for prisoners to bring civil rights complaints to court.
See no evil: In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that a prison supervisor is not required to challenge discriminatory practices based on the “mere knowledge of his subordinate’s discriminatory” actions.
Ben Buchwalter 