A New Wild West?

Yesterday, in Brasilia, Brazil's capitol, Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment, resigned. She had worked for Lula's PT (Worker's Party) for over five years, but had battled recently with senior aides, as well as governor's of some of the most controversial states in the battle between agrobusiness interests and Amazon rainforest protection. While not exactly saying that she felt stepped-on, she did say that this time, unlike in the past, her decision was permanent. As Folha de S. Paulo noted, this is seen as a victory for the soy and ranching business, and especially the governor of Mato Grosso, who has called for an increase in deforestation, as a solution for the inflation of food prices. Silva, an ardent advocate for the different tribes in the area, as well as increased protection and penalties against illegal lumbering, was publicly at odds with the governor, one of the most powerful in Brazil.

BBC, as I just read in Folha de S. Paulo, is on top of things in the Amazon, as well as Indonesia, another literal hotspot for the burning and destruction of rainforests worldwide. The photo attached to this post is from yesterday's issue of BBC online, and shows the drastic demarkation between farmland (mainly soy) and the Amazon, in the state of Mato Grosso. This report, combined with the numerous reports both nationally and internationally regarding the acquittal of Bida, accused of ordering the death of Dorothy Stang, who tirelessly defended natives and the rainforest in the state of Para, has put the focus back on what has become today's Wild West, and one of the most important battlegrounds in the fight to control climate change while feeding a world increasingly dependent on Brazil for food. Numerous reports here in Brazilian periodicals have noted that areas with high levels of illegal lumbering also have the highest numbers of homicide per capita. With the aforementioned acquittal of a powerful farmer in the death of Stang, many fear that it is open season on dissidents an voices for the Amazon.

To check out the fascinating slideshow on BBC, complete with shocking captions and stories about those who make up the Amazon reality today, go to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7399991.stm

Do not miss this revealing and disturbing look at one of the most important places in the world.

a chambermaid reading with author saira rao

it was a wonderful night... last night saira rao entertained us at our nyc chambermaid book party with true tales of judicial hell from her federal clerkship experience. saira answered questions from the group, mostly comprised of lawyers, such as, "well, how mean is mean?" saira shed some light on the most private branch of our government and expressed outrage at clarence thomas' latest attack on anita hill in his memoirs.

saira then read an excerpt from her book and some of the ex-clerks shared their own chambermaid tales. we had good food, drinks and shared much laughter... thanks saira!!

invite saira to your reading club or throw a book party for chambermaid. you'll have a chance to get a signed copy, ask saira for more inside scoop on absolute power and the justices, and learn more about the soon-to-be sheila raj (aka chambermaid) lifetime series.

Sit-Lie-Roll Over

Dispatches From Cascadia Vol. 5

One thing that often strikes people from out of town who come to visit Portland is that everyone here seems to be in such good shape. Walk down the street here in the Rose City and it is hard to find an obese local. Most folks living here are generally pretty slim, some to the point of looking like a heroin addicted rock star (a popular look in my neighborhood of Hawthorne). Lately however, Portlanders have been putting on a few collective pounds. Maybe it is all the good desert places that have been opening up lately, or all of those whole milk cappuccinos that we love so much, but whatever the reason, were starting to bulge our hip-huggers. Fortunately for us, City Hall is taking notice. So, after much debate, our esteemed and fitness conscious City Council has decided to begin enforcement of an existing law that makes it illegal to sit or stand on the sidewalks of downtown Portland. As a result, anyone working, visiting or living in downtown will have to walk continuously whenever they are outside in downtown. And as most fitness experts and City Councilmen will tell you, the best way to shed those excess pounds is light aerobic exercise like walking (particularly walking to the Galleria Mall from the Abercrombie and Fitch on Broadway). How thoughtful of the Mayor’s Street Access For Everyone (SAFE) Committee which came up with the new enforcement guidelines as part of the existing "Obstructions as Nuisances" law. Whoa, wait a minute! Obstructions as Nuisances Law? Street Access for Everyone Committee (didn’t even know we had one of those)? This doesn’t sound like a fitness ordinance to me! This actually sounds like an attempt to justify ticketing homeless people in the nice, clean, white, downtown shopping district! Could it be that the driving force behind the law is none other than the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), whose representative, Mike Kuykendall, has co-chaired the SAFE oversight committee since January? OK, so no one here really thinks this about fitness, I made that part up, but the truth is that right now in Downtown Portland, supposedly one of the most liberal and progressive cities in North America, the police can ticket you if by lying, sitting or standing on the side walk you leave less than 6 to 8 feet of passable space (pretty easy when most of the sidewalks are barely eight feet wide). Any two people standing and talking to each other on the sidewalk will likely be in violation of the new guidelines. It also allows people to be ticketed if they are sitting and posing a "trip hazard," whatever that means. The new enforcement guidelines have already gone into effect, and word on the street is that the police have begun handing tickets out to "offenders."

photo above: "I don't care what you say, Buddy, you can't sit there!"

--submitted by cousin marc from portland, oregon

Prosecuting the Duke Lacrosse Players

This recent article from RaceWire was written by Victor Goode, one of my professors at CUNY School of Law.

The ghosts of the Duke University rape case continue to haunt the press and Mike Nifong, the ex-county prosecutor who charged three white lacrosse players with raping a Black exotic dancer last year.

In his aggressive attempt to jail those “hooligans hiding behind a wall of silence,” Nifong withheld key evidence from the defense. Last week, a judge began hearing arguments to decide if Nifong is in criminal violation. Thursday, Nifong issued a public apology in court for falsely accusing the men.

Could it be, though, that Nifong’s real offense is not misconduct, but rather treating three middle class white defendants as if they were poor and Black?

Prosecutors wield the substantial power of the state, often with a great deal of discretion, so the Constitution rightfully imposes on them the burden of presenting a case that will likely meet the standard of reasonable doubt.

Regardless of how one might feel about the tawdry events of last year’s party, with all its racial and misogynous overtones, the prosecutor simply did not have the facts to support an indictment for rape. But like so many before him, Nifong pressed on.

After all the charges were dismissed, the young men appeared on “60 Minutes” to talk about how their lives had been irrevocably changed by the stigma of even being charged with a crime. Nifong quickly became the target of their blame.

Reade Seligmann, one of the accused, said ''If police officers and a district attorney can systematically railroad us with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, I can't imagine what they'd do to people who do not have the resources to defend themselves. So rather than relying on disparaging stereotypes and creating political and racial conflicts, all of us need to take a step back from this case and learn from it.”

Watching these events unfold, it was hard not to think about the thousands of young Black and Latino men who wind up in the same predicament as these Duke students.

Nifong was charged with making false and inflammatory statements to the press that prejudiced the defendants' right to a fair trial and with the more serious offense of withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense. While North Carolina’s rules of professional conduct clearly prohibit such behavior, ethics committees almost never sanction prosecutors.

Experts estimate that over the last fifty years there have been fewer than one hundred cases of sanctions against prosecutors and many of those were for matters related to bribery or mishandling of money. While the Duke case was a very real miscarriage of justice in that the evidence didn’t support the indictment, what distinguishes it from so many others is not that justice was eventually done. Rather, justice was done because the defendants could afford it and because at some point the system simply refused to treat these young white men like they were poor and Black.

We need not look far for cases where prosecutorial misconduct was far more egregious, but in which poor Black defendants had neither judges nor bar committees acting to guarantee a fair trial. Take for example another North Carolina case, the prosecution and conviction of Lesly Jean in 1982. He was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to two life sentences because of faulty eyewitness identification and government misconduct. After serving nine years in prison, he was finally exonerated in 2001 through the efforts of the Innocence Project. His conviction was overturned when it was revealed that police and prosecutors had failed to disclose pertinent evidence to the defense or the court—the same offense that cost Michael Nifong his law license.

We should also remember the states in which poor defendants face strict limits on the amount of funds that can be spent on their defense. In Alabama, for example, in capital murder cases the defense is limited to $1000, for which amount one cannot get even the most basic DNA test. In other states, defense lawyers are paid so little that it creates a financial incentive not to go to trial.

The media narrative of the Duke case shaped the public perception that this was a “special” injustice because of what was being done to white defendants. The very idea of white skin privilege would cease to have meaning if white and Black, rich and poor could actually expect the same treatment by our criminal justice system. One article expressed this “racial narrative” by referring to the case as “justice run off the rails by political correctness.” Not surprisingly, some of the demonstrations on the Duke campus tried to link the prosecution of the Lacrosse players with “excesses” of affirmative action. Others accused Nifong of simply trying to please the Black community of Durham because he needed their vote.

In light of the Duke case, will disciplinary committees now diligently hold DAs to their ethical duty as lawyers first and public prosecutors second? Probably not. The simplest lesson from this case is that race and class not only still matter in our criminal justice system but that they matter a lot.

Despite Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ insistence that we now live in a “colorblind” society, we should not now expect bar associations to intervene regularly on behalf of the poor when a DA makes remarks that could prejudice a jury. Or if one begins the prosecution by over charging, demanding high bails, insisting that 16-year olds are tried as adults and serve time in adult prisons. There are hundreds of cases where appellate courts have found that prosecutors should have turned over evidence to the defense but didn’t and bar associations never stepped in.

If the Duke case teaches us anything, it is that the effort to reform our criminal justice system has found few new tools. Communities have to continue to provide funding for defense lawyers for the poor. We will have to be the ones reminding prosecutors that, while ethical sanction has been a very rare occurrence, they too now must follow the lessons from the Duke rape case.

The Democrats to Introduce Impeachment Proceedings Against Gonzalez

A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow. The Text of the Resolution is here. See ya Gonzo!

Dispatches from Cascadia, Vol. I

Dispatches from Cascadia, Vol. I
(submitted by my cousin marc, the wandering road)

Activists all across the Republic of Cascadia* are still sorting through the fallout of the recent conviction and sentencing of 11 environmental activists on charges of property destruction, arson, and conspiracy relating to actions going back nearly a decade which were attributed to the Earth Liberation Front. The eleven activists were threatened with life sentences if they refused to cooperate with the government and serve as informants. After months of negotiation, in November of last year, Daniel McGowan (of Rockaway Beach, Queens) and three others pled guilty to some of the charges on the condition that they would remain non-cooperative with the state. As a result, the government sought and received a "terrorism enhancement" for their sentences. The National Lawyers Guild called the terrorism sentencing enhancement issued to Daniel McGowan and the others as unnecessary and excessive government tactic to discourage the exercise of free speech. Last month, a federal court sentenced Daniel to seven years in prison and this week Daniel reported to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to begin his sentence. All 11 defendants, including those that cooperated with the government’s case, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

One of the great ironies of the case against the 11 activists is that on June 20, 2006 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the initial 65-count indictment against group. On the same day, after serving ten years in prison, Michael Fortier (who was convicted for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people), was released from jail. At the time, the government was threatening the activists, who injured no one, with sentences ranging from 30 years to life. While we, the politically active citizens of Cascadia acknowledge that arson is a serious crime, we are concerned that the government is pursuing terrorism enhancement based on political views and not the nature of the crime. While the terrorism enhancement has been used in the sentencing of environmental activists it has not been sought in over 30 cases of murder of abortion doctors killed by right-wing extremists, or against obvious domestic terrorists like Michael Fortier.

*The Republic of Cascadia is the name for a movement committed to forming a new country out of the Pacific Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, Northern California, western Idaho and southern British Columbia. This region shares a geographical and bioregional proximity that helps drive the socio-political landscape.