kohenari:

Today is World Day Against the Death Penalty. If you’re not working to change people’s minds about this issue, what are you doing?

As Human Rights Watch astutely notes:

October 10, 2011 is the ninth annual World Day against the Death Penalty, and this year marks 35 years since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976. In that time, 1,271 people have been electrocuted, shot, hanged, gassed, or put to death by lethal injection.

I’ve posted these next few sentences before, but they bear repeating today:

I know what death row looks like, I’ve talked with condemned men, and because of my interaction with the death penalty in this country I’ve been given a good look at the privileged life I lead.

There is nothing to applaud when people die. There is nothing to applaud when people fail to examine their own lives and the good fortune they have had. There is nothing to applaud when our leaders do not understand the difference between justice and vengeance. There is nothing to applaud when people believe that the only thing our government can do properly is inject some citizens full of poison.

And also these sentences:

[W]e cannot organize an opposition to the culture of death that seems to powerful in this country at the moment by looking for individual cases that inflame our passion. This is reactive; time and time again, the bulk of our organizing happens at the last moment, once a death warrant has been signed, and so all of our effort seems to go into last-ditch efforts like calling the Pardon Board, hoping for the Supreme Court to step in, and holding a rally or vigil late into the night while someone is strapped down and injected with poison.

It’s today that we need to organize; it’s today that we should begin to put one foot in front of the other and do the difficult work that will be required to rid ourselves of the death penalty for good, not simply to stave off one particular execution or another. There are organizations or coalitions of organizations in every state that are dedicated to legislatively eliminating the death penalty.

To sum up: It is both legal and proper in more than half of the states in this country for agents of the government to strap someone down and inject him full of poison in revenge for something terrible he did many years earlier. You can tell your legislators that this is an attack on human dignity; you can change that law.

letterstomycountry:

Cristian was born on January 14th of 1999 to a mother who was as old as he is today. Cristian is 12 years old. On March 15th he was arrested relating to the alleged beating of his 2 year old brother David. At the time of his arrest, David was under the care of St. Luke’s hospital, receiving treatment for injuries he sustained the day before.

David died on March 16th as a result of injuries to the head. Doctors who took care of the young child indicated that if his mother had brought him to the hospital when he was first injured he might not have died as a result. However, the child’s mother waited for six hours or more before taking him to the hospital. She did not call 911 before taking her son to the hospital.

12 year old Cristian was left in the apartment to care for his 2 year old brother even though he had broken the child’s leg while wrestling in January of the same year. Cristian’s arrest report indicated that Cristian was worried about the condition of his brother and was also concerned about what would happen to him as a result of his hurting his younger brother.

Yes!  Let’s try 12 year olds as adults for murder.  That will surely deter all 12 year olds from murdering.  Indeed, 12 year olds, despite being unable to legally own land, serve in the military, work for wages, enter into legally binding agreements, purchase cigarettes, consume alcohol, consent to sex, or determine their own course of medical treatment, are nonetheless plainly mature enough and learned with respect to the conventions of society, to be able to comprehend criminal acts, and to appreciate the meaning of life in prison. 

And SURELY throwing this young man in prison and condemning him to literally grow up in prison will make him a productive citizen when he eventually qualifies for parole (if at all).  That is both a productive and sane task for our Criminal Justice system to partake in.

Surely.

This — a perfectly innocent woman being hauled off a flight, handcuffed, jailed, strip-searched, and grilled for hours — because some fucking ninny on the plane thought she and the two dark-skinned people sitting next to her were “suspicious”, and because “better safe than sorry” has become a higher value to law enforcement than probable cause or reasonable suspicion or due process or common freaking sense, and because we’re too cowed as a people to say anything about it.

Reporting on the issue is meek.

“Due to the anniversary of Sept. 11, all precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously,” Berchtold said. “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.”

From what I can piece together, this woman got treated like that because she was seated in the same row as two Indian men who wen to the bathroom in succession and took longer than some passenger deemed necessary.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Via.

emphasis mine

letterstomycountry:

A woman in the state of New Mexico is asking cops to cover her medical bill after she was ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency of Las Cruces, NM to undergo a costly cavity search — at her own expense.

The woman, whose name is being withheld, was apprehended by authorities earlier this summer. Acting on “credible information from a reliable source,” Metro Sgt. Mike Alba obtained a search warrant from Magistrate Court to send the woman into Memorial Medical Center to undergo a forcible and thorough body cavity search.

Not only did the probe come up fruitless, however, but the woman was footed with a medical bill for $1,122 for something she never wanted or asked for. Attorney Michael Lilley is representing the woman and served the county a claim last week that they will be held responsible for the hospital fees, which he is calling “unlawful.”

While Sgt. Alba says his source believed the woman was concealing up to an ounce of heroin on her person, the authorities had no other evidence against the woman other than hearsay and she had no criminal record. Doctors did not recover any drugs in the search and the woman was not formally arrested or charged with any crime. Even still, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the woman was held in custody for several hours.

h/t Balko

I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this.

The Arizona legislature has passed legislation that will now allow prisons to charge $25 for people to visit their family and friends in prison. It is a remarkably cruel law since many of these visitors are coming from low income families and have to travel great distances. Yet, legislators are pointing out that they originally wanted to charge babies and children as well but decided to be nice guys.

 
The fee is being justified as a one-time “background check fee” for visitors, but staffers admit that it is an effort to increase revenue at the expense of these families. Wendy Baldo, chief of staff for the Arizona Senate, confirmed that they “were trying to cut the budget and think of ways that could help get some services for the Department of Corrections.”

Prison visitation has an extremely positive impact on inmates both psychologically and socially. It maintains and strengthens family bonds that will be needed to keep them from recidivism and can weaken the hold of gangs and other bad influences. Now the state is going to tell tell families on assistance that in order to see their loved ones, each adult will have to fork over $25. The article below also details how people have had difficulty paying the fee in advance. Visiting a loved one can be a terribly traumatic experience for a family. Yet, Arizona will now be there to get its cut.

As someone who has worked in prisons for decades, I find this absolutely appalling. From the beginning of correctional systems, the one right that virtually all societies have afforded inmates has been visitation. To now charge for the right to visit is gratuitous and cruel.

Back to the birth of the English legal system when the courts were a source of profit to the crown.

letterstomycountry:

WARNING: extremely graphic photo.

The coffee burned through her clothes and caused third degree burns on her thighs and buttocks.  She was hospitalized for seven days and required extensive skin grafts to repair the damage.

The bulk of her award consisted of punitive damages that the jury felt was justified on the basis of McDonalds’ reckless disregard for consumers, and cavalier attitude towards the risks of their product.

I’ve written about this case before.  Some people may still be unsympathetic to her cause.  I understand.  But I think when most people think of spilling coffee, they think of a painful but otherwise trivial burn.  That was not the case here.  This woman could have died from her injuries.  And I think that’s why 12 men and women on the jury (who were also originally skeptical) quickly came to a unanimous decision at the end of her trial that she deserved to be compensated, and that McDonalds should also be fiscally punished over and above what it took to compensate Ms. Liebeck for her injuries.  Worth considering.

For those looking for more information, you can read about the case here.

I remember when I first heard the back story to this — this was definitely a case of sound bite trumps real news.  And initially she asked them to pay for her out of pocket medical expenses and they refused!