Monday Roundup

That has a strange ring to it.

You'll have to forgive me, I was in Durham, North Carolina this last weekend for the Full Frame documentary film festival. There were scores of intensely beautiful and moving films there, several that focused on human rights concerns around the world. But there were two in particular that are appropriate fodder for the blog:

• The Visitors follows a bus-full of women who travel from New York city upstate to visit their loved ones in prison every weekend. It was a powerful portrayal of love, devotion, and loneliness, as one of the women remarks, "I'm doing my time, too."
• Unit 25 (Unidad 25) follows Simon Pedro, an Argentinian convicted of stabbing a man. What makes Simon's story interesting is that he has the right to choose where he will serve out his sentence. His family convinces him to choose Unit 25, which gives prisoners "relief from customary prison horrors" in exchange for their embrace of Christianity while in prison.

I just discovered the website www.thousandkites.org, a dialogue project dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system, thanks to Twitter user @prettytoes.

Miguel Roman was exonerated in Connecticut after serving 20 years for a murder DNA now proves he didn't commit. He's the 235th person exonerated by DNA testing nationwide.

The Connecticut legislature's judicial committee voted to approve a bill to abolish the death penalty in that state. The bill will be sent to the floor for a vote. Connecticut and New Hampshire are the only two states in New England that still have the death penalty.

SentLaw reports that Ohio's death row is getting smaller, noting that the row shrunk by 15 people last year, either through executions or successful appeals. Related to that, Brett Hartmann was scheduled to die tomorrow in Ohio for a murder, but his execution was stayed. The three-judge panel that granted his reprieve specifically mentioned that they were awaiting the outcome of Osborne in the Supreme Court, which will determine whether inmates have the right to post-conviction DNA testing.

Finally, as you probably already know, Iowa's Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. (File this loosely under Constitution and it's okay to blog about it here.)

Media coverage of Osborne

On Monday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District, et al. v. Osborne out of Alaska. I have blogged before about Osborne; it's a hugely important case both for the work we do here freeing innocent people and for Americans in general, as it could affirm a Constitutional right for inmates to acquire DNA testing.

The case has received a mountain of media attention. Editorials have run in the New York Times, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska's largest newspaper. Articles have appeared on CNN's website and on Anderson Cooper's blog.

But some of the reports are less than promising. It is unfortunate that lawyers for the Obama administration, for example, have taken such a hardline stance against the right to DNA testing. (Some of that might be due to the fact that they have inherited the case from the previous administration.)

The new deputy Solicitor General for the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court today to go slow in giving prisoners a right to seek DNA testing that could free them.

"Our position is there is no constitutional right to DNA," Neal Katyal, a former Georgetown law professor, told the justices.

..."It is a no-cost proposition for the defendant," he said, and could "open the floodgates" to legal suits seeking new tests of old evidence.

An article in McClatchy paints a somewhat grim picture that makes it seem at least like this will be a serious nail-biter.

Supreme Court justices appeared closely divided Monday over claims by an Alaska inmate that the Constitution guarantees a right to post-conviction DNA testing.

The court's most conservative members are clearly aligned against inmate William Osborne, who was convicted of assaulting a prostitute known only as K.G. The court's most liberal members sounded sympathetic to expanded testing. At most, the odds appear to favor a narrow decision.

A decision is not due for months in the case, but we will continue to watch for developments.

Friday Roundup

Arguments at the Supreme Court begin in Osborne on Monday. Today the New York Daily News has an article calling Alaska's refusal to grant post-conviction DNA testing "shameful."

The state admits that a DNA test now would be conclusive as to whether or not Osborne is guilty. But Alaska has no statute entitling anyone to post-conviction DNA testing, and the prosecution has simply refused to give Osborne access to the evidence. Instead, Alaska has fought tooth and nail to deny Osborne that access, in a decade-long legal battle that will soon culminate with a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. The state's position has been endorsed in "friend of the court" briefs filed by the federal government, 31 individual states and the New York City Corporation Counsel...

Given the numerous cases in which new evidence, including DNA evidence, has exonerated those who like Osborne seemed very likely guilty, a prosecutor owes it to the public to be open-minded with respect to requests like Osborne's. If such testing had, in 1997, shown that Osborne was guilty, it would have done no harm - and indeed saved the Alaska taxpayers a huge litigation bill. If Osborne had been shown to be innocent, he could have been released.

More links regarding Osborne can be found here and on SCOTUSblog here.

An interesting post for all those who love numbers and statistics – like I do – went up at TalkLeft that exposed some interested line items in President Obama's stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The post called out money appropriated for criminal justice "lock-em-up" programs:

• Violence against women prevention and prosecution programs $225,000,000
  
• Southern border and high-intensity drug trafficking areas $30,000,000
  
• ATF Project Gunrunner $10,000,000
  
• Internet crimes against children initiatives $50,000,000
  
• Rural drug crime program $125,000,000
  
• Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants $1,000,000,000
  
• Justice Department salaries and expenses for administration of police grant programs $10,000,000
  
• Office of Justice Programs state and local law enforcement assistance (Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants) $2,000,000,000

Finally, several more posts covering the movement to abolish the death penalty, which is picking up steam in many states.

• Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing: Tennessee Study Committee Issues a Report
  
• The New York TImes: Citing Cost, States Consider End to Death Penalty
  
• A map and infographic of states with and without capital punishment on Change.org.
  
• TalkLeft: States Consider Dropping Death Penalty.