Eideard

David Camm — Keith Henderson

If former Indiana state Trooper David Camm is tried a third time in the murders of his wife and their two children, Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson should not be involved, an Indiana appeals court has ruled.

The unanimous, three-judge panel ruled that a special prosecutor should replace Henderson because he entered a book deal to write about the case while Camm’s second conviction was being appealed.

The panel called that deal, which has since been canceled, “an irreversible, actual conflict of interest with his duty to the people of the state of Indiana…”

Camm was convicted twice of murdering his wife, Kimberly Camm, their 7-year-old son, Bradley, and 5-year-old daughter, Jill, in the garage of their home near Georgetown in September 2000. Both convictions were overturned because prosecutors used impermissible evidence or arguments.

In June 2009, while the Indiana Supreme Court was weighing Camm’s appeal of the second conviction, Henderson reached an agreement with Berkley Penguin Group to write a book about the case…

He and a co-author split a $3,400 advance and promised to deliver the manuscript by Aug. 1, 2009, court records show. But just days after Henderson entered into the contract, the state high court overturned the conviction.

Though Penguin canceled the contract, Uliana filed a motion with Special Judge Jonathan Dartt in December 2009 asking that Henderson be replaced by a special prosecutor if a third trial were to be held.

Looks like Penguin has more sense than the DA or the political hacks who had endorsed his continued presence as prosecutor. What an egregious creep!

Yes, there are parts of Kashmir that look just like my neck of the prairie
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A much-despised law that suspends basic rights and shields security forces from prosecution in the disputed province of Kashmir will be lifted in some areas in the next few days.

Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, said in a speech to police officers that the situation in many areas of Kashmir had become peaceful enough to warrant removing the law, which is known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Human rights activists have long argued that the act, which gives government security forces wide latitude in areas where insurgents operate, has led to widespread abuses. The discovery of thousands of unidentified bodies in mass graves in the region this summer seemed to underscore the impunity the law allowed.

Security officers cannot be prosecuted for acts committed while on duty in areas covered by the act without permission from the Home Ministry, and such permission has almost never been granted, even in cases where rape and murder were alleged.

The law was put in place in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir in 1990, when the state was in the grip of insurgents — partly fueled by Pakistan — who sought to wrest it free of India…The insurgency petered out in the late 1990s, and the past few years have been largely free from armed struggle. But the act has remained in force and was a crucial catalyst for unarmed protests that have swelled in Kashmir almost every summer in recent years. Last year more than 100 people died in protests, most of them killed by security officers who fired into rock-throwing crowds.

But this summer was largely tranquil, and the state government has been slowly reducing the visibility of its security presence in the region, removing heavily armored bunkers and taking machine-gun-toting security officers off the streets.

Like many activists around the world who support the range of struggle from national liberation movements in earlier days, pro-democracy movements, nowadays – I sincerely hope the Indian government can make it past sectarian insurgencies to support full-blown democracy in a region long in the search for its own voice in governing.

This could be a start.

A former Nasdaq executive has been sentenced to 3-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty for making hundreds of thousands of dollars by trading on confidential information.

Donald Johnson, 57, was director and then managing director of Nasdaq’s market intelligence desk before retiring in September 2009. In May he pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud for his scheme, which ran from 2006 until 2009.

He was responsible for monitoring the stocks of companies traded on the Nasdaq as well as giving the companies information and analyses about trading in their stocks. As a result, Johnson received advance information about upcoming companies’ earnings, news releases and personnel changes.

Federal prosecutors accused him of using that inside information on at least eight occasions, reaping $641,000. Securities regulators said there was a ninth illegal trade that brings the total ill-gotten gains to just over $755,000…

Judge Anthony Trenga sentenced Johnson to serve 42 months in prison followed by one year of supervised release. The judge also signed a forfeiture order for the $755,000 amount…

Johnson is the latest high-profile prosecution in a string of cases brought by the Obama administration in a bid to crack down on insider trading.

Over at the Big Blog – and many other sites that halfway cover American business [or is that halfassed?] I have given up trying to correct the ignorant who constantly prattle about nothing ever being done about corruption on Wall Street.

Meanwhile, I continue to record a portion of these clowns sent up the river for their crimes.

Fourteen mobsters from New York’s Italian-American mafia have been sentenced as part of a wide-ranging assault by the authorities on the Cosa Nostra…

The 14 ranged from former Gambino crime family boss, Daniel Marino, to so-called soldiers or thugs carrying out beatings to enforce Gambino extortion activities, the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan said. Nine were sentenced this week and five over recent months.

Illustrating the authorities’ principal strategy against secretive mafia groups in New York, the 14 were handed light sentences after they admitted guilt. Mafia members in plea bargains with prosecutors are often handed reduced punishments in return for cooperation with investigators against former comrades, including testifying against them in court…

US Attorney Preet Bharara said: “The successful prosecutions of Daniel Marino and his cronies dealt a significant blow to the Gambino Family — a family that will stop at nothing to wield power, extract illegal profits, and exact revenge against its enemies.”

“We are far from finished,” Bharara said.

Preet Bharara is becoming my new hero copper. Between flushing mafaioso soldiers [and Capos] down the toilet and doing the same to Wall Street Barons convinced they’re as much above the law as La Cosa Nostra, Bharara is establishing a new legend in New York City of an east coast Untouchable [that's American slang btw].

Phil Woolas, the former immigration minister, has been thrown out of Parliament and the Labour Party after breaking electoral law by making up damaging allegations about his main general election opponent.

Two High Court judges made the historic decision to overturn the result of May’s ballot in Mr Woolas’s constituency, the first such ruling for 99 years, and order a by-election.

The ruling means Mr Woolas will be barred from standing for public office for three years, and he could face criminal charges after a file on the case was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

He said he would fight the court’s decision but Labour immediately disowned him for “telling lies” and said it would not support his appeal. The result of the election in Oldham and Saddleworth — which Mr Woolas won by just 103 votes — had been challenged by Elwyn Watkins, the defeated Liberal Democrat who accused the MP of exploiting racial tensions in the area by falsely claiming Mr Watkins was courting Islamic extremists.

Mr Justice Nigel Teare and Mr Justice Griffith Williams ruled that Mr Woolas had breached electoral law by knowingly making false statements about his opponent.

As well as declaring the election result void, they ordered Mr Woolas to pay Mr Watkins’s legal costs.

Can you imagine a ruling like this one coming in the United States?

Even when our congressional whizbangs get round to fiddling with a possible sanction again some of the corruption that passes for culture – it takes months and years to bring the process to conclusion.

Six years after she mysteriously drowned in a bathtub, Kathleen Savio is finally getting her day in court.

Savio essentially will testify from the grave Tuesday, with witnesses expected to tell a judge in Illinois how Savio discussed and wrote about her fears that her husband, former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson, would kill her.

The hearing is expected to provide the first detailed look at evidence prosecutors contend ties Peterson to Savio’s death. It stems from a state law that allows a judge to admit hearsay evidence – testimony from witnesses who recount what they heard from others – in first-degree murder cases if prosecutors can prove a defendant killed a witness to prevent him or her from testifying.

The Illinois Legislature passed the law after authorities named Peterson a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy, then exhumed the body of Savio, his third wife, and reopened the investigation into her 2004 death. Though the bill’s sponsors were careful never to link the law publicly to Peterson, it has been referred to as “Drew’s Law,” and his attorneys have long suggested it was passed to put Peterson behind bars.

During the hearing, which is expected to last three weeks, prosecutors will present to Will County Judge Stephen White about 60 witnesses to testify about 15 hearsay statements. White will then decide if the jury can hear any or all of those statements when Peterson stands trial…

The death initially was ruled an accidental drowning – until Stacy Peterson’s disappearance led officials to exhume Savio’s body, conduct another autopsy and conclude Savio was the victim of a homicide. Drew Peterson has not been charged in Stacy Peterson’s disappearance.

Let’s maintain this style of American jurisprudence all the way to the logical end.

Lose that case, you still can appeal to the Supreme Court – now loaded with medieval minds from Republican appointees – and they can rule on the Constitution afresh. Even the Federalists who babble about never changing anything from 1775 are perfectly willing to do an about-face if it means votes for conservatives, better prosecution scores for mediocre police departments.

People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it to them should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department has said in a directive with far-reaching political and legal implications.

In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that make some allowance for the use of medical marijuana, the department said that it was committed to the “efficient and rational use” of its resources and that prosecuting patients and distributors who are in “clear and unambiguous compliance” with state laws did not meet that standard.

The new stance was hardly an enthusiastic embrace of medical marijuana, or the laws that allow it in some states, but signaled clearly that the Obama administration thought there were more important priorities for prosecutors…

The new memo is the latest reversal of Bush administration social policies that had especially rankled liberals. Yet the politics of marijuana cross ideological lines. For instance, in effectively deferring to the states on this particular issue, the Obama administration is taking what could be seen as a states’ rights stance, more commonly associated with conservatives. That was a theme that echoed on many conservative and libertarian Internet sites in the wake of Monday’s announcement…

Conservative hypocrites immediately increased the blather-o-meter on talk radio.

Polls have shown for years that there is widespread public support for making marijuana available to relieve the suffering of very ill people. But repeated efforts in Congress to block federal prosecution of medical marijuana have fallen short, and the new policy was a sharp departure from that of the Bush administration, in which the Drug Enforcement Administration raided medical marijuana distributors even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws.

A truly sensible order would probably require the participation of the really large chicken coop called Congress – that is, legalization of marijuana so that it may be taxed and regulated like cigarettes and beer.

Living in a state with legal medical marijuana, with a lobby for grow-your own – I’m reminded of the last touch of realism I witnessed in a small “traditional” town north of Lot 4 a few years back: a couple of teenagers trying to escape in their low rider from a police car after robbing a convenience store – and neither was exceeding 20 miles per hour.

Debbie Purdy and Omar Puente
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A woman with multiple sclerosis has made legal history by winning her battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified.

Debbie Purdy wanted to know if her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her end her life in Switzerland. Five Law Lords ruled the Director of Public Prosecutions must specify when a person might face prosecution.

Ms Purdy, 46, from Bradford, said she was “ecstatic” at the ruling and she had been given her life back…the Law Lords’ decision was “a huge step towards a more compassionate law”…

“The decision means that I can make an informed choice, with Omar, about whether he travels abroad with me to end my life because we will know exactly where we stand.”

No one has been prosecuted for assisting someone’s death, although the law says they could potentially face 14 years in prison…

Ms Purdy said she would like to see the policy distinguish between “what is acceptable and what isn’t” so people in situations like hers could make decisions about what to do.

The Law Lords also said she had the right to choose how she died, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

One of those areas where European Law is centuries ahead of the United States.

Another couple decades of battling with the backwards religious institutions that still exert unreasonable control over politicians – if not the state.

The family of Timothy Cole, a Texas man who died in prison nearly a decade ago while serving a sentence for a rape he swore he did not commit, is hoping a court will issue the state’s first posthumous exoneration.

Cole was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1985 rape of 20-year-old Michele Mallin. He maintained his innocence, but it was not confirmed by DNA until years after his 1999 death, when another inmate confessed to the rape…

The court hearing on the exoneration began Thursday afternoon, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Mallin, who has spoken publicly about the case, will join Cole’s family in the Austin, Texas, courtroom. They want a judge to clear Cole’s name, according to the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help the wrongfully convicted.

Among those expected to testify are Mallin and Jerry Wayne Johnson, her confessed rapist…

The Innocence Project became involved after Cole’s family received Johnson’s letter of confession. DNA tests confirmed that Johnson was Mallin’s attacker. Now, Cole’s family hopes the court hearing will be the final step in clearing his name.

Mallin is helping them. “I’m trying to get his name cleared. It’s the right thing to do.”

Having some experience with Texas law and politics, the exoneration can’t be counted on as a gimme – regardless of evidence and circumstances. Texas law and Texas politicians feel they do no wrong.

Johnson spent 12 years trying to confess to the rape and got nowhere. It wasn’t until a group like the Innocence Project got involved and started to embarrass the state that new DNA evidence and the confession were even allowed into consideration.

UPDATE: Can’t tell you all how glad I am to be wrong. My cynical self is pleased to learn that court in Texas has exonerated Timothy Cole. Friday 6th February.

An Italian comic who said Pope Benedict would be punished in hell for the church’s treatment of homosexuals was spared possible prosecution when the government blocked an investigation against her.

Sabina Guzzanti, one of Italy’s most biting political satirists, made the remarks before a cheering crowd of thousands gathered at Rome’s Piazza Navona in July.

A Rome prosecutor suspected the comments broke a law protecting the honor and dignity of the leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics under a 1929 Italian treaty with the Vatican.

But the treaty, signed by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, required government approval before the investigation could go forward. Justice Minister Angelino Alfano decided to block it.

“I decided not to authorize it, knowing well the stature and capacity of the pope for forgiveness,” Alfano told Italian media.

What a crock!

Fact is that prosecution might also be another straw on the broad camel’s back of Italian voters – beginning to look askance at the fascist antics of the buffoon they’ve elected, again.