CSI-Style Tools Offer Clues about Flame Retardants in Dust

From Environmental Science and Technology:

Two new papers published in ES&T provide the first evidence that computers, TVs, and other electronic products, as well as textiles, can slowly degrade over time to produce tiny plastic fragments containing relatively high concentrations of bromine. The work is significant because it sheds light on the mystery of how brominated flame retardants get into indoor dust, where humans can be exposed to them.

Over the past few years, scientists have amassed data confirming that the brominated flame retardants used in plastic and fabric consumer goods are found in the air and dust in people’s homes, workplaces, and automobiles. At least seven retardants have been documented in indoor air and dust from North America, Europe, and Asia. Researchers have definitively linked the levels of one widely used class of retardants, PBDEs, in homes’ dust with PBDE concentrations found in the residents’ breast milk.

Until now, however, no one has been able to explain exactly how the retardants migrate out of the products they are intended to protect and into the dust, says Tom Webster of Boston University’s School of Public Health, lead author of one new ES&T paper (DOI 10.1021/es803139w). “Many people have assumed that volatilization is the main process” responsible for flame retardants escaping into indoor environments, Webster says.

In their work, Webster and Go Suzuki of Ehime University’s Center for Marine Environmental Studies (Japan) and colleagues take a new approach by trying to pinpoint where the bromine is actually located in the dust, says Cynthia de Wit of Stockholm University’s Department of Applied Environmental Science. Taken together, the papers represent “a significant step forward“ for researchers interested in how peopleand animalstake up flame retardants, she says.

Webster and his team jokingly call this their CSI paper, in reference to the popular American television show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, because they used some of the investigative tools found in police laboratories. Using scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared microspectrophotometry, and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, they analyzed house and automobile dust samples with extremely high levels of BDE-209 (260−2600 micrograms per gram of dust) from the U.S. and the U.K. BDE-209 is the main component of the deca-BDE flame retardant mixture, a PBDE formulation widely used in TVs and other electronics sold in the U.S. BDE-209 was ideal for this research because it is highly nonvolatile, Webster says.

Full article here.

Reports of Internet Crime Jump 33 Percent

Reports of Internet-based crime jumped 33 percent in 2008, according to a group that monitors web-based fraud. The Internet Crime Complaint Center said in its annual report released Monday that it received more than 275,000 complaints last year, up from about 207,000 the year before. The total reported dollar loss from such scams was $265 million, or about $25 million more than the year before. About one in three complaints were for nonpayment or non-delivery. The other most common complaints were for auction fraud or credit and debit card fraud. The ICCC is a partnership of the FBI and a nonprofit group that tracks white collar crime. The group forwarded more than 70,000 of the complaints to various law enforcement agencies for further investigation.

Jailed Without Justice

A new report released March 25, 2009, by Amnesty International, entitled "Jailed Without Justice" exposes the immigration detention system in the United States as broken and unnecessarily costly. The report indicates that over 30,000 immigrants are detained every day. This is triple the number detained just ten years ago. Immigrants can be detained for months or years without any meaningful judicial review - this despite international human rights standards requiring judicial review.

It costs about $95 per day to detain someone, while effective alternatives only cost $12 per day.

Bill to Eliminate Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Drugs

On March 12, 2009, Representative Maxine Waters from California introduced into the House of Representatives H.R. 1466, the "Major Drug Trafficking Prosecution Act of 2009.'' The bill would eliminate all mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses; curb federal prosecutions of low-level drug offenders; and allow courts to place offenders on probation or suspend their sentence. This bill could be a major step in the right direction towards a sensible drug policy. To add support to this bill, contact your Congressperson or check with Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Fingerprint Science?

Interesting piece published in the LA Times yesterday questions the reliability of fingerprint evidence, especially the types that we often see in defense cases: smudges or partial prints. For full article, click here.

When Thomas and Ann Farrow were found murdered in their paint shop, their heads crushed with a blunt object, the only clue was a bloody right thumbprint on the store's empty cash box.
The brazen murder shocked the people of Debtford, a sooty industrial suburb of London. They clamored for police to find the killer.

The year was 1905. Forensic science was in its infancy. Scotland Yard had only recently begun collecting carefully pressed fingerprints from criminals, stashing the cards in pigeonholes of a makeshift filing system.
But Scotland Yard Inspector Charles Collins believed that the bloody print could help him solve his crime. After learning that a man named Alfred Stratton had been seen near the crime scene, he collected the unemployed ruffian's thumbprint and compared it with the one left at the crime scene. A close inspection showed there were 11 minute features that the two prints shared.

The prosecutor at Stratton's trial told jurors the similarities left "not the shadow of a doubt" that the crime-scene print belonged to Stratton.
But the defense had a surprising ally at their table: Henry Faulds, a Scottish doctor who two decades earlier was the first to propose using fingerprints to solve crimes.
Faulds believed that even if fingerprints were unique -- there was, after all, no scientific basis for the popular assumption -- the same was not necessarily true of "smudges," the blurry partial prints accidentally left behind at crime scenes in blood, sweat or grease.
A single bloody thumbprint, he felt, was not enough evidence to convict anyone of murder.

Stratton's trial would be the first test of the new science of fingerprinting, and it raised concerns that, more than a century later, still have not been addressed.
Today, fingerprints are once again on trial.
In 2007, a Maryland judge threw out fingerprint evidence in a death penalty case, calling it "a subjective, untested, unverifiable identification procedure that purports to be infallible."

The ruling sided with the scientists, law professors and defense lawyers who for a decade had been noting the dearth of research into the reliability of fingerprinting. Their lonely crusade for sound science in the courtroom has often been ignored by the courts, but last month it was endorsed by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

The question is not whether fingerprints are unique -- most scientists agree they probably are, though that assumption remains largely unstudied. The issue is whether the blurry partial prints often found at crime scenes -- what Faulds called "smudges" -- are sufficient to identify someone with any reliability.

The answer: No one knows. There are no national standards for declaring a fingerprint "match." As a result, fingerprint identifications are largely subjective.

Changing Lives Through Literature

From the Green Mountain Barrister

In the never ending effort to rehabilitate and prevent recidivism, there is a program through which offenders, as a condition of their probation, are ordered to attend and complete homework for six twice-monthly seminars on literature. The program is titled "Changing Lives Through Literature." It is an alternative sentencing program, started in 1991 in Massachusetts, and has been embraced by seven other states. According to the website, cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm, "[l]iterature has the power to transform men's and women's lives - this is the philosophy behind Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). Individuals who read about characters in literature may find a connection between themselves and those characters. If literature is a regular companion in our lives, this is not news. But, many adults and youth do not have access to literature and its transformative nature. CLTL participants, judges, probation officers, and instructors believe that bringing carefully selected works of literature to criminal offenders may help these men and women gain insight into their lives and behavior, while learning that they are not alone with their problems. The written word affects us far beyond the moment of reading."

In addition to Massachusetts, the program is available in seven other states: Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Connecticut, Maine, New York, and Rhode Island.

Bills to Make Informants More Reliable

Interesting Post from Grits for Breakfast

Florida bill would give informants legal counsel
As Texas considers bills to corroborate and ensure reliability of jailhouse informant testimony, I was interested to see that bipartisan legislation moving in Florida takes a different tack on regulating confidential informants. Reports AP:

The proposed bill would create strict standards on the use of confidential informants and give them the right to talk to an attorney before agreeing to help police.

It would not allow people in drug treatment programs to be used in undercover drug operations.

Plus, the plan would prevent a nonviolent offender from being involved in any undercover operation involving weapons or suspects with violent criminal records.

The actual Florida legislation - HB 271/SB 604 - is sponsored by Republicans in both chambers but has bipartisan support. See the original filed version and the negotiated substitute bill that cleared committee. Among provisions dropped at the demand of law enforcement was a requirement for "prosecutors to approve the use of an informant."

Even so, the negotiated version is still much stronger than Texas' law, including a requirement that potential informants have "an opportunity to consult with legal counsel upon request before the person agrees to perform any activities as a C.I." The Florida bill also includes expanded internal reporting and supervisory requirements when informants are used and requires each law enforcement agency to develop policies conforming to the law.

Interesting to see how other states are confronting these issues. Though Texas' informant-related bills in 2009 focus on jailhouse snitches, one need look no further than popular culture - evidenced by the forthcoming silver-screen depiction of snitch-based false drug convictions in Hearne - to know that Texas faces similar problems to those that inspired Florida's legislation with informants caught up in the drug war.

Trial Advocacy Book or How to Do a Trial in (several easy) Steps

While looking at information on the latest trial prep materials, I saw this recommendation from the Trial Practice Tips Weblog

The Book, Trial Advocacy: Planning, Analysis, and Strategy, while written for students, is also an excellent resource for practitioners, especially younger lawyers working on their first trials.

Described as a "how-to book for trial lawyers," Trial Advocacy is full of practical information about all the areas of trial you'd expect: jury selection, opening, exhibits, direct, cross, experts, instructions, closing. The book also includes a DVD in which "experienced trial counsel present" a mock trial based on the materials in the book.

Here's a sample tip from the book, chosen pretty much at random from a chapter titled "Cross-Examination of Experts"--

The expert's opinion may be vulnerable in the following areas:

* The time the expert had or used in analyzing the data (the doctor examined the patient for ten minutes; psychiatrist did not examine criminal defendant until ten weeks after the crime);
* Information was incomplete (the engineer did not receive all the blueprints);
* Expert is making an incorrect assumption about the data (the expert assumes that the core soil sample he was given was from "quadrant 4";you will present evidence that the sample was from "quadrant 3," which invalidates the expert's calculation);
* Expert received faulty or biased data (much of the data is from an interested party);
* Expert's procedures or experiments for analyzing the data faulty, unreliable, left undone, or wrong (a metallurgist failed to heat the metal to the appropriate temperature).

At almost 600 pages, it's a hefty book. You'll find a trailer for the DVD, sample documents, and ordering information at the book's companion website. You can also find the book at Amazon.

Ex-Bush Admin Official: Many at Gitmo are Innocent

Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday.

"There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.

In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."

Full story here.

As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up

From the New York Times:

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

“We were stunned,” said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”

It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.

Last week, a building products company asked an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror used Twitter to send updates during the civil trial.

And on Monday, defense lawyers in the federal corruption trial of a former Pennsylvania state senator, Vincent J. Fumo, demanded before the verdict that the judge declare a mistrial because a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The juror had even told his readers that a “big announcement” was coming on Monday. But the judge decided to let the deliberations continue, and the jury found Mr. Fumo guilty. His lawyers plan to use the Internet postings as grounds for appeal.

Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based on only the facts the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial. But now, using their cellphones, they can look up the name of a defendant on the Web or examine an intersection using Google Maps, violating the legal system’s complex rules of evidence. They can also tell their friends what is happening in the jury room, though they are supposed to keep their opinions and deliberations secret.

Full article here.

Eyewitness: Anatomy Of A Story

Have the Eyes Had It?

From Slate.com:

Describe the last person who served you a coffee. What if I helped refresh your memory? Showed you some photos of local baristas? Pulled together a helpful lineup? Cheered exuberantly when you picked the "right" one? Now imagine that instead of identifying the person who made your venti latte last week, we had just worked together to nail a robber or a rapist. Imagine how good we would feel. Now imagine what would happen if we were wrong.

Last month, a Texas judge cleared Timothy Cole of the aggravated sexual assault conviction that sent him to prison in 1986. Although his victim positively identified him three times—twice in police lineups and again at trial—Cole was ultimately exonerated by DNA testing. The real rapist, Jerry Wayne Johnson, had been confessing to the crime since 1995. Unfortunately, Cole died in prison in 1999, long before his name was cleared.

Our eyes deceive us. Social scientists have insisted for decades that our eyewitness identification process is unreliable at best and can be the cause of grievous injustice. A study published last month by Gary Wells and Deah Quinlivan in Law and Human Behavior, the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society, reveals just how often those injustices occur: Of the more than 230 people in the United States who were wrongfully convicted and later exonerated by DNA evidence, approximately 77 percent involved cases of mistaken eyewitness identification, more than any other single factor.

Wells has been studying mistaken identifications for decades, and his objection to the eyewitness identification system is not that people make mistakes. In an interview he explains that eyewitness evidence is important but should be treated—like blood, fingerprints, and fiber evidence—as trace evidence, subject to contamination, deterioration, and corruption. Our current criminal justice system—blessed by a 30-year-old Supreme Court precedent—allows juries to hear eyewitness identification evidence shaped by suggestive police procedures. In a 1977 case, Manson v. Brathwaite, the Supreme Court held that evidence that was a product of suggestive identification procedures need not be excluded if the identification was nevertheless deemed "reliable." Five criteria for determining whether that identification could be reliable were laid out—including how much opportunity the witness had to view the perpetrator and how certain she was of her identification. In the intervening years, social scientists have called into question much of the science underlying these five factors. Today we know, for instance, that you can have a good long look, be certain you have the right guy, and also be wrong. But Manson is still considered good law.

Jennifer Thompson was 22 the night she was raped in 1984. Throughout the ordeal, she scrupulously studied her attacker, determined to memorize every detail of his face and voice so that, if she survived, she could help the police catch him. Thompson soon identified Ronald Cotton in a photo lineup. When she—after some hesitation—again picked Cotton out of a physical lineup a few days later, a detective told her she'd picked the same person in the photo lineup. As Thompson told Leslie Stahl on CBS last weekend, that assurance led her to think: "Bingo. I did it right. I did it right."

But in this case Thompson got it wrong, although Cotton served 10 and a half years before DNA evidence exonerated him and decisively implicated another man, Bobby Poole. The curious part of the story is that despite Thompson's determination to memorize every detail, when she first saw Bobby Poole in court she was certain she had never seen him before. Indeed, according to Wells and Quinlivan, "Even after DNA had exonerated Cotton and Thompson herself had accepted the fact that Poole was her attacker, she had no memory of Poole's face and, when thinking back to the attack she says, 'I still see Ronald Cotton.' "

Full article here.

Gary Wells Hompage.

No Settlement in Spokane Civil-Rights Case

From the Seattle Times:

A federal civil-rights suit against the city of Spokane and nine of its police officers says Otto Zehm died three years ago when officers used batons and Tasers in a display of excessive force on the unarmed, passive, mentally ill man who wanted to buy a soda.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by the Center for Justice after negotiations with city attorneys failed to produce a settlement, a plan for changes in how police deal with mentally ill people or an apology.

The suit says the Police Department and its former acting chief, Jim Nicks, engaged in a conspiracy to portray Zehm as the aggressor after the 36-year-old janitor's encounter in 2006 with Officer Karl Thompson and other officers in a convenience store.

Zehm's death two days later was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.

Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Nicks declined to comment and referred questions to the city attorney. Kirkpatrick said earlier that Thompson had her "unequivocal support" for the way he handled the encounter with Zehm.

Full article here.

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske named new "Drug Czar": Will Reason Prevail?

President Obama has chosen Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to be the nation's drug czar. Pending congressional confirmation, Kerlikowske would direct the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Kerlikowske's nomination has been received with a cautious hopefulness by advocates for drug policy reform. Seattle residents who work on drug-reform issues called Kerlikowske smart and reasonable, and they noted that his police department has largely abided by a voter-approved initiative that made marijuana possession the city's lowest law enforcement priority. Here's one member of the Marijuana Policy Project talking to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Geo IP Tool

While perusing a favorite blog of mine, Tales of a Public Defender Investigator, I ran across a cool tool to use when tracking down where an IP address originates from.   Geo IP Tool gives you the city, state and even the internet provider of an IP address.  

For those, ahem, who we lost at "IP" here is a brief summary:

In computer networking , an IP address ( internet protocol address ) is a unique number that devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard. (Sometimes this is shortened to just "IP" as in "My IP is A.B.C.D".) Any participating device ó including routers, computers , time-servers, printers, internet fax machines, and some telephones ó must have its own globally unique communicable address.

IP is a network layer protocol in the internet protocol suite and is an upper layer protocol that also provides globally unique addresses (e.g., MAC address for ethernet ) but two of these addresses will not necessarily be able to communicate to each other. IP adds a service on top of these data link layer protocols ó through the use of an IP address that provides the ability to uniquely identify with and communicate with any other device on the network.

In other words, an IP address is like a full address for postal mail while a MAC address is just the house number. For example, there are many addresses with a house number of 123 but there is only one address for 123 Main Street, Anytown, California , United States . Simply mailing something to "123" will not get it there but "123 Main Street, Anytown, California, United States" is a globally unique address.

The unique nature of IP addresses makes it possible in many situations to track which computer ó and by extension, which person ó has sent a message or engaged in some other activity on the Internet. This information has been used by law enforcement authorities to identify criminal suspects; however, dynamically-assigned IP addresses can make this difficult.

Since IP addresses are not easy to remember, the Domain Name System provides the ability to map domain names (e.g. www.wikipedia.org ) to an IP address ( 207.142.131.248 ).

Caller ID: Maintaining Investigative Security

From the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, written by David P. Williams:

Investigators should take precautions in response to the growth of caller identification services.

Mr. Williams serves with the Electronic Surveillance Unit, Office of Investigations, at the U.S. Customs Service headquarters in Woodbridge, Virginia.

The telephone has become such a staple of modern life that few people give it a second thought. When callers pick up the receiver, it is doubtful they consider the millions of signals being routed through switching stations that their call is about to join. They just know that when they want to check in with a family member across town or a business associate across an ocean, they only need to pick up the telephone. Even when power goes out in a community, the telephones generally continue to work. So, it might be easy to take this workhorse of the information age for granted.

However, advances in telephone service options--most notably caller identification services--require that law enforcement agencies take a close look at how they use the telephone. The growing prevalence of caller identification services (generally referred to as caller ID) dictates that investigators take special precautions, especially during undercover operations.

Caller ID: Help or Hindrance

As its name implies, the caller ID device displays the originating telephone number of an incoming call, allowing the recipient to know, before answering the call, the number of the party calling.

For law enforcement, caller ID has proven to be a valuable intelligence tool. When investigators install a court-authorized wiretap or dialed number recorder on a telephone line, for instance, they also generally request caller ID. With caller ID on the line, investigators not only know whom the targeted subject calls but also who calls the subject.

Investigators also can include a suspect's caller ID device on a search warrant request. A properly worded search warrant allows investigators to seize the caller ID box and thus obtain an accurate record of the last 25 to 100 calls received by the subject.

Nevertheless, despite its benefits, caller ID poses some potentially serious problems for the police. Critics claim that it invades citizens' privacy. There are also concerns that caller ID may reduce the number of calls to police crime tip lines, crisis centers, and suicide and abuse hotlines. For law enforcement agencies, concerns primarily revolve around the effects caller ID and related services have on undercover operations. By understanding the functions of these services, however, investigators can develop strategies to maintain telephone security during investigations.

THE MECHANICS OF CALLER ID

Caller ID comes in two forms. Basic caller ID (sometimes referred to as single message) represents the first generation of caller identification services, widely available since the early 1980s. During the last several years, telephone companies have been converting to enhanced caller ID (also known as deluxe or multimessage).

The primary difference between the two systems is the amount of information provided about the originating telephone call. While basic service provides only the caller's telephone number and the date and time of the call, enhanced service supplies this information, as well as the name and in some cases, the address of the caller.

Regardless of which form of caller ID serves a particular locality, the mechanics of its operation remain the same. The local telephone company attaches caller ID at its central office after the originating call has been placed. This makes it nearly impossible for the caller to trick or defeat the system.

Once the caller ID codes have been attached, the caller's identifying information is routed on the line with the call itself to the destination telephone. Caller ID information reaches the receiving telephone between the first and second rings. If a call is answered before or during caller ID delivery, the answering party will not receive the data.

CALL BLOCKING

If a caller has installed call blocking--an optional service to prevent transmission of the originating telephone number and other identifying information--this request is attached at the central telephone office after the commands for caller ID have been attached. When the call reaches the central office for the area serving the destination telephone, the office handles caller ID according to local programming. If the party at the destination telephone has paid for caller ID services, identifying information from the originating call will be sent.

If a call blocking command has been attached by the party making the call, the call will go through but the identifying information will not be relayed. Instead, a message indicating that all identifying information has been blocked will accompany the call. Generally, the word "private" or some variation appears on the caller ID screen, notifying the recipient that the caller has concealed the originating telephone number.

AVAILABILITY

Newly relaxed regulations and advances in technology soon will make caller ID and related services available on a much larger scale. Until recently, regional telephone companies dictated local service availability. Often, parties with caller ID would receive an "out of area" message, indicating that an incoming call was being placed from a locality that did not relay caller identification information.

In December 1995, the Federal Communications Commission allowed caller ID services to be relayed nationwide. As telephone companies gradually expand service availability, caller ID will become a truly national system. Already, there are indications that caller ID will be offered on a worldwide basis in the not-too-distant future.

Rapidly advancing technology also has enabled carriers to offer caller ID services on calls originating from sources that were once immune, including cellular and pay telephones. As with calls from localities that do not pass caller ID, calls from these types of telephones previously would relay an "out of area" message. Now, calls placed from cellular or pay telephones, as well as long-distance calls paid for via credit or phone cards, may provide identifying information to the party being called.

In fact, some firms that specialize in emerging technologies heavily promote their caller identification capabilities. The newest competition to cellular service, personal communications systems (PCS), pass identifying information in both directions. A screen on the handset lets users know the originating telephone number of the party calling them. Likewise, callers using PCS will pass on their identifying information to anyone with a PCS unit or caller ID. PCS users do not need to activate caller ID service separately; the caller identification features are included in the basic service contract.

With expanding caller identification services, law enforcement agencies should study the various methods available to respond to the threats posed to undercover investigations. Because no single antidote exists for every situation, investigators should be aware of the broad range of possible countermeasures to caller ID.

CONCLUSION

While it might be easy to take the telephone for granted, law enforcement agencies cannot afford to become complacent about telephone security. Evolving caller ID services represent a potentially serious threat to undercover operations for law enforcement agencies in an increasing number of communities around the country.

By developing a flexible array of countermeasures, agencies can minimize the dangers posed by caller ID. Investigators must remember that no countermeasure can be guaranteed effective for every situation. Instead, they should take precautions and be prepared for any problem that might arise from breaches of security due to caller ID. After all, the security of law enforcement operations is on the line.

Full article can be found here.

Mixed Opinions of a Judge Accused of Misconduct

From the New York Times:

If Sharon Keller, the presiding judge of Texas’ highest criminal court, has ever doubted her judgment, she has not shown it.

In 1998, Judge Keller wrote the opinion rejecting a new trial for Roy Criner, a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA tests after his trial showed that it was not his semen in the victim.

“We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent,” she later told the television news program “Frontline.” “We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important.”

Gov. George W. Bush eventually pardoned Mr. Criner.

To Judge Keller’s detractors, the Criner decision highlighted what they see as her strong and habitual bias for the prosecution. Many Texas defense lawyers describe her as a law-and-order zealot who rejects most appeals out of hand. Her defenders argue that she has been fair and impartial, though unabashedly conservative, in her interpretation of the law.

Now, Judge Keller is again defending her actions, this time in a judicial misconduct case that could end her career.

Seventeen months ago, lawyers for a man facing execution sought extra time to file a last-minute appeal. Judge Keller refused to delay the closing of her clerk’s office past 5 p.m., even though late filings are common on the day of a scheduled execution. The man, Michael Richard, was put to death by lethal injection a few hours later.

Based on that case, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct last month charged Judge Keller with incompetence, violating her duties and casting public discredit on the judiciary. Judge Keller, who was first elected chief judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000, faces a public trial and could be forced off the bench.

Her lawyer insists that she did nothing wrong and that she was being blamed for the mistakes of the defendant’s lawyers and court staff.

Judge Keller, whose current term runs through 2012, rarely grants interviews and did not respond to requests for comment. But others are taking up her cause.

“Sharon is a hard worker,” said Dan Hagood, a defense lawyer and longtime friend from Dallas who served as her campaign treasurer when she ran for election to the court in 1994. “She never complains, never explains.”

Judge Keller, 55, has always kept her own counsel; her colleagues at the court have given her the nickname Mother Superior because of her reserved and diligent demeanor and her devout Roman Catholic faith.

Full article here.

The Officer Who Posted Too Much on MySpace

From the New York Times:

In pictures, Vaughan Ettienne is a champion bodybuilder of surreal musculature. In conversation, he is polite and thoughtful.

And in the looking glass of his computer screen, he becomes a man of fierce, profane views on how to keep law and order. A few weeks ago, he posted a description of his mood on a MySpace account. “Devious,” he wrote.

The next day, a man accused of carrying a loaded gun would go on trial in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn — and in large part, the case rested on the credibility of Vaughan Ettienne, bodybuilder, Internet user and arresting officer.

What seemed like a simple gun possession case became an undeclared war over reality: Was Officer Ettienne a diligent cop who found a gun after chasing an ex-convict weaving through traffic on a stolen motorcycle? Or was his story a “devious” facade in keeping with the ruthless character he revealed on social network Web sites?

“You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.”

Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena. The man on trial, Gary Waters, claimed that Officer Ettienne and his partner stopped him, beat him and then planted a gun on him to justify breaking three of his ribs.

Suddenly, Officer Ettienne was being held to the words that he wrote in cyberspace.

Besides the “devious” mood setting, the jurors learned that a few weeks before the trial, the officer posted this status on his Facebook page: “Vaughan is watching ‘Training Day’ to brush up on proper police procedure.”

That referred to a 2001 movie starring Denzel Washington as a narcotics detective who pillaged and plundered Los Angeles. “The defense lawyer brings up ‘Training Day’ — like I was trying to emulate Denzel,” Officer Ettienne said. “He ties the defense to the story in the movie. It was a masterful piece of fantasy — but it was one that the jury bought.”

Mr. Waters, on parole from a burglary conviction when he was arrested, beat the most serious charge, the felony possession of a 9 millimeter Beretta and a bagful of ammunition. He was convicted of resisting arrest, a misdemeanor.

When the case started, the defense was going to focus more on what was in the officer’s body than on his mind. Officer Ettienne had been suspended for using steroids — legally, he says, with a doctor’s prescription. The defense lawyer, Adrian Lesher of the Legal Aid Society, argued last year that steroids might have created irrational rage in Officer Ettienne.

Full article here.

How to Stop the Drug Wars

From The Economist:

A hundred years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

The evidence of failure.

Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Full article here.

March 10th Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

An excerpt from His Holiness the Dalai Lama March 10, 2009 Statement (full statement here):

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Tibetan people’s peaceful uprising against Communist China’s repression in Tibet. Since last March widespread peaceful protests have erupted across the whole of Tibet....

Looking back on 50 years in exile, we have witnessed many ups and downs. However, the fact that the Tibet issue is alive and the international community is taking growing interest in it is indeed an achievement. Seen from this perspective, I have no doubt that the justice of Tibet's cause will prevail, if we continue to tread the path of truth and non-violence.

As we commemorate 50 years in exile, it is most important that we express our deep gratitude to the governments and peoples of the various host countries in which we live. Not only do we abide by the laws of these host countries, but we also conduct ourselves in a way that we become an asset to these countries. Similarly, in our efforts to realize the cause of Tibet and uphold its religion and culture, we should craft our future vision and strategy by learning from our past experience.

I always say that we should hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. Whether we look at it from the global perspective or in the context of events in China, there are reasons for us to hope for a quick resolution of the issue of Tibet. However, we must also prepare ourselves well in case the Tibetan struggle goes on for a long time. For this, we must focus primarily on the education of our children and the nurturing of professionals in various fields. We should also raise awareness about the environment and health, and improve understanding and practice of non-violent methods among the general Tibetan population.

May all sentient beings live in peace and happiness!

The Dalai Lama

10 March 2009

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National Drug Report

This assessment, available from USDOJ and the National Drug Intelligence Center, provides a strategic overview and predictive outlook of drug trafficking and abuse trends within the United States. The assessment contains useful information including studies of prices, sizes of busts, availability, production and cultivation, transportation, distribution, and demand. Worth a browse if you work with drug cases.

50 Years Tibetan Uprising

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How to Do a Trial In 4 Easy Steps

Link to Blonde Justice's Four part trial series. The series of posts makes for a pretty good step by step guide worth a look for investigators and lawyers alike. It has tips for pretrial investigation and motions, outlining, planning exhibits, witnesses, and being ready for the game.

A sample from step four:

Get a good night's sleep, dress nice for the trial, wear your lucky underwear, get up early (but, let's face it, you weren't sleeping anyway), then leave for the office early to avoid any transportation snags (then, later, pace your office for a half-hour, imagining that you could have slept a half-hour later.)

Then, put on your game face and head to court.

Good advice!

Mexican Drug Cartel Takes over California

Primer on Jurisdiction of the US Courts of Appeals

"A Primer on the Jurisdiction of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, Second Edition" by Law Professor Thomas E. Baker provides a 120 page introduction to the complexity and nuance in the subject-matter jurisdiction of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The monograph examines procedural issues related to the exercise of appellate jurisdiction in appeals from final judgments and interlocutory appeals. Coverage includes civil and criminal appeals, extraordinary writs, and federal administrative agency reviews. Free Download here.

Constitutional Right to DNA Testing

From the Innocence Project:

Innocence Project client William Osborne was convicted in Alaska in 1993 for a crime that DNA testing could prove he didn't commit. Alaska has arbitrarily refused Osborne’s requests for DNA testing for years – even though the testing would be performed at no cost to the state, and the state now concedes that DNA testing could prove his innocence. On March 2, the Innocence Project argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Osborne has a constitutional right to DNA testing that can prove his innocence. Below is the argument transcript, followed by briefs filed in the case by the Innocence Project and the State of Alaska, along with friend-of-the-court briefs and media coverage of the case.

Download the oral argument transcript from March 2, 2009. (PDF)