The slow decline of the death penalty ["If murder is wrong, then whether it is committed by the man or by the society and its court, makes no difference" - Bhagwan]

WashPost

In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin profiles the heroic Bryan Stevenson.

In 1989, a twenty-nine-year-old African-American civil-rights lawyer named Bryan Stevenson moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and founded an organization that became the Equal Justice Initiative. It guarantees legal representation to every inmate on the state’s death row. Over the decades, it has handled hundreds of capital cases, and has spared a hundred and twenty-five offenders from execution. In recent years, Stevenson has also argued the appeals of prisoners around the country who were convicted of various crimes as juveniles and given long sentences or life in prison . . .

Stevenson and his colleagues have managed to slow, but not stop, the death-penalty machinery in Alabama—an enormous challenge in view of the state’s conservative and racially polarized politics. Alabama has an elected judiciary, and candidates compete to be seen as the toughest on crime. It’s also the only death-penalty state in which judges routinely overrule juries that vote against imposing death sentences. (In their campaigns, judges boast about the number of death sentences they’ve imposed.) Alabama’s population is about twenty-seven-per-cent African-American. The nineteen appellate judges who review death sentences, including all the justices on the state Supreme Court, are white and Republican. Forty-one of the state’s forty-two elected district attorneys are white, and most are Republican. The state imposes death sentences at the highest rate in the nation, but the Equal Justice Initiative has limited the number of executions to twenty-two in the past decade, and there has been only one in the past three years. “It’s just intensive case-by-case litigation,” Stevenson told me. “We’ve gone more aggressively than anyone in the country on racial bias against African-Americans in jury selection. We have extensive litigation on the lethal-injection protocols. We identify inadmissible evidence. We push hard on every issue.”

In portions of the profile, Stevenson seems pessimistic, citing the recent spate of police shootings and white hostility to the civil rights movement. The profile also focuses more on Stevenson’s admirable efforts to build a memorial to American lynchings than on his litigation.

But given Stevenson’s lifelong work on the death penalty, it’s worth taking the opportunity to point out just how rare executions are these days. At the national level, we’re seeing a significant slowdown. Certainly, there are still hot spots where the death penalty is flourishing, and in those areas it still retains a familiar litany of problems: Those executed aren’t the “worst of the worst.” Rather, the death penalty is arbitrarily applied. It’s racially discriminatory, with respect to the race of both the perpetrator and the victim. And the people executed aren’t always the most culpable. Often, it’s used as extra punishment for those who protest their innocence, or as leverage for a killer to give up accomplices. In the few states that still execute, the entire process is also getting more secretive and less accountable.

But there’s good reason to think that the efforts in those states are capital punishment’s death rattle. In a large and growing part of the country, the death penalty is becoming a relic of the past. Delaware’s Supreme Court just ruled capital punishment unconstitutional. Nebraska’s legislature repealed the death penalty, even overriding a veto in the process (though it may be resurrected with a ballot measure this fall). As NPR reported last December:

The death penalty is in decline no matter the measure, a new study released by the Death Penalty Information Center has found.

The report found that 28 people were executed this year, the lowest since 1991. The number of death sentences dropped by 33 percent.

Only six states executed convicts during the year, and Texas, Missouri and Georgia accounted for 86 percent of the executions.

There have been 15 executions so far this year, and just two since April. Only five states have carried out executions. Georgia and Texas alone account for 12 of the 15 executions.

According to Gallup polling, while three in five Americans (61 percent) still support the death penalty, that figure also marks a 40-year low. Pew polling also shows a 40-year low, with support even lower, at 56 percent. Among those ages 18 to 29, it’s at 51 percent.

Stevenson isn’t the sort to take a bow, but the tireless work from groups such as EJI, the Innocence Project and the Death Penalty Information Center are a big reason for all of this — both in changing public opinion and in slowing down the machinery of capital punishment. You could argue that the progress has been too slow. But there’s no question that there has been progress.

Private Prison Corporations Lost Nearly 40% Of Their Value Today

ThinkProgress

Late Thursday morning, the United States Department of Justice announced that it would phase out its contracts with private prison companies. The announcement followed an Inspector General report which found that federal private prisons “had more frequent incidents per capita of contraband finds, assaults, uses of force, lockdowns, guilty findings on inmate discipline charges, and selected categories of grievances” than government-run facilities.

The report also named three companies, Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group, Inc., and Management and Training Corporation, that will soon no longer do business with the Justice Department. [MORE]

Bruce Lee’s Never-Before-Seen Writings Revealed in his Notebooks

Brain Pickings

Although Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940–July 20, 1973) is best known for his legendary legacy in martial arts and film, he was also one of the most underappreciated philosophers of the twentieth century, instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions to Western audiences. A philosophy major in college, he fused ancient ideas with his own singular ethos informed by the intersection of physical and psychological discipline, the most famous manifestation of which is his water metaphor for resilience.

Early in his career, Lee was systematically sidelined by Hollywood’s studio system, which operated with extreme racial bias and still used white actors in yellowface to portray Asian characters based on flat stereotypes. Over and over, Lee was told in no uncertain terms that white audiences simply wouldn’t accept an Asian man as a lead character in a movie.

Even when he finally broke through and was cast as a lead, the studios continued to treat him as a brainless robot, there to entertain with his kung-fu skills. When they tried to cut all the philosophy out of Enter the Dragon because they wanted a vacantly entertaining action movie, Lee refused to go on set for two weeks, insisting that the kung-fu and the philosophy were inextricably entwined, each the vehicle for the other. Hollywood eventually had to relent and it was precisely the philosophical dimension that rendered the movie — just before the release of which Lee met his untimely death — a cultural icon and a beacon of racial empowerment associated with the Black Power movement, later acquired by the Library of Congress as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” artifact.

Lee saw philosophy as inseparable from everyday life, just as he saw the mind as inseparable from the body, each end of the battery constantly charging the other. He recorded his rigorous workout routine alongside his philosophical meditations, which he fleshed out in the course of living. Like Oliver Sacks, who carried a notebook everywhere, Lee always had a tiny 2×3″ pocketbook with him, which he filled with everything from training regimens to the phone numbers of his pupils (who included trainees like Chuck Norris and Steve McQueen) to poems, affirmations, and philosophical reflections. Even his handwriting, meticulously neat and measured to fit the tiny page, radiates Lee’s formidable discipline and orderliness.

But perhaps the most notable portion of his pocketbooks — or day timers, as they were called — were his affirmations, reminiscent of the rules of conduct Nobel laureate André Gide penned in his youthful journal and of artist Eugène Delacroix’s diaristic self-counsel. In these notes to himself, Lee articulated his personal philosophies aimed concretely at his own growth but resonating with universally applicable insight into our common psychology, behavior, and human nature.

With special permission from the Bruce Lee estate, here is an exclusive look at several pages from his 1968 pocketbook, penned shortly before Lee’s twenty-eighth birthday, each transcribed below, beginning with Napoleon Hill’s “Daily Success Creed,” which Lee copied into his notebooks: [HERE]

“I’ve tried to move on but you can’t just move on from 23 yrs. of deprivation" - Black Man Exonerated After Wrongful Murder Conviction

Innocence Project 

One year ago today, Everton Wagstaffe and Reginald Connor were exonerated when a Brooklyn appeals court ruled that they had been wrongfully convicted in 1993 after a 16-year-old girl in Brooklyn, New York, was kidnapped and found dead on New Year’s Day 1992.  

Everton and Reginald were convicted based on the testimony of an informant who said that she’d witnessed the two men grab the female victim and force her into a car.  

The Innocence Project consulted on the case and aided in testing foreign hairs found on the victim’s body, which excluded both Everton and Reginald of the crime. Additionally, it was revealed that prosecutors had buried exculpatory evidence in the case. Based on this and other new evidence, Everton was released from prison on September 23, 2014. Connor had been earlier released on paroled in 2004. Both men were fully exonerated on July 27, 2015. [MORE]

Everything Wrong With How Our Justice System Treats Poor Non-White People, In One Awful Case

From [HERE] Maria Rivera’s young son spent over a year in Orange County, California’s juvenile detention facilities. When he was released, the county sent a $16,372 bill to Rivera, claiming she needed to pay for the food her son ate, the clothing he wore, and the medicine he took while he was incarcerated.

The debt imposed a considerable hardship on Rivera. She sold her home to cover the debt, although this sale only allowed her to pay off about $9,500. Moreover, the county appears to have charged her significant interest on the unpaid portion of the debt. It eventually obtained a court order requiring her to pay nearly $10,000 more in addition to the funds she raised through the sale of her home.

With no other options, and no remaining assets, Rivera declared bankruptcy. And yet, even after this declaration, the county continued to hound her to pay money that it said she owed for a crime that she did not commit.

In Rivera’s case, this saga has a happy ending, although it is a happy ending that took three rounds of litigation in three separate courts before a panel of judges finally declared that she had been through enough. Writing for a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge Stephen Reinhardt explained in In re Rivera on Wednesday that Orange County could not continue to seek repayment of this debt after her bankruptcy.

Rivera turned on a provision of the bankruptcy code that is intended to prevent parents from using bankruptcy to dodge their family obligations. Under that provision, a debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy if it is “in the nature of alimony, maintenance, or support (including assistance provided by a governmental unit) of such spouse, former spouse, or child of the debtor or such child’s parent.”

So a parent who, for example, owes child support payments to their ex-spouse cannot escape those payments simply by declaring bankruptcy. As Reinhardt wrote, “bankruptcy provides a way to leave one’s debts, but not one’s most fundamental family obligations, behind.”

“the County’s actions compromise the goals of juvenile correction and the best interests of the child, and, ironically, impair the ability of his mother to provide him with future support.”

Orange County claimed that the bill it sent Rivera was analogous to child support because it was a bill for food, clothing and other basic necessities for Rivera’s minor child. The court disagreed, concluding that a bankruptcy code provision intended to ensure that parents do not escape their obligations to their children could not be used to help fund a government agency that is primarily concerned with something quite unrelated to child support.

“The ‘support’ that the Probation Department provided to Rivera’s son in the course of his detention,” Reinhardt explained, “was incidental to — and the price of — its larger governmental purpose of promoting ‘public safety’ and ‘reduc[ing] crime” through “corrections practices.’” He added that “juvenile detention serves not domestic but correctional ends.”

Even more importantly, the court explained, allowing a provision of the bankruptcy code that was intended to protect children from deadbeat parents to be used in the way Orange County attempted to use it here would have perverse effects. “A conclusion that Rivera’s debt is excepted from discharge would not benefit her son,” Reinhardt wrote. To the contrary, it “would only detract from her ability to fulfill her family support obligations.” This case “is troubling,” according to the court, “because the County’s actions compromise the goals of juvenile correction and the best interests of the child, and, ironically, impair the ability of his mother to provide him with future support.”

“In relentlessly pursuing the debt’s collection and opposing its discharge, the County raises yet another obstacle to Rivera’s efforts to provide her son with the support about which the County claims to be so deeply concerned. That ‘betray[s] a misguided sense of values.’”

So the good news for Rivera is that, after years of harassment and litigation, she is freed from her obligation to pay a debt she may never be able to afford. And the Ninth Circuit’s decision is also good news for people in similar positions in the nine states overseen by that court, as it will set a precedent that will prevent other county from engaging in similar tactics so long as this decision stands.

But the Rivera case also appears to be, as Reinhardt lays out in his opinion, part of a larger effort to raise funds on the backs of the least fortunate.

Orange County’s public budget shows that the Probation Department relies on self-generated revenue for more than 40% of its financing. Seeking to obtain that revenue by unremittingly pursuing legal actions against disadvantaged individuals — the counterproductive practice at issue here — can have damaging effects on the community. Not only does such a policy unfairly conscript the poorest members of society to bear the costs of public institutions, operating “as a regressive tax,” but it takes advantage of people when they are at their most vulnerable, essentially imposing “a tax upon distress.”

And, lest there be any doubt, such taxes upon distress are hardly limited to Orange County. In California as a whole, “driving while poor” can be a harrowing experience, as minor offenses can lead to fines that low-income drivers cannot afford. And that, in turn, can cause them to lose their license, to receive even more fines because the only way they can work is to drive without a license, and eventually force them into an abyss of debt owed to the state.

Similarly, in Ferguson, Missouri and the surrounding areas, courts often prey upon the poor to raise funds for the local government. One community, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, collects 66 percent of its revenue from fines and fees.

Reinhardt’s opinion will provide a minor buffer against some of these efforts to tax distress, but it will only be a very minor one. For, while Rivera ultimately won her court case, she did so only after she had to sell her house, turn over the profit from the sale to Orange County, and then face years of bankruptcy proceedings and litigation.

State prisons/county jails house 10X more Americans with mental illness than psychiatric hospitals

The CrimeReport

In 1975 the Supreme Court dealt a final blow to a broken state hospital system by severely restricting the ability of government to confine citizens involuntarily simply for being mentally ill.

Four decades later, there are few mental health experts who would argue that the deinstitutionalization movement was wrong in principle. But most now acknowledge that the shortsighted reforms of the 1960s and 1970s – and the corresponding lack of community support and investment – was a recipe for disaster that funneled tens of thousands of Americans who lived in deplorable conditions in state psychiatric facilities to even more deplorable conditions in the nation's jails and prisons.

“If you set out to design the absolute most expensive and worst way to address mental illness you would do it in a jail setting,” said John Snook, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC).

Snook spoke during a panel discussion yesterday at the National Criminal Justice Association conference in Philadelphia that focused on innovative strategies for addressing what by all accounts is a runaway public health crisis.

“This a problem that is rapidly increasing and we are only just getting a handle on it,” he said. ”and if we don't solve it we are going to look back in 20 years and wonder how things got so bad.”

It's estimated that roughly 1.5 million people with severe psychiatric conditions are arrested every year, and that more than 350,000 of them are currently languishing in the nation's jails and prisons.

State prisons and county jails house ten times more mentally ill Americans than state psychiatric hospitals, according to a report released last month by TAC, and the total number of inmates suffering from mental illness continues to grow.

Many were arrested for minor offenses, and are housed in conditions that are medically unsound while placing a severe financial burden on the municipalities tasked with caring for them.

With the support of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, researchers and policy makers are beginning to identify early intervention strategies that can identify at-risk individuals before they are arrested and provide a continuum of care. [MORE]

Another Government Do-Gooder Busted for Lying & Fraud: Pennsylvania Attorney General Quits on Heels of Perjury Conviction

NY Times

Even by Pennsylvania’s unbuttoned standards, it was a scandal of exhausting length and tawdriness, a seemingly endless parade of pornography, personal and political vendettas, smear tactics, barely veiled threats, conspiracy and cover-up. So when the state’s attorney general, Kathleen G. Kane, announced on Tuesday that she was resigning, one day after her conviction for perjury and conspiracy, among other charges, even her supporters might have been excused for welcoming a sense of closure.

Except that the scandal is not closed, not yet. More than two years after it began, the Kane affair may have a few more shoes to drop from its Zappos-size closet of improprieties.

Ms. Kane, who had weathered indictment, the loss of her law license, threats of State House impeachment and Senate removal and a plea to resign from her fellow Democrat, Gov. Tom Wolf, said she would leave office on Wednesday, less than three months before voters will choose her successor.

The announcement followed a jury’s decision to convict her on nine criminal charges, saying she had leaked secret grand jury information to a newspaper to discredit a rival prosecutor, Frank Fina, and then lied about it under oath.

The first deputy attorney general, Bruce Castor, who has in effect run Ms. Kane’s office the last few months, said Tuesday that investigators were still working on the most lurid aspect of the scandal: a trove of lewd pictures and sexist and racist comments that Ms. Kane discovered when she exhumed emails of her Republican predecessor’s staff.

He said that a law firm that Ms. Kane had hired to sift through the emails was flummoxed by the sheer number of them — 13 million, later winnowed to seven million by tossing out the correspondence of lower-level officials. The emails, which did not come up at Ms. Kane’s trial but some of which have trickled out of her office, have led to the resignation of two State Supreme Court justices and a bevy of other officials, with the prospect of more embarrassment to come.

Douglas P. Gansler, the lawyer hired to lead the investigation, said Tuesday that he expected to release a report on the inquiry “in the next few weeks.”

The chairman of the state Democratic Party, Marcel Groen, said Tuesday that he believed the most salacious correspondence had already become public — and then, in an indication of just how dire the scandal has been, suggested that the emails were the lesser of the problems.

“There’s a difference between inappropriate behavior by elected officials and illegal behavior,” he said. “I think the emails are inappropriate, and they’re wrong, but I don’t think they’re illegal, per se.”

They nevertheless played a starring role in the affair. And they may turn out to be Ms. Kane’s last word in a scandal that began with her desire to ruin a competitor, and wound up destroying her own career.

Ms. Kane, 50, was hailed at the state’s most promising politician when she became the first Democrat to be elected attorney general in 2012. But she antagonized her Republican predecessor by opening an investigation into his office’s handling of the sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State. [MORE]

The Memphis Police Department threatens to demote officers who complain about racism

Final Call

Black police officers are often caught between White peers accused of police violence and criminality while trying to protect and serve their own communities. In some instances Black officers remain silent, willing and active participants in mistreatment and abuse Black communities are all too familiar with.

Amid distrust and dissatisfaction, Black police activists work knowing they are often struck by their community’s righteous indignation over police killings and excessive force from racist or rogue cops.

Some told The Final Call that while they feel key to curbing police shootings and beatings, they are caught in a crossfire as targets of racism, hatred, and police criminality—within the departments they serve.

Rochelle Bilal of Philadelphia at National Black Police Association meeting last year. Photo: Facebook

“You’ll be in the crossfire when you stand up for what you believe is not correct or is wrong dealing with this institution that we live in,” said Rochelle Bilal, president of the Guardian Civic League in Philadelphia. She is also a member of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Accountability and Justice Reform.

“It becomes a bullying effect where you are targeted, ostracized, and sort of like shunned to the side, because they consider you not a blue brother or sister. But I’m saying there’s no such thing as blue, because you’re African American, or you’re Irish or Hispanic, but blue is the uniform you wear,” Ms. Bilal said.

According to Blacks in Law Enforcement of America, the Memphis Police Department threatened to demote officers who complain about racism.

The non-profit organization reported on its website that Memphis police officials said Black cops would be forced to pay back money they earned after receiving promotions, if they do not back down from claims against the department.

The organization accuses the Memphis Police Department of decades-long history of racism and discriminatory practices against Blacks on and off the police force. [MORE]

Eric Holder: We Can Have Shorter Sentences and Less Crime

NY Times

Washington — As a college student in Virginia, Corey Jacobs started selling drugs with the help of a group of friends to make some extra money. A Bronx native, Mr. Jacobs was no kingpin, and no aspect of their drug conspiracy involved violence. Now age 46, Mr. Jacobs has served 16 years of a sentence of life without parole in the federal system.

No question, Corey Jacobs should have gone to prison for his felony. But does he deserve to die there?

His sentencing judge does not think so. Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. wrote in a letter supporting clemency for Mr. Jacobs that had the law not mandated a life sentence, he would not have imposed one for a first felony conviction.

Sadly, Mr. Jacobs is no anomaly. There are thousands like him serving sentences in our federal and state systems that are disproportionate to their crimes. The financial cost of our current incarceration policy is straining government budgets; the human and community costs are incalculable.

Today, a rare bipartisan consensus in favor of changing drug-sentencing laws presents an opportunity to improve the fairness and efficiency of America’s criminal justice system. But to build on this coalition for reform, which includes senior law enforcement officials, we need action in Congress.

In February 2015, President Obama convened a group of lawmakers — including the Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rand Paul of Kentucky and the Democratic senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Cory Booker of New Jersey — to build support for sweeping reforms. But the momentum has slowed thanks to opposition from a small group of Republican congressmen using language dredged from the past. One, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, even claimed recently that “we have an under-incarceration problem.”

The Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is now fanning fears about the level of crime in America, which is actually at historic lows. Such pandering is a reminder of how we got here in the first place.

A few numbers help to illustrate the scale of the problem. From the late 1970s, America’s incarceration rate more than quadrupled, to over 700 per 100,000 people from about 130; compare that with Russia, for example, which imprisons about 450 people per 100,000. Between 1970 and 2005, America’s prison and jail population increased sevenfold, to approximately 2.2 million from about 300,000. 

The United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population, yet about 22 percent of its known prisoner population. In 2010, it cost about $80 billion per year to house these people in our prisons and jails.

Some more numbers: Controlling for other factors, the United States Sentencing Commission found that between December 2007 and September 2011, black male defendants received sentences 20 percent longer than their white counterparts. From 1983 to 1997, the number of African-Americans sent to prison for drug offenses went up more than 26-fold, compared with a sevenfold increase for whites. By the early 2000s, more than twice as many African-Americans as whites were in state prisons for drug offenses.

Individual responsibility must always be a primary consideration in deciding sentences, but we must also acknowledge that there is racial bias in the criminal justice system. The disparity in incarceration rates has bred distrust, alienating communities of color from those who serve valiantly in law enforcement. [MORE]

Ban on criminal history question for US job seekers reveals deeper issue: racism

Guardian 

Several new studies on so-called “ban the box” policies that block employers from discounting job applicants with criminal records have revealed another, even more extensive problem: deep-seated employer discrimination against African Americans.

Ban-the-box laws, which prevent employers from asking about criminal history on job applications, have passed in scores of cities, 24 states and the District of Columbia. The laws were intended to reduce the impact of US mass incarceration on hiring as individuals with a criminal record attempt to return to the workplace. Because African Americans are five times more likely than whites to be incarcerated, a major secondary goal of ban-the-box advocates is to reduce the effect of racial disparities in employment. Black unemployment has hovered at almost twice that for white Americans in the US.

But researchers who have scrutinized the policies have found that, regardless of whether employers ask about criminal history, African Americans face discrimination from employers with ingrained racial biases.

“The core problem raised by the studies is not ban-the-box but entrenched racism in the hiring process, which manifests as racial profiling of African Americans as ‘criminals’,” said researchers Beth Avery and Maurice Ensellem with the National Employment Law Project, in a new study released on Thursday.

Other studies released over the past few months have reached the similar conclusion that black Americans may be profiled as criminals. Another released in June sent out 15,000 fake job applications in states with ban-the-box laws – New York and New Jersey – before and after their respective laws took effect. [MORE]

Death penalty [State Approved Murder of Blacks & Latinos] costs Nebraska about $14 million annually

Omaha News

Maintaining the death penalty costs Nebraska an extra $14.6 million a year, according to an estimate prepared for a group seeking to uphold the repeal of capital punishment.

Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who conducted the research, used U.S. Census Bureau statistics on criminal justice expenses per state and looked at reports done in other states to come up with what he called a “first of its kind” estimate.

Goss said additional trial expenses, years of legal appeals and the costs of housing inmates on death row are all well above the cost of cases in which the maximum sentence is life in prison without parole.

“I expected there to be little difference (in cost),” Goss said at a Monday press conference. “Now, I’m reconsidering my position on the death penalty.”

The study, commissioned for $16,000 by the group Retain a Just Nebraska.

White Company's Private prison contractor's $1B no-bid deal to run immigration jails guarantees 100% occupancy payouts

From [HERE] Private prison titan Corrections Corporation of America has extensively diversified its holdings into the entire carceral-industrial sector: halfway houses, electronic monitoring, mental health -- and family immigration detention, a growth industry where the human rights standards are rock-bottom and the payouts are guaranteed to jackpot.

CCA won a $1B no-bid federal contract to operate America's "baby-jails" -- the family immigration detention centers whose inmates include very small children and infants. The deal guarantees CCA full fees (based on 100% occupancy) even if the centers sit empty.

Most of the incarcerees are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- refugees fleeing failed states where violence and corruption are the order of the day. In 2015, 66,000 families from these countries were intercepted on the Texas border and committed to the tender mercies of CCA. The detention centers were supposed to be "deterrents" to families, but have failed in this regard (the number of families caught on the crossing when the program started was 61,000).

CCA has a grim human rights record, thanks mostly to its private prisons (see this four-month undercover investigation, for example). Given that migrants slated for deportation have no recourse and no rights, it's a safe bet that CCA treats the families with their small children no better than it treats the American men and women it locks up in its adult prisons.

Immigration activists say CCA had already proved itself incapable of running a family detention center. Between 2006 and 2009 — the only other major U.S. attempt to house women and children seeking asylum — CCA ran a facility in Taylor, Tex. Children wore prison uniforms, received little education and were limited to one hour of play time per day, according to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed against ICE in 2007 that led months later to a settlement agreement and improved conditions. Months after taking office, Obama closed the facility.

At ICE, officials saw the reboot of family detention as a welcome, if belated, sign of strength on the border. CCA was one of the two companies with the “means” to pull it off, along with GEO, said Phil Miller, an ICE deputy executive associate director who helps to oversee family detention. It could build a new facility quickly and had a legion of staff members with the right security clearances. (GEO, which referred all questions to ICE, ended up refurbishing a smaller facility.) [MORE] 

NPR’s Audie Cornish: Media Are “Normalizing” And “Contextualiz[ing]” Trump’s Outrageous Comments For Him

Media Matters

OHN DICKERSON (HOST): And Audie, on that point, are we in the press kind of going overboard on the Trump hyperbole, which is to say, when he says, "Obama was founder of ISIS," does he have less room to be hyperbolic than other candidates who say things that are totally hyperbolic and nobody takes them that seriously. But he is being fact checked.

AUDIE CORNISH: I've been thinking about this this week, because I think we are cranking up the outrage machine at a rapid pace. And the thing about Trump that I maybe disagree with Dan a little bit, is that when he says something, right, that people say is controversial, he now forces everyone to repeat the falsehood, to quote unquote “fact check” it, to normalize and contextualize it for him, right? You see a lot of kind of conversations that say, "What you really meant was this and that." And he can kind of say, "Eh no, maybe, just kidding." Media is doing all the work of explaining things for him and normalizing some things that might in another context be considered socially unacceptable.

MICHAEL GERSON: And I think it's deeper than just gaffes, he's not --

CORNISH: Gaffes are unintentional. 

GERSON: Right. But he's not showing empathy. When someone opposes him, he has to degrade them. He has to dehumanize them. When you go after Gold Star families, when you go after a judge, a federal judge in your case, that's different than going after Jeb Bush, OK? It shows that you lack empathy. And that, I think, is a real problem for him. He has based his life on the notion that -- not to be a loser. He now is facing the prospect of being one of the biggest losers in American history. I don't know how he adjusts to that. We have not seen how he adjusts to that. It could be a major factor. 

MICHAEL SCHERER: The danger is that he adjusts to it by saying the whole process was rigged, and then afterwards delegitimizing the democratic process, which could be really hazardous for the country. 

DICKERSON: That's right, Dan. He mentioned when he was in Pennsylvania, he said the only way it would be the case that he would lose Pennsylvania is if the system has been rigged. This is a state a Republican hasn't won since 1988.

DAN BALZ: Right. It is a dangerous step that he is taking. And I'm sure there are people who are are saying to him, "Do not do that." I do not know this for a fact, but it would not shock me that Reince Priebus, in their constant conversations, is saying, "Don't go there. Don't do that." But it is a risky strategy, as Michael said, to, in a sense, delegitimize in advance the outcome of an election in which you may be on the losing side.

Marion Christopher Barry, son of former D.C. mayor, has died at 36

WashPost

Marion Christopher Barry, son of the late D.C. mayor Marion Barry and former candidate for the Ward 8 council seat, has died, relatives said Sunday. He was 36.

The younger Barry died early Sunday of an apparent overdose on synthetic marijuana, those close to him said, though no official cause of death was confirmed Sunday. His girlfriend found him, and he was taken to George Washington University Hospital.

Barry had struggled with drug use. He ran unsuccessfully for the Ward 8 council seat last year after his father died.

In a statement, Cora Masters Barry, widow of Marion Barry, said she was devastated by the younger Barry’s death.

“My heart is broken,” she said. “I am in shock. The news of his death is beyond comprehension.”

Barry was survived by his grandmother Polly Lee Harris.

Liz Matory, 36, his campaign manager in his run for the Ward 8 seat, said Barry was peaceful and reflective in his final hours.

Saturday evening, they were rushing to return a U-Haul truck after gathering his belongings from an apartment he’d where he had been planning to move in Northwest. The landlord had apparently decided he didn’t want new tenants.

Compounding Barry’s frustration, he’d lost the home of his late father recently because of his inability to make rent.

“There’s so many things that are broken. There’s so much stress on his mind and spirit,” she said. “By losing the house, he felt another loss because that was his place that he’d go to remember his dad.”

Matory said he had adopted an attitude of healing in recent months. The new apartment, adjacent to Rock Creek Park, was ideal for running along the trail. And he’d made an effort to become sober, she said.

Those close to him saw shades of his father in his ambition and his shortcomings.

“He was a very sage person, a very powerful spirit — he was like a champion that we were all kind of rallying to see him win,” Matory said. “He took on the responsibility of everyone without having the foundation and strength to focus first on himself, you know.”

She added: “He was very strong. And he was able to handle a lot. And I think he inherited that from his father. But he also inherited the hubris, where he was like ‘I can handle this.’”

Carl Thomas, a childhood friend who served as Barry’s field director in his campaign for the Ward 8 council seat, said he perfectly embodied the spirit of his late parents, the late Effi and Marion Barry.

“Effi was an amazing woman, full of character; Marion was an amazing man full of ambition,” he said. “And they made a Christopher who was full of ambition and full of character and carried with him the beauty of his mother and the ills of his father.”

Trayon White, the Democratic nominee for the Ward 8 council seat, and a protege of the senior Barry, called Marion Christopher Barry a friend who will be missed.

“Chris was like a brother to me. He cared about the community. He had a lot of things that he wanted to work on to better the community,” White said.

White, the younger Barry and a dozen others had run to fill the council vacancy left by Marion Barry’s death in November 2014. LaRuby May (D-Ward 8) won that special election. But in the election this year for a full, four-year term to succeed the former mayor, the younger Barry had endorsed White, who prevailed in the Democratic primary.

Christopher Barry had started a construction firm last year, he said in an interview with The Post in the fall. He said he was trying to form a community business enterprise, a minority firm that could compete for city contracts.

White said Barry was on the site of one of his construction projects in Southeast as late as Saturday.

“Chris is going to be missed by me and others who knew him,” White said.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser memorialized the younger Barry on her Twitter account.

“Let’s remember the brightest days! Rest in peace dear Christopher!” she posted, along with a photo of the two of them.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he was saddened to hear of Barry’s death, putting it in the context of the late mayor’s life.

“Christopher Barry’s untimely passing is a sad ending to the Marion Barry legacy,” he said in a statement. “Christopher never asked for the burden that comes with being part of a famous politician’s family. We know he cared deeply about our city – his hometown from birth to death. And that his parents cared deeply for him. My condolences to those whom he is survived.”

May said in an interview that “My relationship with Christopher extended before and beyond us being on the ballot.”

“One of the things I appreciated about him was his commitment to the people in our community,” May said. “ As a small business owner Christopher continued the legacy of his father by many times offering job opportunities to people.”

Fairley McCaskill, Barry’s close friend, said his death was especially tragic because he was working to turn his troubled image around.

Barry had brushes with the law, including charges related to an alleged outburst at a Chinatown bank branch last year.

“Chris is someone I grew up with and now he’s gone,” McCaskill said. “This is surreal. Those who really knew Chris, knew that he marched to his own beat and we loved that about him. He had a big heart,” she said. “I think a lot of times he was misunderstood based on how he was portrayed in the media, which our goal was to shift that image and portrayal during his campaign run, and help people to get to know him the way we knew him. He was a one-of-kind type of guy and he will be missed tremendously.”

Thomas, who attended Jefferson Junior High with Barry, recalled the pressure Barry faced as his father was rocked by political scandal. The elder Barry was arrested on drug charges on Jan. 18, 1990, after being videotaped smoking crack in an FBI sting.

Thomas said children pelted the young Barry with oranges and crack pipes and taunted him in the schoolyard.

“Either people thought he was too good, people thought he was the child of a crackhead, people thought he was a waste -- people had all types of perceptions of Christopher that were not okay,” he said. “None of us had to grow up with that.”

At times, he said, Barry felt alone in the world.

“No one could really understand what he was going through,” Thomas said.

Noam Chomsky: US Terrorism and Imperialism [white supremacy]

Bad Brains - Live at the CBGB's 1982 (Full Concert)

Unlimited War [only on Non-White People] Budget: Pentagon reveals no-bid $10 million contract for mercenaries and spies to fight ISIS in Syria

BlackListed News

It’s not just U.S. troops battling ISIS. Now the Army is sinking millions of dollars into private intelligence contractors for the fight.

Every day at 5 p.m., the Pentagon releases a list of that day’s contracts worth more than $7 million. On July 27, buried in the daily email was an eye-catching detail: Military contractors would be working inside Syria alongside the roughly 300 U.S. troops already deployed there.

This appears to be the first time the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged that private contractors are also playing a role in the fight against the so-called Islamic State inside Syria, and it’s one more signal that the U.S. military is deepening its involvement in the fate of the country.

The contract announcement said Six3 Intelligence Solutions—a private intelligence company recently acquired by CACI International—won a $10 million no-bid Army contract to provide “intelligence analysis services.” According to the Pentagon, the work will be completed over the next year in Germany, Italy and, most notably, Syria.

Beyond this, details are scant. For example, it is difficult to say, given how little information is available, how many contractors might have to go into the country under this contract. It could be just a few (presumably well-paid) intelligence analysts augmenting a military unit or it could be many more.

CA. Prosecutors who falsify or withhold evidence could become felons under proposed state legislation

OC Register

Prosecutors who intentionally withhold or falsify evidence could be charged with a felony under a new bill winding through the state Legislature.

The proposal by Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, D-San Fernando, comes as prosecutors in Orange County face accusations that they’ve routinely misused jailhouse informants and withheld information from defense attorneys.

But the problem of prosecutorial misconduct predates Orange County’s snitch controversy. A 2010 study by Santa Clara University School of Law looked at misconduct statewide, concluding: “Courts fail to report prosecutorial misconduct (despite having a statutory obligation to do so), prosecutors deny that it occurred, and the California State Bar almost never disciplines it...The problem is critical.”

The study noted that just six out of 600 prosecutors accused of misconduct in California between 1997 and 2009 were punished by the state Bar.

“As a member of the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, I believe that accountability for California’s prosecutors is critical to ensuring that justice in our courts is truly served,” Lopez said Wednesday by email.

The bill is scheduled to go before the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday. It would boost penalties to between 16 months and three years for prosecutors who violate the law. Current statutes make it a misdemeanor for anyone to withhold or falsify evidence, while law enforcement officers can be charged with a felony.

The law also currently allows a judge to fine prosecutors and report them to the state for various types of misconduct. In some cases, judges can remove prosecutors from a case entirely. Last year, an Orange County superior court judge, citing such abuse, removed the Orange County District Attorneys Office from the penalty phase prosecution of Scott Dekraai. Dekraai killed eight people at a Seal Beach salon in 2012.

At least six other attempted murder and murder cases in Orange County have been overturned or otherwise affected by allegations of misconduct by prosecutors or police.

Ignacio Hernandez, a spokesman for the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, said Orange County’s controversy reinforces the need to increase the penalties for prosecutorial misconduct.

“We’re seeing the problem in many parts of the state, in many counties,” Hernandez said.

The bill is supported by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who says it should apply to all attorneys as well.

Opposing the measure is the 500-member union representing Orange County lawyers, including deputy district attorneys, public defenders and county counsel. The group’s board on Tuesday voted 8-3 to oppose the bill. [MORE]

Justice Department to Streamline Tracking of Police Killings

NY Times

The Obama administration is moving forward with a plan to better track killings by police officers, as heightened national scrutiny of such deaths has reinforced criticism of its reliance on self-reporting by state and local law enforcement agencies. 

In a notice published in the Federal Register this week, the Justice Department said it would ask law enforcement agencies and medical examiner’s offices to fill out forms when there is a news report or another indication that a person died while in police custody.

Under the proposed system, which would cover 19,450 state and local law enforcement agencies and about 685 medical examiner’s or coroner’s offices, they would also be asked to fill out forms about the total number of such cases every three months. The department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics would then compile that information.

The proposal comes as police killings of African-Americans have fueled protests in recent years in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, and led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The resulting scrutiny of the issue has focused attention on the lack of reliable and comprehensive data about how many people are killed by the police each year.

The government’s existing system is called the Arrest-Related Deaths program, which is intended to be a census of a variety of causes of such deaths, including suicides, accidents and deaths from natural causes. Critics say it does not provide accurate data about killings by police officers in part because it relies on self-reporting by law enforcement officials.

In 2014, for example, The Wall Street Journal gathered data on police shootings from 2007 to 2012 from 105 of the nation’s largest police agencies and compared it to the F.B.I.’s statistics. It found that more than 550 police shootings were not included in the national database or were not attributed to the agency involved. 

The Guardian, which reported the Justice Department proposal on Monday, and The Washington Post are conducting projects that will try to fill the gaps by compiling data on arrest-related deaths across the country. [MORE]

Minnesota White Party [GOP] Congressional Nominee Has Fun, Creative Views On Women, Slavery, Everything

Wonkette