Reason Magazine - Staff

RateMyCop.com

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Many police departments have set up Internet registries for sex offenders and drug offenders, and police also have begun posting the pictures and names of suspected johns online. Still, police groups took umbrage when a site called RateMyCop.com appeared in March.

Site founder Gino Sesto wrote to police departments across the country and obtained lists of the names and badge numbers of their officers. He then posted the names online in a format broken down by state and city, encouraging users to rate their experiences with individual officers.

All of the information Sesto posted was already open to the public, and he didn’t reveal the identities of any undercover officers. But police groups were outraged, making the dubious argument that posting publicly available names and badge numbers on the Internet somehow jeopardized officers’ safety. Jerry Dyer, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, told Wired the site could give citizens the opportunity to “unfairly malign” individual officers. He added that he’d be asking the state legislature to ban sites like RateMyCop.com.

Then in March, hosting service GoDaddy mysteriously terminated Sesto’s account and pulled RateMyCop.com offline. GoDaddy has offered several explanations to Wired, none of which has made much sense. Sesto gave up on GoDaddy and tried to get the site hosted at RackSpace. After initially accepting his down payment for hosting services, RackSpace sent a letter to Sesto saying, “We believe that the website to be found at www.ratemycop.com as described to our sales representative could create a risk to the health and safety of law enforcement officers.” At press time the site was back online, but its future is uncertain.

Republic of Montana

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

Several dozen Montana politicians, including Secretary of State Brad Johnson, have adopted an unconventional take on the Second Amendment case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court: They’ve threatened secession. D.C. v. Heller, the first substantive Second Amendment case the Court has heard in nearly 70 years, could definitively settle whether the right to bear arms is an individual right or a collective right.

In a joint resolution, the Montana politicians argue that when Washington approved the state constitution, including a clause granting “any person” the right to bear arms, upon the Treasure State’s entry into the Union in 1889, the federal government recognized that clause as consistent with the Second Amendment. If the Court comes down on the side of a collective right, they argue, it would breach the compact for statehood between Montana and the federal government.

“Some speak of a ‘living constitution,’ the meaning of which may evolve and change over time,” supporters of the resolution explain on their website. “However, the concept of a ‘living contract,’ one to be disregarded or revised at the whim of one party thereto, is unknown.” Therefore, they argue, “A collective rights holding in Heller would not only open the Pandora’s box of unilaterally morphing contracts, it would also poise Montana to claim appropriate and historically entrenched remedies for contract violation.” Said remedies include opting out of its breached compact with the federal government—in other words, seceding from the Union.

Reforming Forensics

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:09:00 EDT

Fairleigh Dickinson Professor Roger Koppl argues for a significant overhaul of forensics in the U.S. in the current issue of Forbes. Forbes editor William Baldwin was alarmed enough at Koppl's examples of forensics malfeasance to write a sharply-worded editorial of his own.

Koppl wrote a study on forensics reform for the Reason Foundation, and wrote a summary of the study for the November issue of reason. Koppl and I have also co-written an article touching on similar themes that will appear in an upcoming issue of Engage, a journal published by the Federalist Society.

Koppl's work deserves more attention. Controlled studies have shown that the bias forensic experts absorb even by such seemingly innocuous interactions as speaking with police and prosecutors before running tests can have a disturbingly significant impact on their results. This bias exists even in well-intentioned, professional scientists. That's bias that's independent of the more egregious examples such as Dr. Hayne in Mississippi, or cases where prosecutors put ethically dubious pressure on forensics experts to tailor their findings to help the prosecution's case.

Koppl's proposals employ competition, proper incentives, and strategic manipulation of information (that is, separating information about the crime from the analysis of the evidence) to produce more accurate results—results less likely to be influenced by unintended bias, and that also would also go a long way toward uncovering the more egregious offenders. Koppl estimates that the cost of implementing his ideas would be less than the cost of just a couple wrongful convictions.

The most urgent of Koppl's reforms is the idea of giving forensic vouchers to indigent defendants. We need a Gideon v. Wainwright for forensics. Until defendants are given access to their own experts, far too many criminal cases will feature testimony only from state forensic scientists, and all the problems that come with that. When only one guy with letters after his name is testifying, jurors are going to tend to put quite a bit of faith in what he says. We've seen this even when what the expert is saying is absurd, and scoffed at by just about everyone else in the scientific community. When poor defendants aren't given access to their own experts, then, it calls into question whether we really have an adversarial criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, too many people think all of the country's forensic labs work like the ones they see on CSI. I'm not sure it's enough to merely ask that judges take a more aggressive approach to weeding out the frauds. First, judges can be duped, too. Second, even competent, professional forensic scientists can make mistakes. The changes need to be more radical. Another of Koppl's suggested reforms essentially applies the idea of peer review to the criminal forensics process. That would go a long way toward cutting down on mistakes, intentional and otherwise.

Chicago Reverses Foie Gras Ban

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:12:00 EDT

A rare bit of sanity in the Windy City:

With Mayor Richard Daley running the vote, the Chicago City Council on Wednesday repealed its controversial ban on foie gras.

Over the shouted objections of Ald. Joe Moore (49th), the ban's sponsor, the council used a parliamentary manuever to put the ordinance on the floor for a vote.

The council voted 37-6 to repeal the two-year-old ban, which critics argued had made Chicago--and the City Council--a national laughingstock.

"National laughingstock" honors now fall on the entire state of California, which passed a fois gras ban set to take effect in 2012. Ald. Moore is apparently furious:

Moore, whose pleas for a debate were ignored by Daley, warned fellow aldermen "tomorrow it could happen to you."

I'm guessing Moore was referring to the parliamentary meneuver, and wasn't insinuating that America may one day crave the fatted livers of Chicago politicians over fava beans and a nice Chianti.

reason.tv chatted with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain about foie gras bans last November.

Tracy Ingle Gets a Lawyer

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:15:00 EDT

Tracy Ingle is the Arkansas man I wrote about last week. He was shot five times during a no-knock drug raid on his home. Though police found no drugs, they charged him with running a drop operation, anyway, due they said to a scale and some plastic bags they found in his home. He's also charged with assaulting the police officers for pointing a broken gun at them when they broke into his bedroom and woke him. A few updates on his case:

• First, the good news. A couple of weeks ago while still researching the raid on Ingle's home, I called Arkansas defense attorney John Wesley Hall to get his thoughts on the case. This week, Hall agreed to represent Ingle. Hall is one of the best defense attorneys in the country. He's a former executive with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and argued the landmark no-knock raid case Wilson v. Arkansas before the U.S. Supreme Court. Ingle's defense (and possible lawsuit) is in good hands.

• I also spoke late last week with the prosecutor in the case, John Hout. Hout wouldn't go into the details of the case with me, but did confirm that (1) he plans to go ahead with both the drug and assault charges, (2) the officers who shot Ingle have been cleared of any wrongdoing, and (3) he can't release the affidavits from the raid despite the fact that they're public record, because the case is "an ongoing investigation." He did say the affidavits will be available to Ingle's attorney through discovery. I also spoke with the information officer of the North Little Rock Police Department. He also told me that the affidavits are off-limits.

• Finally, members of Ingle's family say the North Little Rock SWAT team visited Tracy Ingle again last week. This time, they came to his house asking for a man named Shawn Anthony Turner. Turner is Ingle's cousin, and has had frequent problems with the law—he has actually served time on drug charges. When Turner was released from prison several years ago, Ingle's mother agreed to have him released into her custody, mostly, she says, because no one else in the family would take him. For a short while, Turner lived in the home Ingle's mother (Turner's aunt) owned, along with Ingle and a few other roommates who came and went.. This is the same home the police raided in January. When Turner didn't clean up his act, the family threw him out. Turner continued to pester Tracy Ingle about letting him move in, the family says, and Ingle continued to refuse to allow it.

Tracy Ingle's family members now speculate that Turner somehow factored in to the January raid on Ingle's home. Ingle's house is Turner's last known address, though he hasn't lived there since mid-2006. Ingle's sister and mother believe either the police mistakenly raided the house while looking for Turner, or that Turner told the police Ingle was making methamphetamine in retaliation for Ingle's refusal to let Turner live in his home. Tracy Ingle's name doesn't appear anywhere on the search warrant for the raid.

Last week, when the police saw Ingle, they apparently recognized him, realized this was the same house they had raided months ago, realized Turner no longer lives at the address, and left.

Rachel Hoffman: More Collateral Damage

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:11:00 EDT

Earlier this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman, who friends say was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and MDMA within her social circle. Hoffman was at the time undergoing state-forced drug treatment after police found 20+ grams of marijuana in her car during a traffic stop. The raid turned up another five ounces of marijuana, plus six ecstasy pills and assorted pot-related paraphernalia.

From this, Tallahassee police apparently threatened Hoffman with prison time, then agreed to let her off easy if she'd become a police informant, and set up a deal with her supplier. They never informed Hoffman's attorney or the state prosecutor of the arrangement. They wired Hoffman, and asked her to arrange to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine, and a gun—a deal that would have run well over ten thousand dollars. Hoffman's friends and family have told me that all three purchases would also have been drastically out of character for her. Which means the dealers she was buying from were almost surely on to her.

Tallahassee police found Hoffman's body last week. The first thing they did was call a press conference in which they blamed Hoffman for her own death, stating that the arrangement she made with the police was consistent with department protocol, and that she agreed to meet with the dealers in a different location than the one previously agreed upon.

After public outrage, the city is now walking that back a bit, and has asked Florida's attorney general to look into the Tallahassee Police Department's procedures for dealing with drug informants.

Chalk it up as collateral damage, and add Hoffman's name to that of Isaac Singletary and Anthony Diotaiuto, three deaths of non-violent, non-threatening Floridians in just the last few years, thanks to the drug war.

Forrest Wept

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:31:00 EDT

Last week, the city of Cleveland was pursuing criminal charges against a bar manager for operating pool tables without a permit.

This week, Washington Post columnist Mark Fisher reports on the heroic Frank Winstead, whose moral crusade has purged Washington D.C. of the threat of an un-permitted ping pong table.

I Want My CCTV

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:51:00 EDT

New research indicates that Britain's massive CCTV surveillance system isn't particularly good at either solving or preventing crime. So, sorry about doing away with that whole "privacy" thing. Guess it was for naught.

But all is not lost. Boing Boing reports...

The Get Out Clause, an unsigned Manchester band who could not afford a camera crew for their video, 'performed' in front of a load of CCTV cameras, requested the footage from the camera operators under the Data Protection Act and then stitched the results together for their music video.

Here's the result:

reason's seminal 2004 covers story on the benefits of the surveillance state here.

Sports and Election 2008

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:58:00 EDT

USA Today asked the three remaining major-party candidates how they feel about Title IX and about performance enhancing drugs.

Refreshingly, all three said neither steroids nor gender participation are any of the government's business, and that, being private entities, sports organizations should be free to set their own rules free of meddling from the federal government or grandstanding congressmen.

Just kidding. All three favor using the federal government to bend pro and amateur sports to their liking.

DWI for Walking a Bicycle

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:23:00 EDT

Jeff Brown of Columbus, Ohio was arrested for DWI, spent four days in jail, and had his license suspended for six months when he refused to take a breath test after an officer confronted him on suspicion of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. Brown was walking his bicycle across his own front yard. Brown has since made a YouTube video detailing his ordeal.

Via Lawrence Taylor, who notes that in 2005, a woman in Florida was arrested for DWI for operating her own wheelchair while intoxicated. That case, fortunately, was thrown out.

MORE: The appellate court decision describes the facts of the case this way:

The record contains scant details of the underlying facts of this case, but it appears appellant was riding a bicycle on a sidewalk on December 18, 2004, when he was detained by a police officer.

Make of that what you will.

Joe Alston, Top Fibby, Badminton Champ: RIP

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:15:00 EDT

One of the more interesting obituaries I've read in a while:

Joe Alston, an FBI agent who investigated Patty Hearst's kidnapping and a champion athlete who was the only badminton player ever to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, has died. He was 81.
[...]
He had just won his second U.S. Open singles title when he appeared on the March 7, 1955, cover of the sports magazine. At the time, he had been with the FBI for four years.
“That picture really changed my life,” Alston told Sports Illustrated in 1999.
“The bosses said, 'Maybe this isn't the time to have you doing undercover surveillance.' As a result, I continued working investigations – kidnappings, extortions, bank robberies, all the good stuff – the rest of my 30 years in the bureau.”
[...]
He was the FBI's major case coordinator in Los Angeles from 1967 through 1980. His family said he was involved with investigating the 1974 kidnapping of Hearst, the newspaper heiress who was seized by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, and in the still-open investigation of airplane hijacker D.B. Cooper.
As a badminton player, Alston represented the U.S. eight times in the world men's team championships. He also was the only U.S. player to win the men's doubles title in the prestigious All England Open Badminton Championships. He and Johnny Heah of Malaysia won in 1957.
His son also was an FBI agent and a leading U.S. badminton player in the 1980s.

Back to Atlanta

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:57:00 EDT

Arthur Tesler is the only officer involved in the Atlanta drug raid that killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston to fight the charges against him. The testimony to so far come out of his trial really only confirms what we knew about the narcotics division at Atlanta PD from the federal investigation into Johnston's death, but it's still pretty striking stuff:

A former Atlanta police officer testified Thursday that narcotics officers routinely lied under oath when seeking search warrants, a practice that led to police killing a 92-year-old woman.
Former Detective Gregg Junnier told a Fulton County jury that detectives would tell judges that they had verified their informants had bought cocaine from dealers by searching them for drugs before the buy took place.
"I have never seen anyone searched before they go into the house, I've never seen that done, even though officers always swear to it," Junnier said. "It's done that way in 90 percent of the warrants that are written."
But it wasn't just lies to get the warrant to search Kathryn Johnston's home that made Junnier uneasy, he said. He had an inkling something was wrong when he and Officer Jason R. Smith were leading the narcotics team to the front door. He said the northwest Atlanta house differed from the informant's description.
"I said, 'Man, this doesn't look right,' and he said, 'I know,' " Junnier testified. " 'I said what do you want to do.' He said, 'Hit it.'"
A minute later, Johnston was lying on her floor, dying.
[...]
He said the chance to seize a kilo (2.2 pounds) of cocaine also drove the officers, who normally made arrests for much smaller amounts.
In the raid, police fired 39 shots. Junnier was shot in the face, chest and leg. Two other officers were also wounded. Investigators determined Johnston had fired one round from a revolver; the officers were shot in their own crossfire.
Junnier described entering Johnston's house: "She was still alive. She was gasping for air. I heard ... the order to cuff her."
Later that day, he said, the cover-up began.

It would be pretty näive to think these kinds of shortcuts only happen in Atlanta. Prior reason coverage of the Johnston case here.

Tracy Ingle's Website

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:14:00 EDT

The sister of botched drug raid victim Tracy Ingle has set up a website with information about his case, including how to donate to his legal defense.

Summary of Ingle's story here.

I'll Need to See Your Permit

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:54:00 EDT

I don't know which is worse, that the city of Cleveland requires a "music permit" and a "pool table permit," or that failing to obtain one is a criminal offense.

Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:45:00 EDT

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He'd been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I've reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going silent. We've seen all that before. What's mind-blowing about this one is that they've continued abusing the poor guy, even after it should have been clear for some time now that they made a mistake.

From the outset, it should be noted that Tracy Ingle has had some trouble with the law in the past, though nothing violent, and nothing drug-related. He has had a couple of DWI's, and a citation for failing to appear in court. He apparently also agreed to do some repair work on a friend's car that later turned out to be stolen.

That said, what's happened to him over the last few months is pretty outrageous.

Here's the Arkansas Times piece, which I'd encourage you to read in full. And here's a follow-up interview with North Little Rock Police Chief Danny Bradley about SWAT tactics.

I've since spoken again to the reporter and to Tracy Ingle's sister, Tiffney Forrester, who herself is a former sheriff's deputy. I've also had a chance to review the warrants and return sheets (pdf).

The North Little Rock Police Department wouldn't discuss the case with me.

Here's a quick rundown:

• On January 7, 2008 a paramilitary police unit in North Little Rock, Arkansas conducted a drug raid on Tracy Ingle's home. Ingle says he had fallen asleep for several hours, and was asleep when the raid happened. He awoke when the police took a battering ram to his door. Another team of officers approached form the outside of the house, and shattered the window to his bedroom.

• When he awoke, Ingle says he thought his home was being invaded by armed robbers. He reached for a broken gun, a pretty clear indication that he had no intention of killing anyone, but rather was trying to scare away the intruders. When he grabbed the gun, an officer inside the house fired his weapon. The bullet hit Ingle just above the knee, shattered his thigh bone, and nearly severed his lower leg. When the outside officers heard the shot, they opened up on Ingle, hitting him four more times. According to Ingle's sister, one bullet still rests just above Ingle's heart, and can't be removed.

• Ingle was taken to the hospital, and spent a week-and-a-half in intensive care. He was then removed from intensive care—still in his hospital pajamas—and taken to the North Little Rock police department, where he was questioned for five hours. He was not told he was suspected of a crime, and his family wasn't allowed to speak with him. After the interrogation, he was arrested and transferred to the county jail.

• Ingle spent the next four days in jail. He says he was never given his pain medication or his antibiotics. Though hospital nurses told him to change his bandages and clean his wounds every 4-6 hours, Ingle told the Arkansas Times that jail officials changed them only twice in four days. Ingle's wounds became infected during the time he was in jail.

• Police found no illegal drugs in Ingle's home. They did find a scale, which Ingle's sister tells me was an extra she was given when she worked at a medical testing facility. She used it in her jewelry-making hobby. They also found a bunch of small plastic bags. Again, Ingle's sister says these were part of her business. "I was leaving the country for a while, and I stored a lot of my stuff at his house," she told me. "The scale and bags were mine, and are both common things to have for anyone who makes jewelry." Police also found the broken gun and a broken police scanner.

• From those items, the police charged Ingle with running a drug enterprise. They also charged him with assault, for pointing his broken gun at the police officers who had just barged into his home. The judge set Ingle's bail at $250,000, explaining that it had to be set high because Ingle had engaged in a shootout with police—never mind that Ingle didn't fire a shot. Ingle was able to sell his car to pay a bail bondsman. But with no car, his injuries render him basically immobile. He had to walk two miles on crutches and an infected leg to his hearing last week.

• The police obtained a no-knock warrant for Ingle's home about three weeks prior to the raid. The warrant itself (pdf) reads like boilerplate, with no specific references to Ingle (other than his address), or why he specifically posed a risk to police safety, or of disposing of drugs before coming to answer the door. It mentions no controlled buys. It doesn't even mention an informant. In fact, someone scratched out "crack cocaine" and hand-wrote in "methamphetamine" on the type-written warrant, suggesting a cut, plug, and paste job. The Supreme Court has ruled that police must show case-specific evidence of exigent circumstances in order to be issued a no-knock warrant. The mere fact that it's a drug case isn't enough. The warrant for Ingle's home contains no such specific information.

Many times, information specific to the investigation is contained in the affidavit the investigating officer files for the search warrant, not in the warrant itself. Forrester says she has called the North Little Rock Police Department more than 20 times in an effort to obtain a copy of the affidavits. She says they at first refused to return her phone calls. When she was finally able to speak with a lieutenant, he became angry when she told him she had contacted the media. She then says he told her to "dream on" when she asked for copies of the affidavits.

• According to Forrester, Ingle's neighbor had a direct line of sight into the bedroom, and saw the entire raid. His account initially matched Ingle's. But that changed. "We have a witness, a next door neighbor that saw the entire incident," Forrester told me. "He came forward on his own to give a statement to the family. Police never questioned him until a month or so after the shooting, at my insistence. They kept this neighbor in his home, and questioned him for at least four hours, refusing to let the man's wife come home, of for other people to see him. When the police finished intimidating the man, they told him specifically that 'he did not see what he thought he saw.' The neighbor is now afraid to talk to the media." I have not yet been able to speak with the neighbor.

• Ingle's family was able to put up $1,000 to retain an attorney, but can't afford the extra $6,000 the attorney has asked to represent Ingle. Ingle is therefore still looking for representation. He has no health insurance, and no money to pay for medication, or to continue treatment of his injuries.

• Last week, after the Arkansas Times article appeared, the judge in the case issued a gag order, preventing Ingle and any future attorney he may have from talking to the media about what happened to him. This is puzzling. Before today there had been exactly two articles about this case—not exactly a media circus. It's hard to understand why a gag order was necessary. It's only real purpose is to prevent more people from learning about what's increasingly looking like a railroading. And it's only effect is to lend more support to the possibility that it is, in fact, a cover-up and railroading.

As noted, the police aren't talking. And the prosecutor is now bound by the gag order. Perhaps there's some piece of information damning to Ingle I'm not yet aware of—though it's hard to imagine what that might be.

Barring that, what's happening to Tracy Ingle is pretty outrageous.

UPDATE: The Arkansas Times reports that the gag order request in Ingle's case was withdrawn late yesterday. I don't know that this will make the police or prosecutors any more likely to talk about the case, but if I have time this afternoon, I'll try again to give them a call.

UPDATE II: Several people asked in the comments about donating to Ingle's legal defense. You can now do so directly via PayPal at: http://www.justicefortracy.com.

Bush, Lies, and Retarded Monkeys

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:17:00 EDT

Last fall I wrote about Arizona anti-war activist Dan Frazier's tacky "Bush Lied/They Died" t-shirts, and about even tackier attempts by Congress and several state legislatures to ban them. The front of the shirts say "Bush Lied." The backs of the shirts say, "They Died," and feature the names of some 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq.

Now comes a lawsuit (pdf) from the family of one of the late soldiers whose name appears on the shirt. The family's attorneys are seeking to make the suit a class action on behalf of the families of every solider listed on the shirt. One can sympathize with the family and still believe that (a) their suit is ridiculous, and (b) it looks as if they've hired a third-grader to represent them. For example, after arguing that Frazier's enterprise isn't protected by the First Amendment, and that even it is, Frazier should be forced to share his profits with the soldiers' families, the suit then states:

Most respectfully, this is a concept that even a mentally-challenged monkey could grasp, but, apparently, defendants cannot—or, more likely, refuse--to do so, for as defendant, Fraser [sic], stated recently to the Associated Press, he is “not worried” about the outcome of this litigation.

"Most respectfully?" Also, the attorney is asking for $40 billion in damages.

(Hat tip: Howard Wasserman)

Galt's Gulch & Trust

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:12:00 EDT

NPR reports:

John Allison, CEO of banking giant BB&T, calls Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged "the best defense of capitalism ever written." He says that Rand changed his life, and he's working to ensure that the deceased author isn't left out of the nation's college curricula.
Since 2005, the BB&T Charitable Foundation has given 25 colleges and universities several million dollars to start programs devoted to the study of Rand's books and economic philosophy. In January, the company announced it was donating $1 million to Marshall University in West Virginia.
The money would establish a course dedicated to Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and help create the BB&T Center for the Advancement of American Capitalism on campus.

I'm not sure I see the problem, here. Hell, my alma mater had classes on pornography, the Beatles, and the music of Frank Zappa (note: I consider this a good thing). It would be one thing if BB&T were establishing an entire econ department staffed only with Objectivists. But an elective class on the virtues of capitalism that exposes students to Rand's ideas doesn't seem all that nefarious. Of course, some people disagree:

Rick Wilson, a sociology instructor at Marshall and head of the West Virginia Economic Justice Project, says that Rand's philosophy, objectivism, is based on the view that selfishness is the only moral value.
"[Objectivism] goes against the collective wisdom of the human race, I think, pretty much everywhere," says Wilson. "I think it's a curious interpretation of philanthropy to use corporate money to promote, really, an extreme philosophy."

I'm not sure when it became accepted logic that corporate philanthropies should only fund ideas and causes that are hostile to free markets. But that certainly seems to be the prevailing sentiment in the philanthropy world. And Rand's weaknesses aside, I'd say you could make a pretty good case that capitalism, the economic system that accepts and harnesses self-interest, has served humanity pretty darned well.

Jeff Taylor blogged about a similar Allison gift to UNC-Charlotte last March, and wrote about BB&T's lead-by-example capitalism in 2006.

Should Prosecutors Who Withhold Exculpatory Evidence Face Criminal Charges?

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:28:00 EDT

First, have a look at this video, from last night's episode of 60 Minutes:

Brady v. Maryland was the Supreme Court case that made it illegal for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys. The problem is that there's rarely if ever any punishment for breaking the rule, even when it has led to wrongful convictions and imprisonment.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, featured in the above video, is now publicly advocating that prosecutors who knowingly violate the rule (that is, who knowingly break the law) should face criminal charges, not just professional sanctions (which also rarely happen).

"Something should be done," said Craig Watkins, whose jurisdiction leads the nation in the number of DNA exonerations. "If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be criminalized."
Mr. Watkins said that he was still pondering what kind of punishment unethical prosecutors deserve but that the worst offenders might deserve prison time. He said he also was considering the launch of a campaign to mandate disbarment for any prosecutor found to have intentionally withheld evidence from the defense.
Such ideas could not be more at odds with the win-at-all-costs philosophy that was the hallmark of legendarily hard-line Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and, to a lesser extent, of subsequent administrations.
It is rare for a prosecutor to advocate strict penalties for misconduct – even when it's intentional, said Mr. Gershman, a former New York prosecutor. "I couldn't give you five cases in the last 40 years of criminal charges against prosecutors," he said.

The Duke lacrosse case was great in that it brought national attention to the possibilty of wrongful prosecutions and prosecutorial misconduct. But it may have also fostered the misconception that prosecutors like Mike Nifong are routinely punished when they make the same mistakes he made. In truth, it almost never happens. Still, it's fun to watch law-and-order, "the law is the law" prosecutors backpedal when asked why they themselves shouldn't face charges when they violate the law.

Watkins, by the way, is a rock star. Read my interview with him here.

Giving Them the Rope to Hang Themselves

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:32:00 EDT

Cato's Juan Carlos Hidalgo explains a possible nefarious motive behind Raoul Castro's recent reforms in Cuba.

(Update: Link fixed.)

Updates in Mississippi

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 05 May 2008 10:17:00 EDT

A few new items on the Dr. Steven Hayne debacle in Mississippi.

• The Hattiesburg American—Mississippi's second-largest newspaper—asks DAs around south-central Mississippi if they're still using Dr. Steven Hayne to perform autopsies, in spite of the allegations against him to come out over the past several months. Not surprisingly, all of them said they have no problem with Hayne, and plan to keep using him. At this point, I think you could make a pretty good case that continuing to use Hayne amounts to a breach of ethics.

The paper's editorial board was concerned enough about the responses that they fired off a separate editorial denouncing the prosecutors.

This strikes as three ostriches putting their heads in the sand. How can these DA's be at all confident in Hayne's work given the information that has come out about the pathologist?
The DA's have been asked by the Innocence Project to turn over any documents pertaining to Hayne, including official reports on autopsies.
We hope they are complying. They must, if they believe in justice.
Meanwhile, the Legislature has funded $500,000 this year for a state medical examiner. The state has been without one since 1994 and if more of Hayne's work is found to be faulty, the state will have no one but itself to blame.

Again, it's not surprising. If any of these prosecutors were to admit to having reservations about Hayne, they'd have to admit his testimony may have tainted some of their convictions. Additionally, Hattiesburg is in Forest County, Mississippi. That's the home of Dr. Michael West, who was also once coroner of Forest County. The good ol' boy network runs thick in what locals call the "Pine Belt." One of the DAs interviewed for the article, Jon Mark Weathers, used Hayne in at least one civil before he became a prosecutor.

• Another case has surfaced in which Hayne issued a questionable autopsy report. A woman was jailed for more than a year and lost custody of her kids after Hayne determined her infant daughter died of alcohol poisoning. Hayne based that diagnosis on a toxicology report showing the child died with an astonishing blood-alcohol level of 0.4.

Problem is, a review of Hayne's work by Dr. Leroy Riddick of Alabama determined that there were no other signs of alcohol poisoning, and that Hayne had every reason to question the results from the lab. Subsequent tests showed much, much lower blood-alcohol levels, as low as .02. Riddick says the child died of interstitial pneumonia and myocarditis. The mother was to be charged in the death of her son. I'm told that the charges will now likely be dropped.

• Finally, there's more detail on an odd case of swapped bodies in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In that case, a mother who'd had lingering suspicions about the body county officials told her was her daughter's finally succeeded in having the body exhumed and DNA tested. Testing showed the body was not her daughter, and in fact may have been of a different sex. Hayne performed the autopsy, which also had the daughter's height off by half a foot. To be fair, while something clearly went very worng with Mississippi's autopsy system, here, it isn't yet clear if the mistake was Hayne's. It's at least possible that the county coroner mixed up the bodies before delivering them to Hayne.

Drug Raid/Self-Defense Case Brewing in Columbus, Ohio

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 04 May 2008 11:45:00 EDT

Last Thursday night, police in Columbus, Ohio raided what they thought was a crack house. Though initial reports say some illicit drugs were found, the police thus far haven't been forthcoming about what type or how much. It's starting to look like the place was instead a gambling house.

When the police busted in, two men—who now say they thought they were being robbed—fired at the door. Two police officers were wounded. Both are likely to survive. The two men are being charged with attempted murder. The police say they announced twice before battering down the door, but at least one witness not in the house at the time says he only heard an order from one officer for "knockers" to break out the windows.

One of the two men who fired at the officers is a former Ohio State University football player named Derrick Foster. Foster says he was playing dice at the house when he heard a loud bang at the door, then heard someone say the place was being robbed. That's when he fired his gun at the men breaking down the door.

Foster hardly fits the profile of a crazed cop killer. He has no criminal record. He isn't suspected of drug activity. He has a legal concealed carry permit for the gun he used in the raid. He works a $60,000/year job as a code inspector for the city of Columbus. His last performance review described him as "an asset to the Near East Side." The other suspect's record is quite a bit more spotty. Still, if Foster genuinely thought the place was about to be robbed—and I think it's more than reasonable to believe him when he says that he did—it's reasonable that the other man would too, criminal record or no.

One again we have a someone facing serious charges for shooting at police during a volatile, confrontational forced entry raid to serve a drug warrant. Again we have injured cops, and again we have a guy who otherwise would have no motivation to want to harm a police officer. But instead of questioning if it's a wise policy to put an ordinary citizen in the perilous position of having to determine in the heat of the moment if the men breaking in on him are cops or criminal intruders, the state has again decided to prosecute the citizen—for making the kind of error in judgment it rarely prosecutes police for making under similar circumstances. And the raids will undoubtedly continue.

Oliver Diaz, Jr.

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 04 May 2008 08:50:00 EDT

In Mississippi, state supreme court justices are elected, not appointed. They serve eight-year terms, but can serve multiple terms if they're reelected. Yesterday Associate Justice Oliver Diaz, Jr. announced his plans to run for reelection.

Diaz may face a tough campaign, due in part to the fact that he's one of the more liberal justices on the court. He's also the only justice on the court who seems to give a damn about the sham that is Mississippi's criminal justice system. Diaz was instrumental in building a coalition to throw out Dr. Steven Hayne's absurd two-hands-on-the-gun testimony in the Tyler Edmonds case. My sources in Mississippi tell me the court initially was planning to uphold Hayne's testimony and Edmonds' conviction. Diaz not only succeeded in turning that around for a 8-1 vote for a new trial, he wrote a blistering concurring opinion stating that Dr. Hayne should never testify in Mississippi's courts again (disclosure: he cited my reason article on the Cory Maye case in that opinion). Unfortunately, Diaz wasn't able to convince a majority of his colleagues of his opinion of Dr. Hayne, and so Hayne continues to do the bulk of the state's autopsies.

The other reason Diaz may face an uphill battle for reelection is because several years ago, he was indicted by the Bush Justice Department on public corruption charges. Diaz, a former Republican now backed by Democrats, maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, refused to plea or resign his seat on the court, and was eventually acquitted on all charges. The Bush Justice Department then indicted him again. And he was acquitted again. His case is now being investigated by Congress to see if it was one of a series of overtly political and questionably meritorious prosecutions of Democratic public officials led by Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys (other prosecutions under investigation include those against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and Pennsylvania medical examiner Cyril Wecht).

One other thing: The federal charges against Diaz stemmed from his relationship with Paul Minor, a plaintiff's attorney in Mississippi who got rich off the tobacco settlement. As Harper's Scott Horton points out, the case against Diaz, Minor, and others was part of a GOP backlash in Mississippi against the rise and enormous influence of trial lawyers in that state. But interestingly, while Diaz is often painted as a friend of the plaintiff's bar, it's worth noting that Dr. Hayne is also a favorite of trial lawyers in Mississippi. Part of Hayne's success stems from the fact that he has managed to win over both the state's prosecutors and the state's trial lawyers (and the county coroners, who often go out of their way to please both). Talk to any medical malpractice defense attorney in Mississippi, for example, and they'll rant about Hayne's absurd testimony in various tort cases for a good ten minutes (I'll have more on this next week).

Diaz's blistering opinion singling out Hayne in the Edmonds case, then, was actually a blow to the state's trial lawyers—the very group for whom the feds and the state's GOP accuse of Diaz of being a shill. His continued presence on the court is important to keep the pressure on the state to do something about Hayne.

It would be unfortunate if South Mississippi's voters were to take Diaz off the bench due to what looks like an overtly political federal prosecution. Right now, at least on criminal justice issues, he's the only justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court who seems to even realize Mississippi has a problem.

Another Isolated Incident

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:47:00 EDT

As part of a massive operation targeting hydroponic marijuana growers called "Operation D-Day" (noting militaristic about that at all), federal agents in Florida mistakenly raided the home of a Cuban immigrant couple.

"I was frightened for my husband because they threw him on the ground," Llorente's wife said. "I was scared.
Llorente said he was just leaving for work when unmarked cars pulled up, Drug Enforcement Administration agents jumped out, threw him down with guns drawn, handcuffed him, stormed into his home and searched for drugs.
"I asked them why they came to my house, they said a neighbor or somebody called and said I had a hydroponics lab in my house," Llorente said. "Then I asked them if a marijuana plant could grow inside my underwear drawer."
The Llorentes said they don't speak much English – they're immigrants from Cuba. They said one of the reasons they came to the U.S. was to escape oppression from the Cuban police.Isabel Llorente said she never thought this could happen here."Never, because they criticize Cuba so much," she said.
"I've never gone through anything like this."She said what made it especially traumatic was not knowing if the agents were really police or imposters. She said she tried to call 911, but they wouldn't let her.
"What added salt to this injury was after the situation – house is searched, door is broken – they just walked away," the Llorentes' lawyer said. "Like, 'We're the government. We made a mistake.'"

It's worth noting that while police say these tactics are necessary because drug distributors tend to be violent and armed to the teeth, this operation apparently turned up just eight guns from 150 homes.

Compensate Much?

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:32:00 EDT

Via Reddit, the 50 most popular pages on "Conservapedia," the reference wiki for right-wingers.

And Don't Even Ask About Purple Nurples and Wet Willies

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:24:00 EDT

Via Fark comes this quote:

The police spokesman said they are ever vigilant and on the lookout for wedgies here.
“You might get away with that in Lincoln or Omaha,” the spokesman said. “But we’re not going to allow wedgies in North Platte.”