pre-weekend roundup
[updated]
In the news, both capital & criminal just reform, from both in the States and abroad:
- The Innocence Project reports “Lynn DeJac spent 13 years in a New York prison for her alleged involvement in the death of her teenage daughter in 1993. She was released late last year after DNA tests on evidence from the victim’s body implicated another person in the murder. Yesterday, however, the case took another turn, as the Buffalo District Attorney said he intended to drop all pending charges against DeJac based on evidence that the girl died of a cocaine overdose, and ‘no other competing cause of death’.”
- Absurdly low rates for appointments in capital cases can lead to equally absurd results — dragooning counsel in to representation. DPIC notes “Judge Stephen Roth of Utah has decided to force an unwilling attorney to handle the appeal of death-row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies after no qualified lawyers were willing to take the assignment for the amount of pay offered. “The court ultimately concludes that it has the authority to appoint unwilling counsel to represent the petitioner here, but only if the attorney appointed is justly compensated,” Roth wrote. The judge will ask attorney Richard P. Mauro for evidence of past and future expenses. If the amounts are reasonable, he will authorize the appropriate payment. The attorney may still be excused if the state is unwilling to make reasonable compensation.” More over the weekend if time permits.
- The Los Angeles Times notes that the American College of Physicians, the nation’s largest organization of doctors of internal medicine, with 124,000 members, wants the federal government to ease its ban on marijuana as medicine and hasten research into the drug’s therapeutic uses. The ACP contends that the long and rancorous debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis.
- The Seattle Times reports, the embattled director of the Washington State Patrol crime labs, Barry Logan resigned earlier this week. Long resigned amid of sloppy work and fraud that jeopardized more than 100 cases in the last year.
- Fawza Falih has been sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia for Witchcraft (that’s no typo) [h/t Johnathan Turley]
