CrimProf Blog

Court to Help Vets in Criminal System

From NPR.com: As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan put renewed focus on the issue of veterans' mental health, a judge in Buffalo, N.Y., has created a special court to assist veterans who wind up in the criminal justice system.

ary Pettengill wanted to make a career out of the military, but the Army made him take a medical discharge in 2006 after he injured his back in Iraq. At the time, Pettengill was 23 and married, with a third child on the way.

To cope with what he says were empty days and nightmares caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, Pettengill says he started smoking marijuana. Then he began selling it to pay his bills. In February, he was arrested during a drug sweep and accused of being in possession of two pounds of marijuana.

Pettengill found himself facing serious time and the possibility of losing his children to the child welfare system. His family was evicted from their apartment.

Then he was referred to Judge Robert Russell's "veterans court." Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

War Crime Charges Filed Against Embassy Bomber

From online.wsj.com: Military prosecutors filed war-crimes charges yesterday against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al Qaeda operative implicated in the simultaneous 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The case makes for another useful lesson in the post-9/11 military commissions process, and ought to provide a measure of justice for the atrocities, which killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands.

Currently incarcerated at Guantanamo, Ghailani procured the truck, TNT, detonators, and oxygen and acetylene canisters that comprised the suicide bomb that destroyed the Dar es Salaam embassy. He scouted for the attack and coordinated between his terror cell and the one in Nairobi. A day before the bombing, Ghailani fled to Pakistan, where he was captured in 2004 following a 10-hour firefight, part of a joint Pakistani-U.S. operation. At least 10 of the conspirators remain at large, including Osama bin Laden.

Ghailani confessed to his role in the plot during a 2007 hearing but claimed he was a dupe, for instance that he thought the TNT was "soap for washing horses." Yet Ghailani continued his service to al Qaeda after the bombing. He worked as an instructor at a terrorist training camp and forged documents, becoming at one point a bin Laden bodyguard. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The DOJ Has Not Spent any of the Congress Allotted $8 Million for DNA Testing

From USATODAY.com: Since 2006, the Justice Department has yet to spend any of the $8 million set aside by Congress for DNA tests for convicts to prove their innocence while it has used $214 million to collect DNA from convicted criminals and improve crime labs, records show.

"DNA evidence is such a powerful tool in proving guilt or innocence that it's inexcusable not to use it," says Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief sponsor of a bill to provide more funding for what is known as innocence testing.

If spent, the $8 million could affect dozens of cases, says Barry Scheck, a defense lawyer who specializes in using DNA to overturn convictions. Exact costs for a DNA test vary from case to case.

Rules imposed by Congress have made it difficult for states to qualify for post-conviction DNA grants, says the department's National Institute of Justice, which administers the funds. Only Virginia, Connecticut and Arizona have applied.

The law requires a state's attorney general to certify that the state requires police departments to take "reasonable measures" to preserve biological evidence for possible future testing. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Federal Prosecutor in Child Sex Sting

Story here.  This is really quite unbelievable; one of the lesser reasons is that it is difficult to understand how an experienced prosecutor could fail to realize that the free-thinking mother who offered up her 5 year old child for  a sexual experience with an gentle older man was almost certainly a cop.

Jack Chin

U.S. Attorneys are Low on Funds

From wsj.com: In the past few years, U.S. attorneys' offices around the country have been unable to fill vacancies. Lawyers sometimes can't travel to interview witnesses. Even funds for basic office needs such as photocopying documents and obtaining deposition transcripts have been cut, according to current and former officials.

Overall, funding for the offices has grown well below the rate of inflation. As a result, "fewer cases were getting charged and bigger investigations were taking longer because there weren't enough prosecutors to do them," says Debra Yang, who stepped down in October 2006 as the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Department of Justice data show the impact. Prosecutions are down overall, with large drops in categories such as drugs, violent crime and white-collar offenses. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Is the Justice Department Losing Credibility?

From NPR.com: As Congress continues investigating allegations of politicization at the Justice Department, some current and former department employees say they fear that the scandal is hurting department morale and damaging the institution's credibility in the courts. Listen. . . [Mark Godsey]

DOJ Releases Inmate Death Report

From ojp.usdoj.gov: The nation's state prison officials reported that 12,129 inmates died while in custody from 2001 through 2004, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The deaths over this four-year period constituted an annual mortality rate of 250 deaths per 100,000 inmates, which was 19 percent lower than the adult mortality rate in the U.S. general population.

            Overall, 89 percent of all state prisoner deaths were attributed to medical conditions and 8 percent were due to suicide or homicide. The remainder of deaths were due to alcohol/drug intoxication or accidental injury (1 percent each). A definitive cause of death could not be determined for an additional 1 percent. Two-thirds of inmate deaths from medical conditions involved a problem that was present at the time of admission to prison.

            Half of all inmate deaths during this period resulted from heart disease (27 percent) or cancer (23 percent). Liver diseases, including cirrhosis, accounted for 10 percent of deaths, followed by AIDS-related causes (7 percent).

            Among cancer deaths, lung cancer was the most common, accounting for 910 deaths from 2001 through 2004, followed by liver (276), colon (171), pancreatic (124) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (114). Deaths due to gender-specific cancer sites varied. Breast, ovarian, cervical and uterine cancer accounted for 24 percent of female cancer deaths. By comparison, prostate and testicular cancer caused 4 percent of male cancer deaths.

            State prisoner mortality rates increased steadily with age. The mortality rate of inmates age 18-24 was lowest, at 34 deaths per 100,000 inmates. Among inmates age 55 or older, the rate was 1,973 deaths per 100,000 inmates. Inmates age 45 or older represented 14 percent of state prisoners, but 67 percent of the prisoner deaths from 2001 through 2004.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Secret "FISA" Court to Monitor Domestic Spying Program

Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that a secret independent panel of judges, known as the FISA Court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) has been given authority to monitor the government's contentious domestic spying program.  FISA has already has approved one request for monitoring the communications of a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida or an associated terror group. 

The FISA court was established in the late 1970s to review requests for warrants to conduct surveillance inside the United States. The Bush administration initially resisted giving the court final approval over the Terrorist Surveillance Program (the program allowing the phone calls or emails of Americans suspected of ties to terrorism to be monitored without any oversight from a judge), even when communications involved someone inside the country. A federal judge in Detroit last August declared the program unconstitutional, saying it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers. In October, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that the administration could keep the program in place while it appeals the Detroit decision. Story from CBS/AP. . . [Michele Berry]

FBI Releases Hate Crime Statistics for 2005

From AllHeadlineNews.com: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released their 2005 statistics on hate crimes. Statistical data indicates a total of 7,163 criminal incidents. These incidents involved 8,380 reported offenses reported in 2005, resulting from a bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability...Racial bias topped the list as motivation for the 2005 hate crimes at 54.7 percent. Thereafter, smaller percentages were reported for motivations of religious bias at 17.1 percent, sexual-orientation bias at 14.2 percent, ethnicity/national origin bias at 13.2 and disability bias of 0.7 percent.  The "Hate Crime Statistics, 2005," is published by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The data includes details on reported hate crimes from city, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies across the country. More statistics. . . and more information from the FBI about these statistics here. . . [Michele Berry]

Another FBI Agent Indicted for Mob Ties

The Brooklyn DA said that the respected agent leaked information about pending cases to members of the Colombo crime family, leading to the killing of informants and other individuals.

Have they Considered GMail? FBI Does without Email

CNN reports that FBI agents are going without .gov accounts for cost reasons.  Not all of the agents and analysis have a need to be connected to the internet, FBI spokespersons say. 

Secret Criminal Dockets in Federal Court

Thousands of criminal cases remain sealed after disposition in the federal system, AP reports.  Many of the secret cases involve cooperating witnesses.
 

DOJ Report on Misidentified Madrid Bomber

A Justice Department report faulted the FBI for sloppy work but cleared the agency of more serious allegations in the botched fingerprint investigation of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield. The report concluded that errors in fingerprint analysis did not result from misconduct, Mayfield's Muslim religion, or abuse of the Patriot Act...An executive summary of the classified report by Inspector General Glenn Fine found the FBI, despite its failings in the case, did not exhibit bias or violate provisions of the anti-terrorism law...The report, released Friday, said the primary reason the FBI connected Mayfield's fingerprint to the one on the backpack was its "unusual similarity" to that of Algerian national Ouhnane Daoud. The fingerprint was ultimately determined to be Daoud's. Mayfield and his supporters accused the FBI of religious bias against Mayfield, a former Army officer who had converted to the Muslim faith. Read more from CNN.com. . . [Mark Godsey]

DOJ Investigates NSA Leaks

Who leaked the NSA's secret domestic spy program?  Criminal investigators want to know.

DOJ Report: Prisoners in 2004

Here.  "Highlights include the following:

The Nation's prison population grew 1.9% in 2004, reaching 1.5 million inmates.

• Ten States had increases of at least 5%, led by Minnesota (up 11.4%), Idaho (up 11.1%), and Georgia (up 8.3%).
• Eleven States experienced prison population decreases, led by Alabama (down 7.3%), Rhode Island (down 2.8%), New York (down 2.2%),
• Local jails housed 74,378 State and Federal inmates (5.0% of all prisoners)."

[Jack Chin]

New Juvenile Justice Website

OJJDP Web Site Offers Expanded Coverage and Targeted Services 

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has launched a redesigned home page on its Web site. Enhancements include expanded coverage of news, publications, and events and links to tools designed to assist specific users such as first-time visitors and students. Aid for those seeking funding information or the latest data is also provided.

Resources: Access the OJJDP Web site's redesigned home page at

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ojjdp

2004 Crime Stats: Rape Up, Murder Down

From MSNBC.com: Washington (AP)-- "Murders across the United States fell for the first time in five years, while rapes increased slightly last year, the FBI reported Monday.  Overall, the number of violent crimes, which also include aggravated assaults and robberies, fell by 1.2 percent last year...

There were 16,137 murders in the United States in 2004, the last full year for which statistics are available. That was about 350 fewer than in 2003...Chicago was largely responsible for the drop, recording 150 fewer murders in 2004 than in 2003.  The number of rapes, however, has increased in three of the past four years, according to the FBI data." More Stats... [Mark Godsey] 

FBI's Criminal Caseload Down by Fifty Percent

From MSNBC.com: "The number of criminal cases opened by the FBI has dropped by nearly half since 2000, a reflection of the bureau’s shift toward stopping terrorist attacks, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Monday.  The decline was steepest in drug investigations and extended to organized crime, bank robberies, civil rights, health care fraud, corporate fraud and public corruption, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said...

Among the FBI’s traditional criminal investigations, only gang cases increased...The report looked at cases opened and the deployment of agents in the 2000 government spending year — the last full year before the attacks — and in 2004.  The FBI opened 62,782 criminal investigations in 2000 and 34,451 last year, a drop of 45 percent, Fine said. Drug cases declined by 70 percent, he said.  There were 2,200 fewer field agents investigating criminal matters in 2004, he said.

State and local law enforcement officials said they have tried to fill the gaps, but have been unable to take up the slack in complex financial fraud cases that the FBI handled before Sept. 11." Story... [Mark Godsey]

DOJ Publication: Understanding Hot Spots

Report here. [Jack Chin]

DOJ IG Report on Wiretaps

Shows a lot of mistakes.  Story here; OIG homepage here. [Jack Chin]

Federal Prosecution Trends

Story here. [Jack Chin]

North Carolina: DNA Crime Lab Receives Two Federal Grants

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's DNA crime lab received two federal grants from the justice department, totaling over $92,000.  The first grant will fund the testing needed to work through backlogged DNA cases, and the second grant will be used to enhance the lab's infrastructure to prevent future backlogs.  The lab anticipates solving about 240 DNA cases this year.  Story here... [Mark Godsey] 

DOJ IG Report on Mishandling Informants

Here. [Jack Chin]

DOJ: Family Violence Statistics

The DOJ recently published a report on family violence statistics.  Some interesting findings:

"The rate of family violence fell by more than one-half between 1993 and 2002, from an estimated 5.4 victims to 2.1 victims per 1,000 U.S. residents 12 years old and older, reflecting the general decline in crimes against people during the same period, the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today.

Family violence accounted for 11 percent of all reported and unreported violence between 1998 and 2002. Of these offenses against family members, 49 percent were a crime against a spouse, 11 percent a parent attacking a child, and 41 percent an offense against another family member.

Seventy-three percent of family violence victims were female and 76 percent of persons who committed family violence were male. Simple assault was the most frequent type of family violence."

Full report here.

"Operation Wildfire" Leads to over 400 Arrests in Nationwide Meth Crackdown

From MSNBC.com--AP (Washington): "Police around the country have arrested more than 400 people in the first nationally coordinated operation aimed at producers and sellers of methamphetamine, officials said Tuesday.  Police in more than 200 cities and the Drug Enforcement Administration took part over the past week in Operation Wildfire, which also resulted in the seizure of more than 200 pounds of the drug and 56 labs where it was made.

The arrests follow intense criticism from members of Congress and local law enforcement that the federal government is not doing enough to combat the use of methamphetamine. More than the half the 500 sheriffs in a recent survey called meth their top problem, far surpassing cocaine and marijuana." Story here... [Mark Godsey]

DOJ Study Finds Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops

Actually, the racial disparity was not found to exist in connection with who is stopped, but rather post-stop treatment.  Minorities are substantially more likely to be searched, handcuffed, etc. than whites.  Story . . . [Mark Godsey]

AG on Gangs

Speech here. Homeland Security reports 500 gang arrests over the last two weeks. [Jack Chin]

FBI Emails Reveal Lack of PC for Faulty Link Between Oregon Attorney and Madrid Bombings

From Findlaw.com: Portland, OR (AP): "The day before a Portland attorney was wrongly arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings, an FBI official stated in an e-mail that the agency did not have enough evidence to arrest the man on criminal charges. The recently declassified e-mail, written by Portland FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele in May 2004, also noted that the attorney, Brandon Mayfield, was a Muslim convert. And it said the FBI had a plan to arrest Mayfield 'if and when' his supposed link to the March 2004 terrorist attack 'gets outed by the media.'

Mayfield was arrested a day later under the material witness law, which allows the arrest and detention of witnesses who might flee before testifying in criminal cases. The FBI said at the time that fingerprints found on a bag of detonators near the bombings had been matched to Mayfield. Two weeks later, the FBI admitted the fingerprints belonged to someone else, freed Mayfield and apologized to him.

Mayfield, 38, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, alleging he was singled out as a Muslim, and that the government violated his constitutional rights by wrongly arresting him, as well as by wiretapping his house prior to his arrest. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who heads the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security, said: 'This e-mail corroborates what is already widely known - that when the Justice Department does not have probable cause to make a criminal arrest, but they have a suspicion that someone is involved in terrorist activities, one tactic is to arrest them as a material witness.' Such use of the material witness law raises constitutional problems,' he said, because the person can be held for long periods without access to legal protections that come with a normal arrest." Story... [Mark Godsey]

Lawsuit over Mob/FBI Frameup

The Associated Press reports that a man who died in prison after being framed by mobsters who were FBI informants has been posthumously exonerated by the Massachusetts courts. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/national/05mob.html

Judge Nancy Gertner of the District of Massachusetts recently ruled that a lawsuit against the United States based on the frame up may proceed.  Opinion here:http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/opinions/gertner/pdf/limonememosept04.pdf

Jack Chin