Nothing Better To Do

Restaurant Owner Shaken By Seizure Of Fish From Tank

FREEPORT, Maine --Armed game wardens seized 10 exotic fish from the tank of a popular Chinese restaurant, leaving its owner shaken and outraged.

"They treated me like a criminal," said Cuong Ly, who escaped from Vietnam 25 years ago. "I lived under communism and I felt like I'm back there again."

Ly, 45, said his pet koi were like family members and their confiscation in what he described as a heavy-handed raid made him "want to explode inside."

After obtaining a search warrant, two uniformed wardens and a biologist, accompanied by Freeport police, visited China Rose on Wednesday, taking away the 10 fish that ranged in size from 12 to 14 inches.

The koi had been on display since Ly opened the restaurant nearly 15 years ago and he credited them for bringing good luck to the business in a way akin to the arrangement of articles in the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui.

A few years ago, however, Maine outlawed the importation and possession of koi, and Ly was charged with importing freshwater fish without a permit.

"These fish can grow to be very large," said Sgt. Tim Spahr of the Maine Warden Service. "And when they grow out of their indoor habitat, they may be taken to a lake or a river or stream, and what you have is an invasive species that can compete with the native fisheries."

Spahr said wardens had acted in response to a tip but he could not comment on the specifics of Ly's case while it was pending. The warden said he personally had been involved in three koi seizure cases within the past year.

The confiscation, Ly said, followed two days of warden visits to the restaurant in downtown Freeport, down the street from L.L. Bean. On July 17, he said, a warden warned him that the fish were illegal and he could face a big fine.

"We thought they were joking. We had these fish for years and we didn't take them serious," Ly said.

A warden who arrived the next day with a video camera issued Ly a summons.

That incident, according to Ly, came during the business lunch period and he told the warden that he didn't have time to talk just then. The warden left, only to return the next morning to confiscate the fish.

"It looked like they were raiding the place for illegal drugs," he said. "They made it seem like a crime scene."

The koi were transported to the Little Shop of Pets in Portsmouth, N.H., which agreed to let Ly buy them back.

Ly, which planned to place his koi with a relative in Boston while awaiting the final outcome, said he could not bear losing the fish.

"It's like someone taking your dog or your cat away," he said. "These are like my children. I clean the tank every other week, keep them nice and healthy, clean and happy. As long as the fish are happy, I'm happy, and I do good business."

After the koi were removed, Ly placed another fish species, red parrots, in the restaurant tank because leaving it empty would give him an unlucky feeling.

Even so, he said bad luck struck the restaurant soon after the loss of the koi.

"The central air conditioning went down this weekend," he said. "It's an unlucky feeling already appearing in my business."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2006/07/24/restaurant_owner_shaken_by_seizure_of_fish_from_tank?mode=PF

Killer Cops Inspire Grave Concern in Las Vegas

A spate of recent shootings by Las Vegas police has community activists pushing for accountability they say is so lax cops have a virtually free hand to kill and abuse residents.

July 12 – A man is gunned down after a confrontation over a loud car stereo. A teenager is shot in the back as he tears down a street to escape his pursuers, hands bound.

In a rough city like Las Vegas, these incidents would ordinarily be the stuff of local crime blotters: except in all the incidents, the bullets came from police officers’ guns.

In recent months, a rash of shootings involving the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has sent chills through local communities. Yesterday, a coalition of civil-liberties and community-advocacy groups, including state and local branches of the NAACP, ACORN, the Mexican American Political Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, launched a campaign calling for an overhaul of what they view as a law-enforcement system rife with impunity.

This year, the Metro police have registered nineteen officer-involved shootings, six of which took place in the past month. The shootings resulted in ten deaths, and another death resulted from the use of a Taser electroshock weapon. The number of shootings has already exceeded the total for all of 2005, according to police statistics.

Activists have been especially incensed over the shooting death of 17-year-old murder suspect Swuave Lopez as he fled the police in handcuffs. The case was recently sealed by a special investigatory hearing that deemed the killing "justifiable" according to the state’s legal standards.

Activists say that some of the recent shootings seem more a product of poor judgment by police than imminent danger.
Dean Ishman, president of the Las Vegas NAACP and a retired police officer, told The NewStandard that while his organization understands that police may face difficult choices in extreme situations, some of the recent shootings seem more a product of poor judgment by police than imminent danger.

Ishman pointed to a July 4 shooting as a sign that police might be allowing minor disputes to escalate into tragedies. According to publicized police accounts, when an officer approached 31-year-old Tarance Deshon Hall to order him to turn down his blaring sound system and reached into his car, Hall pulled away, leaving the officer clinging to the side of the vehicle. A crash and a fatal shot from another officer followed.

"All of our young people drive around with their windows down and loud music," remarked Ishman. "Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard with a loud radio… should not result in anyone’s death."

Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU, said the spike in police shootings "should raise serious questions about the culture of the department, about the training, and… whether or not they are unnecessarily putting themselves in positions where using deadly force necessarily becomes an option."

But José Montoya, an officer and spokesperson for the Metro police, said that the decision to use lethal force is more complex than the public might assume. "It’s pretty easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback, and it’s difficult for us to predict what the criminal is going to do with their behavior," he told The NewStandard. "We’re in a situation where we have to react to that behavior."

Some argue that police-involved violence stems from bias and weak relations with the community: When there is little mutual trust or communication, police might be less hesitant to use force.
Montoya noted that the department continually reviews its practices and may internally discipline officers for misconduct. But, he said, these actions are "internal affairs" and as a policy are not publicly disclosed.

Others view police behavior from a different angle. "From our perspective… this is really just an issue about being scared of the police," said Will Ward, Nevada head organizer with the low-income grassroots advocacy group ACORN.

Ward argued that police-involved violence stems in part from bias and weak relations with the community. When there is little mutual trust or communication, he said, police might be less hesitant to use force in a confrontation, "rather than trying to calm someone down and take control of the situation, based on a greater understanding of this individual and the community that they come from."

For many cops patrolling local streets, Ward said, "because they don’t have that relationship, it’s less an individual – a real person – that they’re dealing with, and more just a suspect that they can shoot in the back, if they need to."

Ward said the local chapter of ACORN, with a membership he estimates at about 60 percent Latino and 30 percent black, had recently facilitated meetings between police and community members to encourage cooperation in addressing neighborhood crime. But with the surge in officer-involved shootings, he commented, despite police outreach efforts, "at the end of the day, what they’re doing is killing a lot of low-, moderate-income, and minority people… which doesn’t go very far in trying to build good relationships."

Processes like the coroner’s inquest may be unlikely to spur major reform, because laws on the use of deadly force tend to give police broad discretion.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that police can legally use deadly force against an individual as a "reasonable" means of preventing what the police consider serious potential harm. Nevada revised its criminal code in 1993 to allow deadly force against an escaped suspected felon if he or she "poses a threat of serious bodily harm to the officer or to others."

But activists maintain that current state law enables police to exercise deadly force in situations that do not justify it. They also say lawmakers should look toward the Metro police’s own code of conduct. The department’s policy allows the use of deadly force only "to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon who [the officer] has probable cause to believe will pose a significant threat to human life if escape should occur."

In Ishman’s view, this rule is actually more protective of potential victims than the state statute. "Unfortunately," he said, "our state laws don’t agree with the police policies, which would tend to uphold what we’re saying: that you don’t shoot someone in handcuffs who is running away. He is not an immediate threat to anyone’s life, and therefore he should not be shot. But our state law doesn’t say that."

The ACLU has also decried the public process for probing officer-involved homicides, known as a coroner’s inquest. Designed as a "fact-finding" hearing as opposed to a trial, the district attorney’s office orchestrates the process before a jury and questions witnesses without cross-examination. Representation of the deceased is limited to written questions submitted by family members and other advocates, which are filtered through a "hearing master" – a legal professional designated by the Clark County Commission.

Though the jury’s verdict is not binding on any government entity, the district attorney and the police department’s internal "use of force board" may act on the finding in deciding whether to prosecute or discipline an officer. However, of about 150 inquests over the past 30 years, only one was deemed criminally negligent, in 1976; the rest were "excusable," "justified" or otherwise not liable.

According to the Coroner’s office, blacks and Hispanics constitute more than half of the cases vetted through the inquest system since 2004, whereas they make up approximately 10 and 24 percent of the Las Vegas population.

The ACLU contends that the Lopez shooting inquest ignored troubling holes in the witness accounts.

The officer who fired the fatal shot, Shane Womack, testified that he was about 25 to 30 feet away from Lopez when he shot him. But another testifying officer recalled that Womack was just six to eight feet away.

The ACLU argues the discrepancy might have implications for judging whether officers acted appropriately. But the seven-member jury nevertheless ruled that the killing was "justified" following testimony by officers and other witnesses who spoke about Lopez’s alleged criminal involvement.

From a legal standpoint, said ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein, widely differing eyewitness accounts should have raised "some real questions about the necessity of shooting him." However, he said, "that wasn’t addressed at the coroner’s inquest. The coroner’s inquest was mainly about what a bad guy he was."

Oren Root, deputy director of the national law-enforcement policy think tank Police Assessment Resource Center, said that processes like the coroner’s inquest are unlikely to spur major reform, because laws on the use of deadly force tend to give police broad discretion.

"Lots of people who are upset at shootings put energies and hopes into seeing indictments of officers," Root said. "But the problem with that is that rarely is there enough evidence to charge officers with violating the law, based on what the law is.… The law gives officers a wide scope for using deadly force."

But Root noted that state legislatures have the authority to amend existing laws on deadly force to go beyond the minimum standard set by the Supreme Court. Individual jurisdictions, as well as police agencies, he said, could establish heavier restrictions on the circumstances in which officers may legally use lethal tactics.

The civil-liberties coalition formed in Las Vegas is pressing lawmakers to strengthen the use-of-force statutes, as well as mechanisms for investigating deaths that police officers cause.

The organizations say they want to see the Nevada criminal code tightened to make it harder to "justify" police killings. They are also calling for an overhaul of the coroner’s inquest process, to provide for fuller legal representation of the deceased and for an independent body to handle the proceedings, rather than the district attorney, who normally works closely with law enforcement.

Lichtenstein said that even if the inquest system serves simply to shed some light on deaths at the hands of police, the process could still be strengthened to empower communities. "Internal police investigations are generally not disclosed to the public, and it’s the police investigating themselves," he said. "These are situations with police who are supposed to be accountable to the public, and the coroner’s inquest is the only public inquiry. And it should be a real one, and a fair one, and a credible one. And it is not."

by Michelle Chen

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3405

No To Military Kangaroo Trials

Pentagon Breaks With Bush On Detentions

· Geneva convention covers Guantánamo detainees
· Supreme court ruling prompts policy switch

The Bush administration was facing the collapse of its detention regime in the war on terror yesterday after the Pentagon said for the first time that prisoners at Guantánamo and elsewhere in US military custody around the world would be granted the protections of the Geneva convention.

In a memo released yesterday, the Pentagon's second in command, Gordon England, broke with the Bush administration's insistence of the past five years that the rules of war do not apply to the fight against al-Qaida.

"I request that you promptly review all relevant directives, regulations, policies, practices and procedures" to bring them in line with protections under article three of the Geneva convention, Mr England wrote. Article three outlaws torture and humiliating and degrading treatment, and says prisoners are entitled to a hearing by a regularly constituted court. Yesterday's memo was a direct result of last month's supreme court decision which ruled that the Bush administration's military tribunals for the detainees were illegal.

The 5-3 decision was widely seen as a rebuke to a White House that had asserted since 2001 that Mr Bush had extraordinary powers as a wartime president, and that al-Qaida suspects were not entitled to the protections given to prisoners of war.

The Pentagon has insisted that it had treated detainees humanely. However, a report this week from the Centre for Constitutional Rights on conditions at Guantánamo describes interrogations of hooded prisoners with snarling dogs, sleep deprivation that lasted for months, solitary confinement for periods of up to a year, and threats of transfer to countries that practise torture.

While the Bush administration has said it will implement the supreme court decision, there were indications the new policy was only reluctantly endorsed by the White House. "We are going to do this in a way that is consistent with national security," the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, told reporters .

Other administration officials expressed reservations. In the first of three days of hearings in Congress on the treatment of detainees, Steven Bradbury, of the justice department's office of legal counsel, told senators the Geneva convention protections were ambiguous and poorly defined.

Those tensions dampened the response of civil rights organisations to the Pentagon announcement. "At the same time that the defence department is showing signs of heading in the direction of restoring the rule of law, the justice department is urging Congress to abandon it," said Anthony Romero, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Amid conflicting signals from the White House and the Pentagon, it was not immediately clear how the directive would affect interrogations at Guantánamo and other detention centres.

However, the move by the Pentagon could weigh on Congress as it considers new legislation following the supreme court decision. There has been growing unease among Republicans and Democrats that the administration might try to dilute the supreme court ruling by introducing legislation that would support its version of military tribunals to try Guantánamo detainees.

Yesterday the Senate judiciary committee opened three days of hearings on Guantánamo amid warnings to the administration that it would be mistaken to try to circumvent the decision.

Last week, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, criticised America's conduct in the global war on terror and said the west would be "doomed" unless it reclaimed "the moral high ground".

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Sir Richard singled out CIA rendition flights and the indefinite detention of prisoners in Guantánamo for rebuke, saying both policies would have been illegal under UK law.

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington, Oliver King and Simon Jeffery
Wednesday July 12, 2006
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1818413,00.html?gusrc=rss

Center for Constitutional Rights Report

Guantanamo Bay Detainees Face 'Systematic' Abuse: CCR Report

[JURIST] Prisoners at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] have been subjected to "systematic physical, psychological, sexual, medical and religious abuse," according to a report [PDF full text; synopsis] released Monday by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) [advocacy website]. CCR describes the 51-page "Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," as the most comprehensive primary-source account of abuse at the facility. The report cites declassified statements from detainees still at Guantanamo and from their lawyers. According to the report, Guantanamo detainees have been:

held in solitary confinement for periods exceeding a year;

deprived of sleep for days and weeks and, in at least one case, months;

exposed to prolonged temperature extremes;

beaten;

threatened with transfer to a foreign country, for torture;

tortured in foreign countries or at U.S. military bases abroad before transfer to Guantanamo;

sexually harassed and raped or threatened with rape;

deprived of medical treatment for serious conditions, or allowed treatment only on the condition that they "cooperate" with interrogators; and

routinely "short-shackled" (wrists and ankles bound together and to the floor) for hours and even days during interrogations.

The report concluded that the Bush administration's designation of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" allowed the US Department of Defense to avoid not only the guarantees for prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention [text] but also the Army Field Manual's restrictions on interrogation techniques [text].

The commander of the Guantanamo detention facility said last week that most prisoners no longer face regular questioning [JURIST report]. Also last week, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on the US to set a date [JURIST report] for closing Guantanamo. US officials, including President Bush, have said they would like to close the facility [JURIST report] but cannot until they ensure that detainees will not pose a security risk or face torture when returned to their native countries.

Joe Shaulis at 1:36 PM ET
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/07/guantanamo-bay-detainees-face.php

A Failing Grade For A `Broken System'

THE SAME WEEK Americans enjoy the 230th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, they might also consider the meaning of another, less celebratory, anniversary. Thirty years ago, on July 2, 1976, a divided US Supreme Court upheld Georgia, Florida, and Texas laws that promised an end to the arbitrariness and discrimination that had rendered capital punishment unconstitutional four years earlier.

After the Supreme Court's decision, the 38 states using the death penalty have employed different criteria to measure aggravating and mitigating circumstances. However, all empower juries to use such a formula to decide who deserves death and who does not. After 30 years, it is time to evaluate the impact of the laws.

Regardless of whether observers favor or oppose the death penalty, most agree with the conclusion of Columbia Law School's James Liebman , a leading capital punishment scholar, who has labeled the way we enforce death penalty laws a ``broken system."

And no wonder. Execution commonly occurs more than a decade after the crime that gave rise to it, long after the death has meaning for anyone outside the immediate circle of the case. Amazingly, it costs from $2 million to $5 million to take a convicted killer from trial to the death chamber. The justice system devotes enormous, if often dysfunctional, attention to capital cases, shortchanging the law enforcement resources available to the vastly larger number of serious, noncapital, cases.

And then there are the disputes between those who insist that executions effectively deter murder and those who claim they do not. Or between those who see race-based decision-making infecting every stage of the process, and those who say that such claims are not established by statistics. These differences are of long standing and they may never be resolved.

Of considerations that demand a failing grade for the American way of death sentencing, three stand out.

First, the rise of the innocence movement has produced well over 100 exonerations. When the Supreme Court decided to restore the death penalty in 1976, serious innocence claims were limited to rare instances of total criminal justice system collapse. Fueled by infallible DNA evidence but also encompassing defects in eyewitness identification and law enforcement malfeasance, doubts about death sentences are now understood to result from common and virtually ineradicable human failures.

Second, when the Supreme Court tried to rid us of capital punishment in 1972, it focused on arbitrariness. As Justice Potter Stewart famously put it, death sentences were ``cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual" -- only a capriciously selected, random few, not fundamentally different in character than those sent to prison, were actually executed.

Today, despite the new laws, little has changed. Washington State's Green River Killer took at least 48 lives, but because he knew where his victims were buried he plea bargained to save his life. The brutal Kansas serial murderer of 10 known as the BTK (``bind, torture and kill") strangler received only multiple life sentences.

Yet we still make room for the execution of men like Chicano laborer Ruben Cantu who, based on the tireless investigation of Houston Chronicle reporter Lise Olsen, turns out to have been sent to his death because of the perjury of an eyewitness. More fortunate was Ray Krone, who spent four years on Arizona's death row and six more in prison before release because the state stubbornly refused to turn over for testing the evidence that ultimately exonerated him and pointed to a man who should have been the prime suspect. These are not isolated cases; they illustrate how difficult it is to make the tough legal and nuanced moral choices that fair and constitutional death sentencing should require.

Last, what we get instead is a distracting series of courtroom passion plays -- the latest involving convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui -- that stoke the fantasy that we are being protected by executing what is, in reality, a tiny percentage of killers. In 2005, only 60 individuals were executed, despite the fact that perhaps 15,000 murders are committed each year.

It is striking how relatively little we talk about reducing lethal violence and how little energy politicians provide to policies targeted at containing it -- youth employment, family support, drug treatment, handgun suppression -- before it happens.

The policies in question are controversial but debate over whether they can make us more secure is muted while capital punishment is a show that never ends.

By Michael Meltsner | July 2, 2006

Michael Meltsner, a professor of law at Northeastern University, is author of ``The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/07/02/a_failing_grade_for_a_broken_system/
Globe Newspaper Company.