By FRANK RICH
LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?
A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.
The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)
As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr. Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.
That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."
It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.
These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.
Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr. Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr. Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."
But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr. Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Mr. Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr. Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.
The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.
Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.
WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.
Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Governor Schwarzenegger Vetoes Chu Bill to Protect Public From Released Sex Offenders
WHY ??????
SACRAMENTO, CA – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bipartisan legislation by Assembly Member Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Assembly Member Todd Spitzer to create a California Sex Offender Management Board that was passed by the Assembly on a 72-0 vote.
Assembly Bill 632 would have established a Sex Offender Management Board to address any issues, concerns, and problems related to the community management of the state's released adult sex offenders.
The appointed unpaid expert members of the California Sex Offender Management Board would have studied and assessed current sex offender management practices and made recommendations to improve management practices for adult sex offenders under supervision in the community, with the goal of enhancing community safety.
“I am greatly disappointed that the Governor vetoed this important public safety bill. Over 100,000 registered sex offenders currently live in various communities throughout California. The multitude of state agencies involved in the release of sex offenders do not sufficiently coordinate or communicate with one another,” said Chu, “There is only a short window of time when sex offenders are supervised once they are released from prison. The state needs to have a well coordinated and effective system to control the behavior of sex offenders and prevent recidivism during this critical period following release.”
SACRAMENTO, CA – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed bipartisan legislation by Assembly Member Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Assembly Member Todd Spitzer to create a California Sex Offender Management Board that was passed by the Assembly on a 72-0 vote.
Assembly Bill 632 would have established a Sex Offender Management Board to address any issues, concerns, and problems related to the community management of the state's released adult sex offenders.
The appointed unpaid expert members of the California Sex Offender Management Board would have studied and assessed current sex offender management practices and made recommendations to improve management practices for adult sex offenders under supervision in the community, with the goal of enhancing community safety.
“I am greatly disappointed that the Governor vetoed this important public safety bill. Over 100,000 registered sex offenders currently live in various communities throughout California. The multitude of state agencies involved in the release of sex offenders do not sufficiently coordinate or communicate with one another,” said Chu, “There is only a short window of time when sex offenders are supervised once they are released from prison. The state needs to have a well coordinated and effective system to control the behavior of sex offenders and prevent recidivism during this critical period following release.”
THE CALIFORNIA RECALL: THE LEADING REPUBLICAN; Sexual Accusations Prompt an Apology By Schwarzenegger
By CHARLIE LEDUFF AND DEAN E. MURPHY (NYT)
1461 wordsPublished: October 3, 2003
Correction Appended
SAN DIEGO, Oct. 2 - Faced with new accusations of sexual misconduct, Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged on Thursday that ''wherever there is smoke there is fire'' and apologized for having ''behaved badly sometimes'' toward women.
Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has been surging in the polls in California's recall election, issued the apology here at the beginning of a statewide bus tour. The six-bus tour, with international news crews in tow, is part of the actor's final push to replace Gov. Gray Davis.
Mr. Schwarzenegger made his apology first thing on what swiftly turned into the most tumultuous day of his brief campaign. In the afternoon he was facing questions about a 1997 book proposal that quoted him saying in 1975 that he had admired Hitler. In an interview, he said he didn't remember the comment and said he despised ''anything that Hitler stands for.'' [Page A20.]
His statements on Thursday were the first during the extraordinary recall campaign in which Mr. Schwarzenegger expressed remorse for sexual indiscretions, having previously played down accusations of groping and mistreatment of women as exaggerations, mistruths or provocations.
''Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets,'' the actor and former bodybuilder said, ''and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful. But now I recognize that I have offended people. And to those people that I have offended I want to say to them, I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do.''
The announcement came in response to a front-page article in The Los Angeles Times on Thursday about six women who said they were the victims of unwanted sexual advances by Mr. Schwarzenegger when they came into contact with him on movie sets, in studio offices or at a gymnasium, among other places.
Mr. Schwarzenegger's attitude toward women has been an issue since the start of his campaign. But the new accusations, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's reply, set off a maelstrom of protest from his critics, including women's groups, Democrats and Arianna Huffington, who dropped out of the race this week but had repeatedly clashed with Mr. Schwarzenegger during a debate last week.
''I consider his campaign a very expensively produced masquerade,'' Ms. Huffington, who was running as an independent, said, 'the question is will the mask be removed before the election or after. I believe what this story is going to do is really bring to question this big issue of trust and credibility. If his word and image are consistently proven to be false, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.''
The Los Angeles Times reported that three of the women said Mr. Schwarzenegger had grabbed their breasts. Another said he reached under her skirt. A fifth said he tried to strip off her bikini in a hotel elevator. The sixth said Mr. Schwarzenegger pulled her to his lap and asked if she was experienced in a particular sexual act. The accusations covered a 25-year period, ending in 2000.
Though some of the accusations had been published elsewhere, including in an article in Premiere magazine in 2001, the Los Angeles Times account included fresh details and named two of the women.
In apologizing on Thursday, Mr. Schwarzenegger denounced the Los Angeles Times article as ''trash politics'' and did not admit to any of the specific accusations made by the women. ''A lot of those that you see in the stories is not true, but at the same time I have to tell you that I always say that wherever there is smoke there is fire,'' he said. ''That is true.''
Until now, accusations of sexual misconduct involving Mr. Schwarzenegger have held little sway with voters. But the issue has shadowed the campaign since Day 1. In announcing his candidacy on Aug. 6 on television on ''The Tonight Show,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger was the first to raise the subject.
''I know they're going to throw everything at me, and they're going to, you know, say that I have no experience and that I'm a womanizer and that I'm a terrible, terrible guy,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger said then.
In August, when stories began to surface about an interview he had given in 1977 to Oui magazine, in which he bragged about group sex and talked about the benefits of drugs and sex before bodybuilding competitions, Mr. Schwarzenegger seemed to have been caught off-guard. He changed his explanation over the course of two days.
When first asked about the interview on a talk radio show in Sacramento, Mr. Schwarzenegger chuckled and said he ''never lived my life to be a politician.''
He added: ''Obviously, I've made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was.'' The next day at a news conference, he backtracked. ''I have no idea what you're talking about,'' he said. ''I have no memory of any of the articles I did 20 or 30 years ago.'' Later, he said he made up the episodes to promote a documentary about himself and to advance his sport.
''There were only a few hundred gymnasiums in America at the time when I came over here,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger said on ''Hardball With Chris Matthews'' on MSNBC on Sept. 3. ''Now there are hundreds of thousands. So we were very successful with our campaign to promote bodybuilding, to promote fitness, the health industry and all of that.''
The decision to apologize was a calculated move by Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign to prevent the latest accusations from derailing the campaign on the last weekend of the recall race, aides said. Recent polls have shown Mr. Schwarzenegger emerging as the favorite in the election on Tuesday and picking up support among women.
But even as Mr. Schwarzenegger apologized, some of his aides and allies took a different tack, denouncing the Los Angeles Times story and questioning the credibility of the women interviewed.
''I think the behavior of the L.A. Times has been unbecoming of a newspaper,'' Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who bankrolled the recall signature gathering, said in a radio interview from the Schwarzenegger bus convoy. ''They have used dozens of reporters to constantly find new and creative ways to be disingenuous about the recall and anyone who stood up for it.''
Democrats and women's group seized the issue, holding news conferences and declaring Mr. Schwarzenegger unfit to govern. And as Mr. Schwarzenegger's convoy rolled from San Diego to Costa Mesa to San Bernardino to Los Angeles, protesters stole some of his thunder.
At one stop, Gail Escobar, a waitress in Santa Monica, accused Mr. Schwarzenegger of threatening to rape her 25 years ago. It was impossible to verify the accusation by Ms. Escobar, who was joined by a representative of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which supports Mr. Davis. Nonetheless, the woman was mobbed by reporters.
Mr. Schwarzenegger was not without defenders. Some yelled, ''Lesbian!'' Still others hollered, ''Liar, liar.''
Mr. Schwarzenegger tried to stay above the fray, focusing on a hemorrhaging budget, jobs leaving the state and a burdensome automobile tax. In one campaign stunt in Costa Mesa, Mr. Schwarzenegger dropped a wrecking ball on an automobile in protest of a 200 percent increase in the vehicle license fee.
With nearly 200 reporters traveling with Mr. Schwarzenegger and two unsanctioned busloads of lesser candidates hounding him, his staff tried to tamp down a story that was being carried live to an audience well beyond California.
''Some of the things in the article are not true,'' said Todd Harris, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. ''Some are and he's apologized for that. He's addressed it directly and we're going to move on.''
Mr. Harris and other Republicans said they were curious about the timing of the article, criticizing Mr. Davis but stopping short of linking him to it. The Los Angles Times said none of the women had been identified by Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign rivals, and Davis campaign officials denied any involvement.
Correction: October 4, 2003, Saturday An article yesterday about Arnold Schwarzenegger's day of campaigning gave an incorrect figure in some copies for the increase in California's tax on vehicle sales, which he protested during a stop in Costa Mesa. It was 200 percent, not 300 percent.
Photos: Gail Escobar spoke to the press yesterday in Costa Mesa, Calif., after she accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of threatening to rape her 25 years ago. Defenders of Mr. Schwarzenegger yelled at her as she spoke. (Photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times); Arnold Schwarzenegger, at a campaign stop yesterday in San Diego, acknowledged ''behaving badly sometimes'' toward women. (Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times)(pg. A20)
By CHARLIE LEDUFF AND DEAN E. MURPHY (NYT)
1461 wordsPublished: October 3, 2003
Correction Appended
SAN DIEGO, Oct. 2 - Faced with new accusations of sexual misconduct, Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged on Thursday that ''wherever there is smoke there is fire'' and apologized for having ''behaved badly sometimes'' toward women.
Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has been surging in the polls in California's recall election, issued the apology here at the beginning of a statewide bus tour. The six-bus tour, with international news crews in tow, is part of the actor's final push to replace Gov. Gray Davis.
Mr. Schwarzenegger made his apology first thing on what swiftly turned into the most tumultuous day of his brief campaign. In the afternoon he was facing questions about a 1997 book proposal that quoted him saying in 1975 that he had admired Hitler. In an interview, he said he didn't remember the comment and said he despised ''anything that Hitler stands for.'' [Page A20.]
His statements on Thursday were the first during the extraordinary recall campaign in which Mr. Schwarzenegger expressed remorse for sexual indiscretions, having previously played down accusations of groping and mistreatment of women as exaggerations, mistruths or provocations.
''Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets,'' the actor and former bodybuilder said, ''and I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful. But now I recognize that I have offended people. And to those people that I have offended I want to say to them, I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do.''
The announcement came in response to a front-page article in The Los Angeles Times on Thursday about six women who said they were the victims of unwanted sexual advances by Mr. Schwarzenegger when they came into contact with him on movie sets, in studio offices or at a gymnasium, among other places.
Mr. Schwarzenegger's attitude toward women has been an issue since the start of his campaign. But the new accusations, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's reply, set off a maelstrom of protest from his critics, including women's groups, Democrats and Arianna Huffington, who dropped out of the race this week but had repeatedly clashed with Mr. Schwarzenegger during a debate last week.
''I consider his campaign a very expensively produced masquerade,'' Ms. Huffington, who was running as an independent, said, 'the question is will the mask be removed before the election or after. I believe what this story is going to do is really bring to question this big issue of trust and credibility. If his word and image are consistently proven to be false, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.''
The Los Angeles Times reported that three of the women said Mr. Schwarzenegger had grabbed their breasts. Another said he reached under her skirt. A fifth said he tried to strip off her bikini in a hotel elevator. The sixth said Mr. Schwarzenegger pulled her to his lap and asked if she was experienced in a particular sexual act. The accusations covered a 25-year period, ending in 2000.
Though some of the accusations had been published elsewhere, including in an article in Premiere magazine in 2001, the Los Angeles Times account included fresh details and named two of the women.
In apologizing on Thursday, Mr. Schwarzenegger denounced the Los Angeles Times article as ''trash politics'' and did not admit to any of the specific accusations made by the women. ''A lot of those that you see in the stories is not true, but at the same time I have to tell you that I always say that wherever there is smoke there is fire,'' he said. ''That is true.''
Until now, accusations of sexual misconduct involving Mr. Schwarzenegger have held little sway with voters. But the issue has shadowed the campaign since Day 1. In announcing his candidacy on Aug. 6 on television on ''The Tonight Show,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger was the first to raise the subject.
''I know they're going to throw everything at me, and they're going to, you know, say that I have no experience and that I'm a womanizer and that I'm a terrible, terrible guy,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger said then.
In August, when stories began to surface about an interview he had given in 1977 to Oui magazine, in which he bragged about group sex and talked about the benefits of drugs and sex before bodybuilding competitions, Mr. Schwarzenegger seemed to have been caught off-guard. He changed his explanation over the course of two days.
When first asked about the interview on a talk radio show in Sacramento, Mr. Schwarzenegger chuckled and said he ''never lived my life to be a politician.''
He added: ''Obviously, I've made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was.'' The next day at a news conference, he backtracked. ''I have no idea what you're talking about,'' he said. ''I have no memory of any of the articles I did 20 or 30 years ago.'' Later, he said he made up the episodes to promote a documentary about himself and to advance his sport.
''There were only a few hundred gymnasiums in America at the time when I came over here,'' Mr. Schwarzenegger said on ''Hardball With Chris Matthews'' on MSNBC on Sept. 3. ''Now there are hundreds of thousands. So we were very successful with our campaign to promote bodybuilding, to promote fitness, the health industry and all of that.''
The decision to apologize was a calculated move by Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign to prevent the latest accusations from derailing the campaign on the last weekend of the recall race, aides said. Recent polls have shown Mr. Schwarzenegger emerging as the favorite in the election on Tuesday and picking up support among women.
But even as Mr. Schwarzenegger apologized, some of his aides and allies took a different tack, denouncing the Los Angeles Times story and questioning the credibility of the women interviewed.
''I think the behavior of the L.A. Times has been unbecoming of a newspaper,'' Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who bankrolled the recall signature gathering, said in a radio interview from the Schwarzenegger bus convoy. ''They have used dozens of reporters to constantly find new and creative ways to be disingenuous about the recall and anyone who stood up for it.''
Democrats and women's group seized the issue, holding news conferences and declaring Mr. Schwarzenegger unfit to govern. And as Mr. Schwarzenegger's convoy rolled from San Diego to Costa Mesa to San Bernardino to Los Angeles, protesters stole some of his thunder.
At one stop, Gail Escobar, a waitress in Santa Monica, accused Mr. Schwarzenegger of threatening to rape her 25 years ago. It was impossible to verify the accusation by Ms. Escobar, who was joined by a representative of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which supports Mr. Davis. Nonetheless, the woman was mobbed by reporters.
Mr. Schwarzenegger was not without defenders. Some yelled, ''Lesbian!'' Still others hollered, ''Liar, liar.''
Mr. Schwarzenegger tried to stay above the fray, focusing on a hemorrhaging budget, jobs leaving the state and a burdensome automobile tax. In one campaign stunt in Costa Mesa, Mr. Schwarzenegger dropped a wrecking ball on an automobile in protest of a 200 percent increase in the vehicle license fee.
With nearly 200 reporters traveling with Mr. Schwarzenegger and two unsanctioned busloads of lesser candidates hounding him, his staff tried to tamp down a story that was being carried live to an audience well beyond California.
''Some of the things in the article are not true,'' said Todd Harris, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. ''Some are and he's apologized for that. He's addressed it directly and we're going to move on.''
Mr. Harris and other Republicans said they were curious about the timing of the article, criticizing Mr. Davis but stopping short of linking him to it. The Los Angles Times said none of the women had been identified by Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign rivals, and Davis campaign officials denied any involvement.
Correction: October 4, 2003, Saturday An article yesterday about Arnold Schwarzenegger's day of campaigning gave an incorrect figure in some copies for the increase in California's tax on vehicle sales, which he protested during a stop in Costa Mesa. It was 200 percent, not 300 percent.
Photos: Gail Escobar spoke to the press yesterday in Costa Mesa, Calif., after she accused Arnold Schwarzenegger of threatening to rape her 25 years ago. Defenders of Mr. Schwarzenegger yelled at her as she spoke. (Photo by Monica Almeida/The New York Times); Arnold Schwarzenegger, at a campaign stop yesterday in San Diego, acknowledged ''behaving badly sometimes'' toward women. (Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times)(pg. A20)
The Field of 2008
Bernard Kerik has no character. He is a political animal that gets away with any and all corruption he involves himself for profit and/or pleasure.
Kerik Pleads Guilty in Case Involving Gifts and a Loan
By JOHN HOLUSHA and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, pleaded guilty today to two misdemeanor charges as the result of accepting tens of thousands of dollars of gifts and a loan while a city official in the late 1990's.
He entered the pleas, one to a violation of the city charter and the other of the city administrative code, in a Bronx courtroom before Justice John B. Collins and was sentenced to a total of $221,000 in fines. He was accompanied by three lawyers and three supporters for the proceeding, which lasted about 10 minutes.
Outside, he said he should have been more "focused and sophisticated" in dealing with contractors who worked on his Bronx apartment.
"From this moment on, it's back to work," he said before getting into a black BMW and driving south on the Grand Concourse toward Manhattan.
The pleas completed a stunning fall from grace for a public official who rose in a decade's time from a third-grade police detective to police commissioner and a nomination as secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Kerik accepted the subsidized work on his Bronx apartment in the late 1990's, while he was correction commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to investigators.
Investigators said Mr. Kerik paid about $30,000 for renovations worth about $200,000, a violation of the city's administrative code. The work was performed by an affiliate of a construction company that the city has accused of having ties to organized crime.
The company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, had sought Mr. Kerik's assistance in obtaining a license from the city to operate a construction debris transfer station and held meetings in Mr. Kerik's office. The license was ultimately not granted.
One of Mr. Kerik's pleas was for accepting the gift of the subsidized remodeling. The other was for failing to report a loan of $29,000 from a friend for a down payment on the apartment.
Mr. Kerik, a former driver and bodyguard for Mr. Giuliani while he was campaigning for mayor, was named police commissioner in 2000 and was in that post on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked.
On the basis of his performance then, President Bush nominated him to be the head of the Homeland Security Department in December 2004. But he withdrew a week later, citing possible tax problems related to the family's nanny.
Mr. Kerik also left Mr. Giuliani's private consulting firm within days of his failed federal nomination. He has been doing independent security consulting work since then, most recently in Jordan.
Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, pleaded guilty today to two misdemeanor charges as the result of accepting tens of thousands of dollars of gifts and a loan while a city official in the late 1990's.
He entered the pleas, one to a violation of the city charter and the other of the city administrative code, in a Bronx courtroom before Justice John B. Collins and was sentenced to a total of $221,000 in fines. He was accompanied by three lawyers and three supporters for the proceeding, which lasted about 10 minutes.
Outside, he said he should have been more "focused and sophisticated" in dealing with contractors who worked on his Bronx apartment.
"From this moment on, it's back to work," he said before getting into a black BMW and driving south on the Grand Concourse toward Manhattan.
The pleas completed a stunning fall from grace for a public official who rose in a decade's time from a third-grade police detective to police commissioner and a nomination as secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Kerik accepted the subsidized work on his Bronx apartment in the late 1990's, while he was correction commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to investigators.
Investigators said Mr. Kerik paid about $30,000 for renovations worth about $200,000, a violation of the city's administrative code. The work was performed by an affiliate of a construction company that the city has accused of having ties to organized crime.
The company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, had sought Mr. Kerik's assistance in obtaining a license from the city to operate a construction debris transfer station and held meetings in Mr. Kerik's office. The license was ultimately not granted.
One of Mr. Kerik's pleas was for accepting the gift of the subsidized remodeling. The other was for failing to report a loan of $29,000 from a friend for a down payment on the apartment.
Mr. Kerik, a former driver and bodyguard for Mr. Giuliani while he was campaigning for mayor, was named police commissioner in 2000 and was in that post on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center was attacked.
On the basis of his performance then, President Bush nominated him to be the head of the Homeland Security Department in December 2004. But he withdrew a week later, citing possible tax problems related to the family's nanny.
Mr. Kerik also left Mr. Giuliani's private consulting firm within days of his failed federal nomination. He has been doing independent security consulting work since then, most recently in Jordan.
The Tough Guy Tumbles
A Tough Guy Tumbles
He's run a cop shop and dodged bullets in Iraq. But the trail he left behind helped keep him from Bush's cabinet
By Mark Hosenball, Charles Gasparino and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Dec. 20 issue - Richard (Bo) Dietl and Bernard Kerik have long been familiar figures in the flashy underside of New York City night life. They could be seen swaggering into Rao's, an exclusive Italian restaurant in Harlem, where mobsters and models and Wall Street masters of the universe drink shots and swap boasts. Both men were up-from-nothing tough guys, former cops who now wore silk-threaded suits and thin-soled loafers. Sometimes Bo and Bernie were buddies, sometimes not. Lately they have been friends again. Bo is in the security business; Bernie had just been nominated as secretary of Homeland Security by President Bush. Never know when a friend might come in handy.
So Dietl had taken to the airwaves, talking up what a great stand-up guy Bernie Kerik was on "Imus in the Morning" and CNBC's "Kudlow and Cramer." His friend Kerik called to thank him for the kind words, but he seemed worried. "A lot of people are trying to f--- with me," Kerik said, as Dietl recalls.
Apparently so. Within three days, Kerik was done for, compelled to withdraw his name as Homeland Security czar. For the record, the proximate cause was a nanny problem: in going over his financial records, Kerik informed the White House, he had discovered that his housekeeper/nanny appeared to be an illegal immigrant and that he had failed to pay all the necessary taxes for her. Since the Homeland Security Department runs the U.S. immigration agencies, it wouldn't do to have the secretary employing illegal aliens.
But few Washington or New York insiders believed that Kerik's problems stopped there. On his way up, Kerik had shown an inclination to make his own rules, and he had made some powerful enemies. The very qualities that appealed to President Bush—a willingness to get things done, and damn the naysayers—were bound to come back to haunt Kerik, especially in the equally vicious worlds of the New York glitterati and the Washington bureaucracy.
Consider, for instance, Kerik's relationship with Judith Regan. A flamboyant, stiletto-heeled—and highly successful—book publisher, Regan published Kerik's sensational memoir, which begins with the scene of Kerik's mother, a prostitute, murdered in her pimp's bed. Occasional workout partners, Kerik and Regan became close friends. But their relationship soured, and Regan told friends Kerik had hounded her, and that she hired a bodyguard. Kerik's lawyer confirmed that Regan and Kerik were friends, but says "there was nothing untoward about their relationship." The lawyer called the allegation that Kerik had hounded her "absurd."
Regan declined to comment.
She also told NEWSWEEK she had never been questioned by the White House or FBI when Kerik was being considered for the Homeland Security job over the past month. White House officials are defensive about the vetting process. They say they depended on Kerik to be forthcoming, and he failed to warn them of the nanny problem. (Kerik claims he himself was unaware of the problem until last week.) But some administration officials acknowledge that the president's predilections work against a careful review. Bush hates leaks and enjoys popping surprise announcements on the press. He liked the idea of Kerik—the self-made tough guy—and he dismissed as gossip or press carping newspaper stories about Kerik's bending the rules.
The White House seemed to shrug off stories of Kerik's financial dealings a little too easily, like the $6 million he made—without investing a penny—by cashing in his stock options in a company that made stun guns sold to the government. Then there was the arrest warrant. In 1998, Kerik was sued for failing to pay about $5,000 in maintenance fees on a condo he owned in New Jersey. When Kerik failed to respond to a subpoena, NEWSWEEK learned, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest. A Kerik spokesman later said Kerik paid the fees and the warrant was withdrawn, but the existence of the warrant was news to the White House and Kerik's handlers.
Kerik's somewhat cavalier attitude is best captured by his time in Iraq. After the invasion in the spring of 2003, Kerik was sent to Baghdad to organize the Iraqi police. But Kerik didn't seem to show much interest in Iraqis, said a senior U.S. official who worked with him. He appeared to enjoy going on night raids against "bad guys" with some South African mercenaries who were serving as bodyguards to U.S. officials. On his screen saver, Kerik had a photo of a big house he had just bought in New Jersey that he said was across the street from former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms's. Kerik told his colleagues he planned to be in Baghdad for three months while the house was undergoing renovations. "So," the official says he told Kerik, "you're here because you needed a place to go while they're doing renovations on your house." Kerik grinned and cocked a finger as if to say, "You got it." A spokesman for Kerik said that story was "absurd" and that Kerik was a patriot.
With Evan Thomas and Kathryn Williams
He's run a cop shop and dodged bullets in Iraq. But the trail he left behind helped keep him from Bush's cabinet
By Mark Hosenball, Charles Gasparino and Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Dec. 20 issue - Richard (Bo) Dietl and Bernard Kerik have long been familiar figures in the flashy underside of New York City night life. They could be seen swaggering into Rao's, an exclusive Italian restaurant in Harlem, where mobsters and models and Wall Street masters of the universe drink shots and swap boasts. Both men were up-from-nothing tough guys, former cops who now wore silk-threaded suits and thin-soled loafers. Sometimes Bo and Bernie were buddies, sometimes not. Lately they have been friends again. Bo is in the security business; Bernie had just been nominated as secretary of Homeland Security by President Bush. Never know when a friend might come in handy.
So Dietl had taken to the airwaves, talking up what a great stand-up guy Bernie Kerik was on "Imus in the Morning" and CNBC's "Kudlow and Cramer." His friend Kerik called to thank him for the kind words, but he seemed worried. "A lot of people are trying to f--- with me," Kerik said, as Dietl recalls.
Apparently so. Within three days, Kerik was done for, compelled to withdraw his name as Homeland Security czar. For the record, the proximate cause was a nanny problem: in going over his financial records, Kerik informed the White House, he had discovered that his housekeeper/nanny appeared to be an illegal immigrant and that he had failed to pay all the necessary taxes for her. Since the Homeland Security Department runs the U.S. immigration agencies, it wouldn't do to have the secretary employing illegal aliens.
But few Washington or New York insiders believed that Kerik's problems stopped there. On his way up, Kerik had shown an inclination to make his own rules, and he had made some powerful enemies. The very qualities that appealed to President Bush—a willingness to get things done, and damn the naysayers—were bound to come back to haunt Kerik, especially in the equally vicious worlds of the New York glitterati and the Washington bureaucracy.
Consider, for instance, Kerik's relationship with Judith Regan. A flamboyant, stiletto-heeled—and highly successful—book publisher, Regan published Kerik's sensational memoir, which begins with the scene of Kerik's mother, a prostitute, murdered in her pimp's bed. Occasional workout partners, Kerik and Regan became close friends. But their relationship soured, and Regan told friends Kerik had hounded her, and that she hired a bodyguard. Kerik's lawyer confirmed that Regan and Kerik were friends, but says "there was nothing untoward about their relationship." The lawyer called the allegation that Kerik had hounded her "absurd."
Regan declined to comment.
She also told NEWSWEEK she had never been questioned by the White House or FBI when Kerik was being considered for the Homeland Security job over the past month. White House officials are defensive about the vetting process. They say they depended on Kerik to be forthcoming, and he failed to warn them of the nanny problem. (Kerik claims he himself was unaware of the problem until last week.) But some administration officials acknowledge that the president's predilections work against a careful review. Bush hates leaks and enjoys popping surprise announcements on the press. He liked the idea of Kerik—the self-made tough guy—and he dismissed as gossip or press carping newspaper stories about Kerik's bending the rules.
The White House seemed to shrug off stories of Kerik's financial dealings a little too easily, like the $6 million he made—without investing a penny—by cashing in his stock options in a company that made stun guns sold to the government. Then there was the arrest warrant. In 1998, Kerik was sued for failing to pay about $5,000 in maintenance fees on a condo he owned in New Jersey. When Kerik failed to respond to a subpoena, NEWSWEEK learned, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest. A Kerik spokesman later said Kerik paid the fees and the warrant was withdrawn, but the existence of the warrant was news to the White House and Kerik's handlers.
Kerik's somewhat cavalier attitude is best captured by his time in Iraq. After the invasion in the spring of 2003, Kerik was sent to Baghdad to organize the Iraqi police. But Kerik didn't seem to show much interest in Iraqis, said a senior U.S. official who worked with him. He appeared to enjoy going on night raids against "bad guys" with some South African mercenaries who were serving as bodyguards to U.S. officials. On his screen saver, Kerik had a photo of a big house he had just bought in New Jersey that he said was across the street from former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms's. Kerik told his colleagues he planned to be in Baghdad for three months while the house was undergoing renovations. "So," the official says he told Kerik, "you're here because you needed a place to go while they're doing renovations on your house." Kerik grinned and cocked a finger as if to say, "You got it." A spokesman for Kerik said that story was "absurd" and that Kerik was a patriot.
With Evan Thomas and Kathryn Williams
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The Repeal of Habeas Corpus
Posted on Fri, Mar. 07, 2003
Death of DNA law seen as fiascoExperts: It saves innocent inmates
BY WANDA J. DeMARZO
wdemarzo@herald.com
A panel of experts sees a legal train wreck coming this fall when a two-year statute of limitations runs out on raising DNA challenges to Death Row convictions.
Florida lawmakers created the two-year window of opportunity in 2001 after the exoneration of Frank Lee Smith, a Broward man who died of cancer while appealing his death sentence.
But the DNA challenges by inmates have been bogged down by disagreements over how the tests should be conducted.
There should be no time limit on justice, critics say.
'If we later find out that we executed an innocent person, we can't dig up their grave and say `Whoops! Sorry, we made a mistake,' '' said former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan. Kogan was one of six legal experts participating in a discussion on wrongful convictions Thursday at the University of Miami Law School.
Others on the panel included former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Miami-Dade County Public Defender Bennett Brummer, attorney Bill Laswell with the Broward Capital Crimes group, Death Row attorney Martin McClain and Catherine Arcabascio, a professor at Nova Southeastern University's Innocence Project.
Inmates say they want independent examination of the DNA. Agencies, like the Broward Sheriff's Office, say they should do the DNA tests.
The panel addressed several issues, including the death penalty and the governor's plan to cut funding for an agency that defends Death Row inmates.
But one of the most pressing issues on the table was the rapidly approaching October deadline for DNA testing.
The panelists wants state legislators to extend the deadline. Such testing has exonerated 123 people nationwide in the past decade, according to the nationally known Cardozo Innocence Project, based at Yeshiva University's Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
''If 123 people have been exonerated in the last 10 years, think of how many more innocent people may be incarcerated,'' Reno said.
Of those 123 exonerations, 25 are from Florida.
One of those was Frank Lee Smith, who died 11 months before DNA cleared him of the 1985 rape and murder of 8-year-old Shandra Whitehead, McClain said.
Under the two-year time limit, Smith and Jerry Frank Townsend -- convicted of murderer but later freed by DNA testing -- wouldn't have had a chance to get the genetic testing that proved they were not guilty.
Townsend walked out of prison after 22 years.
Brummer said there is always a chance of error where scrutiny is lacking.
In the last two years, the Florida Innocence Project at Nova Southeastern Law School has received more than 600 cases of prisoners claiming innocence.
Project members have identified 150 of those as DNA cases. But, they say, there's not enough time to review cases before the fall deadline.
Nova has handed an additional 400 cases to the Innocence Project in New York.
''There shouldn't be a time limit on justice,'' said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Cardozo Innocence Project.
Reno has volunteered her services to help with the backlog of Florida cases. Officials plan to hire more staff.
The Cardozo and Florida Innocence Projects are launching a campaign in Tallahassee to lobby legislators to extend the DNA deadline.
'Do you know how hard it is for me to tell my clients `It's over. You're going to die in a couple of hours,' '' said McClain, an attorney for the Capitol Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that has overturned sentences for Death Row inmates. ``Without that extension many of them will be executed.''
The future of the state agency is uncertain. Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed eliminating the agency, suggesting he can save $3.8 million by replacing it with a ''registry'' of private attorneys.
Laswell called the governor's plan is ``sheer stupidity.''
''All the credentials those lawyers need are a second-grade education,'' Laswell said. ``They're not going to be Death Row qualified and it will end up costing a lot more.''
Death of DNA law seen as fiascoExperts: It saves innocent inmates
BY WANDA J. DeMARZO
wdemarzo@herald.com
A panel of experts sees a legal train wreck coming this fall when a two-year statute of limitations runs out on raising DNA challenges to Death Row convictions.
Florida lawmakers created the two-year window of opportunity in 2001 after the exoneration of Frank Lee Smith, a Broward man who died of cancer while appealing his death sentence.
But the DNA challenges by inmates have been bogged down by disagreements over how the tests should be conducted.
There should be no time limit on justice, critics say.
'If we later find out that we executed an innocent person, we can't dig up their grave and say `Whoops! Sorry, we made a mistake,' '' said former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan. Kogan was one of six legal experts participating in a discussion on wrongful convictions Thursday at the University of Miami Law School.
Others on the panel included former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Miami-Dade County Public Defender Bennett Brummer, attorney Bill Laswell with the Broward Capital Crimes group, Death Row attorney Martin McClain and Catherine Arcabascio, a professor at Nova Southeastern University's Innocence Project.
Inmates say they want independent examination of the DNA. Agencies, like the Broward Sheriff's Office, say they should do the DNA tests.
The panel addressed several issues, including the death penalty and the governor's plan to cut funding for an agency that defends Death Row inmates.
But one of the most pressing issues on the table was the rapidly approaching October deadline for DNA testing.
The panelists wants state legislators to extend the deadline. Such testing has exonerated 123 people nationwide in the past decade, according to the nationally known Cardozo Innocence Project, based at Yeshiva University's Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
''If 123 people have been exonerated in the last 10 years, think of how many more innocent people may be incarcerated,'' Reno said.
Of those 123 exonerations, 25 are from Florida.
One of those was Frank Lee Smith, who died 11 months before DNA cleared him of the 1985 rape and murder of 8-year-old Shandra Whitehead, McClain said.
Under the two-year time limit, Smith and Jerry Frank Townsend -- convicted of murderer but later freed by DNA testing -- wouldn't have had a chance to get the genetic testing that proved they were not guilty.
Townsend walked out of prison after 22 years.
Brummer said there is always a chance of error where scrutiny is lacking.
In the last two years, the Florida Innocence Project at Nova Southeastern Law School has received more than 600 cases of prisoners claiming innocence.
Project members have identified 150 of those as DNA cases. But, they say, there's not enough time to review cases before the fall deadline.
Nova has handed an additional 400 cases to the Innocence Project in New York.
''There shouldn't be a time limit on justice,'' said Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Cardozo Innocence Project.
Reno has volunteered her services to help with the backlog of Florida cases. Officials plan to hire more staff.
The Cardozo and Florida Innocence Projects are launching a campaign in Tallahassee to lobby legislators to extend the DNA deadline.
'Do you know how hard it is for me to tell my clients `It's over. You're going to die in a couple of hours,' '' said McClain, an attorney for the Capitol Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that has overturned sentences for Death Row inmates. ``Without that extension many of them will be executed.''
The future of the state agency is uncertain. Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed eliminating the agency, suggesting he can save $3.8 million by replacing it with a ''registry'' of private attorneys.
Laswell called the governor's plan is ``sheer stupidity.''
''All the credentials those lawyers need are a second-grade education,'' Laswell said. ``They're not going to be Death Row qualified and it will end up costing a lot more.''
Jeb have a problem with admitting a mistake to people being innocent ? An apology, even?
Posted on Wed, Aug. 03, 2005
DNA exonerates man who spent 26 years in prison
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MIAMI - (KRT) - With a son on each side hoisting his arms like a champion, a jubilant Luis Diaz proclaimed the outcome of the fight of his life.
"Victoria!" he exclaimed in Spanish - victory!
Behind him in a third-floor hallway of the Richard E. Gersten Justice Building surged a crowd of sobbing, laughing relatives Wednesday. Among them:
Children who are now the parents of children who had never met their grandfather.
A former wife who remarried, but lost neither faith nor love.
And a brother in his 70s who helped support the family when the prison doors slammed shut on Luis Diaz, branded the Bird Road Rapist.
It was 3:10 p.m., and a 26-year wrong had been righted. New DNA evidence had proven that Diaz, 67, was not the man who assaulted two women in the late 1970s.
The State Attorney's office then decided not to retry Diaz in five other cases.
"It is impossible to ignore difficulties inherent in retrying five very old cases even under the best of circumstances," read a joint motion for post-conviction relief signed by three defense lawyers and four prosecutors. "Police investigators retire; memories fade; and victims move on with their lives. ... We may never know the complete truth of the Bird Road Rapist ... but because of reasonable doubt now apparent, and under the totality of these circumstances, the State respectfully declines to continue with its prosecution of Luis Diaz."
And so Circuit Judge Cristina Pereyra-Shuminer told the small, weeping man in the red jail jumpsuit, white sandals and oversized spectacles: "You are free to go."
With shackled hands, Luis Diaz crossed himself over and over. His loved ones in the gallery erupted in cheers and applause.
Lawyers cried.
Attorney Barry Scheck, co-founder of The Innocence Project, said through tears that he has witnessed 70 to 80 such emotional scenes resulting from the project's work: using DNA to overturn wrongful convictions.
"It's the family," he said. "They knew he was innocent all along."
The judge liberated Diaz at 11:52 a.m., but an unexpected complication involving the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security delayed his courthouse departure for more than three hours.
When Diaz did leave, he did so in a crisp beige guayabera, black trousers and new, size 7 1/2 slip-ons.
Diaz, a fry cook who emigrated from Cuba in 1966, was a legal resident when he was arrested in 1979. He was ordered deported in 1999.
The convictions having been vacated, ICE had to clear him before Miami-Dade County Corrections would let him go.
Sheck assumed that had been handled in an early-morning fax confirming that ICE had lifted its detaining order on Diaz.
But, he said, corrections officials apparently misunderstood and didn't release Diaz until a second fax using oversized type - "this big," said Sheck, hands spread 18 inches apart - arrived saying, "There is no detainer!"
During a late-afternoon news conference at the law offices of Holland & Knight, someone asked Diaz to list his immediate plans.
"To see his boss and eat good Cuban food," he replied through a translator, immigration lawyer John Pratt.
So after the news conference, the family adjourned to Lila's, the Cuban eatery in a nondescript west Miami-Dade strip mall where Diaz worked briefly before his arrest.
Swarmed by reporters, he came face to face with owner Reinaldo Navarro, 61. For a moment, it seemed as if Diaz didn't recognize him.
Then they embraced, and Diaz declared, "Gloria a Dios!"
Said Navarro: "This is a great joy. I always believed he was innocent."
Waiters in red vests and bow ties applauded, ready to serve Luis Diaz as much rice, boliche asado - Cuban pot roast - and sangria as he might want.
DNA exonerates man who spent 26 years in prison
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MIAMI - (KRT) - With a son on each side hoisting his arms like a champion, a jubilant Luis Diaz proclaimed the outcome of the fight of his life.
"Victoria!" he exclaimed in Spanish - victory!
Behind him in a third-floor hallway of the Richard E. Gersten Justice Building surged a crowd of sobbing, laughing relatives Wednesday. Among them:
Children who are now the parents of children who had never met their grandfather.
A former wife who remarried, but lost neither faith nor love.
And a brother in his 70s who helped support the family when the prison doors slammed shut on Luis Diaz, branded the Bird Road Rapist.
It was 3:10 p.m., and a 26-year wrong had been righted. New DNA evidence had proven that Diaz, 67, was not the man who assaulted two women in the late 1970s.
The State Attorney's office then decided not to retry Diaz in five other cases.
"It is impossible to ignore difficulties inherent in retrying five very old cases even under the best of circumstances," read a joint motion for post-conviction relief signed by three defense lawyers and four prosecutors. "Police investigators retire; memories fade; and victims move on with their lives. ... We may never know the complete truth of the Bird Road Rapist ... but because of reasonable doubt now apparent, and under the totality of these circumstances, the State respectfully declines to continue with its prosecution of Luis Diaz."
And so Circuit Judge Cristina Pereyra-Shuminer told the small, weeping man in the red jail jumpsuit, white sandals and oversized spectacles: "You are free to go."
With shackled hands, Luis Diaz crossed himself over and over. His loved ones in the gallery erupted in cheers and applause.
Lawyers cried.
Attorney Barry Scheck, co-founder of The Innocence Project, said through tears that he has witnessed 70 to 80 such emotional scenes resulting from the project's work: using DNA to overturn wrongful convictions.
"It's the family," he said. "They knew he was innocent all along."
The judge liberated Diaz at 11:52 a.m., but an unexpected complication involving the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security delayed his courthouse departure for more than three hours.
When Diaz did leave, he did so in a crisp beige guayabera, black trousers and new, size 7 1/2 slip-ons.
Diaz, a fry cook who emigrated from Cuba in 1966, was a legal resident when he was arrested in 1979. He was ordered deported in 1999.
The convictions having been vacated, ICE had to clear him before Miami-Dade County Corrections would let him go.
Sheck assumed that had been handled in an early-morning fax confirming that ICE had lifted its detaining order on Diaz.
But, he said, corrections officials apparently misunderstood and didn't release Diaz until a second fax using oversized type - "this big," said Sheck, hands spread 18 inches apart - arrived saying, "There is no detainer!"
During a late-afternoon news conference at the law offices of Holland & Knight, someone asked Diaz to list his immediate plans.
"To see his boss and eat good Cuban food," he replied through a translator, immigration lawyer John Pratt.
So after the news conference, the family adjourned to Lila's, the Cuban eatery in a nondescript west Miami-Dade strip mall where Diaz worked briefly before his arrest.
Swarmed by reporters, he came face to face with owner Reinaldo Navarro, 61. For a moment, it seemed as if Diaz didn't recognize him.
Then they embraced, and Diaz declared, "Gloria a Dios!"
Said Navarro: "This is a great joy. I always believed he was innocent."
Waiters in red vests and bow ties applauded, ready to serve Luis Diaz as much rice, boliche asado - Cuban pot roast - and sangria as he might want.
The Clock Is Running ... innocent people could die
Florida lawyers battle to beat DNA deadline
TAMPA (AP) — Time is running out for perhaps hundreds of Florida convicts to ask for DNA testing that might clear them.
A two-year window opened by the state Legislature for inmates to seek post-conviction DNA analysis is set to close on Tuesday. The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic researching hundreds of old cases on inmates' behalf, has little hope of completing the task by the deadline.
No other large state has a deadline this soon. Florida has the fourth-largest prison population in the country, with nearly 78,000 people behind bars.
Working since April, the Innocence Project has pored over about 400 cases and identified about 80 in which DNA testing of biological evidence might be able to clear the prisoner, said Jennifer Greenberg, one of the Florida directors. But there are about 600 more cases that still need to be examined.
In most situations, Greenberg said, the inmates are poor or do not read and write well enough to pursue the matter themselves.
"There should be no statute of limitations on innocence," said Greenberg, who supports a push to extend the deadline by a year.
The Florida Bar filed an emergency request last week asking the state Supreme Court for a one-year delay, but the court has yet to act.
In Florida, DNA has cleared or freed three prisoners so far.
Generally, the convicts asking the courts for genetic analysis were imprisoned before 1996, before the use of DNA technology became common in criminal cases.
No death row inmates are on the backlog list. Unlike other prisoners, death row inmates have attorneys working on their cases from the time they are sentenced, so those who wanted testing have met the deadline.
Thirty states have enacted laws addressing post-conviction DNA testing, and advocates are pushing for a federal law that sets uniform national guidelines for courts to follow when DNA testing is requested.
Florida is one of seven states with deadlines set by their legislatures for asking a court for DNA testing in old cases, said Nina Morrison, executive director of the New York-based Innocence Project.
Delaware, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon and Washington also have opened windows for seeking DNA testing that will close in the next year or two.
Delaware and New Mexico had one-year deadlines that expired, but in both cases the state legislatures extended them, she said. Idaho had a one-year deadline that has expired.
In Florida, staffers have worked with volunteer law students and attorneys, sifting through old cases in which biological evidence exists.
"We recognized early on that Florida was a crisis for us because of the extraordinary number of requests we received from Florida inmates," Morrison said.
The group was heartened this month when the top prosecutors in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties said they would continue testing DNA evidence past the Oct. 1 deadline. But there is no uniform agreement from other jurisdictions to follow suit.
Some prosecutors "are muttering that the minute Oct. 1 comes, they're going to destroy all of the tissue samples associated with these cases," said Milton Hirsch, a Miami lawyer who has helped with the project.
Willie Meggs, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the deadline was meant to clear the system of claims that are not credible. He said he expects many prosecutors will agree to reopen cases after the deadline for inmates who can show that the evidence might exonerate them.
"We're not gung-ho to change the rule, but we'll do DNA testing anywhere if it will prove their innocence," Meggs said. "There's not a state attorney that I know who's interested in an innocent person being in prison."
The trouble, Meggs said, is that DNA evidence can prove someone was not associated with a piece of evidence but does not necessarily prove the person is innocent. Sometimes other evidence is so strong that it does not matter what the DNA says.
Judges will have the final say regarding whether cases are reopened.
The Innocence Project, created by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld in 1992 at Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law School in New York, said post-conviction DNA testing of hair, semen, blood or other bodily fluids has exonerated 138 wrongly convicted people across the country.
In Florida, a mentally retarded man named Jerry Frank Townsend was freed in 2001 after 22 years in prison when DNA testing cleared him of rape and murder. But help came too late for Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer in prison in 2002 — 11 months before DNA evidence proved him innocent of a 1985 murder.
DNA testing also assisted Rudolph Holton, who walked off Florida's death row in January. The 49-year-old inmate was convicted of raping and killing a teenager in 1987 and spent 16 years awaiting execution. But DNA proved that a hair in the victim's mouth was not Holton's, as prosecutors had contended. Prosecutors concluded they did not have enough evidence to retry him.
The Innocence Project is online at innocenceproject.org.
TAMPA (AP) — Time is running out for perhaps hundreds of Florida convicts to ask for DNA testing that might clear them.
A two-year window opened by the state Legislature for inmates to seek post-conviction DNA analysis is set to close on Tuesday. The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic researching hundreds of old cases on inmates' behalf, has little hope of completing the task by the deadline.
No other large state has a deadline this soon. Florida has the fourth-largest prison population in the country, with nearly 78,000 people behind bars.
Working since April, the Innocence Project has pored over about 400 cases and identified about 80 in which DNA testing of biological evidence might be able to clear the prisoner, said Jennifer Greenberg, one of the Florida directors. But there are about 600 more cases that still need to be examined.
In most situations, Greenberg said, the inmates are poor or do not read and write well enough to pursue the matter themselves.
"There should be no statute of limitations on innocence," said Greenberg, who supports a push to extend the deadline by a year.
The Florida Bar filed an emergency request last week asking the state Supreme Court for a one-year delay, but the court has yet to act.
In Florida, DNA has cleared or freed three prisoners so far.
Generally, the convicts asking the courts for genetic analysis were imprisoned before 1996, before the use of DNA technology became common in criminal cases.
No death row inmates are on the backlog list. Unlike other prisoners, death row inmates have attorneys working on their cases from the time they are sentenced, so those who wanted testing have met the deadline.
Thirty states have enacted laws addressing post-conviction DNA testing, and advocates are pushing for a federal law that sets uniform national guidelines for courts to follow when DNA testing is requested.
Florida is one of seven states with deadlines set by their legislatures for asking a court for DNA testing in old cases, said Nina Morrison, executive director of the New York-based Innocence Project.
Delaware, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon and Washington also have opened windows for seeking DNA testing that will close in the next year or two.
Delaware and New Mexico had one-year deadlines that expired, but in both cases the state legislatures extended them, she said. Idaho had a one-year deadline that has expired.
In Florida, staffers have worked with volunteer law students and attorneys, sifting through old cases in which biological evidence exists.
"We recognized early on that Florida was a crisis for us because of the extraordinary number of requests we received from Florida inmates," Morrison said.
The group was heartened this month when the top prosecutors in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties said they would continue testing DNA evidence past the Oct. 1 deadline. But there is no uniform agreement from other jurisdictions to follow suit.
Some prosecutors "are muttering that the minute Oct. 1 comes, they're going to destroy all of the tissue samples associated with these cases," said Milton Hirsch, a Miami lawyer who has helped with the project.
Willie Meggs, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the deadline was meant to clear the system of claims that are not credible. He said he expects many prosecutors will agree to reopen cases after the deadline for inmates who can show that the evidence might exonerate them.
"We're not gung-ho to change the rule, but we'll do DNA testing anywhere if it will prove their innocence," Meggs said. "There's not a state attorney that I know who's interested in an innocent person being in prison."
The trouble, Meggs said, is that DNA evidence can prove someone was not associated with a piece of evidence but does not necessarily prove the person is innocent. Sometimes other evidence is so strong that it does not matter what the DNA says.
Judges will have the final say regarding whether cases are reopened.
The Innocence Project, created by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld in 1992 at Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law School in New York, said post-conviction DNA testing of hair, semen, blood or other bodily fluids has exonerated 138 wrongly convicted people across the country.
In Florida, a mentally retarded man named Jerry Frank Townsend was freed in 2001 after 22 years in prison when DNA testing cleared him of rape and murder. But help came too late for Frank Lee Smith, who died of cancer in prison in 2002 — 11 months before DNA evidence proved him innocent of a 1985 murder.
DNA testing also assisted Rudolph Holton, who walked off Florida's death row in January. The 49-year-old inmate was convicted of raping and killing a teenager in 1987 and spent 16 years awaiting execution. But DNA proved that a hair in the victim's mouth was not Holton's, as prosecutors had contended. Prosecutors concluded they did not have enough evidence to retry him.
The Innocence Project is online at innocenceproject.org.
They Want to take AWAY the right to be different.
They are very insecure people who NEED to prove to their God they are among those worthy enough to survive their God's Final Solution.
I hate to be this 'outrageous' in my assertions, but, I can't help but realize some realities that are just as potentially outrageously obscure. I do believe their Bible states there are ONLY 110,000 to survive to LIFE ETERNAL on Earth. Why do you think Bush could not care less about nuclear weapon proliferation. He sees it as 'the act' his savior is entitled. They are nut cases.
Rick Santorum is among the Repuglicans that want to make a 'pheonix' of the USA Constitution. Bush/Cheney/Scalia are among them. They want to burn it to the ground and redefine every word. They are zealots.
A Religious Zealot
Rick Santorum
He has his name on any legislation that involves fetuses under the sun. With every presentation of same he is front and center for photo -ops.
This past year he has Pennsylvania pay large amounts of money for his children to receive ON - LINE education. I guess the schools in D.C. aren't religiously right enough.
Here he is speaking at Christendom College. His highly religious biased comments are below.
Rick Santorum is one of the most Self - Righteous legislators in the Senate next to Bush/Cheney.
"We need to summon the moral strength to create a civilization of peace, and justice, and of course, of love," said United States Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) to Christendom College's graduating class of 2003, the largest in the college's 25 year history.
"This is where you come in. I believe of all the great gifts God has given to the young, the greatest of these are energy, idealism, and rebelliousness. I want to challenge each and every one of you to be a radical, to be a rebel, to rebel against the popular culture. Your task will not be an easy one. You must overcome the temptation of silence."
On May 17, during the graduation ceremony, Christendom College President Dr. Timothy O'Donnell awarded the college's Pro Deo et Patria Medal for Distinguished Service to God and Country, to Senator Santorum. after which he delivered the Commencement Address (excerpts from this address below). The audience interrupted the senator's speech three times with standing ovations.
In his address, Senator Santorum alluded to his recent remarks supporting the Texas law prohibiting homosexual "marriage", which occasioned attacks and accusation s of "hate speech".
(About 100 students walked out before his address on Sunday, May 18, at St. Joseph's Commencement in Philadelphia.)
"This is where you come in. I believe of all the great gifts God has given to the young, the greatest of these are energy, idealism, and rebelliousness. I want to challenge each and every one of you to be a radical, to be a rebel, to rebel against the popular culture. Your task will not be an easy one. You must overcome the temptation of silence."
On May 17, during the graduation ceremony, Christendom College President Dr. Timothy O'Donnell awarded the college's Pro Deo et Patria Medal for Distinguished Service to God and Country, to Senator Santorum. after which he delivered the Commencement Address (excerpts from this address below). The audience interrupted the senator's speech three times with standing ovations.
In his address, Senator Santorum alluded to his recent remarks supporting the Texas law prohibiting homosexual "marriage", which occasioned attacks and accusation s of "hate speech".
(About 100 students walked out before his address on Sunday, May 18, at St. Joseph's Commencement in Philadelphia.)
An additional version. The full text doesn't seem to be available on line ANYMORE. Go figure.
Senator Rick Santorum
Commencemet Address at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, on May 17, 2003.
Complete text:
http://www.christendom.edu/news/ricksantorum.shtml
I celebrate this commencement because I have the confidence that the intellectual and moral virtues which you've developed here at Christendom have truly prepared you to take up this great cause. I've now just used a word fraught with controversy in America today: virtue.
The fact that this word can scarcely be spoken in public without inviting sarcastic incrimination from many circles is an excellent measure of the challenge you and we all face in our country today.
I was reminded of this in a very personal way several weeks ago. Both activists within and outside of the press distorted an interview that I gave on a recent Supreme Court case. Yet in my remarks on this particular case, I tried to articulate the nature of marriage, the good of marriage. In a few short sentences, I tried to summarize the considerations of philosophies working in tradition stretching back to at least Aristotle, the tradition of natural law. The natural law tradition is not a religious tradition, in the sense that it is based on Divine Revelation. Rather, it's a tradition of philosophical reflection, on the nature of human beings, the kind of creatures we are. The natural law represents guideposts which direct us to the pursuits of happiness, for happiness is the end which natural law has in mind for all of us.
Yet now, the very act of referring to this tradition, of upholding it, or dare say, making any defense of the moral consensus of every civilization in human history, is often characterized as "hate speech."
What is truly regrettable is that the situation is the worst in the very place where this discussion was centered for hundreds of years: the university. Where are the cries from those one-time centers of the pursuit of truth? The tolerance, the diversity when it comes to ideas? Or when it comes to taking the side of the traditional family? This is an especially serious battle for Catholics. Our social teaching holds that the family is the fundamental unit of our society, not the individual, not the group, not the collective. No, the foundational unit which Catholic social teaching is based is the family.
For many generations, Catholics were viewed with suspicion in America. For Catholics in America, my family included, the breakthrough came with the election of the presidency of John F. Kennedy. But at what price did we earn this break? President Kennedy promised that his faith would have no affect, would have NO affect, on his decisions as President. In effect, what he was saying was that his decisions would be unguided by his conscience. Only now, two generations later, all Americans of faith see how grave, grave a price was paid. For now our popular culture discourages religion and moral convictions from even being discussed in the public square.
Our founders feared the establishment of a religion. What we are left with today is an establishment of moral nihilism. Not surprisingly, our government, being of the people, is following suit. While much of our culture is removing moral guideposts, so too is the government. With this I have no dispute. We are a representative democracy and eventually the collective conscience of the popular culture is going to be reflective in our laws. My concern is the usurpation of the United States Supreme Court, by the United States Supreme Court, of the people's rights, through their elected representatives, to decide these crucial moral issues and the resulting dulling of our collective consciousness and that this vital debate of who we are and what we're about is being moved from the living rooms of America to the court room.
A lack of focus and clarity about the larger aims of life and about the larger aims of our country's institutions is never dulling. This is especially true in the world since September 11, 2001. We need to summon the moral strength to create a civilization of peace, and justice, and, of course, love. Now this is where you come in. I believe of all the great gifts God has given to the young, the greatest of these are energy, idealism, and rebelliousness (that's your parents laughing). As we have seen, these gifts, like all gifts, can be used for good or for evil. And as we've seen over the past thirty years, they can be used, shall we say, sparingly by our young people. I want to challenge each and every one of you to be a radical, to be a rebel, to rebel against the popular culture. Your task will not be an easy one. You must overcome the temptation of silence.
Commencemet Address at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, on May 17, 2003.
Complete text:
http://www.christendom.edu/news/ricksantorum.shtml
I celebrate this commencement because I have the confidence that the intellectual and moral virtues which you've developed here at Christendom have truly prepared you to take up this great cause. I've now just used a word fraught with controversy in America today: virtue.
The fact that this word can scarcely be spoken in public without inviting sarcastic incrimination from many circles is an excellent measure of the challenge you and we all face in our country today.
I was reminded of this in a very personal way several weeks ago. Both activists within and outside of the press distorted an interview that I gave on a recent Supreme Court case. Yet in my remarks on this particular case, I tried to articulate the nature of marriage, the good of marriage. In a few short sentences, I tried to summarize the considerations of philosophies working in tradition stretching back to at least Aristotle, the tradition of natural law. The natural law tradition is not a religious tradition, in the sense that it is based on Divine Revelation. Rather, it's a tradition of philosophical reflection, on the nature of human beings, the kind of creatures we are. The natural law represents guideposts which direct us to the pursuits of happiness, for happiness is the end which natural law has in mind for all of us.
Yet now, the very act of referring to this tradition, of upholding it, or dare say, making any defense of the moral consensus of every civilization in human history, is often characterized as "hate speech."
What is truly regrettable is that the situation is the worst in the very place where this discussion was centered for hundreds of years: the university. Where are the cries from those one-time centers of the pursuit of truth? The tolerance, the diversity when it comes to ideas? Or when it comes to taking the side of the traditional family? This is an especially serious battle for Catholics. Our social teaching holds that the family is the fundamental unit of our society, not the individual, not the group, not the collective. No, the foundational unit which Catholic social teaching is based is the family.
For many generations, Catholics were viewed with suspicion in America. For Catholics in America, my family included, the breakthrough came with the election of the presidency of John F. Kennedy. But at what price did we earn this break? President Kennedy promised that his faith would have no affect, would have NO affect, on his decisions as President. In effect, what he was saying was that his decisions would be unguided by his conscience. Only now, two generations later, all Americans of faith see how grave, grave a price was paid. For now our popular culture discourages religion and moral convictions from even being discussed in the public square.
Our founders feared the establishment of a religion. What we are left with today is an establishment of moral nihilism. Not surprisingly, our government, being of the people, is following suit. While much of our culture is removing moral guideposts, so too is the government. With this I have no dispute. We are a representative democracy and eventually the collective conscience of the popular culture is going to be reflective in our laws. My concern is the usurpation of the United States Supreme Court, by the United States Supreme Court, of the people's rights, through their elected representatives, to decide these crucial moral issues and the resulting dulling of our collective consciousness and that this vital debate of who we are and what we're about is being moved from the living rooms of America to the court room.
A lack of focus and clarity about the larger aims of life and about the larger aims of our country's institutions is never dulling. This is especially true in the world since September 11, 2001. We need to summon the moral strength to create a civilization of peace, and justice, and, of course, love. Now this is where you come in. I believe of all the great gifts God has given to the young, the greatest of these are energy, idealism, and rebelliousness (that's your parents laughing). As we have seen, these gifts, like all gifts, can be used for good or for evil. And as we've seen over the past thirty years, they can be used, shall we say, sparingly by our young people. I want to challenge each and every one of you to be a radical, to be a rebel, to rebel against the popular culture. Your task will not be an easy one. You must overcome the temptation of silence.
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