In yesterday's
Seattle Times,
Additions slipped into Patriot Act looks at one of the Republican objective in the
Patriot Act that has nothing to do with terrorism.
This one expands the reach of a presidential appointee in the U. S. justice concerning some death penalty cases. Effectively, removing judgment from federal judges and giving it to Alberto Gonzales!
Anthony Spears has been on Arizona's death row for nearly 13 years, convicted of the murder of his girlfriend near Phoenix. He isn't an international terrorist, has no links to al-Qaida and was in prison on Sept. 11, 2001.
But tucked away in the pending renewal of the USA Patriot Act, the nation's controversial law to fight terrorism, is a provision inspired by Spears. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., inserted language that could make it harder for state death-row inmates to appeal cases in federal court.
More below the fold.
Since 1996 there has been a fast track law in place for capital punishment cases. When a state provides adequate council to an inmate, they are allowed to shorter the deadlines for filing appeals.
Under current law, federal courts of appeal decide whether states can speed processing capital cases. Kyl's change would give that power to the U.S. attorney general.
What would be the decision of Alberto Gonzales?
Arizona had tried to get Spears' federal appeal dismissed in 2000, claiming it was filed too late. State officials had argued the state was entitled to a faster appeals process because state law guaranteed effective representation for poor defendants who were facing the death penalty.
In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Arizona hadn't supplied Spears with a lawyer in a timely fashion and allowed him to proceed with his case. So now Jon Kyl has hidden away in the Patriot Act a method of insuring that underprivileged state prisoners are left in the hands of a totally unfair collaborator instead of those liberal judges.
This power grab from the judicial branch is another dangerous method by which states will be allowed to kill innocent people. Neither Gonzales nor anyone who follows in his footsteps is a judge. The attorney general is a presidential political appointee and a bias one at that.
Presently the job of the U.S. attorney general is a combination of prosecution and White House pubic relations. Alberto Gonzales, the man who designed the White House's justification for torture has been too busy condoning Republican gerrymandering, Jim Crow laws and warrentless wiretaps by the Bush administration to have any time for poor prisoners on death row.
Jon Kyl has a long history of trying to increase the amount of American who get put to death by the state and federal government. He is the sponsor of S.1088 in the Senate. The Streamlined Procedures Act is a bill that is meant to remove almost every means of federal appeal in criminal cases and creating an express line to the lethal injection.
This death penalty fast track is certainly not the only disturbing threat to American lives and our civil liberties that was crafted during closed-door negotiations that excluded Democrats. This provision is one of many dangerous segments in the New Patriot Act that neither the House nor the Senate has debated.
One is the expansion of the Secret Service referred to in the same Seattle Times news story. Another is the expansion of the death penalty. An October 31 New York Times editorial The House's Abuse of Patriotism referred to a provision that would give an American the death penalty for contributions to a terrorist organization even if the contributor was unaware that the money went to terrorist.
There are now 20 terrorism-related crimes eligible for capital punishment, and the House measure would add 41 more. These would make it easier for prosecutors to win a death sentence in cases where a defendant had no intent to kill -- for example, if a defendant gave financial support to an umbrella organization without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence.
The new patriot Act still gives the government far too much power without the permission or oversight of a judge.
The F.B.I. will still be allowed to demand private financial, medical and library records. They will still be allowed to impose "gag orders," making it illegal for those holding the records to talk publicly about the request. Ordinary Americans will not know if the government is poring over their personal information and it will be impossible for Congress and the public to monitor what the F.B.I. is doing unless they receive a permission slip from the president.
On Wednesday the House agreed to extend the Patriot Act until March 10. Democrats and a handful of Republicans have blocked renewal of the act because they want to add civil-liberties protections. With the extension going to the Senate, lawmakers are expected to negotiate revisions in this anti-American antiterrorism law.
There is absolutely nothing that is "Patriotic" about these presidential power grabs and the destruction of our civil liberties.
In their lust for removing civil rights, the extreme right wing in control of Congress is wasting valuable legislative time that should be devoted to actual National Security. While our Democratic representatives are trying to fight off these affronts, there is little being done to secure our ports, borders and chemical plants.