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The Unauthorized History of the GOP’s 30-Year War on Planned Parenthood

by CorneliGandon Posted on August 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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As a secretive anti-abortion group continues to leak videos selectively edited to portray Planned Parenthood officials breaking federal law, a swarm of states, from New Hampshire to Utah, have renewed efforts to strip the country’s largest women’s health care organization of government funding.

The number of attacks is unprecedented. Just a few weeks after Republicans in Congress made a failed attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, five states—Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Utah—have cut off Planned Parenthood from federal and state Medicaid dollars. The funds, intended for low-income women, pay for family planning services, breast cancer and STI screenings, and abortions in cases of rape or threats to the health or life of the mother. The Obama administration warned two governors that the move violated federal law protecting patients’ rights to choose their provider. But that didn’t stop new states, including Arkansas, from continuing to slash the funds after the warning came down.

“This is the longest and broadest set of attacks we have seen,” says Elizabeth Nash, a researcher for the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights think tank.

But history shows that anti-abortion lawmakers don’t need damning videos to mount attacks on Planned Parenthood. A look back at these older attempts to defund Planned Parenthood shows that today’s onslaught is part of a broader, three-decade-old campaign by anti-abortion lawmakers to jeopardize family planning dollars.

This timeline traces the history of the crusade against Planned Parenthood, and with it, the destruction of family planning programs that continues today.

1979

The Minnesota legislature passes a sweeping law to end all state family planning funding to groups offering abortion, abortion counseling, or referrals. A federal judge strikes down the law in 1980, noting, “Planned Parenthood’s unpopularity in and of itself and without reference to some independent considerations in the public interest cannot justify the law.” Similar laws in Arizona and North Dakota also tank. Anti-abortion activists start seeking a work-around to the rulings.

1980

In Utah, lawmakers reroute $390,000 in family planning funds from the Planned Parenthood’s five clinics to county health departments.

1984

The Reagan administration imposes a new policy that prevents any foreign funding from going to health care providers that perform abortions. The move applies to hundreds of millions of dollars the government sets aside to promote family planning in impoverished countries. The policy is in place until President Bill Clinton rolls it back in 1993.

Colorado approves a constitutional amendment banning state funds from being spent on abortions.

1985

California legislators accidentally send Gov. George Deukmejian a version of the state budget that bars any group providing abortion services from receiving money from the state’s $34 million annual family planning budget. Deukmejian, a Republican, refuses to veto the measure, which lawmakers had previously voted to remove. “The clear target of the provision, which was introduced…at the request of anti-abortion groups, is Planned Parenthood and its 16 local affiliates,” the Los Angeles Times reported. An appeals court struck the measure down.

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The Unauthorized History of the GOP’s 30-Year War on Planned Parenthood

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New Monsanto Spray Kills Bugs by Messing With Their Genes

by Elinor6783 Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a fascinating long piece in MIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado examines the genetically modified seed industry’s latest blockbuster app in development—one that has nothing to do with seeds. Instead, it involves the industry’s other bread-and-butter product: pesticide sprays. But we’re not talking about the poisonous chemicals you convinced your dad to stop dousing the lawn with. The novel sprays in question are powered by a genetic technology called RNA interference, which promises to kill specific insects and weeds by silencing genes crucial to their survival, while leaving nontarget species unscathed.

RNAi, as it’s known, is an emerging science; the two US researchers who discovered it brought home a Nobel Prize in 2006. Regalado describes the process like this:

The cells of plants and animals carry their instructions in the form of DNA. To make a protein, the sequence of genetic letters in each gene gets copied into matching strands of RNA, which then float out of the nucleus to guide the protein-making machinery of the cell. RNA interference, or gene silencing, is a way to destroy specific RNA messages so that a particular protein is not made.

If you can nix RNA messages that exist to generate crucial genes, you’ve got yourself an effective bug or weed killer. And GMO seed and pesticide behemoth Monsanto thinks it has just that. Robb Fraley, the company’s chief technology officer and a pioneer in creating GM seeds, told Regalado that within a few years, RNA sprays would “open up a whole new way to use biotechnology” that “doesn’t have the same stigma, the same intensive regulatory studies and cost that we would normally associate with GMOs.” Fraley described the novel technology as “incredible” and “breathtaking.”

It’s not hard to see why the veteran agrichemical and biotech exec is so amped for something new to load into a crop duster. Monsanto’s GM herbicide-resistant and insecticidal traits still dominate the highly lucrative US corn, soybean, and cotton seed markets, but these cash-cow products are victims of their own success, so widely used that weeds and pests are rapidly developing resistance to them. The company’s flagship herbicide, Roundup, still generates about $5 billion in sales annually, but it went off-patent years ago, and it was recently declared a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization—a finding Monsanto disputes.

Such concerns are widely seen as the reason Monsanto is so hotly pursuing a takeover of its rival, Syngenta, which focuses much more on pesticides than novel seeds. Syngenta, too, is developing RNAi technology, reports Regalado—back in 2012, it spent $523 million to buy Devgen, a company that had been developing the novel sprays.

However, there’s no reason to assume crop dusters will be strafing farm fields with gene-silencing sprays anytime soon. As Regalado notes, they’re very little studied outside of corporate labs. “So far, only a few scientific publications even mention the idea of RNA sprays,” he writes. “That makes it hard to judge companies’ claims.”

The first obstacle is technological—the problem of “how to get a large, electrically charged molecule like RNA to move through a plant’s waxy cuticle and into its cells,” Regalado writes. That’s crucial, because the technology works like this: A targeted bug—the one drawing attention now from Monsanto is the Colorado potato beetle—chomps on a leaf that’s been sprayed by RNA solution and then, fatally, gets critical genes turned off. To make that happen, you have to get the RNA material into the leaf.

The most promising solution so far is to “encapsulate the RNA in synthetic nanoparticles called lipidoids—greasy blobs with specialized chemical tails,” Regalado reports. “The idea is to slip them into a plant, where the coating will dissolve, releasing the RNA.”

This nanotech booster to Monsanto’s new bug killer won’t likely raise red flags from government overseers. As I’ve shown before, both nanotechnology and adjuvants—the compounds mixed with pesticides to help them break into plants—are lightly regulated.

However, the RNAi compound itself will have to be reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency, which vets new pesticides before they reach farm fields. Early indications suggest the going will be bumpy. Last year, the EPA convened a scientific advisory panel to assess the human health and ecological risks posed by emerging RNAi crop technologies.

The panel concluded there’s “no convincing evidence” that RNAi material poses a threat to humans or other animals—the digestive process likely destroys it before it can do harm. But for nontarget insects in the field, they concluded, it’s a different story. The technology’s boosters claim the technology can target particular pests and leave everything else in the ecosystem alone. The independent scientists on the EPA panel were not convinced. They noted “uncertainties in the potential modes of action in non-target species, potential for chronic and sublethal effects, and potential unintended consequences in the various life stages of non-target organisms.” As a result, they found “sufficient justification to question” whether the EPA’s current methods of evaluating new pesticides, which were designed to vet chemicals, apply to these gene-altering treatments.

And the technology is so novel that figuring out what those tests should be will be hard— it “cannot be done without a better understanding” of exactly how the technology works, the panel concluded. US Department of Agriculture entomologists Jonathan Lundgren and Jian Duan raised similar concerns in a 2013 paper.

One particular concern for the EPA panel was the amount of time RNAi material stays intact after it’s sprayed. Monsanto says not to worry, because “when the company doused dirt with RNA, it degraded and was undetectable after 48 hours,” Regalado reports. But he adds that Monsanto “wants to develop longer-lasting formulations,” noting that another RNAi spray it’s developing for trees was shown to persist for months. “What’s more,” Regalado notes, “Monsanto’s own discoveries have underscored the surprising ways in which double-stranded RNA can move between species”—not exactly a comforting aspect of a technology Monsanto hopes to see widely used on farm fields.

A Monsanto exec told Regalado that the company hopes to get its first RNAi spray, one targeting potato beetles, into the market by 2020. The company is also working on an RNAi product to add to its failing Roundup herbicide—one it hopes can turn off the resistant genes in the superweeds now rampant on US farm fields. But that’s well behind the potato beetle product in Monsanto’s development timeline, a company spokeswoman told me.

In addition to its sprays, Monsanto has an RNAi-enhanced corn crop in the pipeline: a corn type engineered to contain RNA that was designed to kill a common pest called the rootworm. It’s “currently pending approval from the EPA,” the Monsanto spokeswoman said. “We are planning for a full commercial launch by the end of the decade, pending key regulatory approvals.”

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a plant pathologist by training who covers biotechnology for the Center for Food Safety, echoed the EPA panel’s concerns.”These are very complex biological systems, and their interactions evolve, and are not static,” he said. “So it is really impossible to predict all the things that could go wrong. That does not mean we should be paranoid about them, but we should be at least reasonably cautious and skeptical about claims of both safety and efficacy, since there is little experience or research to rely on.”

He also questioned Monsanto’s claim, reported by Regalado, that insects won’t likely develop resistance to the RNAi treatments, as they have to most chemical treatments in the past. “This is surprisingly reminiscent of Monsanto’s assurances in the ’90s that weeds would be very unlikely to develop resistance to the glyphosate Roundup herbicide…and now we have an epidemic of glyphosate resistant weeds,” Gurian-Sherman said.

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Before It Cried Conspiracy, the Paul Camp Quietly Prepared for Today’s Indictments

by RobertaEbersbac Posted on August 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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Just hours after three Rand Paul associates were indicted on federal charges that they worked to cover up an attempt to buy an Iowa state senator’s endorsement for the 2012 Ron Paul campaign, the Paul camp is claiming that the indictments are timed to trip up the Kentucky senator on the eve of the first GOP presidential debate. All three men were involved with the 2012 Paul campaign, but have worked for the family for years, including to help get Rand Paul elected.

Shortly after the indictments were announced, Ron Paul issued a statement, saying, “I think the timing of this indictment is highly suspicious given the fact that the first primary debate is tomorrow.” Roscoe Howard, the attorney for Paul’s grandson-in-law Jesse Benton, one of the three men who were indicted and the head of a pro-Rand Paul super-PAC that is currently paying for 40 field staffers in Iowa, echoed the sentiment to the Washington Post:

“We are deeply disappointed to learn of today’s indictment by the Department of Justice,” said Howard. “Jesse Benton, a prominent conservative Republican, has cooperated with the government during its multi-year investigation. That this indictment is now suddenly announced on the eve of the first Republican Presidential debate strongly supports our belief that this is a politically motivated prosecution designed to serve a political agenda, not to achieve justice. Mr. Benton is eager to get before an impartial judge and jury who will quickly recognize this for what he believes it is: Character assassination for political gain.”

But how unexpected was this move?

First of all, the Ron Paul 2012 campaign has spent more than $434,000 on legal bills since last summer. The fees suddenly spiked around the end of July 2014, a period that, according to today’s indictment, involved meetings between Benton and federal investigators. Another of the indicted men, John Tate, who also works for the same pro-Rand Paul super-PAC, also met with federal investigators last July. The following month, a grand jury subpoenaed emails from many members of the Paul campaign. The subpoena, which was publicly leaked, listed the email accounts of all three men, as well as that of Ron Paul himself, as targets of the investigation.

Earlier this month, Eugene Delgaudio, a political activist from northern Virginia who is a friend of the third man indicted today, Dimitri Kesari, circulated an email soliciting donations for a legal defense fund for Kesari. Kesari established the fund, a nonprofit called Defenders of Liberty Legal Defense Foundation in Colorado, this past February. There are also links between Paul’s campaign and Kesari’s attorney. When Kesari appeared in court this morning in Iowa, he was represented by attorney Jesse Binnall. According to campaign filings, the Ron Paul campaign paid Binnall’s firm $20,000 on December 29, 2014 and again on Feb. 4. On June 12 of this year the campaign also wrote a $2,800 check for the firm representing Benton.

People familiar with the way the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section pursues indictments said it was unlikely there would not have been extensive contact between prosecutors and lawyers of the accused and an awareness that charges were coming. It is not uncommon for defense attorneys to have an opportunity before an indictment is handed down to appeal the decision to higher-ups within the Department of Justice. All evidence suggests that the indictments were hardly a surprise sprung on the Paul camp during the frantic final preparation for Thursday’s debate.

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Before It Cried Conspiracy, the Paul Camp Quietly Prepared for Today’s Indictments

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Why Is It So Hard for Wrongfully Convicted Women to Get Justice?

by Arletha21O Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Kristine Bunch spent 16 years in prison before a court overturned her conviction for killing her son. Photograph by Narayan Mahon

In the early morning hours of June 30, 1995, a fire sparked to life in Kristine Bunch’s mobile home. It fanned out across the floor and climbed up the walls, then formed an impassable barrier across the middle of the trailer. Bunch, 21, snapped awake in the living room. Her three-year-old son, Tony, shrieked for her on the other side of the flames.

Bunch staggered outside and howled for a neighbor. She bashed Tony’s window with a tricycle. As the flames lashed 30 feet into the dawn sky, a fire engine tore up to the house. A firefighter, crawling on his belly, found Tony’s charred body in the bedroom.

Bunch told police she had no idea what caused the fire. Soon, though, arson investigators determined that a liquid accelerant such as kerosene or lighter fluid had been poured in Tony’s bedroom and the living room. Police arrested Bunch on charges of arson and felony murder. Eight months later, Bunch went on trial. By then, she was 22 and unexpectedly pregnant with a second child. The evidence against her seemed overwhelming. Two arson investigators gave compelling testimony for the prosecution, and the jury took only a few hours to convict her on both counts.

At sentencing, Bunch recalled, the judge sneered down at her belly.

“I understand that you have arranged to have yourself impregnated,” he said. “You thought it would work to your advantage somehow in this process. It will not. You will not raise that child.”

The judge gave her the maximum sentence: 60 years.

Karen Daniel and Judy Royal are obsessed with people like Bunch.

During their nearly 30 combined years at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School, the two lawyers have helped exonerate more than two dozen people once found guilty of horrendous crimes. Most of the people they have freed are men; just four are women. And for a long time, Daniel and Royal thought that disparity made perfect sense. Men are convicted of crimes, especially violent crimes, at much higher rates than are women. So it follows that most people exonerated of crimes are also men: The National Registry of Exonerations, a University of Michigan Law School database that has cataloged information on more than 1,600 exonerations nationwide since 1989, includes just 148 women.

About three years ago, however, Daniel and Royal began to question whether that number was too low. Women make up about 11 percent of the people convicted of violent crimes, but just 6 percent of those exonerated of violent crimes. At the urging of a former client, Julie Rea Harper—who spent four years in prison for the murder of her son before a serial killer confessed to the crime—Daniel and Royal decided to try to figure out if there was anything that set exonerated women apart.

They started by looking at the few women whose cases they had worked on themselves. “I haven’t had any men’s cases that looked like these four cases,” Daniel recalls thinking. “Could that really be a coincidence?”

After three years of pursuing that question, Daniel and Royal have concluded that most innocence projects—including their own legal clinic—are failing to bring justice to wrongly convicted women. They have identified factors that make female clients more difficult to exonerate, and uncovered startling facts that distinguish the cases of wrongly convicted women from those of men. And they have launched a project that could change how the American innocence movement helps these women get justice.

Daniel and Royal started by digging deep into the exonerations database. Their first insight had to do with DNA evidence—the very breakthrough that launched the innocence movement a quarter century ago. “Women tend not to be convicted of the types of crimes that can be overturned based on the results of DNA testing,” Daniel explained. Men perpetrate the overwhelming majority of rapes and murders of strangers. These crimes are much more likely to leave behind DNA evidence that can rule out an innocent suspect, or point to the real rapist or killer.

But when women kill, they usually kill someone close to them. And in most of those cases, DNA isn’t relevant. When a woman is suspected of killing her husband or her child, investigators are likely to find her DNA all over the crime scene whether she’s guilty or innocent—so DNA testing can do little to exonerate her. Sure enough, 27 percent of the men in the exonerations registry were freed using DNA evidence. The same was true of only 7.6 percent of the women.

Yet many exoneration projects, including the original Innocence Project founded in 1992, only work with convicts who can be absolved through DNA. Because courts consider DNA tests definitive and trustworthy, genetic evidence is often the most effective way to overturn a wrongful conviction. Innocence projects have tended to avoid cases in which the offender knew the victim, because it can be hard to disentangle what happened in a domestic crime. In some cases, Daniel said, “you almost have to look into that person’s brain to know what happened.” About half the women in the registry went to prison for harming someone in their care.

But reliance on DNA and aversion to domestic cases weren’t the only hurdles for wrongly convicted women. In a whopping 63 percent of the women’s cases, Daniel and Royal realized, it turned out that there was never a crime to begin with—the death was actually a suicide or an accident. That was true in only 21 percent of the men’s cases.

This was a critical discovery. The tools innocence projects rely on are designed to solve crimes. When DNA evidence isn’t available, innocence investigators may seek to establish alibis, interview witnesses overlooked by police, undermine mistaken witness identifications, or track down alternative suspects with a history of similar crimes. Attorneys have a much easier time getting a wrongful conviction reopened when they can point to the real culprit.

Yet if a woman is wrongly convicted for an accident that kills her child, there is no crime to solve, no “real killer,” and probably no alibi.

Overturning convictions for crimes that were really accidents is difficult and time-consuming. Attorneys may have to prove that the prosecution misused or misunderstood forensic science or withheld crucial evidence. Proving that something was an accident may require attorneys to understand highly technical and controversial evidence on fire science, shaken-baby syndrome, toxicology, or rare medical conditions, and hire expensive expert witnesses to bolster their arguments. These hurdles disproportionately affect women: Daniel and Royal have found that 37 percent of the women (but around 20 percent of the men) in the exonerations registry were cleared because their original convictions used false or misleading forensic evidence.

There was one more thing that set exonerated women apart: Daniel and Royal have come to believe that, in many cases in which women were freed because no crime had been committed, sexist stereotypes had been used to conjure up a motive.

Northwestern lawyers Judy Royal (left) and Andrea Louise Lewis (right) have helped reshape how wrongfully convicted women seek justice. Photograph by Narayan Mahon

“Almost every case has something like this,” Daniel told me, recounting one trial in which a prosecutor suggested a mother had killed her son so she could pursue a career in modeling. “That was based on one tiny conversation expressing slight interest in maybe having a nice photo taken,” Daniel said. The woman spent years in prison before the real perpetrator came forward.

When Harper, the woman blamed after a serial killer murdered her son, was on trial, the prosecution portrayed her variously as thirsty for revenge on her ex-husband or, pointing out her pursuit of a postgraduate degree, career-obsessed with no time for a child. Her ex-husband testified that Harper considered an abortion when she first became pregnant (which Harper denied). “And that was used to show she was capable of murder,” Royal said, noting that the trial—and jury selection—took place in a rural, heavily conservative county in Illinois.

In the case of Kristine Bunch, the prosecutor said he didn’t think the blaze burned Bunch badly enough. Wouldn’t a mother walk through fire to save her child? He offered evidence that Bunch was a bad mother, telling the jury in his closing argument that she had asked a friend to take custody of Tony, even though the friend had denied this rumor in her testimony. Not to mention the judge’s comments about Bunch’s pregnancy.

These sorts of narratives have “nothing to do with whether the evidence shows that a person did what they’re being accused of,” said Andrea Louise Lewis, an attorney who works for Royal and Daniel. “And these women get wrongfully convicted in these cases where nothing happened. Nothing criminal happened at all.”

After Kristine Bunch gave birth to her second son, correctional officers put her in an ankle chain just long enough for her to reach the toilet in her hospital room. It had been three months since she went to prison. Bunch held her baby for a fleeting moment before her parents took him home with them. Then she made it her single-minded mission to find someone to help reopen her case.

“I realized, I’m going to have to fight,” Bunch recalled. She sent out hundreds of letters and received hundreds of rejections.

While Bunch despaired in prison, new research emerged showing that the signatures of an accidental fire are easy to confuse with signs of arson; as a result, many old arson cases have been called into question. In a similar vein, child abuse investigators once took it as gospel that a baby with brain swelling and certain forms of internal bleeding had been violently shaken within the past several hours. But a new body of evidence suggests that infections, infant strokes, and accidental falls can also cause the telltale symptoms of shaken-baby syndrome (SBS). Meanwhile, child abuse researchers now believe that a symptom like brain bleeding can take days—not hours—to cause serious problems. If a child has several caregivers—a babysitter, relatives, and immediate family members—it can be impossible to say with certainty who abused her.

But it’s prosecutors who decide whether to file charges or fight appeals, and not all of them buy the new science. When I sent questions about wrongly convicted women to the National District Attorneys Association, I was referred to Josh Marquis, an NDAA board member and Oregon district attorney who is a strident skeptic of the innocence community. Daniel and Royal noted that a disproportionate number of women are exonerated because new science cast doubt on their original conviction—or even moved medical experts who once testified against them to change their minds. But Marquis said that he and many of his fellow prosecutors don’t trust the developing science. New doubts about SBS, he said, are shared by only “a very small group of doctors” whose voices have been amplified by the defense bar. As for developments in arson science, he said, “arson investigation is more of an art than a science.”

It was only when Bunch connected with an Indianapolis attorney named Hilary Bowe Ricks, and scraped together a modest fee using her $1.30-a-day prison earnings, that she learned that new arson science could cast her conviction into doubt. In 2006, Ricks convinced the Northwestern center to join the case, and the team, which by then included Daniel, soon found a bevy of problems with the conviction. Bunch’s original defense attorney had argued that one of the trailer home’s many electrical problems probably caused the fire. Any accelerant, he insisted, was likely from a kerosene heater the family sometimes ran in the living room. However, state investigators working on-site (using now-questionable science) observed burn patterns in Tony’s bedroom that fire experts at the time saw as undisputed evidence of arson. And a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives chemist who examined 10 samples sent to his Washington, DC, lab testified at Bunch’s original trial that the floor of both the living room and the bedroom tested positive for liquid accelerant.

Bunch’s new legal team obtained the raw data that the ATF chemist had analyzed. According to lawsuits her attorneys have since filed against the investigators for withholding evidence, someone had altered the result for the sample in Tony’s bedroom, which was negative for accelerant, making Bunch seem guilty. It appeared to Ricks as though investigators hadn’t found accelerant anywhere in the trailer home, except in the living room, where the heater stood.

The fire that had taken Tony’s life now looked like an accident. (The state investigators have denied any wrongdoing, and an ATF spokeswoman declined to comment.)

Bunch’s legal team brought this undisclosed evidence to the Indiana Court of Appeals. On March 21, 2012, a three-judge panel reversed Bunch’s conviction. The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in August, and she walked out of prison, a free woman for the first time in more than 16 years. By Christmas, prosecutors quietly declined to retry her.

A few months after Bunch was released, Daniel and Royal launched Northwestern’s Women’s Project, an exoneration effort focused exclusively on freeing wrongly convicted women. They have already agreed to represent six women—cases that will involve child head trauma and arson science—and in December, they asked the Illinois Supreme Court to grant their first appeal. Meanwhile, their team is poring over files from dozens of suspicious convictions around the country and amassing court transcripts for an in-depth study of wrongful convictions of women accused of killing their children.

Daniel and Royal’s tiny project may wind up in the vanguard of work to exonerate both men and women. More wrongful convictions are overturned each year, but fewer and fewer of them involve DNA: Paul Cates, a spokesman for the Innocence Project, told me that investigators have now cleared many “easy” DNA cases—such as convictions that can be overturned by testing a single previously untested rape kit. Instead, more cases now involve complex DNA evidence, or none at all, and many more of those cases are ultimately found to involve an accident. Last year, a record 125 people were exonerated across the country; in 58 of those cases, courts found no crime was committed at all.

Today, Kristine Bunch volunteers for the Women’s Project, sorting through inmates’ letters. She reads each one carefully, remembering the decade she spent writing pleas just like theirs. “You live with this freaky numbness,” she said. “It’s almost like you’re underwater and everything is in slow motion. And you can’t seem to pull yourself up out of it.”

She is thrilled that there is now an outfit giving convictions like hers its full attention, run by attorneys who understand that everything about a woman—her career, her ambitions, how much she cries—is ripe for judgment. In her off-hours, she is trying to get to know her 19-year-old son. Even though she saw him nearly every weekend in prison, she missed out on raising him, and building a strong relationship has proved difficult.

So has the healing process. Many men who were wrongfully convicted didn’t know their supposed victims. But with Bunch, the accident she was blamed for not only took 17 years of her life—it took her child.

“You’re accused of this horrible, horrible crime, you’re put away, you have newspapers saying horrible, horrible things about you,” she said. “When you walk out, you’re exonerated, and you’re free and clear. But that hurt, that humiliation, that shame—it doesn’t go away because you’ve been exonerated. It’s hard to step back out and act like you’re normal and part of the world.”

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Why Is It So Hard for Wrongfully Convicted Women to Get Justice?

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3.5 Minutes, 10 Bullets, and 1 Racially Charged Tragedy

by LewisOMahony Posted on July 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Black Friday 2012, 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who was sitting with three friends in a car at a Florida gas station, cranked up the rap on the stereo. Three and a half minutes later, he was dead, shot at 10 times by Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man bristling at the black teens’ “thug music.” In a new documentary, 3-1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets, director Marc Silver explores the perfect storm of racism and lax gun laws that led to the killing.

The film, which opened in theaters this month, comes at a time when a lot of racially motivated tragedies have been in the news—the most recent being the church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina. Jordan’s death wasn’t classified as a hate crime, but the film makes an implicit argument for Dunn’s racial motivations, zooming in on his testimony and his jailhouse phone calls with his girlfriend, in which he insists the teens were armed and dangerous—no gun was found—and that he acted in self defense. Throughout, the film touches on the murky legal ground at the nexus of bias and self-defense laws: What constitutes a “reasonable belief” that one’s life is in danger when that belief may be borne out of racial stereotypes?

The film documents both of Dunn’s trials—the first, which ended in a hung jury, and the second, in which he was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. Silver follows Ron Davis and Lucia McBath, Jordan’s parents, as they go to court each day and wait for the final verdict in their son’s death. The pair must maintain their decorum in the courtroom as the defense vilifies their son and his friends—all while wondering whether his legacy will match that of another unarmed Florida teen whose shooter walked free; in one scene, Jordan’s father recalls a text he got from Trayvon Martin’s dad: “I just want to welcome you to a club that none of us want to be in.”

Mother Jones: Tell me a little about why you decided to make this film.

Marc Silver: I saw a tension, a film that would be able to explore this awful moment when two cars happen to pull up next to each other, and within that coincidence this tragedy that consisted of racial profiling, access to guns, and laws that give people the confidence to use those guns. It was unique that you would be able to deconstruct this one tight moment and come out with the big, macro issues. I also felt like it was important to learn about Michael Dunn. I was interested in the idea that there would be audience members who would have some sense of empathy with him at the outset, who also might have felt fear when a car full of young black teenagers pulled up and they start having an argument over music. Through Michael Dunn, you learn about many other people in America who have that same implicit bias, and it might make audiences look at themselves in a different way.

MJ: Jordan’s parents, Ron and Lucy, are featured prominently. You capture some heart-wrenching moments. How did you get that kind of access?

MS: I shoot and do sound on my own, so I’m not approaching them with a big crew and lights and all the rest of it. That’s the technical answer. There was also a huge emotional relationship. We met about seven months before the trial. By the time the trial came, I asked, “Would you be okay if I did several mornings with you and several evenings? It’s really important that the audience gets to see not just you guys sitting there stoically in court, but actually what impact this really has on you.” They were very open to that. They could see the bigger picture, in terms of audiences really understanding that, however many shootings and racist incidents there are in the US, that this is the effect.

MJ: It does feel like, since Ferguson, we hear news about the killing of black men almost daily.

MS: I really hope people walk away from the film remembering that there are concentric circles around these events. If you put these on a map and you actually counted the number of people affected, that would be a very different picture. It’s not just families; it’s communities.

MJ: What was it like documenting Ron and Lucy’s trepidation?

MS: That was a horrific journey. We could feel the tension, the exhaustion, the horror of having to sit through the trial. Every day in the courtroom, the judge reminded people that they weren’t allowed to show emotion—I presume because it might affect the jury. They also weren’t allowed to talk about race because it wasn’t officially declared a hate crime. That’s when I understood this difference between the cold environment of the courtroom and this emotional, every-parent’s-worst-nightmare story unfolding outside the courtroom that the public were finding themselves attached to—because clearly it was about racism.

MJ: A second thread in the film touches on stand your ground and gun laws. What made you decide to toggle between those two plotlines?

MS: The 50 pages, or whatever it was, of self-defense laws the judge had to read out to the jury lasted about 30 minutes. That obviously wasn’t going to work in the film. And the specifics are really difficult to explain. So we put that across to the audience in the simplest way possible by using the jury—in the way the prosecutor, the defense, and the judge explained self defense. It was essential that we embedded that into the story. Of course, you come up against something really weird: Trayvon Martin wasn’t a stand-your-ground case. Jordan Davis’ case wasn’t a stand-your-ground case. That really complicates stuff.

We really didn’t get into gun control because the heart of the film is about race. There are subsequent things in the film that may make you think about gun control without us having to slap you with it. One was the white witness at the gas station: He describes the gun in such great detail. To be able to say the name, make, and model of a gun you saw for a split second goes to show how embedded gun culture is in Florida.

MJ: You’re from the UK, which treats firearms very differently than the United States does. How did that affect the film’s outlook?

MS: I like to think that it gave me a less judgmental perspective. It’s always weird coming to the US and seeing how powerful the gun lobby is and how passionate some people are about the use of guns when you come from a place where hardly any of our police have guns. I understand philosophically the right to self-defense and the Second Amendment. But consider what practical effect these concepts have. It’s very simple: If there wasn’t a gun in Michael Dunn’s car, Jordan Davis would not be dead, and Michael Dunn would not be spending the rest of his life in prison. The gun created a totally different narrative.

MJ: You’re also white. Did that affect the process in any way?

MS: I didn’t feel it hindered my making the film. That’s not to say if I was African American, or American, or owned a gun, I may not have told the story in a different way. But being white made me want to explore what proportion of white America Michael Dunn represents.

MJ: Did you find an answer?

MS: I always had a suspicion that Dunn’s perception of race was wildly skewed. Then we found the prison phone calls. The way he described, as you hear in the film, his conviction that Jordan’s friends are thugs, that they won’t tell the truth in court, that him killing Jordan actually potentially saved someone else’s life because Jordan didn’t get to kill somebody else. And that all of this is related to baggy pants, their fathers not being around, and MTV. The belief system he had in place led to Jordan’s killing. And there were some things that Michael Dunn said that were, for me, metaphorical of what many white people in America say and how they perceive black men. A lot of people think that MTV is this, or all black fathers are that. I don’t know how many people who have those opinions would then reach for their gun. But I think a lot of people have those opinions. Michael Dunn is just one person, but what he comes to represent is much more interesting.

Also, I thought one of the maddest things about Dunn’s rant about black fathers not being present was this amazing irony that Dunn had not seen his son in many years and was literally going to his estranged son’s wedding that day. So he would be a not-present father, and Ron, Jordan’s dad, would be ever-present father. Even in death, Ron is essentially fathering and standing up for his son.

MJ: You started this film before Ferguson got more of America talking about race again. How has the explosion of debate on this topic affected the final product?

MS: I remember we were sitting in the edit suite watching Ferguson erupt on Facebook and in the media. There were moments when we were itching to go out and shoot, not really knowing why. So we held ourselves back. But actually that was the wisest thing. Because Jordan’s story held within its DNA all of these layers that not only spoke to what happened specifically to him, but spoke to bigger things that were, and obviously have been happening in the US for many years—this year in particular. All of that had already happened before Ferguson. So technically nothing changed on the timeline. It just resonated more powerfully.

Ferguson happened in between the two Dunn trials. Members of the public obviously knew it had happened, and then 12 of those members of the public ended up on the second jury. I’ve always wondered if some social change had actually occurred. Whether that second jury had been affected by what happened in Ferguson, and they did look at racial bias in a different way and thought, “This isn’t self defense.” I could never prove that, but I like to think that sometimes.

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3.5 Minutes, 10 Bullets, and 1 Racially Charged Tragedy

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

by Antonio50E Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A court in The Hague has ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by at least 25 percent within five years, in a landmark ruling expected to cause ripples around the world.

To cheers and hoots from climate campaigners in court, three judges ruled that government plans to cut emissions by just 14 to 17 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change.

Jubilant campaigners said that governments preparing for the Paris climate summit later this year would now need to look over their shoulders for civil rights era-style legal challenges where emissions-cutting pledges are inadequate.

“Before this judgment, the only legal obligations on states were those they agreed among themselves in international treaties,” said Dennis van Berkel, legal counsel for Urgenda, the group that brought the suit.

“This is the first time a court has determined that states have an independent legal obligation towards their citizens. That must inform the reduction commitments in Paris because if it doesn’t, they can expect pressure from courts in their own jurisdictions.”

In what was the first climate liability suit brought under human rights and tort law, Judge Hans Hofhuis told the court that the threat posed by global warming was severe and acknowledged by the Dutch government in international pacts.

“The state should not hide behind the argument that the solution to the global climate problem does not depend solely on Dutch efforts,” the judges’ ruling said. “Any reduction of emissions contributes to the prevention of dangerous climate change and as a developed country the Netherlands should take the lead in this.”

After a legal campaign that took two and a half years to get to its first hearing in April, normally dispassionate lawyers were visibly moved by the judge’s words. “As the verdict was being read out, I actually had tears in my eyes,” Roger Cox, Urgenda’s lead advocate, told the Guardian. “It was an emotional moment.”

Young activists in court said that the ruling had gone some way to restoring Dutch national pride, which has been dented as Denmark, Germany and even the UK overtook the Netherlands, once seen as a European climate leader, in the green economy race.

The Dutch Labor MP Eric Smaling cautioned though that “some people will feel proud but others are more unhappy about the influx of refugees. So far climate action has too much been the last baby of a relatively leftist elite.” He called for a wide coalition to spread the climate action message before elections in early 2017.

The Dutch government has not decided whether to appeal the court’s decision yet, but opposition politicians are steeling themselves for the prospect.

Stientje Van Veldhoven, an MP and spokesperson for the D66 Liberal opposition in parliament noted that the government had yielded to a comparable, if more limited, ruling ending gas extraction in part of the giant Groningen gas fields earlier this year.

“The government has never ignored a court ruling like this one before, but there has never been a ruling like this before either,” she said. “Everybody has a right to appeal.” Veldhoven has requested a parliamentary debate on Wednesday’s court ruling.

In a statement on behalf of prime minister Mark Rutte’s cabinet, the Dutch environment minister Wilma Mansfeld said that the government’s strategy was to implement EU-wide and international agreements.

“We and Urgenda share the same goal,” Mansfeld said. “We just hold different opinions regarding the manner in which to attain this goal. We will now examine what this ruling means for the Dutch state.”

Some 886 plaintiffs organized by Urgenda had accused the Dutch government of negligence for “knowingly contributing” to a breach of the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) maximum target for global warming.

Their legal arguments rested on axioms forbidding states from polluting to the extent that they damage other states, and the EU’s “precautionary principle” which prohibits actions that carry unknown but potentially severe risks.

An article by the UN climate secretariat obliging states to do whatever is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change was also cited. So was the UN climate science panel’s 2007 assessment of the reductions in carbon dioxide needed to have a 50 percent chance of containing global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Several legal sources said that ideas outlined in the Oslo Principles for climate change obligations, launched in the Guardian in March, appeared to have been influential in the judge’s reasoning.

James Thornton, the CEO of the environmental law group ClientEarth, hailed what he said had been a “courageous and visionary” ruling, that would shape the playing field for future suits.

“There are moments in history when only courts can address overwhelming problems. In the past it has been issues like discrimination. Climate change is our overwhelming problem and this court has addressed it. The Dutch court’s ruling should encourage courts around the world to tackle climate change now.”

Serge de Gheldere, the president of Klimaat Zaak, which is pursuing an almost identical case to Urgenda’s in Belgium, said: “This gives us a lot of hope as it sets an incredible precedent. The government in Belgium will take a lot of notice of whats happened here today. This could be the first stone that sets an avalanche in motion.”

Professor Pier Vellinga, Urgenda’s chairman and the originator of the 2-degree target in 1989, said that the breakthrough judgment would have a massive impact. “The ruling is of enormous significance, and beyond our expectations,” he said.

The court also ordered the government to pay all of Urgenda’s costs.

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

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Why Chris Christie Is Fighting the Release of His Media List

by CarriWinning Posted on June 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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For years, the news media has been battling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for access to a host of ostensibly public records. In February, Mother Jones’ Molly Redden reported that Christie’s administration was fighting 23 open-records requests in court, on everything from Bridgegate to Christie’s out-of-state travel and contracts awarded in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. These fights over records aren’t just minor squabbles between pesky reporters and a prickly governor—they are costing New Jersey taxpayers serious money. As of September 2014, the Christie administration had shelled out $441,000 reimbursing lawyers for plaintiffs who successfully sued for records (and that doesn’t include other costs, such as government lawyers’ time).

Even when the Christie administration loses, it doesn’t go down without a fight. The New Jersey Watchdog, an independent investigative reporting outlet, reported Monday that the Christie administration is challenging a court’s order to release a comprehensive media list that was created by the governor’s communications office. The communications office is staffed by 16 people who earned more than $1.3 million in taxpayer-funded salaries last year.

The list, requested by the New Jersey Watchdog, includes “contact information for roughly 2,500 reporters, producers and editors, subdivided into categories, which enables Christie and his staff to selectively target efforts to promote their political ambitions,” according to the outlet. The Christie administration is arguing that providing the list would give the New Jersey Watchdog an unfair competitive advantage over other media outlets and is refusing to release it under a law that allows the government to withhold records that include trade secrets or proprietary information of government contractors.

“New Jersey Watchdog does not bid on government contracts,” Mark Lagerkvist, the site’s reporter and editor, wrote Monday. “It is a non-profit investigative news site that freely shares its content with other news outlets.… The governor’s argument suggests the governor has a proprietary, or ownership interest in the list. But the governor’s office is not a private business. And while the media list may be a valuable asset for his political future, it is not Christie’s property.”

Lagerkvist told Mother Jones that his attorney will file a response to the administration’s challenge and the judge in the case will likely schedule a hearing to decide the matter.

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Why Chris Christie Is Fighting the Release of His Media List

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Judge in Dylann Roof Case Has a History of Racist Comments

by FloraWessel254 Posted on June 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The judge who held the bond hearing for Dylann Roof, the suspect in the mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, has a history of making racist comments, according to court documents. The Daily Beast reports that in 2003, Magistrate James B.Gosnell told a black defendant, “There are four kinds of people in this world—black people, white people, red necks, and n—rs.” The comment led to a disciplinary proceeding that was eventually heard by the state Supreme Court in 2005.

During the investigation, according to records from the proceeding, Gosnell argued that his statement was excusable because “he knew the defendant, the defendant’s father, and the defendant’s grandfather,” and that he was merely repeating something he remembered hearing from “a veteran African American sheriff’s deputy.” The document goes on to say:

“Respondent Gosnell alleges he repeated this statement to the defendant in an ill-considered effort to encourage him to recognize and change the path he had chosen in life.”

The same proceeding details another ethical pickle that Gosnell found himself in two days after the racist comment, when he allegedly helped get another judge out of jail in a DUI case.

“Respondent Gosnell met the arresting officer and Judge Mendelsohn at the detention center. At some point, respondent took possession of the ticket, placed a ‘bond hearing’ stamp on the back, and entered the amount of $1,002.00. When detention center officials expressed concerns over Judge Mendelsohn’s release, respondent remarked ‘this didn’t happen until 8:00 a.m.,’ or words of similar import and effect. Respondent acknowledges it was his intention to facilitate Judge Mendelsohn’s release without waiting for the morning bond hearing and to make it appear that Judge Mendelsohn’s bond was set at 8:00 a.m. in accordance with Mount Pleasant’s bond procedure.”

Gosnell ultimately kept his job when the court concluded that an official reprimand would suffice.

At Friday’s bond hearing, Gosnell won praise for letting members of the victims’ families confront Roof directly. But some were surprised when he made comments about Roof’s family members being victims of the tragedy as well.

Charged with nine counts of murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, Roof is due back in court on October 23. His bail for the weapon charges was set by Gosnell at $1 million, but the judge said he did not have the authority to set bail for murder charges.

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Judge in Dylann Roof Case Has a History of Racist Comments

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The Legal Trouble That Could Haunt Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign

by TerrencWmv Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rick Perry’s recently launched presidential campaign is off to a relatively smooth start. Sure, unlike his 2012 bid, he’s entering the field far, far behind in the polls—he’s trailing Donald Trump!—but he’s been getting good press. “Rick Perry’s still got it,” proclaimed Politico‘s Katie Glueck over the weekend, noting that “when it comes to glad-handing and working a crowd, Perry still sets the gold standard even if he trails in the polls.”

But as he launches his second run for the White House, Perry faces ongoing legal trouble back home in Texas stemming from his time as governor. Last August, a grand jury indicted Perry for abusing his power as governor. Perry has repeatedly requested that judges dismiss the case, only to be rebuked as the allegations progress toward a trial—one that could play out during the heat of the GOP primaries.

The case is a bit convoluted, but it stems from Perry’s 2013 effort to oust a county district attorney who investigates public corruption.

Texas has an unusual system of keeping politicians in check. There’s no a state-level commission that scrutinizes political malfeasance. Instead, the Travis County DA—based in Austin—is responsible for conducting these investigations.

Texas Republicans had never been huge fans of a system that entrusts this liberal county with that power (especially after the Travis DA charged former US House majority leader Tom DeLay with violating election law in 2005). Nevertheless, the status quo had hummed along until April 2013, when police arrested Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg for drunk driving. Lehmberg, a Democrat, was caught on videotape the night of her arrest threatening police officers.

Republicans, including Perry, immediately called on Lehmberg to resign. But she refused, managing to hold onto her job despite various legal maneuvers to remove her from office. So Perry attempted a more creative method to get rid of Lehmberg. In 2013, he used the governor’s line item veto power to cross out $7.5 million in funds allocated to the Public Integrity Unit, the subsection of the Travis County DA’s office that investigates political corruption. Perry directly linked the veto to Lehmberg’s arrest, saying he couldn’t allow the funds to go to this outfit “when the person charged with ultimate responsibility of that unit has lost the public’s confidence.”

That raised the ire of Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning good government outfit. It filed a complaint alleging Perry had abused his office’s powers. “The governor overstepped his authority by sticking his nose in Travis County’s business,” the group’s executive director said in a statement at the time. This led to a judge tasking a special prosecutor to look into the case, and that led to a grand jury and felony indictment for Perry on one count of abusing his official capacity and another count of coercing a public servant.

Perry has been dismissive of the case, turning his mugshot into a fundraising t-shirt. And a number of legal commentators, even liberal ones, have agreed, questioning the seriousness of the charges leveled against Perry. University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen termed it “the criminalization of ordinary politics.”

Yet judges in Texas aren’t ready to shelve the charges. San Antonio Judge Bert Richardson has repeatedly turned down motions from Perry’s lawyers to dismiss the case. In April, the case was assigned to a three-judge panel in Texas’ 3rd Court of Appeals. No date has been set for initial hearings, so the case might not get fully aired until the peak of presidential primary season later this fall. If Perry he ends up getting convicted on both counts, he would face a maximum sentence of over 100 years of jail time.

No matter the outcome of the case, Perry soon might get his wish to see Lehmberg off the public corruption beat: The state house and senate both recently passed bills to reassign corruption cases to the Texas Rangers—a law enforcement agency that is overseen by the governor’s appointees.

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The Legal Trouble That Could Haunt Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign

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How Scott Walker and His Allies Hijacked the Wisconsin Supreme Court

by doyoubringlaptopstoclassincollege Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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For three years, Wisconsin prosecutors have been investigating whether Republican Gov. Scott Walker broke campaign finance laws as he battled a 2012 recall effort sparked by his push for a law that undercut the power of public sector unions. Prosecutors allege that Walker and his aides illegally coordinated with conservative groups that were raising money and running ads to support Walker and his Republican allies. At least one group at the center of the probe, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, has gone to court to stop the investigation. Its fate now rests with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will rule any day now on whether the inquiry can proceed.

But there’s a rub. Two key targets of the investigation—the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state’s leading business group—have spent over $10 million since 2007 to elect a conservative majority to Wisconsin’s top court. Given their involvement in the investigation, and the Wisconsin Club for Growth’s position as a party to the case, good government advocates question whether the four conservative justices elected with the help of these two groups should be presiding over the case.

Read about the scandal that could that could crush Scott Walker’s presidential hopes.

The Wisconsin Club for Growth and WMC did not make direct contributions to the campaigns for these justices. Instead, they poured millions into so-called independent issue ads that clearly conveyed messages that supported these campaigns. And in an odd twist, due to lax recusal guidelines—which were adopted at the urging of one of these conservative outfits—these justices on the state’s high court are not compelled to sit out a case involving these two groups.

The Wisconsin Club for Growth and WMC are top players in a years-long undertaking by Walker and his allies to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that is friendly to conservative policies—an operation that has included spending millions on ads, ending public campaign financing for Supreme Court elections, rewriting the court’s ethics guidelines, and amending the state’s constitution. This effort has led to one of the most partisan and dysfunctional judicial bodies in the country, a court with liberal and conservative justices who won’t appear together in public. And it could well end up benefiting the conservative groups under investigation should the jurists they helped elect rule the probe should stop.

“This large amount of money and special interests has impacted the workings of the court, the reputation of the court, and how it’s interacting internally,” says former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who served on the court from 1993 to 1998.

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How Scott Walker and His Allies Hijacked the Wisconsin Supreme Court

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