Two caribou in Denali National Park, Alaska.

Last month, I wrote about new questions in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for setting a fire that killed his two children. Nine forensic fire experts have since come forward to say that the fire marshall who testified in Willingham’s case had no idea what he was talking about. The most recent expert to review the case, for example, said the marshall’s findings were “nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation.”

I wrote at the time that it was tough to say Willingham was innocent, only that he should never have been convicted. But in an in-depth investigation published in last week’s New Yorker, David Grann makes a compelling case that Willingham didn’t set the fire. Grann also participated in a follow-up chat, and answered criticism of his article—convincingly, I think—on the New Yorker’s blog.

So what now? I’m opposed to the death penalty, but mostly because I have little faith in the government to administer it competently. So I’ve never much doubted that one ore more states have executed innocent people. There has long been a sentiment among death penalty opponents that proof of an executed innocent would turn public opinion on the death penalty. I’m pessimistic that’s going to happen. But it does raise the question for supporters of capital punishment: Does Willingham’s case make you rethink your position? If not, how many more cases of an executed innocent person would it take to make you change your mind?

This week, my Reason crime column looks at Alvarez v. Smith, a challenge to the state of Illinois’ particularly nasty asset forfeiture law. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case next month.

Charleston, South Carolina.

An Indiana man has filed a lawsuit against a Lawrenceville, Indiana police officer and a local doctor and hospital, claiming he was forcibly catheterized after a DWI stop. According to the lawsuit, Jamie Lockard passed his roadside breath test. But the officer still detained  Lockard and took him to a local hospital, where doctors strapped him to a gurney, pushed a catheter inside of him, and forcibly extracted blood and urine from him. The blood and urine tests also showed Lockard to be under the legal limit.

Lockard was never charged for drunk driving. According to the lawsuit, he was charged with “obstruction of justice,” apparently for having the temerity to resist someone shoving a tube into his body without his permission.

A local magistrate signed off on a warrant for the procedure.

I guess this means the results of those trustworthy roadside breath tests are only reliable when they show that someone is intoxicated.

(Via Popehat)

So for consistency’s sake, Michael Moore’s new film won’t be advertised, marketed, or otherwise promoted by crass capitalist machinations, right?

And I assume we’ll all be able to see it for free?

Inside of the 6th and I Synagogue, Washington, D.C.

Given the subject matter of the last few posts, I thought maybe you all could use some ice cream.

More old-timey ice cream photos here.

When the police shot and killed the pit bull, two bullets ricocheted, striking the kids.

It’s way late notice, but there are a few slots open for this years Agitator.com fantasy football league.

You’ll need to pay $75 to reserve a spot, and have 3-4 hours for a live draft this Sunday starting at 3pm.

Drop me an email if you’re interested.

Payouts go to the champion, regular season points leader, and points leader over the last three weeks of the regular season.

From the A.P.:

It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn’t hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

Yes, you read that correctly. Full story here.

Warrant’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Last June, I put up a post about a Mississippi cardiologist named Roger Weiner. Weiner moved to the Mississippi Delta town of Clarksdale from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999. I had contacted Weiner because he was involved in a protracted court battle with controversial Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne. You can read about that battle at the link above.

Weiner is an outspoken guy. He not only gave me an on the record interview about Hayne and what he, Weiner, perceived to be Mississippi’s corrupt medical investigation system, he has also spoken out against the HMOs he says he came to the state to get away from. He was so disturbed by his experience with Hayne that he successfully ran for Coahoma County Supervisor. He also told me that though he’d never previously touched a gun in his life, after he was elected he felt compelled to keep a shotgun in his home, dryly explaining that, “Not everyone down here is happy about an East Coast Jew getting elected to county office.”

In May of this year, Weiner was arrested by five FBI agents at the improbably named Shady Nook gas station. The charge? Violating the federal Mann Act—a century-old law banning the transport of women across state lines for “immoral purposes.” Specifically, federal agents had posed as prostitutes on a chat room for a Memphis-based website called sugardaddyforme.com, a site aimed at pairing older wealthy men with young women.

The FBI claims Weiner agreed to pay agents posing as escorts to make the 80-mile trip from Memphis to Clarksdale to have sex with him. My sources in Mississippi told me at the time that unofficial word from the U.S. Attorney’s office was that more serious charges against Weiner were imminent. The implication was that he’d be indicted for child pornography, or soliciting sex a minor. But as weeks went by, those charges never came. All the women, or fake women, Weiner is accused of soliciting were of age (one agent posted as a 31-year-old).

Now the solicitation charges themselves are looking pretty weak, too. U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers recently threatened to toss the entire case against Weiner unless U.S. attorneys turned over the cell phone records they had been keeping from Weiner’s defense. As it turns out, there was a pretty good reason why the feds were keeping those records to themselves. It came out yesterday at Weiner’s hearing. The Mississippi blog NMissCommentor was there:

What happened here was that the F.B.I. had a “tip” that Dr. Weiner was somehow involved in child pornography on the site sugardaddy.com.  So they checked it out and discovered, nope, no child pornography there.  Case closed?  Nope, the F.B.I. then decided to run in some fake “sugarbabies”– agents masquerading as escorts– to try to lure Weiner into agreeing to meet them.  Some of the time, one of the agents playing “escort” was a guy!

Just to be clear:  Dr. Weiner never met one of these “women.”  Dr. Weiner never paid one of these “women” a dime.  Dr. Weiner even told the first would be escort,  Ginger (well, the agent or agents masquerading as Ginger), that there was “a difference between a sugar baby and a hooker, and I’m not interested in a hooker.”

According to a motion Weiner’s lawyer filed in federal court, federal prosecutors left this information out of the affidavit they filed to get a search warrant for Weiner’s home. The motion says “the Government knew when it applied for the search warrant that the defendant had already informed the Government agent that he was not interested in a hooker, wanted noting to do with a hooker, and the Government agent assured him that she was not a hooker.” If you’re going to arrest a man for soliciting prostitutes, it seems like it would be pretty important to include in your affidavit the fact that he specifically told an undercover agent he wasn’t interested in a prostitute. Of course, you’d then have no pretext to search his home for the really juicy stuff.

Back to the NMissCommentor:

This led the F.B.I. to run in a second fake sugar baby, Mary.  And, because masquerading Mary was in Mississippi during all the conversations with Dr. Weiner, there was no chance of her crossing a state line, the very essence of a Mann Act violation!  (The U.S. Attorney argues that, well, he meant for her to cross a state line, because she said she was in Memphis)…

…it gets even weirder.  Mary emailed the doctor that she was in Memphis on business, and would like to come down to see him.  He said nope, I’m on call and too busy.  She then asked how’s about tomorrow lunch.  He said don’t bother to come all the way just for me.  She then ventured– oh, I’ve got to drive back home from Memphis to Mobile, and can just pass through Clarksdale en route.  He said well all right, she got off the phone, and some brighter prosecution-side type thought–

–wait a minute, if she’s “going to drive home” and that’s why she’s “crossing state lines,” where’s the Mann Act violation!?

So she calls back to suggest, er, um, I’m not really going to Mobile at all, just coming to see you.  Shortly thereafter, five F.B.I. agents arrested Dr. Weiner at the Shady Nook north of Clarksdale.

Let me stress here that I have no evidence that the feds’ pursuit of Dr. Weiner is in any way related to his outspoken criticism of Steven Hayne and Mississippi’s death investigation system. But it sure seems like someone had a reason to . . . well, I’ll just defer to Judge Biggers, here:

Judge Biggers asked some pointed questions:  Why are they prosecuting him?   Judge Biggers also said, “Something is going on here that is not on the surface that they would bring in 3 government agents in contact with him over and over again.  When he didn’t express interest, they bring in another one.  Something is going on that is not evident.  Perhaps [U.S. Attorney] Mr. Roberts can explain it.”

Other comments from the bench:  “You’ve come a long way from the purpose of this statute in the bringing of this charge.”  “It took five F.B.I. agents…to arrest him?” (This drew a response from the prosecutor hemming and hawing about not being able to assume things just because the arrest involves a doctor and not second guessing the agents about safety).  And:  “This case seems like overload.”

It sure does. Let’s assume for a second that the feds’ pursuit of Weiner has nothing to do with his criticism of Hayne, the Coahoma County coroner, the medical establishment in Mississippi, or that it has any political motivation whatsoever. Let’s just look at it as a question of priorities. Because that’s troubling enough. Hayne and Michael West have been corrupting Mississippi’s justice system for 20 years, with little attention from the federal government. Yet the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office have time to devote three agents and a team of prosecutors to invoke a century-old law against sex slavery to entrap a man who was using an Internet dating site to meet women.

Columbus, Indiana.

Front page of the D.C. Examiner today.

Just. Awesome.

Developing story in Georgia, where church pastor Jonathan Ayers was shot and killed by undercover narcotics officers during a botched drug sting on Tuesday afternoon. Ayers was not the target of the investigation.

Police were apparently after a woman Ayers had dropped off just prior to stopping at the convenience store where police confronted him. Surveillance video shows a black SUV pulling up to the store, and plain-clothes officers jumping out with their guns drawn before the vehicle has stopped. Ayers’ car then backs into the picture, and the officers fire into his car as he drives off. Ayers was shot in the liver, crashed his car a short distance later, and died at the hospital the bullet wound.

A police spokesperson says the officers identified themselves as they got out of the truck, though even if they did, it isn’t difficult to see how someone in Ayers’ position might panic when confronted with armed, plain-clothes men who’d just jumped from a black SUV. He had also just returned from getting money from the store’s ATM. There were no drugs in Ayers’ car.

Ayers leaves behind a wife who is four months pregnant.

Paragliders in Girdwood, Alaska.

I don’t think the U.S. health care system is perfect, or anywhere near what it ought to be. But I also think the talking points about how awful it is are misleading. This passage from a recent Steve Chapman column addressing life expectancy, for example, rings true.

One big reason our life expectancy lags is that Americans have an unusual tendency to perish in homicides or accidents. We are 12 times more likely than the Japanese to be murdered and nearly twice as likely to be killed in auto wrecks.

In their 2006 book, The Business of Health, economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider set out to determine where the U.S. would rank in life span among developed nations if homicides and accidents are factored out. Their answer? First place.

I tried to make this point without the data a while back. Our high homicide and traffic fatality rates have nothing to do with health care, but they’re a significant factor in determining our average life expectancy. Same with lifestyle choices. Which is why life expectancy isn’t a very good way to measure the efficacy of the health care system. Nor, for that matter, is infant mortality.

Several Seattle-area Somali immigrants are suing local police agencies, claiming they were wrongly rounded up in a massive sweep for khat done in conjunction with the DEA. Khat is a mild euphoric stimulant that’s usually chewed in leaf form. It’s illegal in the U.S. but ubiquitous throughout Africa, and common in U.S. cities with large East African immigrant populations.

Three years ago, armed agents from a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) task force crashed through the door of a Seattle apartment where Habibo Jama, a Somali refugee and U.S. citizen, lived with her brother, uncle and cousins. Jama, startled awake, opened her bedroom door in her nightshirt to find herself facing several men in black pointing guns at her and ordering her to the floor.

Almost simultaneously, at an apartment 20 miles away in Kent, Ali Dualeh, his wife and their seven children — ages 4 months to 17 years — jolted from bed when they heard a loud noise. Both parents made it to the hallway before they were tackled by agents from the Valley Narcotics Enforcement Team who had broken down their front door.

“Operation Somali Express” was a nationwide crackdown, but it’s only real achievement appears to be bad blood between police and local Somali immigrant communities. Of the 19 men arrested in Seattle, 15 were dismissed without charges. According to the Seattle Times, most of those arrested in New York, Ohio, and Minnesota were never charged either. Agents seized money and property from Somali families who were never charged, some of whom had to wait nearly a year before their savings and belongings were returned.

The paper suggests the raids may amount to yet another anti-drug operation that undermines the war on terror.

Some law-enforcement officials and Somali community leaders are saying the fallout from the operation has poisoned relations between law enforcement and the communities at a time when federal agents are looking for help.

Over the past two years, as many as 20 Somali men have disappeared from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., apparently recruited in area mosques to wage jihad in their own country.

Some have turned up fighting for a radical Islamic group in Somalia called Al-Shabaab, which U.S. intelligence sources have tied to al-Qaida. One American youth blew himself up at a U.N. checkpoint last October, according to federal investigators…

It is a very difficult community to walk into,” said one law-enforcement official assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle who spoke on condition of anonymity because he does not have permission to talk to the media. “There is a lot of mistrust there and part of it is because of these raids.”

The lawsuit also alleges the Seattle police department conducts no-knock raids (or at least knock-and-announce raids that don’t allow a long enough period of time before forcing entry) for all of its narcotics warrants. If so, the department would be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. But as is often the case with these multi-jurisdictional operations, there seems to be a lot of buck passing about whose procedures were being followed.

The city, in a response to the lawsuit, denies its practice is unconstitutional and said its officers were acting under the direction of the DEA. The DEA referred all inquiries about the lawsuit to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The agency, in court filings, said it can’t be held liable for what the Seattle police officers may have done in leading the raid on Jama’s apartment.

On the addiction/physical harm table, khat ranks below just about every other mood-altering drug available. The harm caused by overly aggressive government efforts to prevent people from chewing it is another matter.

Good point by Gregg Easterbrook in, oddly, his Tuesday Morning Quaterback column for ESPN.com.

Can anyone explain why American taxpayers are being taxed, via the Cash for Clunkers program, to subsidize the destruction of low-mileage cars — while simultaneously being taxed to support General Motors, which just released a 426-horsepower, 16-mpg Camaro to complement its 556-horsepower, 15-mpg Cadillac? Under the Cash for Clunkers mileage rules, both cars classify as clunkers! Taxpayers are simultaneously paying to destroy old low-mileage cars and build new low-mileage cars.

It’s the government equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.