Meant to post these last night, but ran out of time.

My crime column is up at Reason.

It’s a somewhat pessimistic take on last week’s chatter about an emerging left-right-libertarian consensus on criminal justice reform.

My take? We may all agree that there are problems, but we all have view the purpose of the legal system differently, so it’s unlikely that we’re going to come to a consensus on solutions.

That said . . . I hope I’m wrong! And conveniently, my solution would be for everyone else to be a bit more libertarian.

Today is the deadline by which Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe gave Dep. Adam Stoddard to apologize for swiping documents from a defense attorney’s file in open court last month. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who, oddly, is speaking at Arizona State University’s journalism school tonight) has vowed that Stoddard will not apologize.

Arizona freelance journalist Nick Martin broke this story, and lays out the delicously intriguing stakes:

Earlier this month, Arpaio vowed that his young officer would not abide by the ruling, saying, “Superior Court judges do not order my officers to hold press conferences.”

That same day, Liddy announced the sheriff’s office planned to ask the Arizona Court of Appeals to intervene in the case. But as of Sunday night, Liddy had not yet filed the appeal.

On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office asked Donahoe to delay the deadline for the apology so the appeal could still be filed. But so far, no delay has been granted…

Even with the Phoenix area’s unusual politics and bizarre history, the events leading up to today create a scenario unlike any the region has seen in quite some time – if ever.

For one, it sets up the possibility that Stoddard could ignore Donahoe’s order outright and force the judge to send him to jail for contempt of court. The jailing of an active member of law enforcement in Maricopa County is unprecedented in recent memory.

It also raises the question of whether Arpaio, who runs the county jails and has balked at the judge’s order, would agree to lock up one of his own men. If he refuses, Donahoe could take the extraordinary step of asking another agency to step in or else go another route entirely. It’s anybody’s guess.

I can’t think of another case where a judge has ordered someone jailed for contempt and the police department has refused to carry out the order. I’m not sure what would happen next. A duel? Arm wrestling?

The dreadful, ever-earnest Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson is the latest pundit to lament the death of the newspaper.

I’ve written in the past that I think newspapers do serve a useful purpose, and I do think we’ll genuinely be worse off when the last newspaperman takes his last ink-lunged breath of life.

But Gerson makes a number of the same mistakes these broadly written old media vs. new media missives always seem to make. Most notably, he lumps all new media into one category and all old media into another. There are great newspapers. And there are really awful newspapers. There are great web-only, hard news publications, and there are terrible, gossipy poorly-sourced ones. Some, like Huffington Post, manage to be both. There are blogs that do actual reporting and break stories (ahem), and blogs that reiterate talking points from the RNC and DNC.

But I can’t let this passage go without comment:

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don’t produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain. But newspapers are expected to provide their content free on the Internet. A recent poll found that 80 percent of Americans refuse to pay for Internet content. There is no economic model that will allow newspapers to keep producing content they don’t charge for, while Internet sites repackage and sell content they don’t pay to produce.

I dislike media bias as much as the next conservative. But I don’t believe that journalistic objectivity is a fraud. I was a journalist for a time, at a once-great, now-diminished newsmagazine. I’ve seen good men and women work according to a set of professional standards I respect — standards that serve the public. Professional journalism is not like the buggy-whip industry, outdated by economic progress, to be mourned but not missed. This profession has a social value that is currently not reflected in its market value.

Uh…bullshit?

In 20 years, the Gannett-owned Jackson Clarion-Ledger never got around to investigating Steven Hayne, despite the fact that all the problems associated with him and Mississippi’s autopsy system are and have been fairly common knowledge around the state for decades. It wasn’t until the Innocence Project, spurred by my reporting, called for Hayne’s medical license that the paper had no choice but to begin to cover a huge story that had been going on right under its nose for two decades.

Take note, Gerson: That’s when the paper starting stealing my scoops. Me, a web-based reporter working on a relatively limited budget. Like this story (covered by the paper a week later). And this one (covered by the paper weeks later here). Oh, and that well-funded traditional media giant CNN did the same thing.

I believe I’ve told this story before, but the New York Times indirectly reported on the Cory Maye case a few years before I did. Longtime crime reporter Fox Butterfield was in Prentiss, Mississippi to write about how the drug trade was devastating the rural South. He referenced Maye’s case on the front page, but because he’d already committed to the conceptual outline of his story (drugs are bad, and the government isn’t doing enough to fight them), it didn’t occur him to wonder why a man with no criminal record and no significant amount of drugs in his home would intentionally kill a police officer. Butterfield admitted as much to me when I spoke to him over the phone. The same can be said of the initial coverage of Maye’s case by Mississippi media. No one dug a little. No one went beyond interviewing the police and Maye’s attorney. It took a libertarian policy analyst in Washington looking at the case from a different perspective–one much more skeptical of law enforcement–to see the story, here.

You don’t need a ton of money to do investigative journalism. Nor is journalism necessarily tainted when its done with an agenda. In fact, some of the best investigative reporting has historically and still comes from the likes of Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s. More recently, on the web at places like Talking Points Memo or the Center for Independent media sites. Tim Carney has done great work exposing corporate rent seeking and corruption in Washington over at the Examiner. These are all publications that most certainly have a perspective. Accuracy and fairness are what’s important. The idea that anyone can approach a beat or a story with a detached, sterile objectivity is a farce.

Newspapers are still important. But it’s ridiculous to suggest that only newspapers and their pretense of objectivity can do effective or important investigative journalism. Frankly, what investigative journalism needs is more people who haven’t spent 10 years in a newsroom getting too familiar with government sources, growing too wedded to the idea of pure objectivity, and too hamstrung by the way things have always been done.

Oh, and once the traditional media stops running stories broken by bloggers and web publications without giving them proper credit, we can entertain Gerson’s complaint that blogs are stealing content from newspapers and “repackaging” it for profit.

Denver.

Last week, the Economist was kind of enough to ask for my rambling thoughts on criminal justice, some of my reporting, and libertarianism.

You can read the interview here.

The magazine also gave the blog you’re reading a nice endorsement, calling it “…a must read for anyone with a healthy scepticism of the government’s activities.”

I haven’t really explored new music this year the way I have in years past. So I’m leaving it to you, dear readers, to fill me in on what you liked this year.

Leave your favorite songs of 2009, or favorite songs you discovered in 2009, in the comments section.

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

Your surreal moment of the day.

Debra Saunders laments that 10 months into his presidency, Barack Obama’s first presidential pardon has gone to . . . a turkey.

According to political science Professor P.S. Ruckman Jr. of Rock Valley College in Illinois, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, has taken longer to use the executive pardon and commutation power than all but four presidents – George Washington, John Adams, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Obama hasn’t pardoned a single ex-offender, even though about 1,200 people have asked for pardons because they have turned their lives around, expressed remorse for their crimes and now want to wipe the criminal slate clean of long-past offenses for which they paid the penalty.

Nor has Obama commuted the sentence of any of the 2,000 or so federal inmates seeking sentence reductions – many because of draconian federal mandatory minimum sentences.

Saunders notes that when he served in the Clinton administration, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder’s record with the pardon power was stingy, making exceptions of course for political patronage.

It’s telling that over the last three administrations, the one exectuvie power Clinton, Bush, and Obama have been reluctant to make broad use of is the one that grants clemency, forgiveness, and justice to the governed.

I do disagree with Saunders on one point, though. She writes:

Of course, the pardon doesn’t free anyone. It is a reward for reformed offenders who, after serving their sentences, have led exemplary lives and want a clean criminal slate so that they can vote or look for a job without revealing their past.

Forgiveness for contrite, admitted convicts has become the most common use of the pardon power. But it isn’t the only reason the Founders gave it to the president. It was also intended to be a last check against injustice. Here’s Alexander Hamilton defending the pardon power in Federalist 74:

The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel. As the sense of responsibility is always strongest, in proportion as it is undivided, it may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance.

Unfortunately, the pardon power is almost never used in this way. Unless you happen to be the former vice president’s former chief of staff.

Professor Ruckman, by the way, has a terrific blog dedicated solely to the pardon power.

“I told him I actually did give two of these this week. Because it’s for wisdom and judgment and benefits to the state of Indiana, I did give one to (New England Patriots coach) Bill Belichick.”

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, upon giving Indiana’s highest honor to broadcaster Joe McConnell.

Related photo of Patriots thug making way for Belichick’s ego here.

Thanks to my dad for the tip.

….or write your own caption.

For the Lou Dobbs/Pat Buchanan fan in your life.

Compatible with both the “Terrified Immigrant Family” and “Misidentified Sex Offender” playsets. Sold separately.

Human Events helpfully lists ten law firms that deserve your patronage and support.

List is at the bottom of the page.

Now that we know the sloppiness with which the Gitmo detainees were assembled, and the disturbingly high number of detainees held for years on end who had nothing at all to do with terrorism, I think it’s time to declare that anyone arguing with a straight face that the people offering free legal representation to terror suspects are “reprehensible” or anti-American (whatever the hell that means) loses all right to be ever be taken seriously again.

Yeah I’m looking at you, Andy McCarthy.

For your “shouldn’t the police have something better to do?” files:

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Adam Bauer has nearly 400 friends on Facebook. He got an offer for a new one about a month ago. “She was a good-looking girl. I usually don’t accept friends I don’t know, but I randomly accepted this one for some reason,” the 19-year-old said.

He thinks that led to his invitation to come down to the La Crosse police station, where an officer laid out photos from Facebook of Bauer holding a beer — and then ticketed him for underage drinking.

The police report said Bauer admitted drinking, which he denies. But he did plead no contest in municipal court Wednesday and will pay a $227 fine.

He was among at least eight people who said Wednesday they had been cited for underage drinking based on photos on social networking sites.

Thanks to Thom Roethke for the link.

Over at Hit & Run, I have a more detailed post looking at Ed Meese’s sudden interest in the rights of the accused.

The Washington Post reports that support for legalizing marijuana is gaining momentum. The article includes this fun quote from Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project:

“…there is a reason you don’t have Mexican beer cartels planting fields of hops in the California forests.”

Thanks to Bob Ewing for the tip.

Your humble Agitator is quoted on the front page of the New York Times this morning.

I’ll have more on the general premise of the article later. But I’ll just say in the meantime that it’s awfully odd to hear Ed Meese, of all people, saying things like, “[Conservatives'] tradition has always been to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”

This after all, is a man who as attorney general was once asked why he doesn’t support Miranda warnings and allowing a suspect to have access to a lawyer before he’s questioned by police. Meese’s answer:

“…you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That’s contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.”

My crime column this week looks at last week’s Mississippi Court of Appeals ruling to rant Cory Maye a new trial. Specifically, it looks at why the issue of venue is important where Maye’s guilt or innocence rests on his credibility and the credibility of the police officers who conducted the raid on his home. The ruling essentially upheld the right to be judged by a jury of your peers.

Google is taking a swing at the Lexis/Westlaw duopoly by offering free searches and free access to the full text of state, district, and appellate court opinions. Law journals, too.

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the “How Cited” link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).

While the full text of most landmark cases are already available through sites like FindLaw, in giving access to the full range of federal and state decisions Google is providing an important service that, frankly, the government should be already be providing. There’s really no reason why the federal government and every state government shouldn’t provide their respective criminal codes and all court decisions online for free. These, after all, are the laws we’re supposed to follow.

UCLA law professor and blogospherian legal guru Eugene Volokh says the service is a decent start, but needs some obvious improvements, and is still a far cry from replacing Lexis or Westlaw. More feedback over at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog.