The Arizona Republic reports that in his deposition for a class action suit against him and his department, Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio testified that he hasn’t read his own book on immigration policy.

Less surprising but still sort of startling to see in print, the sheriff conceded he is “not well-versed” on the Fourth Amendment.

Powattattamie gets settled before the U.S. Supreme Court can issue a decision.

Not really sure what to make of this. I agree with Jacob Sullum that it suggests the defendants were worried. You have to wonder if they were pressured from other prosecutor groups and government agencies to avoid setting a precedent.

So on we go, then. Could be another 10 years before a case like this brings even the slightest bit of accountability to rogue prosecutors.

Citing “the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment,” the American Law Institute has retracted its guidelines for administration of the death penalty in the United States.

Adam Liptak argues in the New York Times that this may have been the most important death penalty story of 2009. The organization of 4,000 judges, lawyers, and academics essentially provided the scholarly heft behind the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the death penalty 30 years ago.

In 1962, as part of the Model Penal Code, the institute created the modern framework for the death penalty, one the Supreme Court largely adopted when it reinstituted capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Several justices cited the standards the institute had developed as a model to be emulated by the states…

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

Las Vegas.

My crime column this week looks at the Great D.C. Snowball Fight of ’09, and its lessons beyond the gun-waving Det. Baylor.

Philadelphia.

Washington, D.C. is suing AT&T because some customers who buy its prepaid calling cards don’t always use up all the minutes. The city isn’t suing on behalf of the customers, of course (though even that would be sort of silly). It’s suing on the notion that when a customer doesn’t use up all of a product or service they purchase, the remainder belongs to the government. So they want the company to pay what the minutes are worth to the D.C. government, where they might be better used on, oh I don’t know, maybe to pay overtime for Mayor Adrian Fenty’s mountain bike detail.

Next up, D.C. sues Burger King for stray fries that go uneaten after falling to the bottom of the drive-thru bag.

When I was in Indiana last week, I saw signs all over the interstate like this one:

The billboards are part of a re-branding campaign for Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, a joint, largely commuter satellite campus for the state’s two big public universities. I really hope IUPUI didn’t pay an outside PR firm a lot of money to come up with the slogan. In fact, someone should probably be fired for it. It’s so bad it’s funny.

So has anyone actually seen David Foley since Glenn Beck started his TV show?

(Via Reddit)

My colleague Damon Root reminds us that New Year’s Day is the anniversary of the death of the great Hank Williams, Sr.

Here’s my favorite. Lots of great covers of this song, too.

Got back to D.C. yesterday afternoon. All in all, not the best holiday stretch I’ve ever had.

There was some talk in the comments and I received some email about doing a meet-up while I was in Nashville. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in town very long. But I’ll likely be back later this year to do some research. Might be fun to do one then.

One final warm and hearty thank you for the supportive email, offers to help out, and general encouragement over the last 10 days or so. Didn’t quite realize how many people had connected with the dog photos I put up every couple weeks.