• Study: Black youth less likely to do illicit drugs than all ethnic groups but Asians. And yet they’re arrested at a far, far higher rate.
• The Atlantic on police militarization.
• Correction of the day.
• Supreme Court will hear arguments today on whether police should have the power to track your car without a warrant.
• Here’s another violent incident from the Occupy D.C. protests over the weekend.
• Headline of the day.
• Surprise inspection of Mexican prison turns up 100 plasma TVs, 19 prostitutes.

Kenny Vaughan, in Nashville.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals just ruled in favor of Hank Skinner’s request for DNA testing.  request for a stay to determine if he should get DNA testing.

I’ll post the statement from Skinner’s attorneys once I receive it.

MORE: Here’s the  language from the court order:

This is a direct appeal of the trial court’s ruling on a motion for DNA testing filed in the 31st Judicial District Court of Gray County, Cause No. 5216, styled The State of Texas v. Henry Watkins Skinner. See TEX. CODE CRIM. PROC. art. 64.05. Appellant’s execution is stayed pending the resolution of this appeal.

Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 64, which provides for DNA testing, has undergone several changes since its creation, but those changes have never been reviewed in the particular context of this case. Because the DNA statute has changed, and because some of those changes were because of this case, we find that it would be prudent for this Court to take time to fully review the changes in the statute as they pertain to this case.

Furthermore, in denying the motion for DNA testing, the convicting court has failed to enter determinations under Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 64.03. The convicting court shall enter an order containing the relevant Article 64.03 determinations within 15 days of the date of this order. That order shall then be included within a supplemental clerk’s record, which record shall be forwarded to this Court within 30 days of the date of this order.

IT IS SO ORDERED THIS THE 7th DAY OF NOVEMBER, 2011.

So it doesn’t look like this is an order for DNA testing so much as a stay to determine whether the new law allows Skinner to get DNA testing.

MORE: Statement from Skinner’s attorney:

“The Court of Criminal Appeals with its decision today, has ensured that Mr. Skinner’s request for DNA testing will receive the thorough and serious consideration it deserves. We are grateful for the Court’s action and look forward to the opportunity to make Mr. Skinner’s case for DNA testing in that forum.”

Rob Owen, attorney for Mr. Skinner

November 7, 2011

• The second part of the drug war essay I wrote for the Future of Freedom Foundation is now online.
• More evidence Cash for Clunkers was a bust.
• D.E.A. now sending military-trained units in to fight on foreign soil.
• Citing Glik, a New Hampshire judge upholds the First Amendment right to record police in public.
• Interesting article on megacities.
• Cartoonist draws the New York City Marathon as he’s running it.
• The New York Times ed board blames escalating drug war violence on allowing the assault weapons ban to expire. Because back when the ban was in effect, the drug cartels were apparently arming themselves with slingshots and crossbows.

Carrie Rodriguez, playing in Nashville.

Just uploaded my photo album from Rovinj, Croatia. Double-click for full-screen.

I’ll be giving my speech on police militarization at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana on Monday.

It’ll be at Horner Center, room 102, at 7:30 pm. Open to the public.

Reason.tv interviews Steven Pinker about his new book.

Defense attorney uses surveillance video to catch a Philadelphia police officer flat-out lying on the witness stand.

The video also shows a supervisor observing the illegal search.

Via Scott Greenfield, who has more.

• The latest in vaccination conspiracy nuttery.
• Louis C.K. punches his dog to save her life.
• Police at Occupy Oakland protests cover their name tags with tape.
• Meanwhile, Occupy D.C. protesters turn violent, blocking off streets, stopping traffic, trying to shut down a free market conference, and threaten to use force to trap conference attendees inside the D.C. Convention Center.
• Mind-blowing list of interest groups who have lobbied the Super Committee.
• Great game show moments.
• Inside the mind of a regulator.

Statement from Hank Skinner’s attorney:

“We are asking the Court of Criminal Appeals to ensure that Mr. Skinner is not put to death without a careful evaluation by that court of the trial court’s unexplained refusal to grant the DNA testing Mr. Skinner has sought for so long.

“The accurate resolution of cases involving the ultimate punishment is of paramount importance to the criminal justice system.  No such decision is possible until the Court of Criminal Appeals knows why the trial court rejected Mr. Skinner’s request for scientific testing, so that it can assess whether that decision correctly applied Texas law.

“But even putting the evident deficiencies of the trial court’s order to one side, it is plain that the facts of this case raise powerful and unanswered questions about whether Mr. Skinner committed the crime for which he awaits execution next Wednesday.  Those are precisely the kind of questions that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing law was designed to answer.  The Court of Criminal Appeals should stop the rush to execution so that it can give Mr. Skinner’s appeal the close attention it deserves.”

Robert C. Owen, attorney for Hank Skinner
November 4, 2011

I’m still baffled how the trial judge can justify openly defying the new state law. Maybe that’s why he didn’t try.

Meanwhile, try to wrap your brain around this defense of executing Skinner without first testing the DNA evidence. I understand the interest in putting a hot button pro-con head-to-head on your op-ed page. But man. That’s just really awful.

Wish they could all be a little more like Craig Watkins.

On April 30, 1992, Dale Lincoln Duke was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on the charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Four months later, according to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and its Conviction Integrity Unit, Duke waived his right to a jury trial and entered a plea of no contest. But throughout, he refused to confess to the crime — in court, then again during sex offender treatment, a stipulation of his deferred adjudication. And so, in 1997, Duke was sent to prison for 20 years.

But, according to the DA’s office today, one year after Duke went to prison, the county learned that the complaining witness had recanted…

In 2010, says Watkins’s office, Duke came back to the district attorney with further evidence showing that “the person initially reporting the incident did not believe the complaining witness was truthful.”…

All of which leads to this: Tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. in Judge Susan Hawk’s courtroom at the George Allen, Watkins’s office will ask the judge to find Duke innocent and release him from prison. Says Watkins, “The original prosecutor’s failure to provide critical information to the defendant coupled with overwhelming evidence that the initial allegations were false, convinced me that Mr. Duke was wrongfully convicted. After a thorough review of the case, I approved a recommendation to ask the court to exonerate Mr. Duke.”

That Watkins and Lynn Switzer hold the same position in government and take such completely different approaches to their jobs shows just how arbitrary the justice system can be.

We’ll go with a Nashville-based Griffin House this week. Love the ambiguity in this song. Can’t decide if it’s a sappy love ballad, or a sarcastic, passive-aggressive kiss-off.

 . . . is the one that churns outside of the grasp of any government.

With only a mobile phone and a promise of money from his uncle, David Obi did something the Nigerian government has been trying to do for decades: He figured out how to bring electricity to the masses in Africa’s most populous country.

It wasn’t a matter of technology. David is not an inventor or an engineer, and his insights into his country’s electrical problems had nothing to do with fancy photovoltaics or turbines to harness the harmattan or any other alternative sources of energy. Instead, 7,000 miles from home, using a language he could hardly speak, he did what traders have always done: made a deal. He contracted with a Chinese firm near Guangzhou to produce small diesel-powered generators under his uncle’s brand name, Aakoo, and shipped them home to Nigeria, where power is often scarce. David’s deal, struck four years ago, was not massive — but it made a solid profit and put him on a strong footing for success as a transnational merchant. Like almost all the transactions between Nigerian traders and Chinese manufacturers, it was also sub rosa: under the radar, outside of the view or control of government, part of the unheralded alternative economic universe of System D….

What happens in all the unregistered markets and roadside kiosks of the world is not simply haphazard. It is a product of intelligence, resilience, self-organization, and group solidarity, and it follows a number of well-worn though unwritten rules. It is, in that sense, a system.

It used to be that System D was small — a handful of market women selling a handful of shriveled carrots to earn a handful of pennies. It was the economy of desperation. But as trade has expanded and globalized, System D has scaled up too. Today, System D is the economy of aspiration. It is where the jobs are. In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a think tank sponsored by the governments of 30 of the most powerful capitalist countries and dedicated to promoting free-market institutions, concluded that half the workers of the world — close to 1.8 billion people — were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes…

The total value of System D as a global phenomenon is close to $10 trillion. Which makes for another astonishing revelation. If System D were an independent nation, united in a single political structure — call it the United Street Sellers Republic (USSR) or, perhaps, Bazaaristan — it would be an economic superpower, the second-largest economy in the world (the United States, with a GDP of $14 trillion, is numero uno). The gap is narrowing, though, and if the United States doesn’t snap out of its current funk, the USSR/Bazaaristan could conceivably catch it sometime this century.

Best thing I’ve read all week.

• Cato launches the libertarianism.org web portal.
• Michael Moore took $1 million in tax breaks to make his movie about the dangers of crony capitalism. Bonus: This comes out just after he was boasting about how proud he is to pay his taxes. I also love how he suggested the occupy protests move to the wealthy suburbs . . . but not his wealthy suburb.
• Another reason to like Peyton Manning.
• In Cook County, Illinois, a quintuple exoneration.
• The Nation laments the plight of an Occupy Wall Street protester who can’t find a job and has $35,000 in student loan debt after earning a degree in . . . puppetry.
• Not sad. More amusing.
• Nashville Scene reporter describes his arrest at the Occupy Nashville protest.
• Pakistani teens who volunteered to collect evidence of innocent civilians killed by CIA drone attacks . . . are killed in a CIA drone attack.

A Florida state trooper pulls over an off-duty Miami cop after a five-minute chase, during which the off-duty Miami cop, who was on his way to a second job, drove in excess of 120 mph and weaved in and out of traffic.

The head of the local police union is now criticizing the cop for the unprofessional behavior. But as you might guess, he isn’t criticizing the cop who was speeding.

The growing tension was heightened Sunday when Sgt. Javier Ortiz, vice president of Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the city’s 1,000-plus officers, attacked Watts and defended Lopez in a letter to union members. He accused Watts of just wanting to ticket a Miami cop.

“Officer Lopez was extremely professional,” Ortiz wrote. “Many of us would have acted differently if a fellow cop pulled a gun on them. I would have thought she possibly was a Baker Act that stole an FHP car and a uniform,” he wrote, using a legal term for mentally unstable people who are considered dangerous.

He went on to tell officers: “Please do not get to her level and begin taking action against Troopers because of the poor decisions of one. … Do not be running her information on DAVID, FCIC/NCIC, etc.,” referring to law enforcement databases that contain criminal records, addresses and dates of birth.

Such databases are to be used only for law enforcement purposes, not to gain personal information.

It’s telling that Ortiz would feel compelled to advise his members not to retaliate.

Hank Skinner’s trial judge once again denied Skinner DNA testing this afternoon, in spite of the new law in Texas I mentioned in the post below. Here’s the statement from Skinner’s attorney:

“We are deeply disappointed that the trial court has denied Mr. Skinner’s request for DNA testing.  Unfortunately, the trial court’s order offers no explanation for its conclusion that DNA testing is not called for in this case. It will now be up to the Court of Criminal Appeals to give Mr. Skinner’s case the deliberate consideration that is necessary to ensure a correct result.  We are confident that upon such careful review, the Court will conclude that DNA testing is necessary in this case to ensure the reliability of the verdict.  But for now, the Court of Criminal Appeals must stop the scheduled November 9 execution rather than allow itself to be rushed to a hasty and ill-considered decision.  The stakes in this case are too high to allow Mr. Skinner to be executed before he has a fair chance to make his case that the trial court made a grave mistake in denying his request for DNA testing.”

- Robert C. Owen, attorney for Hank Skinner
- November 3, 2011

I have a new piece on the Skinner case up at Huffington Post today. If you’ve been following the case, you know most of the details. But here’s a new twist:

Last year, with Skinner less than an hour from execution, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay to consider whether federal civil rights law may allow Skinner to challenge the way Texas courts have interpreted the state law that allows inmates to get DNA testing post-conviction. In March the Court ruled 6-3 that it did. The Court didn’t order the DNA testing. Rather, the decision only granted Skinner the ability to argue in federal court that Texas state courts had erred in how they applied the state’s DNA testing law.

The Texas legislature has since rendered that question moot. Last June, both houses overwhelmingly passed a revision to the DNA testing law to clarify that inmates should be able to request testing even if their counsel did not request any at trial. Lawmakers even cited Skinner’s case in passing the legislation. Hank Skinner, it seemed, would finally get his DNA tests.

And here’s where D.A. Lynn Switzer began to appear determined to carry out the execution of Hank Skinner. The new law took effect on Sept. 1, 2011. Skinner’s attorneys immediately filed for testing under the new law. Switzer’s office responded by requesting an execution date. They got it: Nov. 9.

So the Texas legislature passed a new law inspired in part by Skinner’s case. One co-sponsor even said he hoped the law would give  Skinner the testing he had been requesting. The prosecutors responded by . . . requesting an execution date. It’s like they want to be sure Skinner is dead before his lawyers can use the new law to get relief.

• Disturbing video depicts Texas family court judge violently beating his daughter.
• Study: Medical marijuana doesn’t lead kids to try pot.
• The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the reliability of eyewitness testimony yesterday. It doesn’t sound like it went well.  More from Dahlia Lithwick here. You have to wonder if the justices’ cluelessness in some of these cases has to do with the fact that none of them has any experience in criminal defense.
• Obama administration’s deportation policy has left more than 5,000 children in foster homes.
• More than 100 criminal investigations into stimulus spending at the Department of Energy alone.

Keb’ Mo’, at the Americana Music Fest.

Another home run from a public service union.

T-shirts sold by the Twin Rivers Police Officers Association have this message: “U raise ‘em, we cage ‘em,” surrounding a picture of a young child behind bars.

On Monday, community leaders and child advocates said the T-shirts are highly offensive and could validate feelings of mistrust for the Twin Rivers’ school police force. The agency has been under intense scrutiny over complaints it has overstepped its authority.

“There is nowhere on the planet where it is OK to wear a shirt like this,” said Ed Howard, senior counsel for the University of San Diego’s Children’s Advocacy Institute, after seeing the image of the shirt.

The quote and picture is on the back of the shirt. The Twin Rivers Police Officers Association logo is on the front.

When the union that represents all the cops Twin Rivers pulls this crap, they’re henceforth barred from ever making the “it’s just a few bad apples” argument.

Thanks to Eapen Thampy for the tip.

What a bunch of childish thugs.

The FBI is reviewing the Oct. 16 incident, which began around 1 a.m. when Deputy Brian Rehg stopped a silver 2006 Acura RSX on East Emory Road in North Knox County. Behind the wheel of the Acura was 19-year-old Terry Wayne Phillips II. Four passengers also were in the car.

The account of the incident is chilling. Rehg threatened to issue Phillips citations for speeding, reckless driving and drag racing. He also called for backup, and four other deputies — Brad Cox, Jeff Bryant, Jason Acuff and Alex Slate — arrived at the scene within minutes.

Phillips cooperated with the officers, consenting to a search of the Acura and responding respectfully. Officers cursed at him and produced a baseball bat, then made a proposition — the reckless driving and drag racing charges would be dropped if Phillips pulled off a stunt with the bat. With the bat perpendicular to the ground, the officers made Phillips put his forehead on the end and run in circles until he became dizzy. Then officers made him run around a cruiser without falling down.

After completing the humiliating task, Phillips was sent on his way with a speeding ticket. Four days later, Phillips, whose uncle is a Knoxville Police Department officer, called the KCSO Office of Professional Standards to file a complaint.Because Deputy Brad Cox is the son of Capt. Tom Cox, who runs the Office of Professional Standards, a Major Crimes investigator led the internal probe.

Jones demoted the deputies to work as corrections officers, cut their pay and suspended their police powers. In a letter to the officers, Jones wrote their conduct was “unprofessional, inexcusable, unauthorized and intolerable.”

The sheriff acted decisively, but the undocumented probe is cause for concern. Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Martha Dooley said the officers confessed, but she said there is no investigative file, an inexcusable lack of documentation that undermines public confidence in the investigation’s legitimacy. Jones should have insisted on written records to ensure transparency and satisfy any concerns that Cox, who has been disciplined before, did not receive preferential treatment.

They should be fired. And it hardly seems like a good idea to put these guys in corrections, where they’ll be overseeing inmates.

• In defense of jury nullification.
• Income inequality in perspective. More from Will Wilkinson.
• Florida man arrested for recording conversation with cops; newspaper misstates the law in Florida.
• The sweet, sweet demise of Righthaven.
• At least it wasn’t the Virgin Mary.
• Headline of the day.
• The National Motorists Association takes down a hysterical Boston Globe report that judges are going easy on drunk drivers.
• More insanity from NYPD: Woman arrested, jailed for two nights for being in a public park after it had closed, then not having ID.

Speaking as a guy who’s been writing student loan checks for more than 10 years now, I keep wondering how these various demands for student loan debt forgiveness would work. What happens to people who paid off or have mostly paid off their loans by the time one of these forgiveness plans kicks in? Do they get a refund? Or are they just out of luck? What about people who work their way through college and never accumulate any debt? Do they get a check? (It’s a similar question you might ask about renters with these demands for debt forgiveness for owners of bad mortgages.)

I talked to an economist last month who said his advice to recent grads would be to only pay your student loans after everything else. If even then. Get deferments and forbearances, even if you don’t need them. They don’t really hurt your credit rating, and if political momentum continues to build toward some sort of massive federal relief program, you’re screwing yourself if you go out of your way to pay down your student loans just before the government declares them null.

Debt forgiveness also wouldn’t do much to address the reason for the debt in the first place—the exploding cost of a college education. In fact, there’s good reason to think it’ll make it worse. If debt doesn’t matter, there’s even less incentive than there already is (which isn’t much)  for buyers of higher ed to factor cost into their decision about where to enroll.

None of which is to say the Occupy folks and others upset about student debt don’t have a point. College has become insanely expensive. But federal loans, grants, and subsidies are a big reason why. They’ve created a lopsided seller’s market for higher ed. When you have way more applicants than you need, there’s zero incentive to control costs. Unfortunately, most of the people upset about this issue seem to favor that involves yet more federal involvement in higher ed, up to and including just having taxpayers supply a free college education for everyone who wants one. (Bonus points if you think the government should pay for everyone to go to college and you’re really concerned about how manufacturing jobs are leaving the country, and that “America just doesn’t make things anymore.”)

Anyway, this idea from Glenn Reynolds makes a lot of sense:

I think we should return to the days when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, starting five years after graduation. This will allow graduates who are unable to pay to get out from under what is otherwise a potential lifetime of debt-slavery. If you buy a house to flip, and wind up losing your shirt, we let you go bankrupt, take a credit-rating hit, and scrub the debt away. Why should graduates be forbidden from doing the same? The five-year delay means that you can’t use immediate post-graduation poverty as an excuse (as some medical students used to do), but still provides an out.

But the real incentive-alignment part is this: Put the institutions who issued the degrees on the hook for the money they received. Making them eat the entire loan balance would probably bankrupt a lot of colleges (though that should tell us something about the problem right there), but sticking them with even a small fraction — say, 10% or 15% — would be enough to inspire a much greater degree of concern for how much debt students take on while in school, and for how likely they are to find gainful employment after graduation.

• Gene Healy writes an appreciation of  former Cato chairman William Niskanen, the rare honest man in Washington.
• Deputies kick in door over reported stolen  iPhone.
• Rep. Dennis Kucinich finds it outrageous that prosecutors might leave government work to become defense attorneys.
• Love this Ta-Nehisi Coates essay on taking the train. Couldn’t agree with this more. I fly a lot. If I could, I’d take a 10 hour train ride over a two-hour flight every time.
• Anonymous takes on the Mexcian drug cartels.
• More creepy places. The town of bird suicides is one of the strangest things I’ve read in a while.