And that’s all you’re allowed to know.

• Headline of the day. Article is actually from September. But wow.
• More wine?
• This photo? Just the latest evidence that we’re really, really close to winning.
• Zero tolerance + anti-bullying hysteria + Internet = criminal charges for teen’s innocuous Facebook post.
• A Ron Paul-touted conspiracy that turned out to be true.
• One of the sadder year-end lists you’ll read.
• Back in 1956, you’d have needed one of these to store each of your iTunes songs.
• Some great space-related time-lapse videos from the past year.
• An undiscovered Ron Paul newsletter.

Lucy Steigerwald has an update on the beating of Jordan Miles, a case I wrote about in January. Miles was beaten nearly to death by three Pittsburgh police officers who say they mistook a bottle of Mountain Dew in Miles’ pocket for a gun. (The Mountain Dew bottle disappeared after the beating.) The cops claimed they confronted Miles because a neighbor had complained that the music student with no criminal record was skulking about her property. That neighbor denies ever making such a complaint. The cops also say Miles should have known they were cops, and say he’s responsible for his own beating for fleeing them. Miles is suing.

Which brings us to the update:

In response to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Jordan Miles over a beating he suffered from Pittsburgh Police in January 2010, a “law enforcement expert” has declared that the cops’ version of events is true. The aforementioned expert was hired by the city to fight the lawsuit from Miles, so it’s not exactly surprising that he came to some familiar conclusions about why the cops just had to do what they did.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The officers have consistently said that they identified themselves as such and displayed badges, wrote Joseph J. Stine, who ran Philadelphia’s Police Training Bureau and served as chief for New Britain Township, in a report filed in federal court. And Mr. Stine suggested that Mr. Miles couldn’t have logically reached the conclusion that the men were common thugs.

“It is my opinion that in order for Jordan Miles not to have known that the males who attempted to stop him and whom he eventually struggled with were police officers, he would have had to believe that three adult white males had come into [a] predominantly Afro-American community in order to rob him,” Mr. Stine wrote, despite little precedent for such an attack. “He would have to have not heard any of the constant repetition of ‘Police. Stop. Police.’”

Steigerwald comments:

Is there really no precedent at all for several white guys to visit an African-American neighborhood and want to make trouble? There’s certainly precedent for people impersonating police officers in order to commit crimes. Maybe the men did yell police and even flash badges, but so what? It was 11 p.m. in one of Pittsburgh’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. And if the men grabbed at Miles while identifying themselves (or not), a logical fight or flight instinct still would have kicked in. Miles also said that the cops yelled “Where’s the money? Where’s the gun? Where’s the drugs?” at him, which made him believe he was being robbed, then abducted, when the men initially put handcuffs on him.

Stine says that it wasn’t “logical” for Miles to have thought that the officers were criminals, yet cops are often forgiven for reacting in the heat of the moment to an apparent threat, be it a human being with a three-inch carving knife or a dog which maybe bares its teeth at a stranger in its home. So why is then-highschool senior Miles not to be forgiven for his nervousness when adult, theoretically highly-trained cops are so often forgiven for theirs?

You could also argue that even if Miles did know they were cops, he was justified to run. For example, he might have recognized that he was a black teenager walking alone at night, he may have heard enough stories about cops who sometimes tend to assume the worst in those sorts of circumstances, and he may have consequently feared that something bad would go down if he stuck around. Something like—just hypothetically speaking—the cops mistaking an innocuous bulge in his coat for a gun, beating him to a bloody pulp, then arresting him for resisting them.

Two of the three cops have been the subject of prior excessive force complaints and lawsuits. Yet thanks to police union clout, all three were not only suspended with pay, they were also paid for the overtime they might have worked had they not been suspended. All three are now back on the force. The union also deemed the three cops “heroes” for beating the hell out of an unarmed, 150-pound viola player. When a local prankster put out a hoax press release mocking the union’s absurd celebration of Jordan Miles’ beating, the Pittsburgh Police Department launched a full-on raid of the video store where they thought the fake release was created.

Good on Sgt. Parker, as well as the cops who treated him as if he were anyone else.

But it’s unfortunate, and telling, that he’d feel compelled to send this email.

A Maine State Police sergeant accused of drunken driving has asked his law enforcement colleagues not to retaliate against other officers in the department for arresting him.

Sgt. Robin Parker of Sanford, an instructor at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, was arrested Dec. 18 on the Maine Turnpike near the New Gloucester toll plaza, according to a previous report in the Bangor Daily News. Parker is on paid administrative leave. Last week, Parker sent a mass email to members of the law enforcement community taking responsibility for the charge against him and asking his colleagues not to blame the officers involved in arresting him. Parker was not specific about what, if anything, has taken place.

“What I have done to my family, friends and our State Police family has saddened me deeply,” wrote Parker, according to a copy of his letter provided to the Bangor Daily News anonymously. “There is one other thing that has saddened me and that is what I’m hearing around the department. I understand that there are many that are very upset that I was processed by our own and perhaps not ‘treated differently.’ Although this anger may stem from a respect and appreciation for me as a person and Trooper, they are not healthy.”

Parker said the troopers involved in arresting him were the “professionals that we all strive to be.”

Put your nominations in the comments. I’ll pick a half dozen or so finalists, and we’ll vote on Monday.

Past winners Forrest Allgood and Tanya Treadway are no longer eligible. Qualifying misdeeds needn’t all taken place this year. They can be cumulative, or have just come to light this year.

I highlighted a few good prosecutors in a piece for Reason earlier this year. If you have other suggestions of someone to highlight this year, please leave that in the comments as well.

• Puppycide. 
• And another one, this time a ferocious Jack Russell Terrier.
• Why Ken White matters. Be sure to read White’s excellent dissection of the culture of prosecutorial misconduct in the criminal justice issue of Reason.
• How many things wrong with this picture can you find?
• Police union fights to reinstate cop who was driving 143 mph with a .089 BAC.
• I always thought this was a joke. It apparently really exists. (It’s also available in a can, but only on your birthday.)
• How to make a Thing in a Jar.
• Headline of the day. (Bonus points: Santorum retweeted it.)
• 2012 will bring the end of Happy Hour in Utah.
• Indiana lawmaker wants to hand out fines for poor renditions of the national anthem.

You’d think they’d be more careful. A totaled car isn’t going to bring back much revenue at the asset forfeiture auction.

When Pompton Lakes police seized Darren Richardson’s car on a rainy September afternoon, they told him it was headed for an impound lot. When they returned it three weeks later, he says, the 2004 BMW belonged in a junk yard.

The instrument cluster and leather dashboard were gone. The caramel-colored seats were torn up. The gear shift was ripped out and stray wires hung limp everywhere. Geico, Richardson’s insurance company estimated the damage at $12,636.42 — more than he paid for the car — and declared the vehicle a “total loss.”

According to police reports, the damage to the black BMW 325i came in the aftermath of a traffic stop during which officers detected a “strong odor of raw marijuana” inside the vehicle. Searching for a cache of drugs, members of three different police agencies and a detective from a federal drug task force spent two days tearing the car apart, the reports said.

So what did police find after their $12,000 search?

Absolutely nothing.

Two drug dogs allegedly alerted to the presence of illicit drugs. Richardson concedes he mouthed off to the cops, which probably explains their thoroughness. Richardson was initially charged with evidence tampering and resisting arrest, while his passenger was charged with “making terroristic threats.” They now face only petty disorderly conduct charges.

• The state of Florida wants to allow cops to bring drug-sniffing dogs to your door without a warrant.
• Cool map showing the geographical distribution of support for/opposition to SOPA.
• Gary Johnson announces his candidacy for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.
• Headline of the day.
• This story seems dubious.
• Tyler Cowen’s Ted Talk on why he’s suspicious of stories.
• How Jamie Oliver, Eric Schlosser, and other “industrial food” critics may be making meat less safe to eat.
• Candidate Newt proving lucrative for Newt, Inc.

So I ordered a 16×24 canvas print of this photo I took in New Orleans, and for some reason they sent me two. So if you want one, send me an email and I’ll ship it to you gratis. Preference goes to someone who lives or lived in New Orleans. It is a Radley Balko original! Which means it probably has a market value of approximately what you’ll be paying for it.

Another important case from the Institute for Justice shows how laws passed under the guise of disclosure and clean elections quickly become a barrier to free speech and civic engagement.

Vance Justice, Sharon Bynum, Matt Johnson, Alison Kinnaman and Stan O’Dell are Mississippi citizens that simply want to join together and speak out in favor of Initiative 31—an effort that would provide Mississippi citizens with greater protection from eminent domain abuse. But if they spend just $200 on signs, buttons and flyers without first registering with the government and navigating a complex web of regulations, they would be subject to fines and possible criminal penalties . . .

Like many Americans, the Plaintiffs in this case—Dr. Stan O’Dell, Sharon Bynum, Matt Johnson, Vance Justice, and Alison Kinnaman—care deeply about the direction of the country, its laws, and its political leaders. For several years, the group has been meeting informally near their homes in Oxford, Mississippi to discuss political and legal issues of the day. Occasionally, they have engaged in activism, organizing rallies and passing out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day . . .

One issue the Plaintiffs have discussed often is private property rights, and, specifically, the impact on property rights of the power of eminent domain. They, like many Americans, were outraged over the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London, that upheld the use of eminent domain for economic development. As a result, they were quite happy when eminent domain reform made it onto the ballot this year, in the form of Initiative 31 . . .

The Plaintiffs support Initiative 31 and would like to convince their neighbors to vote for it as well. Unfortunately, they face a stumbling block that all too many Americans face when they wish to speak out about political issues—the campaign finance laws.

Most people think laws affect only those running for office. Few are aware that the laws restrict the ability of ordinary Americans to advocate for or against ballot issues. These laws impose serious burdens on First Amendment rights and can result in crushing legal costs and penalties when they are violated. The regulations in Mississippi and other states starkly illustrate how campaign finance laws strangle citizen speech.

Under Mississippi law, any time two or more people join together to spend more than $200 to support or oppose a ballot issue, they become a fully regulated political committee.[3] At today’s prices, even a quarter-page advertisement in the local newspaper, or just a handful of signs and flyers can cost over $200.

Thus, just for trying to speak effectively, the Plaintiffs would have to register with the state, appoint a Director and Treasurer, and file monthly, annual, and other periodic reports of their activities. These reports require the Plaintiffs to keep track of every single dollar that is spent or contributed, and from whom that dollar came. If one of the Plaintiffs just drives to a copy shop to pick up flyers, the value of the gas has to be reported as a contribution.

The reports also require the Plaintiffs to keep track of a great deal of personal information about themselves and their supporters. They have to keep track of each contributor’s name, street address, occupation and employer, together with the amounts and dates of their contributions. Even individuals who wish to spend more than $200 of their own money must report their personal information and activities to the state.

To make matters worse, all the personal information they have to report is made public on the internet for all the world to see. This gives strangers—and potentially political opponents or even identity thieves—access to names, addresses, telephone numbers, occupations, employers, and political views.

Yet another area of public life where you now need to hire an attorney merely to keep yourself out of jail.  Or at least from being fined. Some 24 states have laws like the one in Mississippi.  Justice v. Hosemann is part of a broader IJ campaign to overturn similarly burdensome campaign finance laws around the country.

• My Huffington Post colleague Ryan Grim on how Ron Paul has been one of few politicians to talk about the racist origins of the drug war.
• Popehat is asking you to vote for the “Censorious Asshat of the Year.” So many nominees, so devoted to their cause.
• Sen. Chuck Schumer assails new caffeine product before it comes to market.
• L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has jailed hundreds of innocent people due to misidentification.
• “When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead . . . The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.” These are estimates, because the government won’t say how many innocent people its drones have killed.
• Federal worker pay saw lowest increase in 10 years last year, but even with the Obama “freeze,”  it was still more than the increase in the private sector. According to USA Today, one in five federal employees now makes over $100,000 per year. The recession isn’t exactly crippling members of Congress, either.
• Comedienne-turned-conservative-activist Victoria Jackson serves up a hot plate of crazyburgers.
• Headline of the day.
• New York Times attempts to paint conceal carry permit owners as crazy gun nuts with an itchy trigger finger, accidentally publishes data suggesting they’re  far less likely to commit crimes than the general population, but runs with the narrative anyway.

Fresh off a federal report which found that 20 percent of the times Seattle police use force, they violate the Constitution . . . comes this:

A local man called the cops on Seattle officers when he felt a traffic stop was spinning out of control – and the entire incident was captured on a police video that shows the man being yanked from his car and thrown to the ground . . .

The video shows Seattle police pulling a car over for speeding, then one officer walking up to the driver who was pulled over.

Although the dashboard camera captured the incident, the officer did not wear his microphone – a violation of department policy.

Once stopped, the driver, Amanuel Gebreselassie, says the talk went bad from the beginning.

“He’s using profanity. He’s not acting professional. He’s just not acting like an officer,” says Gebreselassie.

In their report, police said the driver was “extremely verbally aggressive.” But Gebreselassie denies it – and says the stop seemed so out of line, he called 911.

An audiotape of the 911 call recorded the conversation between Gebreselassie and the 911 dispatcher.

“911. What are you reporting?” the dispatcher says.

“Uhh, an illegal stop by an officer – you know, I just want to make sure he’s a real officer. … There’s an officer here, but he’s talking crazy to me, and I’m not really dealing with this guy.”

The conversation was cut short when a group of officers returned to the car.

“Get out of the car,” one officer can be heard saying on the 911 tape.

“For what?”

“Get out of the car, man.”

Police say Gebresellassie resisted, so they yanked him to the ground.

In the video, one officer appears to deliver a sharp kick – but it’s unclear where it lands.

Video at the link. The cops then conducted an illegal search of Gebresellassie’s car. An internal review “reprimanded” three cops for profanity and the illegal search, but found nothing wrong with the use of force. Two of the cops were already under investigation for other incidents.

I propose a rule for cases like these: Any time a police officer inappropriately turns off his dash cam, turns off his uniform microphone, or illegally confiscates other audio or video of an incident which then ends up missing or destroyed, the courts will begin considering any disputed facts about the incident with a presumption that the citizen’s account is the correct one.

Comment of the day, in response to this post:

I want to commend the vast majority of the denizens of this blog for your relentless hostility and poor taste. I had seen the linked article elsewhere and noted it as nothing more than a typical liberal cheapshot. Your disdain for tradition is inspiring! Inspiring those in the middle to move to the right and inspiring those on the right to fight harder for the soul of our country. Keep up the good work! I know you will because you can’t help it.

Also, in the same thread, regular commenter CyniCAL makes a heartfelt plea to cease use of the phrase “assless chaps.”

• Not The Onion: Californians will vote on whether porn stars should be required to wear condoms.
• It’s all just going to get dumber and dumber until November.
• Gene Healy: the five worst op-eds of 2011. His delightfully Friedmanesque closer: “And so, my friends, we roll up our sleeves and limp forward, hunkered down to face what 2012 holds, our boats borne back ceaselessly into the past, yet always, always, twirling toward freedom.”
• Alternet publishes article calling for government monitoring of doctors and their pain patients, a crackdown on prescription painkillers, and generally expanding the drug war, all because . . . corporations are evil. And Florida’s governor loves the Tea Party. Or something.
• A list of all the new reasons for which governments will send you to jail, starting on Sunday.
• Woman says she was arrested, had her phone confiscated after trying to record a police beating in North Carolina.

Michael Bowers has been one one of the heroes to shed light on the bite mark matching fraud. He has personally exposed a number of quacks, and contributed to the National Academy of Sciences report that found no scientific basis for the idea that bite marks on human skin can be definitively matched to one person, to the exclusion of everyone else.

Now, two bite mark specialists whom Bowers has criticized are suing him for stating at a conference that they contributed to a wrongful conviction.

Dentists Russell Schneider, of Waukegan, and Carl Hagstrom, of Fox Lake, filed their lawsuit against Michael Bowers, a dentist in California who is a frequent and sometimes acerbic critic of his fellow forensic odontologists for work that has led to numerous wrongful convictions . . .

The two dentists allege in their lawsuit that Bowers spoke at a conference of forensic dentists in Chicago earlier this year and included a case they worked on in a list of 10 wrongful convictions caused by bite-mark evidence. That, the two allege, was wrong and subjected them to ridicule and a loss of business.

I wrote a bit about this particular case in the Reason criminal justice issue. The prosecutor in the case? None other than Lake County, Illinois Assistant State’s Attorney and DNA fabulist Mike Mermel, who was recently forced to resign for comments he made in an unflattering profile in the New York Times.

When a DNA test in 2003 showed that the semen in the underwear of a 68-year-old woman didn’t belong to Bernie Starks, a man convicted in 1986 of raping . . . her, Mermel dismissed the results because the semen came from the victim’s clothing. Had it come from the woman’s vagina, Mermel said, “I would be standing over there advocating the side that the defense has in the case.”

Three years later, defense attorneys found the rape kit and tested semen recovered from the woman’s vagina. Again, there was no match. Mermel again wouldn’t budge, this time arguing that the woman must have had sex with someone else just before the rape.

In its brief to keep Starks in prison, the state cited Schneider and Hagstrom’s testimony as evidence of Starks’ guilt, despite the DNA evidence. Here’s their attorney:

They say Schneider stood up and told Bowers that Starks’ conviction was not reversed because of any of the bite-mark evidence, but Bowers “ignored plaintiff’s statement and did not retract his assertion that the Bennie Starks conviction was premised upon faulty bite-mark testimony.”

“Whether or not he had sexual intercourse with her … has nothing to do with my clients,” said Michael Krause, one of the attorneys for the two dentists, neither of whom returned calls for comment. “My clients feel that their reputations have been harmed by Bowers’ statements. It’s actually quite simple.”

He’s at least right about that last part. Starks’ attorney explains:

“The victim was attacked by one person who sexually assaulted her. We know that wasn’t Bennie Starks, so it wasn’t Bennie Starks who bit her,” said Jed Stone, one of Starks’ attorneys. “There is no other interpretation of this evidence that makes any sense and isn’t completely fanciful.”

Based on the DNA testing, the Illinois Appellate Court overturned Starks’ conviction in 2006. Because of Mermel’s posturing, Starks has yet to get a new trial. It’s reminiscent of Forrest Allgood keeping Kennedy Brewer in prison years after DNA testing cleared him because of Michael West’s claim that bite marks on the victim were a match with Brewer’s teeth. Allgood postulated that someone else must have raped the girl while Brewer held her down and bit her.

One intriguing thing about this lawsuit: In a defamation suit, the plaintiff must prove that the alleged defamatory statements are false. Assuming it isn’t tossed before it gets that far, it would be fascinating if the lawsuit became an inquiry into the scientific validity of bite mark evidence. Something tells me that Bowers would probably welcome that. The plaintiffs probably wouldn’t.

In other bite mark news, CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently aired a report on the topic on his show. Over at the Bite Marks Evidence blog, David Averill posts this incredible video from the report, in which bite mark specialist Lowell Levine defends bite mark testimony as “important and viable.” But when asked if there’s a way it can be validated with the scientific method, he responds, “I sure can’t think of it.”

It’s telling that Levine would be considered one of the country’s most respected bite mark witnesses. He too nearly helped convict an innocent man. From a 2004 article on bite mark testimony in the Chicago Tribune:

. . . a team of Massachusetts State Police officers turned to Levine in hopes of solving the gruesome murder of Irene Kennedy.

The 75-year-old grandmother had been beaten and stabbed two dozen times while on a morning stroll with her husband in a park outside Boston. The killer, who attacked Kennedy when she and her husband briefly took separate paths, left a bite mark on her breast.

The investigators drove from Boston to Levine’s office. Explaining the circumstances of the murder, they asked him to compare photos of the bite mark on Kennedy’s body with a copy of a mold made from the teeth of a suspect, Edmund Burke . . .

. . . in a sworn deposition taken in the lawsuit, Levine testified that after studying the materials in his office, he told the waiting officers he could not exclude Burke but would need additional information for a more definite opinion.

Three days later, Levine went to Boston to examine more evidence, asking police to provide him with enhanced photos of the bite wound. They did, and that, Levine said, was enough.

In his deposition, Levine said he concluded “to a reasonable scientific certainty” that Burke had left the bite on Kennedy’s breast.

Police searched Burke’s home, and arrested and jailed him. The county prosecutors called the bite mark the “most compelling evidence” in the case.

Less than six weeks later, though, officials had to admit they were wrong. DNA taken from saliva recovered on the bite mark was analyzed. A genetic profile was obtained, and prosecutors said it was not Burke’s. He was set free.

Levine insisted in the January 2003 deposition that he had been correct when he linked the bite mark to Burke, although he also hedged a bit, saying he had never made a definitive “match.”

Under questioning by a lawyer for Burke, who sued the police and Levine after he was cleared, Levine stood by his bite-mark analysis.

“Do you think he bit her breasts?” attorney Robert Sinsheimer, who represents Burke, asked Levine in the deposition.

“I think with a high degree of probability he did,” Levine said. He offered possible explanations for why the DNA did not match Burke, including that police who had handled the crime scene contaminated the DNA.

He also noted that another prominent forensic odontologist, Dr. Ira Titunik of New York, had examined the evidence and concurred in his opinion. Titunik confirmed that he had informally examined the evidence and agreed with Levine.

But then Levine’s analysis took another hit. In June 2003, some five months after Levine testified under oath and held fast to his bite-mark analysis, police announced they had made another arrest in Irene Kennedy’s murder.

The genetic profile derived from the bite mark, the police said, had been entered into a database. It hit on a convicted murderer.

I haven’t yet seen the entire CNN story. I hope they at least mentioned the Burke case before introducing Levine as an expert.

This is what 54-year-old Tomas Torres looked like after Connecticut State Police served a drug warrant on his home. From the New Haven Independent:

A state police raid on a Winthrop Avenue apartment netted no drugs or arrests—but it left Tomas Torres hospitalized and his apartment in tatters.

Torres, who’s 54, said state cops broke down the door of his first-floor Winthrop Avenue apartment Wednesday afternoon, punched him in the face, stomped on his head, and then laughed at him as they tossed his apartment looking for drugs.

Police said he tried to jump out the window, then resisted their efforts to detain and handcuff him.

They had the wrong guy, said Torres. The police found nothing in his apartment and released him to go to the hospital, where he said he was told he has a fractured arm, he said.

Here comes the comedy.

Lt. J. Paul Vance, spokesman for the state police, said he had no record of state police action anywhere in New Haven on Wednesday. That doesn’t mean that a search warrant wasn’t executed, he said. He’d have a record if an arrest were made, he said.

“That sounds a little suspect right off the bat,” Vance said when told of Torres’ complaints. “We don’t beat people up as a regular course of business.”

The Independent wryly links the second part of Vance’s quote to this story, about another Connecticut state drug cop who recently beat someone up.

“I know that the task force had a lawful search and seizure warrant for that apartment,” [police spokesman] Hoffman said. He said he wasn’t present at the police action. Cops have to convince a judge that they have evidence that drugs are being sold at a location in order to obtain a warrant.

Hoffman said Torres tried to jump out the window when police showed up. Then he resisted detention when police pulled him back in, he said.

Cops always knock and announce when they execute warrants; Torres must have known police were at the door, Hoffman argued.

Police did not charge Torres with any offense . . .

“They way that guy was, they didn’t need to go that far,” said someone with knowledge of the incident. “They had enough guys. They must have had at least seven. I’m talking about big guys, husky, [handling] an old man. Even the short guy [the state cop Torres said hit him]—he was stocky.”

Here’s Torres’ account:

He was cooking pasteles and watching “Caso Cerrado” on TV when he heard someone pounding on his door.

Torres thought it was the crack dealers or users who sometimes hang out in the hallway of the building along with prostitutes. He said he keeps a pool stick behind the door to protect himself because he’s worried for his safety with the dealers hanging around.

He asked who was there. No answer.

Torres looked out the window and saw cop cars. As he moved to the door, it flew open and cops poured in. Someone punched him in the face. They shoved him to the ground. One state cop, a short man, ground his boot into Torres’ face as he lay on the floor.

The cops kept asking him, “Where are the drugs?” Torres said he didn’t have any drugs.

The cops put Torres in a chair and handcuffed him, still asking where the drugs were. They laughed as they teased a cop who had gotten Torres’ blood on his jeans.

The cops started claiming they had fought with him because he had the pool stick nearby and it posed a threat to their safety . . .

His sister, who lives nearby, expressed outrage at the incident.

“He’s a human,” she said. “Not an animal.”

Well, no. He is—or at least was—a drug suspect. That probably does give him more rights than animals, who are summarily executed in these raids. But it still puts him far short of “human.”

Thanks to Mike Magnus for the link.

(Photo credits to the Independent.)

• Virginia drivers ticketed for breaking a law that doesn’t exist.
• Another tribute to Siobhan Reynolds from Eapen Thampy.
• Professional Courtesy: NYPD officer suspected of drunk driving after car crash wasn’t given a blood alcohol test until eight hours later.
• DOJ changes its position on the Wire Act, possibly clearing a path for legal online poker.
• Annapolis police arrest the wrong “Hot Dog.”
• The New York Times looks at the expanding bourbon market. I’m excited for the new Woodford Reserve Double Oaked.
• People Are Awesome, the 2011 edition.

I’m saddened to learn this morning that Siobhan Reynolds was killed over the weekend in a plane crash.

I met Reynolds several years ago when I attended a forum on Capitol Hill on the under-treatment of pain. Her story about her husband’s chronic pain was so heartbreaking it moved me to take an interest in the issue. I eventually commissioned and edited a paper on the DEA and pain treatment while I was working for Cato.

Reynolds was fierce and tireless. She ran her advocacy group the Pain Relief Network on a thin budget, and often used her own money to travel to towns and cities where she felt prosecutors were unfairly targeting a doctor. Then she would fight back. And sometimes she’d win. The DEA and the  federal prosecutors she fought weren’t really accustomed to that. They were accustomed to holding self-promoting press conferences, where they’d hold up big bags of pills, thus winning glowing write-ups from clueless reporters. Reynolds put those bags of pills into context. She encouraged pain patients whose lives these doctors made better to speak up and speak out. And she educated journalists.

There aren’t very many people who can claim that they personally changed the public debate about an issue. Reynolds could. Before her crusade, no one was really talking about the under-treatment of pain. The media was still wrapped up in scare stories about “accidental addiction” to prescription painkillers and telling dramatic (and sometimes false) tales about patients whose lazy doctors got them hooked on Oxycontin. Reynolds toured the country to point out that, in fact, the real problem is that pain patients are suffering, particularly chronic pain patients. And because of the government’s harassment, there are increasingly fewer doctors willing to treat them. After Reynolds, the major newsweeklies, the New York Times, and a number of other national media outlets began asking if the DEA’s war on pain doctors had gone too far.

Reynolds’ passion stemmed from watching her ex-husband agonize, and later her belief that his death was due to his inability to get treatment. She feared her son would contract the same condition, and face the same obstacles. What infuriated her was that this was never a problem of not knowing what relieves chronic pain. This wasn’t about the need for more research. Her husband had found relief in high-dose opioid therapy. The problem was that in its ceaseless efforts to stop people from getting high, the government had blocked that relief, imprisoned the doctor who administered it, and thus condemned her husband to suffer. (Watch The Chilling Effect, the movie Reynolds produced about her ex-husband’s fight here.)

Reynolds was admirably persistent. I often thought she was often a bit too idealistic, or at least that she set her goals too high. She told me once that she wouldn’t consider her work done until the Supreme Court declared the Controlled Substances Act unconstitutional. That’s an admirable goal, if not a particularly practical one. She often frustrated efforts to build a coalition on the issue because she’d grown weary of medical organizations and academics who, while concerned about the issue, she thought were too cowardly to take a more aggressive stand.

But Reynolds did begin to win her battles. She deserves a good deal of the credit for getting Richard Paey out of prison. She got some sentences overturned, and hooked accused doctors up with attorneys who know the issue. Which let to some acquittals.

Of course, the government doesn’t like a rabble rouser. It’s especially wary of rabble rousers who start to accumulate some victories. And so as Reynolds’ advocacy began to move the ball and get real results, the government hit back. When Reynolds began a campaign on behalf of Kansas physician Stephen Schneider, who had been indicted for over-prescribing painkillers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway launched a blatantly vindictive attack on Reynolds’ right to free speech. Treadway opened a criminal investigation into Reynolds and her organization, attempting to paint Reynolds’ advocacy as obstruction of justice. Treadway then issued a sweeping subpoena for all email correspondence, phone records, and other documents that, had Reynolds complied, would have meant the end of her organization. Treadway wanted records of Reynolds’ private conversations with attorneys, doctors, and pain patients and their families. It was unconscionable. The government was demanding that she turn over all records of her conversations with suffering patients. (Some of whom undoubtedly sought out extra-legal ways to relieve their pain, since the government had made it impossible for them to find legal relief.)

So Reynolds fought the subpoena, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And she lost. Not only did she lose, but the government, with compliance from the federal courts, was able to keep the entire fight sealed. The briefs for the case are secret. The judges’ rulings are secret. Reynolds was barred from sharing her own briefs with the press. Perversely, Treadway had used the very grand jury secrecy intended to protect Reynolds as a gag to censor her. The case was a startling example not only of how far a prosecutor will go to tear down a critic, but of how much power they have to do so.

The sad thing is that it worked. The Pain Relief Network went under. Reynolds also lost a good deal of her own money. She was never charged with any crime. But that was never the point. It was a transparent and malicious effort to neutralize a pestering critic. And it was successful.  (I wrote a piece for Slate on Treadway’s vendetta against Reynolds.) Despite all that, the last time I spoke with Reynolds she working on plans to start a new advocacy group for pain patients.

Reynolds was an unwearying, unwavering activist for personal freedom. She not only became a martyr for the rights of pain patients, but also for free expression and political dissent.

And she died fighting.

Rest in peace.

UPDATE: More tributes to Reynolds from Jacob Sullum, David Borden, and Robert Higgs. Higgs quotes from an email he sent to Reynolds two days before her death:

You have had no way to have known, but you have been one of my heroes (and I have very few) ever since I learned, more or less by chance, about your efforts on behalf of people denied pain relief by the whole congeries of sadistic government laws, functionaries, and activities aimed at keeping them in pain. I have the greatest respect for you and the few others who have the courage to do something concrete to fight the power.

Please accept my very best wishes for a happy Christmas and for better days to come. And please know, too, of the great esteem in which I hold you.

UPDATE II: Richard Paey’s wife Linda left this in the comments:

Siobhan, an amazing force focused on defending the rights of people in pain and their doctors, she was relentless in this pursuit. My husband and I owe her a debt of gratitude, one that we could never repay. Siobhan was responsible for moving the nation to support the release of my husband, Richard Paey from a Florida prison. Her impact on pain patients and the issue of undertreatment of pain is her legacy. We will all miss her loud and strong voice. My heart and my prayers goes out to her son.

• Company that made TSA-confiscated cupcake spins a t-shirt out of the episode. I love it.
• The world’s strangest toys.
• 2011, as seen from space.
• Harris County ADA pleads the 5th in criminal investigation of cover-up of botched DWI cases, remains on the job.
• Meanwhile, a defense attorney in Ohio Michigan is found in contempt, jailed for advising his client to take the 5th.
• Russia’s anti-Putin protests grow.
• City birds and country birds may no longer speak the same language.
• The perils of opening a bar in Baghdad.

This is my parents’ old and graying pooch Max, after two days of Daisy wearing him out.

He’s tired.

• A Christmas pun.
• Christmas wish list: 1975.
• Vengeful Christmas card.
• A very Portal Christmas.
• Photo collection of unexpected Santa sightings.
• Sweden’s bizarre Donald Duck Christmas tradition.
• Amusing kids’ Christmas letters.

• Nevada legalizes online poker. Of course, that’s the one state where they don’t really need it.
• Ex-cop won’t do jail time for multiple arsons.
• More genius from Lawrence O’Donnell.
• Obama breaks another campaign promise.
• “As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements  were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.” But sure. Let’s give them more control over health care, too. (Via Peter Suderman.)

Given that he seems to have been the theme this week, a commenter has asked for some John Hiatt. Here’s “Lift Up Every Stone,” of Hiatt’s 2000 back-porch stomper, Crossing Muddy Waters.