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From the Los Angeles Times

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Pot growers are a new crop

They're indoors, upscale and have values their hippie parents shunned.

By Sam Quinones, Los Angeles Times

October 15, 2010

Reporting from Arcata, Calif.

About the time the wholesale price of pot hit $4,000 a pound, Tony Sasso bought a bulldozer and an excavator and dug a massive hole on his ranch in eastern Mendocino County.

Then he bought four metal shipping containers and buried them in the hole. Inside the containers, Sasso installed 32 1,000-watt lights, a ventilation system and plumbing – all of it powered by a 60-kilowatt generator. His subterranean plantation produced 60 pounds of pot every 56 days, the time it took to turn a crop. They were popular strains, with names like Blueberry, Herojuana, White Widow and Big Red.

He'd begun growing pot as a teenager in the mid-1980s, when police helicopters forced growers to hide their plants indoors. Going underground was the next logical step, to shield the lights from the infrared sensors of law enforcement.

His harvests paid for expensive trucks, skydiving in Maui, boogie-boarding in Chile and a five-bedroom home with a four-car garage. He eventually owned five ranches, including two in Oregon, and says he took in as much as $11 million a year.

"I grew up believing that the only way to make money was to grow marijuana, and I was good at it," said Sasso, now 42 and serving a 14-year sentence at the federal penitentiary in Atwater.

His career as a pot entrepreneur, drawn from interviews with Sasso and from court records, mirrors the arc of the marijuana business in California.

Today, indoor-grown pot is king. A weed that grows naturally in the sun has been tamed into an industrial product that is branded like soda pop and as subject to fashion as women's shoes. Pot raised indoors or underground commands up to $3,000 a wholesale pound, twice the price of outdoor varieties.

A Nov. 2 ballot measure to legalize limited cultivation and use of marijuana is the talk of Northern California's "Emerald Triangle," where indoor pot is an economic mainstay. The effect that legalization would have on the marijuana market is unclear. Much would depend on the policies enacted by cities and counties, which would have power to regulate and tax production and sales. Oakland is making plans to allow cultivation in warehouses, which could affect prices.

What is clear is that consumers now harbor a powerful fetish for indoor weed. A potent bud is no longer enough. Like connoisseurs of wine or coffee, pot smokers want cachet: an exotic look, a distinctive smell of cheese or lemon. This requires growing indoors, where plants can be coddled, protected from the elements and blasted with nutrients.

The spread of medical marijuana dispensaries has contributed to demand for indoor varieties. The dispensaries need a year-round flow of identical product that only indoor grows can produce.

Magazines and websites have helped promote a cult of indoor pot. High Times magazine glamorizes indoor strains with photo spreads of lush marijuana plants, their branches dripping with resins that hold the psychoactive chemical THC.

Nowhere is the ascendancy of indoor pot more evident than in the rugged hills of the Emerald Triangle: Mendocino, Trinity and Humboldt counties, where some of the most potent weed in America is grown.

In the city of Arcata in Humboldt County, several hundred houses are partly or entirely devoted to growing marijuana, said Police Chief Tom Chapman. This has led to more residential fires, a consequence of overburdened wiring.

In half of the city's 50 or so structure fires each year, firefighters come upon "grow" rooms, said Arcata Fire Chief John McFarland.

Money from indoor pot has led to an increase in home-invasion robberies and fostered a taste for massive trucks, designer jeans and plastic surgery.

In urban parts of Humboldt County, electrical use per household has leaped 50% since 1996, when voters approved the state's medical-marijuana initiative, according to a study by the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University.

In Arcata and unincorporated areas of the county, average electrical use rose 60% during that time -- while California's overall use remained virtually flat.

"The housing inventory in California is continuing to get more efficient. Yet our per-capita use is increasing," said Peter Lehman, director of the Schatz Center. "Indoor grows have got to be part of it. How much? Nobody knows."

In areas without electrical service, the diesel generators that power indoor grow operations foul the air, and spills of diesel fuel have polluted streams.

Home and garden stores have become grow shops whose aisles are piled high with 1,000-watt light bulbs, tubes for watering and nutrient potions with names like Bud Ignitor and Bud XL. Along Highway 101, logging trucks have been replaced by big rigs stacked with bags of potting soil.

Key to indoor's rise is that it channeled the energies of a new group of growers native to the Emerald Triangle: rural kids who saw a chance to make more money from a weed than they, or their parents, ever thought possible.

Tony Sasso was one of them.

In the Triangle, he said, "indoor allowed the kids of hippies and rednecks to get rich."

All this would have been unthinkable 40 years ago when hippies, runaways and Vietnam veterans headed to the Northern California outback in one of America's last pioneer movements, called Back to the Land.

They bought homesteads for $100 an acre from ranchers and timber companies. They lived in tents. The names they gave their children embodied their values: Canyon, Ocean, Greenleaf, Sunny Day on the Mattole.

At first, they grew marijuana for their own use. Then they began to sell it. As logging and fishing faded, marijuana filled the void.

Across rural America, farm towns became ghost towns. But in the Triangle, pot supported communities of small farms, locally owned businesses and young people. "Marijuana saved the family farm," said Gerald Myers, former chief of the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department in southern Humboldt.

Grower money funded clinics, hospices, pre-schools and volunteer fire departments, residents say.

Then in 1983 the state began its Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), using helicopters to spot pot fields. Each summer, narcotics agents uprooted tens of thousands of plants. By the mid-1990s, the crackdown helped push the wholesale price of premium pot as high as $5,000 per pound.

Growers went indoors. Beyond simply hiding from police, they could now grow year-round.

By the late 1990s, growers could meet anonymously on Internet sites to trade indoor tips and techniques. In 1983, Jorge Cervantes, a columnist for High Times magazine, published his "Indoor Marijuana Horticulture — The Indoor Bible." It's now in its fifth edition. Rappers such as Snoop Dogg and the Three 6 Mafia glorified specific strains, many of them grown indoors.

In the last decade, indoor pot's success sparked a "Green Rush" of youths from Pennsylvania, New York, Idaho and Wyoming to the Triangle, eager to try their hand. But the pioneers were the Triangle's native sons and daughters.

Sasso grew up a "redneck, cowboy kid" in Mendocino County and married the daughter of hippies.

He began smoking weed as a child and was growing marijuana outdoors by his early teens. He moved indoors in response to CAMP. When he decided to go underground and had shipping containers delivered to his ranch, no one seemed to notice.

"If you're continually hiring people and keeping society running, people just look the other way," he said.

He and his three workers entered their underground operation via a trap door. The generator burned through seven to nine gallons of diesel fuel per hour, 24 hours a day.

As he bought other ranches, he hired more workers, including more than a dozen women – some single mothers, some retirees — who trimmed his buds as they were harvested.

Every pound of marijuana grown this way required about 180 gallons of diesel fuel — enough to take a big rig from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City.

Sasso installed a 10,000-gallon fuel tank, refilled by a diesel-fuel company whose drivers he tipped handsomely. "Fuel truck drivers know the game, and like everyone else in the Mendo, they just get rich off the game," Sasso wrote in an e-mail from prison.

He bought eight swamp coolers to ventilate the grow room and a large water tank, with lines running to the buried containers. The plants needed 440 gallons of water a day – about what a typical family of five uses. Sasso took it from a nearby spring.

Mendocino County "is not part of the United States in so many ways," he said. "There are no rules."

Many aspiring growers were young and couldn't show much legitimate income. Subprime loans allowed them to buy property, further fueling the indoor boom, say real estate agents in the Triangle.

Grow shops — legitimate businesses that sell everything a pot farmer needs except the seeds — spread across the region. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Department has counted 22 grow stores — one for about every 4,500 residents. Arcata has twice as many such stores as supermarkets.

Their shelves are crammed with plant nutrients. The shops are also steeped in euphemism. Redwood Garden Supply in Myers Flat boasts in advertisements that it sells everything needed for "maximum yield" and that its "secure and private location" has "large vehicle turn-around space" for "quick in & outs."

Years ago, hippies complained that logging companies kept their profits while foisting environmental costs on the public. Indoor marijuana growers have done much the same thing on a smaller scale.

At indoor grow sites, Humboldt County environmental officials report finding tubs of used anti-freeze, leaking fuel lines, pesticide containers and nutrient-laden potting soil that runs off into streams during rains, feeding algae blooms that suffocate fish.

In May 2008, a generator in the southern Humboldt mountains was left untended, and as much as 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into a creek that feeds the Eel River.

"In the last three years, I've seen more diesel spills than I have in my previous 28 years" in law enforcement, said Mendocino County Sheriff Thomas Allman.

The year-round stream of cash from indoor cultivation spawned a consumerism of the kind the original hippies were trying to escape. Locals called young men like Sasso "The Knights of Toyota" for their expensive new trucks. At their homes high in the hills, they installed massive stereos, wide-screen televisions and satellite dishes – mostly powered by diesel generators.

As indoor fever took hold, Sasso's operation churned out $480,000 worth of weed every 56 days. It all ended in 2002, when he was busted based on an informant's tip, charged with conspiracy and pot manufacturing. He pleaded guilty.

According to the federal indictment, Sasso and his workers turned $1.3 million in pot receipts into dozens of $10,000 cashier's checks. Sasso said he used them for down payments on other ranches in Mendocino and in Oregon. His wife and several workers were also charged and convicted, but only Sasso remains in prison.

He's heard that shipping containers have since fallen out of favor. Growers now prefer multi-plated culverts – structures used to channel streams under highways – because they are easy to assemble, don't arouse much suspicion when trucked in and are built to be buried.

That's not the only way the pot business has changed. Now, so many people are growing that wholesale prices have dropped.

"The days of making $300,000 to $600,000 a year are basically over," said Tim Blake, co-owner of Area 101, a Mendocino marijuana collective and social center. "If people would say $60,000 to $100,000 a year is a great wage, then they'll be fine. Problem is, a lot of them can't say that. They're used to something else."

Many indoor growers now oppose legalization of marijuana, believing it would further depress prices. Others, including some conservative retirees in the Emerald Triangle, yearn for legalization, hoping it would end indoor cultivation.

A cultural backlash against indoor is forming. In a recent Humboldt County Craigslist personal ad, a woman seeking a man insisted on "No indoor growers. Yuck." An unsigned ad in the weekly North Coast Journal noted indoor's carbon footprint and urged farmers to "Put 'Em in the Sun … as nature intended."

Still, economic interests have grown up around indoor pot: grow shops, nutrient manufacturers, urban dispensaries.

"All these are all about indoor, exclusively," said Charlie Custer, a board member of the Humboldt Medical Marijuana Advisory Panel, formed recently to discuss the county's future if pot is legalized.

Tony Sasso is scheduled to be released from prison in 2015. He expects pot to be legal in California by then. If not, he won't return to Mendocino.

"There's only one thing to do there. It would be entirely too easy to get back in the game," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-indoor-pot-20101015,0,38070,print.story

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CVS will pay record fine over sale of drug

The nation's largest pharmacy chain will pay $75 million in the unlawful sale of pseudoephedrine at stores in California and Nevada. The drug is a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

By Lisa Girion and Scott Glover, Los Angeles Times

October 15, 2010

The nation's largest pharmacy chain will pay a record fine for illegally selling large amounts of a key methamphetamine ingredient to criminal traffickers, a problem that prosecutors say led to a surge in production of the widely abused drug in California.

CVS Pharmacy Inc. agreed to pay a $75-million fine and forfeit $2.6 million in profits on the unlawful sales of pseudoephedrine in California and Nevada in 2007 and 2008, according to federal prosecutors based in Los Angeles.

The penalty is the largest for a civil violation of the Controlled Substances Act, a 40-year-old law that is more often aimed at street dealers and narcotics traffickers.

The illegal sale of cold and allergy medications and other products containing pseudoephedrine, or PSE, "was an unacceptable breach of the company's policies and was totally inconsistent with our values," CVS Caremark Corp. Chairman Thomas M. Ryan said in a statement. CVS Pharmacy is a division of CVS Caremark, a company that reported making a $3.7-billion profit on $98.7 billion in sales last year and operates more than 7,100 stores.

The company admitted that CVS stores in California, Nevada and 23 other states were vulnerable for more than a year to criminals who bought enough PSE through repeated purchases to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant abused in epidemic proportions and linked to violence and other crimes.

CVS blamed the problem on the flawed implementation of an electronic monitoring system that was supposed to guard against excessive purchases.

In an effort to curb the production of methamphetamine, the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 required retailers to store PSE products behind the counter, check purchasers' identifications and limit sales to the equivalent of one package a day and three a month. Customers also had to sign for each purchase.

Prosecutors said the company fixed the problem only after discovering that the government had opened an investigation. "CVS's flagrant violation" made the company "a direct link in the methamphetamine supply chain," said Michele M. Leonhart, acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In addition to the financial penalties, the company agreed to implement a compliance and ethics program and to make periodic reports to the DEA for five years. In exchange, the government agreed not to pursue criminal prosecution or further civil action.

"CVS knew it had a duty to prevent methamphetamine trafficking, but it failed to take steps to control the sale of a regulated drug used by methamphetamine cooks as an essential ingredient for their poisonous stew," said U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr.

The investigation began in 2008 after the arrests of dozens of people across Southern California for alleged possession of pseudoephedrine. Agents with the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and local police in several cities noticed that the suspects had purchased unusually large quantities of medicines containing pseudoephedrine from CVS stores.

Those officials contacted the DEA, said Mike Lewis, head of the agency's diversion program in Los Angeles, which focuses on the growing problem of legal drugs being diverted to a black market that caters to addicts.

Lewis launched a review of the company's sales practices that revealed that CVS store computers were on an improper setting that allowed customers to make repeated purchases of products containing the drug in quantities above the federal daily limit. This allowed "smurfing," in which meth makers or their associates travel from one store to another — or make repeat trips to the same store — to gather enough pseudoephedrine to make meth. The reference comes from the image of the tiny cartoon characters acting as drug dealers' minions.

Meth makers targeted CVS stores, especially in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas, sometimes "cleaning out store shelves," according to a news release announcing the agreement Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Shana T. Mintz, who led negotiations with CVS on behalf of the government, said that from September 2007 through November 2008, CVS sold more generic pseudoephedrine in Southern California stores than in their stores in the rest of the country combined.

Mintz said investigators found many CVS customers who made up to a dozen purchases in a single store in one day. One customer made 10 transactions in 53 minutes at a CVS in Huntington Park, she said.

The customers did not seem particularly secretive about their purchases — many used CVS discount cards to get credit for what they were buying, Mintz said. The most popular form of the drug was the CVS generic.

"Apparently, smurfers are good shoppers too," she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-meth-20101015,0,2355804,print.story

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More wounded soldiers recount horrors of Ft. Hood rampage

Army Staff Sgt. Paul Martin, one of 11 witnesses testifying at a preliminary hearing, identifies Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as the shooter. 'It was like a cannon going off inside the building,' he says.

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

October 15, 2010

Reporting from Ft. Hood, Texas

Stiff with pain from lingering bullet wounds in his leg and back, Army Staff Sgt. Paul Martin rose slowly to his feet on the witness stand Thursday and pointed across the military courtroom.

"Yes, sir, that's him," Martin said, nodding toward Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, huddled in a wheelchair beneath a blanket and watch cap.

Martin said it was Hasan, firing methodically from two handguns, who shot him twice Nov. 5. And it was Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who fired again and again at soldiers inside a medical processing building as they tried to flee, Martin testified.

Martin was one of several wounded soldiers who described on Thursday a terrifying shooting rampage, for which Hasan is charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 more before being brought down by police gunfire that left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Combined with searing testimony Wednesday from eight other survivors, the soldiers' accounts helped prosecutors build a narrative that paints Hasan as a ruthless and remorseless killer who fired on fallen soldiers. The hearing, which is expected to last weeks, will determine whether Hasan, 40, will stand trial at court-martial, where he could face the death penalty.

Soldiers described trying to play dead after they were shot, only to watch the gunman shoot other soldiers as they lay bleeding. Several, including Martin, identified Hasan as the killer who relied on red and green sighting lasers to mark his victims.

"It looked like a light show," said Martin, who was shot moments after he said Hasan abruptly stood up and shouted "Allahu Akbar" — Arabic for "God is great."

Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim who counseled soldiers, was at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center to take medical tests for deployment to Afghanistan. The building was packed with soldiers bound for Afghanistan or Iraq.

Eleven soldiers testified Thursday, nine of whom were wounded Nov. 5. Several soldiers pounded on a wooden railing to simulate the bam-bam-bam of rapid gunfire.

"It was like a cannon going off inside the building," Martin said.

Hasan shot Martin in the left arm, he testified. As he tried to flee, Hasan shot him again in the back, he said.

"I dropped to the floor like a rock and I said to myself, 'I'm paralyzed,' " Martin said at the Article 32 hearing.

Martin recovered, but was left with severe back pain and numbness in his fingers, he said. Other wounded soldiers described treatment not only for their physical wounds, but for mental and emotional anguish — post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks and migraines.

Hasan is not charged with terrorism offenses. But many at Ft. Hood consider him a terrorist and his alleged rampage part of jihad against the United States, rather than an episode of workplace violence.

Hasan's attorney, retired Army Col. John P. Galligan, has complained that his client has been portrayed as a terrorist suspect.

In the months before the shooting, Hasan reportedly sent e-mails to Anwar Awlaki, an American-born terrorism suspect who has a U.S. bounty on his head. "I can't wait to join you," he allegedly told Awlaki in one e-mail.

U.S. authorities intercepted the e-mails but reportedly considered them part of Hasan's research on post-traumatic stress disorder. Awlaki, who is believed to be in Yemen, praised Hasan after the shootings.

While a resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan reportedly told colleagues he believed the U.S. was waging war on Muslims. In court Thursday, Hasan was dressed in Army fatigues and combat boots. He watched impassively, occasionally taking notes.

Spec. Alan Carroll, testifying by video link from Afghanistan, said he saw a clear escape route during the rampage but stayed inside to protect his buddy Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, who had been shot in the throat.

"I'd been told to never leave a fallen comrade," Carroll said.

As he tried to help Nemelka, Carroll was shot four times — twice in the arm, once in the leg and once in the back. He recovered and returned to duty.

Carroll was asked about the fate of Nemelka and two other friends who had accompanied Carroll to the center and were shot, Spec. Frederick Greene and Pfc. Michael Pearson.

"They all three died — passed away," Carroll replied.

Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, a pale, slender soldier, limped into court with the help of a cane. He described the targeting laser passing over his face just before he was shot in the left side of his head.

Knocked flat, he watched his own blood pool on the floor. As he crawled toward a rear door, he said, he was shot three more times — in the shoulder, forearm and hip.

He later underwent surgery that removed about 20% of his brain matter, he said. He is relearning to walk and use his left arm.

After he testified, Zeigler glanced into the courtroom gallery and caught the eye of his fiancee, Jessica Hansen, who smiled at him. He struggled to stand, even with his cane. Once on his feet, Zeigler glared hard at Hasan for several seconds. Hasan looked down at the defense table.

With great effort, Zeigler turned and made his way toward his fiancee. The only sound in the courtroom was the pounding of his cane against the wooden walkway.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hasan-testimony-20101015,0,3145871,print.story

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From the New York Times

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Family's Effort to Clear Name Frames Debate on Executions

AUSTIN, Tex. — It was an unusual hearing. The subject at the center of it all, Cameron Todd Willingham, was not present. After being convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire, he was executed in 2004.

Members of Mr. Willingham's family, working with lawyers who oppose the death penalty, had asked for the rare and controversial hearing, held here on Thursday, to investigate whether Mr. Willingham was wrongfully convicted. They argue that the proceeding, known as a court of inquiry, could restore Mr. Willingham's reputation, a right guaranteed under Texas law, even to the dead.

But they also say that the hearing is more than symbolic — it could cast in a new light the Lone Star State's record on executions. And more broadly, they argue, it is a cautionary tale about the power of flawed science to sway a courtroom, and a glaring injustice that could affect debates over the fairness of the death penalty.

That debate has been framed, in part, by a 2006 opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court, in which he said that the dissent in a case had not cited “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”

Many who oppose the death penalty have taken Justice Scalia's statement as a challenge, and argue that the Willingham case is their proof.

To those favoring the death penalty, Mr. Willingham is guilty, and the efforts to posthumously exonerate him are an abolitionist farce.

Critics of the hearing have said the proceeding is illegal, and have tried to derail it. The district attorney of Navarro County, R. Lowell Thompson, whose office originally convicted Mr. Willingham, filed a motion last week demanding that Judge Charlie Baird recuse himself, arguing a judge cannot appoint himself to lead a court of inquiry, and must instead refer the matter to a higher court for an appointment. At the beginning of the hearing on Thursday, Judge Baird ruled that he would allow the hearing to go forward.

At the end of the day, however, as testimony was closing down, the Texas Third Court of Appeals in Austin issued a stay at Mr. Thompson's request, ordering Judge Baird not to hold further proceedings or to issue rulings until next Friday, and asked the Willingham team to explain why the case should be allowed to go forward.

The focus of lawyers for Mr. Willingham's family was on evidence presented by fire marshals at Mr. Willingham's original trial — evidence that nine experts have said included “many critical errors,” as one report put it. Several of the experts were working at the request of the Innocence Project, an organization that seeks the acquittal of wrongfully convicted people.

The expert who wrote that critical report, Gerald Hurst, argued that evidence suggested the fire was accidental, not arson. His report was sent to Gov. Rick Perry shortly before the execution, but Mr. Perry declined to halt or delay the procedure.

The evidence presented at trial that Mr. Willingham committed arson “amounts to junk science,” Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer arguing on behalf of the Willingham family, said in the courtroom.

Judge Baird asked Dr. Hurst at the hearing whether his review of the case could rule out arson “within a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.”

Dr. Hurst demurred. “I never had a case where I could exclude arson,” he said. “It's not possible to do that.”

The judge then asked if “there's nothing in the evidence you've seen here that suggests arson.”

“That's correct,” Dr. Hurst said.

John Lentini, a fire expert who has studied flawed arson investigations, hammered at the evidence and analysis from fire marshals at the Willingham trial.

Under questioning by Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, Mr. Lentini ridiculed critical testimony at the trial that 20 factors, including burn patterns on the floor and cracks in the windows, proved that Mr. Willingham spread accelerants to fuel the fire.

No such chemicals were found in the house, Mr. Lentini said. Much of the analysis of Manuel Vasquez, the state fire marshal in the Willingham trial, “didn't even meet the standards of 1991,” a time that Mr. Lentini characterized as having “a wretched state of the art.”

The current fire marshal, Paul Maldonado, stands by the work of the original marshals in the Willingham case, which Mr. Lentini said he found mystifying.

Mr. Lentini said that the flaws in the science required the state to go back and take a new look at other arson convictions. “I can understand why the fire marshal doesn't want to go back and review hundreds of cases,” he said. “But that's probably his duty.”

Governor Perry has fought the review of the case, and declined to participate in the hearing. Katherine Cesinger, his spokeswoman, said, “Nothing the Austin court does can change the fact that Todd Willingham was convicted in a trial court with the appropriate jurisdiction, and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for murdering his three young daughters.”

The case, she noted, had worked its way through the appeals process and even reached the Supreme Court over the course of more than a decade. The governor has described Mr. Willingham as “an absolute monster who killed his own kids.”

Closing the hearing, former Gov. Mark White said that “the frailty of the system has been demonstrated clearly and overwhelmingly by the testimony brought forth in this court today.”

In an interview, Mr. Scheck said, “What we've proven is there was no crime” in the Willingham case.

“I would expect that at the end of the day, what we'll get is an opinion that an innocent man was executed in Texas,” he added.

Even if that should happen, its impact will be minimal, said Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that supports the death penalty.

“It'll be trumpeted on the Death Penalty Information Center site,” he said, referring to a group that opposes capital punishment. “Nobody on the other side of the aisle is going to give it any credence.”

To one person attending the hearing, however, it was anything but meaningless. Eugenia Willingham, Mr. Willingham's stepmother, said during a break in the proceedings that it was an important day.

“This is what he wanted us to do,” she said of her stepson. “He wanted us to stand up for him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/us/15execution.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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2 Pennsylvania Men Guilty in 2008 Killing of Mexican

WASHINGTON — A federal jury found two young Pennsylvania men guilty of a hate crime on Thursday in the 2008 beating death of a Mexican immigrant. The verdict was welcomed by Hispanic organizations, which saw the trial as a national test case for the treatment of Latinos.

The men, Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky, were found guilty of violating the civil rights of Luis Ramírez, an illegal immigrant, when they and a group of football players beat him in Shenandoah, Pa., in July 2008. He died shortly after from head injuries.

Mr. Donchak, 20, sobbed as the verdict was read in United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, in Scranton, and Mr. Piekarsky, 18, put his head in his hands, according to The Associated Press. The men face sentences of up to life in prison. Mr. Donchak faces up to 20 years more on an obstruction of justice charge and 5 years on a conspiracy charge. They are to be sentenced on Jan. 24.

The men were acquitted of the most serious charges in a state trial last year, a verdict that angered Hispanic advocacy groups and drew criticism from Gov. Edward G. Rendell. The Justice Department later indicted the men on the hate crime charges on the grounds that they beat Mr. Ramírez because he was Latino and they did not want Latinos living in their town.

Prosecutors said Mr. Donchak and Mr. Piekarsky, both teenagers at the time of the crime, hurled ethnic slurs at Mr. Ramírez and told him: “This is America. Go back to Mexico.”

The two men were tried under the Fair Housing Act, a federal law that makes it a crime to use someone's race or national origin to prevent him from living where he chooses.

Mr. Donchak's lawyer, William Fetterhoff, said that the trial amounted to a case of double jeopardy — being tried twice for the same crime — and that the two were indicted only because the government was dissatisfied with the state verdict.

He said that the encounter was a result of young male aggression soaked with alcohol. “Once a fight among teens begins, then the sky is the limit for name calling, insults and foul language,” Mr. Fetterhoff said Thursday by telephone from Scranton. “It didn't matter that Mr. Ramírez was white, black, Hispanic or shiny green.”

The case had become a cause célèbre for Hispanic groups.

“The verdict sends an important message that hate crimes are not to be tolerated,” said Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights organization. “In this case, justice has been made.”

A lawyer for Mr. Piekarsky, James Swetz, said by telephone that the two men would appeal. He said the Fair Housing Act required not only a finding of racial or ethnic bias, but also that it relate directly to preventing the victim from living where he chooses. It was intended to prevent threatening situations like the placing of burning crosses on black people's lawns in the past.

“It's an attempt to put a square peg in a round hole,” Mr. Swetz said. “There is no evidence that these kids knew that Ramírez lived in the borough.”

Prosecutors disagreed, and managed to persuade the jury.

The case raised difficult questions that are rooted in the immigration debate that has swept the country in recent years: for example, whether, as a person in the country illegally, Mr. Ramírez even had a right to the federal government's protection of his housing, as the Fair Housing Act designates. Mr. Swetz said that would be part of his appeal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/us/15scranton.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Judge Overrules Terror Suspect's Request on Evidence

DETROIT — Overruling the wishes of a Nigerian man accused of trying to use explosives in his underwear to blow up a transcontinental airliner over Detroit last Christmas, a federal judge on Thursday ordered that the man's standby lawyer receive documents related to the prosecution's case. The defendant, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also waived his right to a speedy trial.

Earlier at the hearing in Federal District Court here, Mr. Abdulmutallab told Judge Nancy G. Edmunds that he wanted to continue representing himself and that he did not want the lawyer appointed by the court to advise him to receive discovery documents.

Mr. Abdulmutallab dropped his court-appointed lawyers on Sept. 13, citing poor representation, and signaled the possibility that he might plead guilty to some of the charges. Another pretrial hearing is scheduled for Jan. 12.

Anthony Chambers, the lawyer appointed to advise Mr. Abdulmutallab, 23, told the judge that he had had multiple conversations with the defendant. In answers to questions from Judge Edmunds, the slight, soft-spoken Mr. Abdulmutallab said he was fluent in English, needed no translator and understood the charges against him, which include attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill the nearly 300 people on Northwest Flight 253, bound for Detroit from Amsterdam.

The judge urged Mr. Abdulmutallab to reconsider and to have a lawyer present his case. "I like the arrangement the way it is," Mr. Abdulmutallab responded. After the judge's ruling, the prosecution said that documents would be provided to Mr. Chambers in the next few days.

According to the federal complaint, Mr. Abdulmutallab tried to set off an explosive identified as pentaerythritol tetranitrate, also called PETN. Had he been successful, experts believe, he could have blown a hole in the aircraft, causing it to crash.

The defendant, who is being held at a prison in Milan, Mich., has told officials that he got the explosive materials from a bomb expert in Yemen who was affiliated with Al Qaeda. The chemicals and a syringe had been sewn into Mr. Abdulmutallab's underwear.

Before Mr. Abdulmutallab's arrest, his father, a high-profile Nigerian banker, had told officials at the United States Embassy in Nigeria that he was worried about his son's burgeoning extremist religious views. Instead of revoking Mr. Abdulmutallab's visa, embassy officials instead called for an investigation to be conducted if he reapplied. Because he was not added to the no-fly list of those with alleged terrorist connections, Mr. Abdulmutallab was able to use cash to buy a ticket to the United States and to board a plane without checking any bags.

Nigerian officials said that Mr. Abdulmutallab arrived in Lagos on Christmas Eve and soon left for Amsterdam. American officials, meanwhile, were investigating his travels to Yemen. The defendant has an engineering degree from the University College London and was president of the Islamic Society there.

Mr. Abdulmutallab has reportedly spoken at length with F.B.I. agents here, and officials have said that those conversations aided their investigation into the alleged bombing attempt.

The incident renewed debate about the ability of federal security measures to prevent terrorism aboard airplanes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/us/15bomber.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Need a Lawyer? Good Luck

EDITORIAL OPINION

Across the country, programs that provide legal representation in civil cases to low-income Americans are so cash-strapped that they are turning away numbers of people. Hard-pressed Americans fighting foreclosure or seeking protection from domestic violence or access to medical care or unemployment benefits must often navigate the judicial system on their own or give up.

For much of its financing, civil legal aid has relied on the interest earnings from escrow accounts that private lawyers often hold for clients. That has all but disappeared as interest rates have dropped. At the same time, deficit-plagued statehouses are cutting support, while federal dollars are not taking up enough of the slack.

The chief judge of New York State's highest court, Jonathan Lippman, has begun a campaign for expanded state support. At recent public meetings, business, political, and bar leaders, judges and litigants described the high cost, to all New Yorkers, of denying such assistance to the poor.

Beyond basic moral and ethical concerns, they argued, the rising volume of self-represented litigants is causing court delays that impose financial burdens on opposing parties with lawyers. Foreclosures that might be avoided drive families into shelters, further straining local budgets and disrupting lives. Hospitals operating at the financial brink are hurt when poor people can't obtain Medicaid payments for their treatment.

A special commission named by Judge Lippman is readying a report that will assess the unmet needs for civil legal services and suggest cost-effective steps to meet them. Even in hard times, progress should be possible. New York's State Legislature already has approved a measure that would allow borrowers who prevail against banks in foreclosure actions to recover their attorneys' fees. Gov. David Paterson needs to sign it.

After the election recess, Congress must approve the extra financing to provide legal services for struggling homeowners authorized in the financial reform law. It must also approve a substantial budget increase for the federal Legal Services Corporation, which helps finance these critical programs, and ditch senseless restrictions hampering its mission.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15fri2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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The Foreclosure Crises

EDITORIAL OPINION

Attorneys general in all 50 states have pledged a coordinated investigation into chaotic foreclosure practices by some of the nation's largest banks. The Department of Justice is also looking into what happened, while some lawmakers are now calling for a nationwide moratorium on all foreclosures until the legal questions are settled. The Obama administration is insisting such a broad delay would hurt the economy.

There is plenty to worry about. But amid all this roiling, neither Congress nor the administration has found a way to address an even more fundamental problem: What government and banks need to do to finally stanch the flood of foreclosures wreaking havoc on the lives of millions of Americans and threatening the recovery.

According to the latest figures, 4.2 million loans are now in or near foreclosure. An estimated 3.5 million homes will be lost by the end of 2012, on top of 6.2 million already lost. Yet the administration's main antiforeclosure effort has modified fewer than 500,000 loans in about 18 months.

Judges and investigators need to be unflinching in their inquiries into the paperwork debacle and must hold the banks fully accountable. What we've already learned is chilling — and suggests that bankers have learned little since the 2008 implosion and taxpayer bailout.

Major banks — including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Bank, which is owned by GMAC — have suspended foreclosures after admitting they had submitted tens of thousands of affidavits to the courts, attesting to facts about the defaulted loans that had not been verified by the bank employees signing the documents.

The Times's Eric Dash and Nelson D. Schwartz reported in Thursday's paper that in their rush to process foreclosures, banks hired inexperienced workers (“Burger King kids” as one former banker derided them) who barely knew what a mortgage was.

The problems may go far deeper. The banks' procedures for keeping track of mortgages may also be seriously flawed. If there are problems in establishing a chain of title, it could — again — call into question the value of mortgage-backed securities. That would mean litigation, which would harm bank profits, and in a worst case, risk another economywide disruption.

As important, and dismaying, as all this is, it must not obscure the underlying problem: potentially millions of foreclosures that could and should be avoided.

A mandated, national moratorium may be unavoidable if banks resume a rush to foreclosure before all the legal issues are resolved. So far, there is no sign of that. A moratorium won't address the fundamental problem that banks have not competently and aggressively pursued ways to keep more financially viable Americans in their homes.

The White House may well be right that a moratorium would further rattle investors. But the economy is not going to rebound until the housing mess is resolved. What is needed, urgently, are laws and policies to give homeowners a better shot at reworking their loans so they can keep making payments and avoid foreclosure.

Throughout this crisis, the Obama administration has been far more worried about protecting the banks than protecting homeowners. The big weaknesses in the administration's main antiforeclosure policy is that participation by lenders is voluntary and homeowners have little leverage to get better terms — especially reductions in loan principal when the mortgage balance is greater than the value of the home.

One way to change that would be for Congress to reform the bankruptcy law so troubled borrowers could turn to the courts for a loan modification if banks were uncooperative. Homeowners also need a simple process to challenge a bank if it uses incorrect information to deny a modification and justify a foreclosure, or if it refuses to divulge the facts and figures it used.

The administration also needs to alter refinancing guidelines so that many borrowers who are current in their payments are eligible to refinance to lower rates, even if their houses have declined in value. It needs to provide more legal aid to homeowners, using money authorized by Congress.

This latest foreclosure crisis should settle one issue once and for all. The banks that got us into this mess can't be trusted to get us out of it. The administration and Congress need to act.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15fri1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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Joyous Rescue

EDITORIAL OPINION

Like so many people around the world, we waited and prayed until the last Chilean miner and the last rescuer emerged from that improbably deep hole and was again free. In a world of so much division — and one where technology too often seems to be the enemy — the miners' survival and rescue was truly deserving of national and global celebration.

This rescue has turned one impossibility after another into joyous fact. It seemed impossible that all of the 33 miners could have survived for 17 silent days after the cave-in, not to mention two months of strained waiting as the drills made their way into the earth. It seemed no less impossible that the miners could be rescued safely and expeditiously, winched skyward along a winding shaft in a slender pod that looked more like part of a space mission than a mining operation. And emerge so surprisingly healthy.

What made it possible was the community underground, the fierce shared bond among those miners, and the community aboveground.

This was already a very difficult year for Chile, which suffered a devastating earthquake in late February. Chile's new president, Sebastián Piñera, vowed to do everything possible to bring the miners home and organized his government to meet that task. He also sensibly and graciously accepted help from the international community, including this country.

Above all, the miners, trapped a half-mile below the earth for more than two months, are the heroes, especially their shift leader, Luis Urzúa, the last of the 33 to be freed. He kept this band of men organized, hopeful and ready to be reborn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15fri4.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Record number of 102,134 homes repossessed in September

October 15, 2010

by SANDRA GUY - Business Reporter

The number of homes nationwide repossessed by banks surpassed 100,000 for the first time in a single month, reaching 102,134 in September, a RealtyTrac study revealed Thursday. And lenders seized more home this summer -- from July through September -- than in any other quarter since the housing market crisis started four years ago.

The rising numbers are expected to stall soon, after attorneys general in all 50 states announced Wednesday they are investigating problems with foreclosure documents, including mortgage loan-servicer employees signing hundreds of affidavits saying they were familiar with foreclosure cases without first reading the documents -- a practice known as robo-signing. Other documents were signed without a notary public present, which violates state law. Major banks have halted their foreclosure proceedings while they try to rectify the situation.

The Chicago metro area -- a 14-county expanse including Lake County, Ind. -- had a greater number of homes in some stage of foreclosure than the state and national averages during the July-through-September period, RealtyTrac reported. One in every 84 housing units was in trouble in the Chicago region, compared with one in every 110 in Illinois and one in 139 nationwide.

Despite the prevalence of risky subprime loans in Chicago's South Side and West Side neighborhoods, Cook County has ranked behind rural and suburban counties in foreclosure activity for the last four years, said RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Blomquist.

The latest full-year data from 2009 show Cook County ranking fifth in numbers of homes at risk of foreclosure, with one in every 30 homes the subject of some type of foreclosure action. Counties with greater activity were Kendall (one in 14 housing units), Kane (one in 24), Will (one in 25), Lake (one in 27) and McHenry (one in 27).

Blomquist said the outlying counties experienced speculative buying and housing development, and that homeowners are now being squeezed by high unemployment rates and underwater property values.

Nationwide, experts are divided as to whether the foreclosure-document controversy will change the outcome of people losing their homes, especially in states like Illinois that require a judge's approval of foreclosures.

Local attorneys are researching their files to see whether they can challenge any foreclosure actions, but the final result depends on whether the homeowner can afford to pay the mortgage.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/2804110,CST-NWS-FORECLOSE15.article

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Readout of Secretary Napolitano's Remarks on the National Law Enforcement Museum Groundbreaking

October 14, 2010

Washington, D.C. - Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today participated in the groundbreaking ceremony for the National Law Enforcement Museum and delivered the keynote address at the museum's inaugural gala—highlighting the Department's continued partnership with the law enforcement community and honoring the vital contributions of the men and women serving on the frontlines.

"Homeland security begins with hometown security, and law enforcement play a critical role in keeping communities across our nation safe," said Secretary Napolitano. "The National Law Enforcement Museum will pay tribute to the selfless commitment of the men and women in uniform who serve and protect our homeland."

During her remarks, Secretary Napolitano highlighted the National Law Enforcement Museum's role in educating the public on the significant counterterrorism responsibilities of law enforcement.

She discussed the ongoing collaboration between DHS' law enforcement organizations—including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration's Federal Air Marshal Service—and an extensive network of federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partners to combat terrorism.

Secretary Napolitano also underscored the Department's unique commitment to equipping local law enforcement, citizens and communities with the tools they need to better understand and counter threats to our nation—getting information and resources out of Washington D.C. and into the hands of law enforcement officers throughout the country.

Further, she emphasized the Department's joint efforts with the Justice Department to expand the nationwide Suspicious Activities Reporting Initiative – an administration effort to train state and local law enforcement to recognize behaviors and indicators related to specific threats and terrorism-related crime; standardize how those observations are documented, vetted and analyzed; and expand and enhance the sharing of those reports with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS. This initiative is being implemented in partnership with state and local officials across the nation and has been launched in 19 locations.

Earlier today, Secretary Napolitano joined Attorney General Eric Holder, National Law Enforcement Officer Memorial Fund Chairman Craig Floyd, U.S. Congressman Steny Hoyer and Boston Police Department Officer Thomas Griffiths to officially break ground on the National Law Enforcement Museum.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1287149446218.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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Attorney General Holder Speaks at the 2010 Shriver Center Awards Dinner in Chicago

October 14, 2010

Thank you, John [Bouman]. It is a pleasure to be with you and to be among so many friends. And while I appreciate your very kind words, tonight I am most grateful for the opportunity to celebrate the work that you and Stu [Cohen] – and the Shriver Center's staff, Board of Directors, and many supporters – are leading.

Your efforts have helped to establish the Shriver Center as the authoritative international resource center on poverty law – and as a powerful voice for the most vulnerable among us. For more than three decades, you've fought to protect the rights and best interests of Americans in need and at risk. You've found innovative ways to bring legal assistance to those struggling to access our justice system and vindicate their rights. And you've made meaningful progress in fulfilling Sargent Shriver's vision of a more just, and more inclusive, society.

On behalf of our nation's Department of Justice, I am grateful, and proud, to count you all as partners. I want to thank each of you for the service that you provide and inspire, and the difference that you are making across Chicago – and far beyond this beautiful city.

I also want to thank you all for this wonderful award. I am honored to be included among its distinguished recipients and to be associated with this Center's – and this award's – namesake.

Although I'm sorry that Sargent Shriver can't be here with us, it is his life's work that we honor and recommit ourselves to this evening.

Forty-seven years ago this week, as our nation struggled to overcome new threats and long-standing divisions, Sargent Shriver assured the American people that, “Deeply committed individuals, prepared to work and sacrifice, can have a profound impact on the most difficult and intransigent of problems.” In the intervening decades, much progress has been made in addressing difficult and intransigent problems. But as I reflect on these words – and raise them to all of you - I am acutely aware of how much more that we, as a nation, have to do.

For today's Justice Department, that work is well underway in the Civil Rights Division, a place of special importance to many of you. I am proud to report that, over the past 20 months, this division has reaffirmed its role as the conscience of the Department and as America's finest civil rights enforcement agency. This, I believe, is just as Sargent Shriver and his brother-in-law, my predecessor Attorney General Robert Kennedy, would want it.

Of course, there is still work to be done. There are still injustices to be prosecuted and problems to be remedied. But our vigorous enforcement efforts are having a powerful and positive impact in safeguarding the rights of disabled Americans, institutionalized persons, voters, veterans, workers, and students, and service members. We are ensuring that education and job opportunities, as well as the religious freedoms of all our citizens, are protected. And we're making extraordinary progress – through suits in Chicago and far beyond – in combating human trafficking, promoting fairness in our housing and lending markets, and protecting civil rights in our board rooms, in our voting booths, and along our borders.

In fact, in fiscal year 2009, the Justice Department set a record for the most criminal civil rights cases filed in history. Then, in fiscal year 2010, we exceeded that record.

Part of that work has focused on addressing the growing and alarming problem of hate crimes. Last year, leaders across the Department worked tirelessly to advance the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act – one of the most significant new pieces of civil rights legislation enacted in decades. Today, our prosecutors are actively enforcing this law and utilizing the new tools it provides.

Although civil rights violations are not limited to any one socioeconomic, racial, or geographic group – as many of you have pointed out – the poorest among us often suffer the most. But through several new initiatives, the Justice Department is working to remedy this. We have launched, for example, a new fair lending unit, and we held our first fair lending summit here in Chicago earlier this year. I'm pleased to report that we also recently obtained the largest fair lending settlement in the Department's history.

We have launched and strengthened partnerships with leaders across the administration – and with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials – to ensure fairness in our housing and lending markets, as well as our health-care, corrections, and education systems.

Here in Chicago, the importance of these partnerships is clear. As many of you know, one year ago, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and I traveled here together following the horrific beating of 16-year-old Derrion Albert. Derrion was one of forty Chicago public high school students killed last year. His fatal attack – captured on video for the world to see – was a wake-up call for our country, and for many of the citizens and communities you serve.

A year later, the challenge persists. Just last month, a student was killed on the second day of class. This is unacceptable. And, for this group – leaders who refuse to turn a blind eye to injustice or ignore the suffering of others – it is cause for action. It is yet another reason to consider the connections between public safety, youth violence, educational opportunities, and poverty.

Earlier today, when I met with Chicago's interagency delegation to our National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention, I had the chance to discuss some of the concerns we all share. And I learned about some of the local youth violence challenges you're confronting.

Across this city, and beyond, childhood exposure to violence is a growing problem – a problem that is also an issue of social justice. That's why, several weeks ago, the Justice Department launched a new Defending Childhood initiative aimed at preventing children's exposure to violence – whether they're perpetrators, observers, or victims – and mitigating the negative effects of violence. By renewing and refocusing our efforts to serve our nation's most vulnerable, most distressed – and, often, poorest – children, I believe we can improve the country we love for the better, one child at a time.

In addition to this work, I would like to tell you about another new Department initiative that is helping to strengthen our communities and serve those who need, and deserve, the assistance and guidance that lawyers can provide.

Helping to ensure the promise of “equal justice for all” is one of the Department's most critical, and fundamental, obligations. Many of you have devoted your lives to this work. And you know just how much remains to be done. Today, the current deficiencies in our indigent defense system and the gaps in legal services for the poor and middle class, constitute not just a problem, but a crisis. And this crisis appears as “difficult and intransigent” as any now before us. Some public defenders' offices are so underfunded and understaffed that the average caseload, for just one attorney, can range from 500 to 900 felony cases and more than 2,000 misdemeanor cases per year. That's over five times the ceilings set by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice.

The state of affairs in civil matters is no less unconscionable. These cases may not result in jail time, but given the possibilities of deportation, loss of child custody, and eviction, they can disrupt and devastate lives. Yet, across our country, those who can't afford counsel in such proceedings are not entitled to be represented at the public's expense. And, unfortunately, lifelines such as the Legal Services Corporation, and many of the legal aid programs it supports, are vastly underfunded.

These are systemic problems. And they call for reinvention – not merely reform. That's why the Department has made an historic and permanent commitment to expanding and ensuring access to legal services. This spring, we established a new Access to Justice Office – led by one of our nation's most renowned Constitutional law scholars, Larry Tribe.

Through this landmark initiative, we are working to ensure that quality legal representation is available and accessible to all indigent defendants. In cities from Chicago to New Orleans, we're encouraging comprehensive planning and reform, increasing training and technical assistance for defender programs, supporting Tribal Courts, and improving the juvenile justice system.

Meanwhile, we are enhancing civil legal representation for both the middle class and the poor by working to strengthen the Legal Services Corporation. We're also encouraging the establishment of more statewide Access to Justice commissions; engaging the pro bono bar; expanding access to domestic violence, wage theft, foreclosure, and child dependency case programs; and working to reform legal education so that more students can learn from and contribute to these efforts.

And wherever possible, we are promoting solutions outside of our courtrooms. Here in Chicago, for example, we're preparing to work with a group of partners – including the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice, the Chicago Council of Lawyers, the Chicago Police Department, the Office of the State Attorney, and other key criminal justice system stakeholders – to implement a deferral program for first-time, non-violent drug offenders. We can all be encouraged by this kind of innovation – and by this level of collaboration.

While I'm pleased that we are moving forward on many fronts, I also recognize that – in some cases – it feels as if we've set out toward a destination, while the roadmap is still in development.

But the urgency of today's challenges demands that we forge ahead anyway – just as Sargent Shriver advised in 1964, while discussing national efforts to combat poverty and injustice.

“We do not yet know all that needs to be known about the job ahead…but we are going to get there,” he said. “By trial and error…we are going to find out.”

Although nearly half a century has passed, this work continues. The struggle against poverty and injustice endures. But, fortunately, our approach has changed. Now, we are supplementing trial and error with sound science. To date, and for far too long, scientific study of our criminal justice system has been insufficient. But we are working to correct this. And today's Justice Department is committed to conducting the research and analysis necessary to allow for improved, evidence-based decisions at every level.

I have no doubt that, by bringing more science into our work, we'll be able to build on the progress that's been made – and find the answers and solutions that we need.

Of course, the world cannot be, as Sargent Shriver often reminded us, changed overnight. But in the work of ensuring civil rights and equal justice, the progress we seek is not beyond our reach. It is not beyond our capabilities. It is not beyond our lifetimes. This is clear, already, in the ways that we are repositioning the legal profession and redefining the obligations that lawyers have to our society. And evenings like this one – and the chance to stand with so many dedicated, talented, and motivated partners – make me especially optimistic about what can, and will, be accomplished.

Like Sargent Shriver, we must believe in the promise of this country, in the power of the individual, and in the possibility of committed, coordinated action. As we continue to chart our course, we are guided by the leadership of the Shriver Center, encouraged by the work of the Justice Department, and inspired by the individual contributions – and joint efforts – of so many partners in and beyond this room.

In the critical days ahead, let us keep moving forward. Let us seize this precious moment. Let us take our work to a new level. Let us create a stronger, better, more just, and – ultimately – more perfect union.

Thank you all.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-101014.html

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