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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. Homicide detectives and prosecutors threatened Claitt with a false unrelated murder charge, and induced him to lie with promises of little or no jail time on over twenty pending felonies, and being released from jail despite a parole violation. In addition, homicide detectives arranged for Claitt, while in custody, to have private sexual liaisons with his girlfriends in police interview rooms. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Without the coerced and false testimony of Claitt there was no evidence against Major Tillery. There were no ballistics or any other physical evidence linking him to the shootings. The surviving victim's statement naming others as the shooters was not allowed into evidence. The trial took place in May 1985 during the last days of the siege and firebombing of the MOVE family Osage Avenue home in Philadelphia that killed 13 Black people, including 5 children. The prosecution claimed that Major Tillery was part of an organized crime group, and falsely described it as run by the Nation of Islam. This prejudiced and inflamed the majority white jury against Tillery, to make up for the absence of any evidence that Tillery was involved in the shootings. This was a frame-up conviction from top to bottom. Claitt was the sole or primary witness in five other murder cases in the early 1980s. Coercing and inducing jailhouse informants to falsely testify is a standard routine in criminal prosecutions. It goes hand in hand with prosecutors suppressing favorable evidence from the defense. Major Tillery has filed a petition based on his actual innocence to the Philadelphia District Attorney's Larry Krasner's Conviction Review Unit. A full review and investigation should lead to reversal of Major Tillery's conviction. He also asks that the DA's office to release the full police and prosecution files on his case under the new  "open files" policy. In the meantime, Major Tillery continues his own investigation. He needs your support. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years The Pennsylvania courts have rejected three rounds of appeals challenging Major Tillery's conviction based on his innocence, the prosecution's intentional presentation of false evidence against him and his trial attorney's conflict of interest. On June 15, 2016 Major Tillery filed a new post-conviction petition based on the same evidence now in the petition to the District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit. Despite the written and video-taped statements from Emanuel Claitt that that his testimony against Major Tillery was a lie and the result of police and prosecutorial misconduct, Judge Leon Tucker dismissed Major Tillery's petition as "untimely" without even holding a hearing. Major Tillery appealed that dismissal and the appeal is pending in the Superior Court. During the decades of imprisonment Tillery has advocated for other prisoners challenging solitary confinement, lack of medical and mental health care and the inhumane conditions of imprisonment. In 1990, he won the lawsuit, Tillery v. Owens, that forced the PA Department of Corrections (DOC) to end double celling (4 men to a small cell) at SCI Pittsburgh, which later resulted in the closing and then "renovation" of that prison. Three years ago Major Tillery stood up for political prisoner and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and demanded prison Superintendent John Kerestes get Mumia to a hospital because "Mumia is dying."  For defending Mumia and advocating for medical treatment for himself and others, prison officials retaliated. Tillery was shipped out of SCI Mahanoy, where Mumia was also held, to maximum security SCI Frackville and then set-up for a prison violation and a disciplinary penalty of months in solitary confinement. See, Messing with Major by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Major Tillery's federal lawsuit against the DOC for that retaliation is being litigated. Major Tillery continues as an advocate for all prisoners. He is fighting to get the DOC to establish a program for elderly prisoners. Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Well-known criminal defense attorney Stephen Patrizio represents Major pro bonoin challenging his conviction. More investigation is underway. We can't count on the district attorney's office to make the findings of misconduct against the police detectives and prosecutors who framed Major without continuing to dig up the evidence. Major Tillery is now 67 years old. He's done hard time, imprisoned for almost 35 years, some 20 years in solitary confinement in max prisons for a crime he did not commit. He recently won hepatitis C treatment, denied to him for a decade by the DOC. He has severe liver problems as well as arthritis and rheumatism, back problems, and a continuing itchy skin rash. Within the past couple of weeks he was diagnosed with an extremely high heartbeat and is getting treatment. Major Tillery does not want to die in prison. He and his family, daughters, sons and grandchildren are fighting to get him home. The newly filed petition for Conviction Review to the Philadelphia District Attorney's office lays out the evidence Major Tillery has uncovered, evidence suppressed by the prosecution through all these years he has been imprisoned and brought legal challenges into court. It is time for the District Attorney's to act on the fact that Major Tillery is innocent and was framed by police detectives and prosecutors who manufactured the evidence to convict him. Major Tillery's conviction should be vacated and he should be freed. Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Major Tillery AM 9786 SCI Frackville 1111 Altamont Blvd. Frackville, PA 17931 For More Information, Go To:  Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009,  Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009,

Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info

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Free Leonard Peltier!

On my 43rd year in prison I yearn to hug my grandchildren.

By Leonard Peltier

Art by Leonard Peltier

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132 

USP Coleman I 

P.O. Box 1033 

Coleman, FL 33521

Donations can be made on Leonard's behalf to the ILPD national office, 116 W. Osborne Ave, Tampa, FL 33603

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1) As Afghanistan Frays, Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Is Everywhere

By Mujib Mashal, October 4, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/world/asia/afghanistan-erik-prince-blackwater.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

An American soldier overseeing the training of Afghan forces in Helmand Province in 2016.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A new crop of senior American officials in Afghanistan has been racing to contain a dual crisis on the battlefield and in a potentially explosive election dispute. But it is a different American figure — the mercenary executive Erik D. Prince — who has been the talk of Kabul these days.

More than a year after first laying out his plan to President Trump to privatize the American war in Afghanistan with a cadre of contractors — and a private air force — Mr. Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security firm that became infamous for killing civilians in Iraq, has seemingly been everywhere.

And as he has made his sales pitch directly to a host of influential Afghans, he has frequently been introduced as an adviser to Mr. Trump himself.

Mr. Prince is pushing his plan at a particularly vulnerable time for the country. Afghan security forces are dying at a record number of 30 to 40 a day largely in a defensive posture against a Taliban that has gained territory. The government is beset by repeated political crises as parliamentary elections, delayed for three years, are scheduled for this month. Presidential elections are set for April.

Interviews with a half-dozen political figures who have met Mr. Prince in recent months — as well as an interview with Mr. Prince by The New York Times during his trip to Kabul in September — reveal an executive determined to sell a vision of how his contractors could offer an official military withdrawal from Afghanistan to a war-weary American public and president.

Now, those officials say, he has increasingly found a receptive audience among Afghanistan's power brokers, meeting everyone from lowly militia commanders, to former cabinet officials and entrenched regional strongmen, to several potential presidential candidates.

What most of those Afghans have in common is a desire to see President Ashraf Ghani gone. And Mr. Prince's lobbying circuit, including multiple visits to Kabul, Washington and the United Arab Emirates, has made him increasingly unwelcome with Mr. Ghani, who has rejected repeated requests to meet with Mr. Prince.

Some in the government even tried to block Mr. Prince's visa, according to Afghan officials and those close to Mr. Prince.

Several officials close to Mr. Ghani say they see Mr. Prince's plan not only as unviable amid a complex conflict and peace effort with the Taliban, but also as a politicized threat to the Afghan president himself before next year's presidential election.

And they say Mr. Ghani's adamant opposition to a privatized security presence has made him an obstacle to Mr. Prince's ambitions.

In a speech on Monday, an angry Mr. Ghani aimed a barely veiled criticism at Mr. Prince and his plan.

"Foreign mercenaries will never be allowed in this country," he said.

A statement by Mr. Ghani's national security adviser on Thursday said the Afghan government would not allow fighting terrorism to become a "for-profit business."

"We will consider all legal options against those who try to privatize war on our land," the statement said.

Mr. Prince is positioning his pitch as a cheaper middle option between continuing a largely failed military strategy at an expensive annual tab of tens of billions of dollars, and a complete security withdrawal that some fear would abandon 17 years of costly Western efforts to remake Afghanistan.

He contends that his proposal can achieve what more than 140,000 American and NATO troops at the heart of the troop surge in 2009 and 2010 could not. He compares the current mission, which is reduced to about 15,000 American troops supported on their bases by more than 20,000 private contractors, to the failures of the Soviet Union. (An American service member was killed on Thursday in Afghanistan, the United States military command here said without providing any details. It was the eighth death of an American soldier in the country this year.)

In the interview, Mr. Prince laid out what he called a "rationalization" of private contracting already happening: a leaner mission of 6,000 private contractors providing "skeletal structure support" and training for Afghan forces. Small teams of Special Forces veterans embedded with Afghan battalions for about three years, he said, would ensure the continuity lacking now with American soldiers rotating out every year.

They would be supported by air through a fleet of contracted aircraft flown by joint teams of Afghans and contractors. About 2,500 American Special Operations forces would remain in the country for counterterrorism missions. All of this, Mr. Prince said, would bring down the annual cost of the war to roughly a fifth of the current amount.

He denied he was trying to influence the Afghan political process to achieve that vision. He said the only money he had spent on Afghanistan was the $1,500 production cost of a 10-minute video to explain his plan.

"The Afghan people will have an election, and they will make the choices that they are going to live with," Mr. Prince said. "But I will talk to whichever party in Afghanistan that wants to think about a different way to this that actually stops the bleeding."

Mr. Prince has also tied his proposal to an effort to exploit Afghanistan's mineral wealth, including rare earth deposits — a favorite topic of Mr. Trump, who has complained that the United States does not gain enough resources from its war efforts.

In one multimedia presentation that The Times has seen, Mr. Prince lists one of his goals as: "Develop and produce key rare earth minerals to restore U.S. high-tech manufacturing supply chain." During his visits here in Afghanistan, he has also met with Afghan mining officials, which he has described as exploratory meetings.

Mr. Prince's former company, Blackwater, won hundreds of millions of dollars in United States military contracts, mainly in Iraq, before it was essentially blacklisted after the firm's contractors massacred civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

His business has since gone through several reincarnations. His latest venture, the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, has contracts in Africa and Asia, and is backed by Citic Group, a large state-owned Chinese investment company.

Mr. Prince's initial push last year to privatize the Afghan war was quashed by two of the most senior members of Mr. Trump's national security team: H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser at the time, and Jim Mattis, the defense secretary. They persuaded Mr. Trump to increase the number of troops and resources in Afghanistan.

Mr. Prince now gauges the winds in Washington as shifting in his favor, with Mr. McMaster gone and Mr. Mattis often at odds with Mr. Trump.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council, who was not authorized to speak publicly for attribution, said the administration was open to new approaches but was not reviewing a proposal from Mr. Prince.

During some of the meetings in Afghanistan, Mr. Prince has been introduced as someone who has Mr. Trump's ear, with his close relations to the president's inner circle listed as a selling point.

In the letter Mr. Prince sent to Mr. Ghani in spring 2017 seeking a meeting, he mentioned that his sister, Betsy Devos, was a member of Mr. Trump's cabinet, one Afghan official said.

Still, Mr. Prince's actual plan for Afghanistan has many skeptics.

"The idea that these contractor-soldiers embedded into Afghan units are only going to be 'training' is almost laughable," said Laurel Miller, a senior foreign policy expert at RAND and a former top United States diplomat on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"And the idea that privatizing the war is going to save money is certainly laughable," she continued. "If this idea didn't promise to be a significant moneymaker, then those who stand to profit from it wouldn't be pushing it so hard."

Ms. Miller said the proposal was based on an incorrect diagnosis for why the conflict is in a stalemate. Although there are problems of leadership and capability in the Afghan forces, the Taliban have proved they can sustain their insurgency against the application of much more force than Mr. Prince's proposal would bring, she said.

Changes to the tactics of training and advising would not convert the stalemate to a victory or an end to the war, she said.

"If anything, bringing in foreign mercenaries would be likely to provide terrific recruiting slogans for the insurgents," she added.

That was a reference to how the Taliban have already made a propaganda point of the American occupation, and would most likely view a wave of American-backed mercenary forces as even more contemptible.

Even many of the Afghan political leaders who see merit in elements of Mr. Prince's proposal — including having trainers of Afghan forces embedded for longer periods, and establishing better air and medevac support accessible to Afghan commanders — express concern about the possibilities of a private security presence less accountable than the United States military.

When pressed on what Mr. Prince's proposal could look like in practice, many of the political figures gave the example of the C.I.A.-run Afghan strike forces that are active in several parts of the country. But those militias, backed by intelligence contractors, have repeatedly been accused of violence against civilians.

Mr. Prince insists the greater danger is in an impatient American public forcing a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving a security vacuum.

"Eventually America is going to grow tired," he said. "At that point you are one suicide vest in a chow hall away from a mass casualty incident that kills a bunch of Americans and makes people say: 'What the hell are we doing there? We have been doing this for 18, 19 years.'"

Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.

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2) Afghanistan Signs Major Mining Deals Despite Legal Concerns

By Mujib Mashal, October 6, 2018

"The contracts, which had been stalled for years, were signed in Washington between the Afghan ministers of finance and mining, and executives from Centar Ltd., an investment company founded by Ian Hannam, a former J.P. Morgan banker who partnered with local Afghan firms to bid for the mines."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/world/asia/afghanistan-signs-mining-deals.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront

A gold mine in Baghlan Province, Afghanistan. The new contracts are for mineral deposits in Sar-e Pol and Badakhshan Provinces.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government on Friday signed two contracts for the exploration of copper and gold deposits in the north, in a bid to move away from the country's dependence on foreign aid by tapping its mineral wealth.

But watchdog groups say aspects of the contracts may violate the law and aggravate questionable practices that have marred the mining sector for years. Strongmen and political elites have long profited from the country's riches, and mineral wealth could turn into another source of instability in a country mired in decades of war.

The contracts, which had been stalled for years, were signed in Washington between the Afghan ministers of finance and mining, and executives from Centar Ltd., an investment company founded by Ian Hannam, a former J.P. Morgan banker who partnered with local Afghan firms to bid for the mines.

Centar's local partner is Sadat Naderi, who until June was Afghanistan's minister of urban development. The Afghan minerals law prohibits senior officials from bidding on mining contracts for five years after they leave government.

Civil society activists say government officials seemed pressured to move forward with the contracts despite unresolved legal issues.

"They signed the contracts without giving us satisfactory answers on concerns that the contracts were very clearly against the law," said Sayed Ikram Afzali, the executive director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan who met repeatedly with senior officials, including the Afghan president and vice president, to discuss concerns. "It was very clear that they were under pressure to move on with these contracts — they said they were facing international pressure to finalize these."

Bradley Barnett, the chief executive of Centar, said in a statement that the company had negotiated the deal "in strict adherence to Afghan law and international standards" and that the bidding process had been transparent.

The contracts call for developing a copper deposit in Balkhab district of Sar-e Pol Province and a gold deposit in Badakhshan Province. Although the value of the two mineral deposits is not clear, Centar said if exploration finds large-scale mining opportunities, the projects could generate $1 billion in economic impact and more than 10,000 jobs.

The Afghan government has repeatedly dangled its mineral wealth in front of President Trump, who is losing patience with the costly presence of American troops in the country. Mr. Barnett of Centar called the deal "potentially transformative" for Afghanistan in his statement.

Stephen Carter, the Afghanistan campaign leader at Global Witness, an organization focused on mining and conflict, said that was not the point.

"Regardless of whether or not this is a good deal for Afghanistan, approving a contract in apparent contravention of the minerals law would undermine the government's declarations that it is bringing the rule of law to the sector," said Mr. Carter, the Afghanistan campaign leader at Global Witness, an organization focused on mining and conflict.

The government of President Ashraf Ghani, which took office in September 2014, immediately halted major mining contracts issued by its predecessor over concerns of corruption. Mr. Naderi was a political ally of Mr. Ghani during the election campaign, and he was appointed to his cabinet.

Because the two contracts had been completed by the previous government — which had chosen the consortium as favored bidder long before Mr. Naderi became a cabinet minister, but had left the official signing to the new government — officials say the contracts do not violate the law. To avoid even "perceptions of a conflict of interest," Mr. Naderi resigned from the government in June.

Mr. Afzali, of Integrity Watch, said the contract that was agreed upon by the previous government has been considerably revised since that time.

"During the renegotiation of the contract, Mr. Naderi was still a cabinet minister," Mr. Afzali said.

The Afghan government provided contradictory information on when the renegotiation happened. Ajmal Ahmady, an adviser to Mr. Ghani, said the contract was renegotiated only after Mr. Naderi resigned in June. But the legal director of the Ministry of Mines said during a news conference the negotiations had been going on for 15 months.

Fatima Faizi contributed reporting.

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3)  Cleveland Judge Refuses to Send Low-Level Defendants to Jail After Inmate Deaths

By Karen Zraick, October 5, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/us/cleveland-jail-inmate-deaths.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

After a spate of deaths in local jails, Judge Michael L. Nelson Sr. of Cleveland Municipal Court said he would release people charged with low-level crimes on personal bond as they await trial.

A judge in Cleveland is refusing to send people accused of low-level crimes into the county jail system, citing safety concerns after six inmate deaths in four months.

The judge, Michael L. Nelson Sr. of Cleveland Municipal Court, said this week that he would release people charged with such crimes until their next court appearance, rather than holding them on bail, which many defendants cannot afford.

Defendants who are released must still agree to any conditions imposed, which could include electronic monitoring or regular check-ins.

"Six deaths means the jail is unsafe," Judge Nelson said in a phone interview. "You shouldn't die before we see you in court."

Five of the six inmates were being held at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland, and one was at the Euclid City Jail, which is also run by the county, according to the county medical examiner.

The cause of death has yet to be determined in two of the cases, the most recent of which occurred on Tuesday. That prisoner, Allan Martin Gomez Roman, 44, died four days after he was arrested on a warrant stemming from a cocaine possession charge, Cleveland.com reported. Two of the other men who died were found hanging in their cells, and two had drugs in their systems at the time of their deaths, the authorities said.

In a statement, the Cuyahoga County sheriff, Clifford Pinkney, said he would ask the County Council to pay for an independent expert to assess the jail system.

He added that the jails were dealing with an influx of people struggling with addiction and psychological problems.

A report released last year by the Pretrial Justice Institute found that the Cuyahoga County Jail, with 2,100 beds, had been operating at over 100 percent capacity, on average, in four of the previous five years.

The report, which was requested by local court officials and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, included a survey of all inmates released on a single day. It found that 73 percent of them were black. In the latest census, 53 percent of Cleveland's residents were black.

Judge Nelson, a former president of the Cleveland N.A.A.C.P., said that the jails remained overcrowded and that staffing levels were not sufficient to monitor all of the inmates. He was loath to place people in those facilities because they could not afford bail, he said.

Cash bail, which requires defendants to put up money or other assets to win their freedom, has been widely criticized in recent years. Some states and municipalities have taken steps to reduce its use; California recently abolished cash bail altogether. (The change takes effect next year.)

In Ohio, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer spent more than a year examining the bail system in a series called "Justice for All." Officials in parts of the state, including Cuyahoga County, have initiated changes to bail practices, and a statewide bill was introduced last year.

Critics of the cash bail system argue that defendants should be evaluated based on the risk they present to public safety, not on their financial situation.

Low-income defendants often turn to bail bond agents, which function as the payday lenders of the criminal justice world. Commercial bail is a $2 billion industry, and agents charge steep fees and can even arrest their clients.

Judge Nelson said the most recent death underscored the need to change bail practices and reduce overcrowding and strain on the jail system.

"If the balance of the county had implemented bail bond reform, there's a good chance that young man would not be in jail, period," he said.

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4) Convicts Seeking to Clear Their Records Find More Prosecutors Willing to Help

By Alan Blinder, October 7,  2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/us/expungement-criminal-justice.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Stephanie Truchan, a volunteer at the Expungement Help Desk in Indianapolis. At least 20 states have created or broadened expungement and sealing laws since the beginning of 2017.

INDIANAPOLIS — The convicted men and women who visit Room B2 of Indianapolis's courthouse cannot find jobs, or want better ones. Or they wish they could join their children for school field trips. Or they are simply seeking a measure of societal forgiveness.

They all arrive with the same aspiration: expungements intended to ease the burdens of old criminal records.

"I had to talk my way into a lot of places because of my background," said a woman named Fernell, who stopped by the subbasement room on a recent morning to discuss a conviction for resisting law enforcement when she was 19. "I want to put it behind me."

What she and most visitors to Room B2 are finding is that the people who helped get them convicted in the first place now want to help make the black marks less perilous. Bolstered by a renewed focus, from the Trump administration on down, on helping people with criminal histories participate in society successfully, at least 20 states have created or broadened expungement and sealing laws since the beginning of 2017, according to the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a nonprofit group.

And although law enforcement officials have traditionally opposed such measures for an array of reasons — including accountability, a belief that records are vital to public safety, and unstinting support for crime victims — a growing number of them have begun to recognize that criminal records can be enduring obstacles to self-sufficiency and even help trap people in cycles of crime. Increasingly, they are overtly endorsing mercy through record suppression.

"It's just a matter of trying to remove obstacles that would make it more difficult for someone to become a productive member of the community," said Terry Curry, the elected prosecutor in Marion County, which includes Indianapolis and has a population approaching 1 million residents. "If an individual has stayed out of the criminal justice system, then why should they continue to have that stain forever?"

Though in most places the paperwork burden for expungements has fallen on private lawyers and nonprofit legal clinics, South Florida prosecutors now routinely hold events intended to help people wipe away records of arrests but not convictions. A district attorney in rural Louisiana leads information sessions about expungements for some felony convictions after a 10-year waiting period; a Vermont prosecutor recently held a record-clearing clinic; and the authorities near Fort Bragg, N.C., attracted about 500 people to an expungement event last year.

Last month, the Brooklyn district attorney promoted "Begin Again" events, where, one advertisement said, people were invited to "clear your record of a misdemeanor marijuana conviction or warrant."

But there is still a national patchwork of policies and terminologies, from destroying records to sealing them to simply noting that a conviction is effectively vacated. States have imposed various waiting periods, conditions and fees. Some places have made their processes deliberately simple, while others have complicated approaches that may require legal assistance or court hearings.

The proliferation of new laws, and newfound enthusiasm on the part of some prosecutors, has hardly erased all doubts about the wisdom of suppressing records. Many prosecutors, especially in rural areas, remain skeptical of any action to show mercy for a person's past, and some judges engage in measured resistance, holding hearings more to complain about an expungement law than to weigh an application's merits.

"You have prosecutors and judges who just think it's wrong: 'You've caused trouble in this county, you're a wrongdoer and you shouldn't get a blank slate,'" said Bernice Corley, the executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council.

But Margaret Love, the executive director of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center and a former United States pardon attorney, said that clemency and expungements are part of the criminal justice process for a reason.

"It ought to be something that prosecutors welcome and use to their advantage to create criminal justice success stories, to advertise criminal justice success stories," she said.

The nuanced approach in Indiana, where officials hoped that expungements would improve people's job prospects, is increasingly seen as a model. Under its so-called Second Chance law, the state has a tiered system in which the offense, and the outcome of the case, determines the waiting period and the exact relief. Indiana does not destroy records, but can limit access to them and mark them as expunged, and crime victims are permitted to express their views before any decision is made.

"Indiana should be the worst place in America to commit a serious crime and the best place, once you've done your time, to get a second chance," Gov. Mike Pence, now the vice president, said when he signed the records measure into law in 2013.

There have been misgivings. Steven P. Sonnega, the prosecutor in a county just southwest of Indianapolis, unsuccessfully challenged Indiana's law in court. He declined to be interviewed but, in an email in September, said that "expungement is now part of the law in Indiana, and it's our legal duty to follow the law."

Other prosecutors, like Mr. Curry, proved more enthusiastic, backed by local law clinics and nonprofit organizations. Since the law went into effect in July 2013, his prosecutors have reviewed about 11,500 petitions, encompassing about 45,000 criminal cases. According to the prosecutor's office, about 60 percent have focused on convictions, not just records of arrests. Many cases concerned relatively minor offenses like prostitution and driving with a suspended license, lawyers involved in the process said.

"The key is you protect the public, and protecting the public means a whole lot of options," said Andrew J. Fogle, the deputy prosecutor Mr. Curry assigned to handle expungement petitions, including one for an arrest in the late 1950s. "To tail them, nail them, jail them is not a totally acceptable option."

And so down Market Street from the Capitol, past the nearly 285-foot-tall Soldiers and Sailors Monument, the local courthouse has become one of the state's busiest proving grounds for the law. In Room B2, an Expungement Help Desk, operated by a local nonprofit in space lent by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, offers information and assistance with paperwork but not explicit legal advice. From time to time, Mr. Fogle shows people the way to the help desk, which is on pace to work on more than 1,500 petitions this year, up from 986 in 2017.

"We try to make it a friendly place and not intimidating," said Julie Mennel, the paralegal who leads the help desk and, using brightly colored posters and paintings, has tried to set it apart from the adversarial justice system operating upstairs. "We're here to help people, not judge people. They've already had judgment passed."

On a recent Thursday, an elderly African-American couple sat at a desk, talking with a law student about an old conviction for marijuana possession. A far younger white man named Fred with a long record announced, laughing, that he would need to return the next day to finish his paperwork with Ms. Mennel.

Fernell, the woman with the conviction for resisting law enforcement, sat anxiously in a chair along a wall and waited to talk with someone. She asked that her last name not be used to avoid undoing what she hopes will come with an expungement: better employment and educational prospects. Before she became eligible for expungement, three fast-food restaurants, she said, had rejected her for jobs because of her teenage behavior.

"A new beginning for me means I can grow with my business, my own interests," said Fernell, 24. "I knew I wanted it done, but I was waiting it out for five years."

Perhaps her greatest ally had left the room only minutes before: Mr. Fogle, the deputy prosecutor who sometimes escorts people to the help desk and, speaking generally, said he was typically looking for a reason to support cleaning up a record.

"We're not just doing lip service to this," he said. "It actually makes other people look at it differently and has people thinking, 'If the prosecutor is O.K. with this, maybe there is something to it.'"

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5) De Blasio Rebuffs Question on Homelessness: 'I'm in the Middle of a Workout'

By Jeffery C. Mays, October 6, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/nyregion/de-blasio-homeless-gym.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Nathylin Flowers Adesegun was recorded as she confronted Mr. de Blasio about his plan to create and preserve affordable housing.

Nathylin Flowers Adesegun has for the past year worked with Vocal-NY, a nonprofit that helps low-income people, to encourage Mayor Bill de Blasio to designate more apartments specifically for homeless people as part of his plan to create and preserve 300,000 units of affordable housing over a decade.

Mr. de Blasio's plan calls for 5 percent of those units, or 15,000 apartments, to be set aside for homeless people. Vocal-NY wants him to double that.

Members of the group have called in during the mayor's appearances on "The Brian Lehrer Show" on the radio station WNYC, attended his town hall meetings and met with the agency commissioner who handles homelessness, but many still felt they weren't being heard.

On Friday, they did what other groups have done when they wanted to grab the mayor's attention: They sought out Mr. de Blasio at the Prospect Park Y.M.C.A. in Brooklyn, where he exercises most mornings.

"He's famous for having his breakfast in Park Slope and going to the gym," Ms. Adesegun, who has lived in women's homeless shelters since she lost her apartment in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn in 2015, said on Saturday. "We needed to get his attention or he was just going to keep blowing us off."

The 35-second encounter was captured on video by another Vocal-NY activist and posted to YouTube. In the video, Ms. Adesegun, 72, a retired office manager, walks to where Mr. de Blasio is seated in a butterfly stretch and says hello. She shakes hands with the mayor and squats down before making her appeal.

"Out of 300,000 units in your affordable housing program, only 5 percent will go to the homeless: Can you look me in the eye and tell me why?" Ms. Adesegun asks as Mr. de Blasio tries to cut her off.

"I'm in the middle of doing my workout: Sorry, I can't do this now," Mr. de Blasio says. As a member of his security detail steps in, Mr. de Blasio gets up to leave. "I'm not doing this here," the mayor says as he walks out with his phone in hand. "I'm in the middle of a workout."

He then heads down a stairwell.

Ms. Adesegun said on Saturday that she believed the mayor cared more about his workout than listening to her. Eric Phillips, Mr. de Blasio's press secretary, defended the mayor's decision to leave.

"People working out at the gym shouldn't be worried they will be recorded in highly publicized, videotaped political confrontations every morning," Mr. Phillips said. "It's not the right venue for these discussions and the mayor won't have them there."

Homelessness has been one of the most vexing issues facing Mr. de Blasio. The Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, says New York is in the midst of the worst homeless crisis since the Great Depression. The city's shelter system houses just under 61,000 people, including more than 22,000 children. In seeking to open 90 new homeless shelters, Mr. de Blasio has struggled to find locations and to overcome resistance from existing residents opposed to new shelters in their neighborhoods. Mr. Phillips says 16 shelters have been opened so far. The city also recently moved to consolidate its confusing system of rental subsidies.

Giselle Routhier, policy director of the coalition, said the group began calling for Mr. de Blasio to increase the number of units in his housing plan about a year ago.

"We still have near-record homelessness and it's not going down as much as it should be at all," Ms. Routhier said. "You can't address record homeless without dedicating a meaningful portion of your housing plan to homelessness."

Over the course of his almost five years in office, Mr. de Blasio has been confronted at the Y.M.C.A. by the union representing uniformed police officers as well as by a large group calling for traffic-calming measures after the deaths of a 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy who were struckby a driver a block from the gym.

On average, the mayor encounters at least one protest per month at the gym, and, as he did with the group calling for traffic changes, Mr. de Blasio sometimes stops to talk. Mr. Phillips said the mayor cared deeply about homelessness and had made strides in tackling a difficult issue.

Activists from Vocal-NY have been invited to City Hall for a meeting.

"I did my deep breaths and did my prayers and asked the Lord to show me the way and he did," Ms. Adesegun said. "We are having a tremendous result."

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6) 17 Years to the Day the U.S. Invaded, 54 Are Killed Across Afghanistan

By Fahim Abed, Fatima Faizi and Mujob Mashal, October 7, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/asia/afghanistan-casualties-anniversary.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

An Afghan police headquarters damaged by a Taliban attack in the Sayed Abad District in Wardak Province, Afghanistan, on Sunday.

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 54 people have been killed across Afghanistan in the past 24 hours, according to a tally based on interviews with officials on Sunday — 17 years to the day American forces invaded the country to topple the Taliban regime.

The violence was a reminder that the war has only raged deadlier with time, taking a toll on both the Afghan security forces and the civilians caught in the crossfire. On average, the conflict has taken the lives of 30 to 40 Afghan forces and at least 13 civilians a day. There are no tangible signs of momentum for peace talks with the Taliban.

Among the killed were at least 35 members of Afghan security forces and 19 civilians. While most of the fatalities of the security forces came from Taliban attacks, residents and local officials said a majority of the civilian casualties in the past 24 hours had resulted from two episodes of firing by government forces in central Afghanistan and an airstrike in the country's east that they said was carried out by the United States. American forces denied they had carried out a strike in the area.

A large number of Taliban fighters were also killed in attacks that Afghan officials said they had carried out in 14 of the country's 34 provinces. But the toll was difficult to verify; analysts estimate Taliban casualties usually number about the same as Afghan forces, if not more because of the airpower used against them.

[Read our weekly tally of the long-running conflict in the Afghan War Casualty Report.]

The deadliest of the attacks was an early morning raid by the Taliban on the Sayed Abad District of Wardak Province, which falls on the main highway about 60 miles outside Kabul, the capital. The highway remained blocked for hours — the Taliban had blown up a bridge — before it was reopened by the security forces.

Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, said 14 police officers, including Col. Sayed Nezrab Shah, the district police chief who had lost his leg in a battle three years ago, were killed.

"His leg was bothering him — it was cut off at the knee, and it would still bleed," said Naqibullah Amini, a friend of Colonel Shah's. "He was saving money, and he had prepared his passport to go abroad for better treatment. He was just waiting for the security situation to get better."

In northern Faryab Province, Taliban fighters overran two police outposts in Pashtun Kot District early on Sunday. Ten police officers and a civilian woman were killed, according to Mohammad Azam, the head of the criminal investigation department with the district police.

Most of the civilian casualties happened in Paktia Province, in eastern Afghanistan. Local residents said a convoy carrying an elite Afghan strike force, trained and run by the Central Intelligence Agency, had come under attack late Friday. Leaving behind two burned vehicles, the unit escaped the area, where a brutal wing of the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, remains influential.

When locals gathered around the vehicles early on Saturday afternoon, aircraft began bombing the area, according to Haji Gadlon Zadran, a local elder.

"Ten villagers were killed, and 21 were wounded," he said. "The ages of killed persons were 9 to 12 and all of them were innocent villagers."

Qadir Khan, the governor of the district, Gerda Serai, confirmed that 10 civilians were killed and said the strike was under investigation.

American airstrikes in support of the Afghan forces have increased in recent months, as the government's security forces have struggled to hold the line against the Taliban. Publicly available data from the United States military show that 746 bombs were dropped in July, and 522 in September. The Afghan air force has also conducted an increasing number of airstrikes.

It was unclear who carried out the strike in Paktia Province. American forces denied they were responsible for it, while a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry did not reply to questions.

"I can confirm no coalition or U.S. forces were involved in strikes at this location during the time period," said Cmdr. Grant Neeley, a spokesman for the United States force in Afghanistan.

Another episode, reflecting the blurred, dangerous state of affairs across the country, occurred in the central province of Ghor, where Afghan forces on Saturday carried out an operation to arrest a local militia commander the government has accused of abuses.

Supporters of the commander, Shamsher Alipoor, have said he was leading a local force to fill the security gap against encroaching Taliban militants.

Abdul Hai Khatibi, the spokesman for provincial governor of Ghor, said Commander Alipoor had engaged in clashes with security forces, killing four police officers and seven civilians. He fled the scene, and a government chase for him continued on Sunday, Mr. Khatibi said.

But some relatives of the victims blamed the government for the civilian deaths. One of those critics was Reza Nazari, whose sister, Amina Nazari, 48, had been killed in the violence. She lost her husband to illness seven years ago, he said, and worked as a social worker for a nongovernmental organization. She was the main breadwinner for a family of four.

Farooq Jan Mangal contributed reporting from Khost, Najim Rahim from Mazar e Sharif, and Mohammad Saber from Herat, Afghanistan.

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7) Life on the Dirtiest Block in San Francisco

By Thomas Fuller, October 8, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/us/san-francisco-dirtiest-street-london-breed.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

The 300 block of Hyde Street in San Francisco received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other.

SAN FRANCISCO — The heroin needles, the pile of excrement between parked cars, the yellow soup oozing out of a large plastic bag by the curb and the stained, faux Persian carpet dumped on the corner.

It's a scene of detritus that might bring to mind any variety of developing-world squalor. But this is San Francisco, the capital of the nation's technology industry, where a single span of Hyde Street hosts an open-air narcotics market by day and at night is occupied by the unsheltered and drug-addled slumped on the sidewalk.

There are many other streets like it, but by one measure it's the dirtiest block in the city.

Just a 15-minute walk away are the offices of Twitter and Uber, two companies that along with other nameplate technology giants have helped push the median price of a home in San Francisco well beyond $1 million.

This dichotomy of street crime and world-changing technology, of luxury condominiums and grinding, persistent homelessness, and the dehumanizing effects for those forced to live on the streets provoke outrage among the city's residents. For many who live here it's difficult to reconcile San Francisco's liberal politics with the misery that surrounds them.

According to city statisticians, the 300 block of Hyde Street, a span about the length of a football field in the heart of the Tenderloin neighborhood, received 2,227 complaints about street and sidewalk cleanliness over the past decade, more than any other. It's an imperfect measurement — some blocks might be dirtier but have fewer calls — but residents on the 300 block say that they are not surprised by their ranking.

The San Francisco bureau photographer, Jim Wilson, and I set out to measure the depth of deprivation on a single block. We returned a number of times, including a 12-hour visit, from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. on a recent weekday. Walking around the neighborhood we saw the desperation of the mentally ill, the drug dependent and homeless, and heard from embittered residents who say it will take much more than a broom to clean up the city, long considered one of America's beacons of urban beauty.

Human waste has become such a widespread problem in San Francisco that the city in September established a unit dedicated to removing it from the sidewalks. Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for the Public Works Department, describes the new initiative as a "proactive human waste" unit.

At 8 a.m. on a recent day, as mothers shepherded their children to school, we ran into Yolanda Warren, a receptionist who works around the corner from Hyde Street. The sidewalk in front of her office was stained with feces. The street smelled like a latrine.

"Some parts of the Tenderloin, you're walking, and you smell it and you have to hold your breath," Ms. Warren said.

At she does every morning, she hosed down the urine outside her office. The city has installed five portable bathrooms for the hundreds of unsheltered people in the Tenderloin, but that has not stopped people from urinating and defecating in the streets.

"There are way too many people out here that don't have homes," Ms. Warren said.

Over the past five years the number of homeless people in San Francisco has remained relatively steady — around 4,400 — and the sidewalks of the Tenderloin have come to resemble a refugee camp.

The city has replaced more than 300 lampposts corroded by dog and human urine over the past three years, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Replacing the poles became more urgent after a lamppost collapsed in 2015, crushing a car.

A more common danger are the thousands of heroin needles discarded by users.

The Public Works Department and a nonprofit organization in the Tenderloin picked up 100,000 needles from the streets over the past year. The Public Health Department, which has its own needle recovery program, has a more alarming figure: It retrieved 164,264 needles in August alone, both through a disposal program and through street cleanups.

Larry Gothberg, a building manager who has lived on Hyde Street since 1982, keeps a photographic record of the heroin users he sees shooting up on the streets. He swiped through a number of pictures on his phone showing users in a motionless stupor.

"We call it the heroin freeze," Mr. Gothberg said. "They can stay that way for hours."

Hyde Street is in the heart of the Tenderloin, a neighborhood of aging, subsidized single-occupancy apartment buildings, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, coin laundromats and organizations dedicated to helping the indigent. Studio apartments on Hyde Street go for around $1,500, according to Mr. Gothberg, cheap in a city where the median rent for apartments is $4,500.

A number of people we met on Hyde Street distinguished between the residents of the Tenderloin, many of them immigrant families, and those they called "street people" — the unsheltered drug users who congregate and camp along the sidewalks and the dealers who peddle crack cocaine, heroin and a variety of amphetamines.

Disputes among the street population are common and sometimes result in violence. At night bodies line the sidewalks.

"It's like the land of the living dead," said Adam Leising, a resident of Hyde Street.

We met Mr. Leising late one evening after he had finished a shift as a server at a restaurant. As we toured the neighborhood, past a man crumpled on the ground next to empty beer bottles and trash, Mr. Leising told us that the daily glimpses of desperation brought him to the brink of depression.

"We are the most advanced country in the world," Mr. Leising said. "And that's what people are having to live with here."

Mr. Leising, who is the founder of the Lower Hyde Street Association, a nonprofit that holds cleanup activities on the street, feels that the city is not cracking down on the drug trade on the block because they don't want it to spread elsewhere.

"It's obvious that it's a containment zone," Mr. Leising said. "These behaviors are not allowed in other neighborhoods."

The Tenderloin police station posted on their Twitter feed that drug dealing "is the most significant issue impacting the quality of life." So far this year officers from the Tenderloin station house have made more than 3,000 arrests, including 424 for dealing drugs. "This is one of our priority areas," said Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman said of the Tenderloin. But many feel they do not do enough.

Gavin Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco and the leading candidate for governor in next month's election, told The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board last week that the city had reached the point of "enough is enough."

"You can be too permissive, and I happen to think we have crossed that threshold in this state — and not just in this city," Mr. Newsom said. "You see it. It's just disgraceful."

Mayor London Breed, who was elected in June, campaigned to clean up squalor.

Ms. Breed has announced plans to provide an additional 1,000 beds for the homeless over the next two years but she is also targeting a relatively small group of people living on the streets whom she says are beyond the point of assisting themselves. The concept of this involuntary removal is known as conservatorship. A law recently passed in Sacramento strengthens the city's powers of conservatorship with a judge's permission.

"There are about 100 to 150 people who are clearly mentally ill and who are cycling through the system and who need to be forced into conservatorship," Ms. Breed said in an interview. "We know all of them."

According to Ms. Breed's office 12 percent of people who use the services of the San Francisco Department of Public Health account for 73 percent of the costs. The majority of these heavy users have medical, psychiatric and substance use issues, according to the department.

Ms. Breed has made unannounced inspections of neighborhoods, sometimes carrying a broom.

On a Saturday morning in September she walked past a woman on Hyde Street slouched on the pavement and preparing to plunge a syringe into her hand. "Put that away," said a police officer accompanying the mayor.

On a recent afternoon we dropped by a barbershop on Hyde Street.

Glenn Gustafik opened Mister Hyde two years ago to escape the high rents of downtown San Francisco, where he was quoted a $10,000 monthly rent for a similarly small space. Since opening on Hyde Street he has been engaged in a battle with drug users in the neighborhood who break the branches off a London plane tree in front of his shop and use the sticks to clean their crack pipes. This harvesting of twigs has killed the previous four trees, Mr. Gustafik said. At Mr. Gustafik's request the city protected the fifth tree with wire mesh, the kind used in suburban areas to discourage hungry deer.

Toward dusk and into the night the 300 block of Hyde becomes an impromptu food and flea market. A woman offered a bicycle for $15 one evening and bric-a-brac was laid out on the sidewalks. Many items for sale were incongruous: A man hawked six shrink-wrapped packets of raw steaks that he cradled precariously as he called out for buyers. No one asked where he got them.

At dawn crews from the city and private organizations arrive to pick up needles and trash. The city spends $70 million annually on street cleaning, well more than any other American cities that were studied in a recent report.

But the sidewalks soon become crowded again and the litter accumulates.

Mario Montoya Jr. has spent the past three decades cleaning the streets as an employee of the city's Public Works Department. Standing on a street corner as another city employee power-washed the sidewalk, Mr. Montoya described a Sisyphean cycle of cleanup and filth.

"By noon everybody is up and out," Mr. Montoya said. "And here we go again."

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8) Justice Delayed, With a Life on the Line

By Nicholes Kristof, October 6, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-jerry-brown-dna.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Kevin Cooper, center, after he was arrested in 1983.

Imagine being framed for a horrific crime: the fatal stabbing of a married couple and two children. You then spend 35 years in prison awaiting execution for that quadruple murder. 

Imagine that you're a black man and that the trial was tainted by the ugliest racism. Meanwhile, federal judges and F.B.I. investigators cite evidence that the real killer is a white convicted murderer who came home late on the night of the murders in bloody coveralls, but when his girlfriend reported him to the authorities, the police took the bloody coveralls and threw them away.

Imagine that evidence sits in government storage that could show who actually committed the murders, yet year after year a governor refuses to allow advanced DNA testing.

That is, I've argued, what happened to Kevin Cooper, now on death row at San Quentin prison. For 11 years, as attorney general and governor, Jerry Brown has refused to allow advanced DNA testing that could free Cooper or confirm his guilt.

Now I have a new argument that perhaps can move Brown. The white convicted murderer who is the other suspect in the case has voluntarily provided samples of his DNA and told me that he too wants advanced DNA testing of evidence from the murder scene.

"I had nothing to do with this crime," the man, Lee, told me. "I want it all retested, yes. To clear my name."

I've used just Lee's first name, because he asked me not to use his full name and because enough damage has been done in this murder case by people jumping to conclusions without clear proof. Lee said that his former girlfriend had fingered him to the police because she was jealous of his new flame, and that the bloody coveralls were not his.

"I have no idea who did it," said Lee, now 68. "The police need to do their job properly and find out who did it."

So both suspects in the case are now pleading with Governor Brown to permit advanced DNA testing of evidence from the murder scene. A towel used by the killers has never been tested at all, and a T-shirt used by a murderer hasn't been tested for "touch DNA" to determine who wore it. Some hairs found clutched in the victims' hands, possibly ripped from the killer's head, are not from an African-American like Cooper and have also never been tested at all.

Will Governor Brown listen?

I asked Brown what he is waiting for, and he emphasized that he is reviewing the case with input from both sides. "I'll act on it," he said. He also protested that my reporting on the case, which led to widespread calls for DNA testing, was one-sided and had "left out a number of elements."

While Brown denied that he was running out the clock, he refused to commit to resolving the issue before leaving office in January. Referring to the likelihood that Gavin Newsom will be elected governor next month, he said: "You're going to get a guy more liberal than me coming around the corner. Don't worry."

I suggested that for an innocent man on death row, every extra day is no minor thing. Brown shrugged and observed that California has 130,000 prisoners.

There has been another important development in the Cooper case. A witness has provided a sworn declaration describing a confession by Lee to the killings, committed with two other named individuals, according to Cooper's defense counsel, Norman C. Hile. The name of the witness is being kept confidential for now for the protection of the witness, Hile said in a letter to the governor.

The 1983 killings — of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica, and an 11-year-old neighbor, Chris Hughes — were as barbaric a crime as one can imagine. Yet the horror of this crime will have been compounded if an innocent man has been framed for it.

Granted, maybe I'm wrong about this. So, governor, prove me wrong. Test the evidence. Settle the doubts.

To study criminal justice is to see how flawed our system is. Researchers have repeatedly found that black defendants are more likely to be convicted, more likely to receive long sentences, more likely to be sentenced to death — especially, as in this case, where the victims are white. One study found that judges are less likely to grant parole when they are hungry, before lunch. Another study found that judges issue longer sentences the week after their college alma mater football team unexpectedly loses a game. Given this arbitrariness in the system, it is unconscionable to let a man languish on death row without even testing all the evidence. At stake is the life of one man, but also the legitimacy of our criminal justice system.

This case is illustrative of the problem with the death penalty, and 163 people on death row have been exonerated since 1973. This is not a problem of one man, but of a flawed system of justice.

I generally admire Brown and agree with him on most issues. But I'm mystified, as are many of his friends, by his recalcitrance in the Kevin Cooper case. I'm glad that my May column finally got him to review options for DNA testing, but almost five months have elapsed and Cooper is still waiting.

Brown told me he wished that "people would take more of an interest" in criminal justice issues. Governor, here's one such issue: Please show more interest yourself.

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