Roundup: Settlement for two men wrongly convicted of Malcolm X's murder; California deputies spend much of their time pulling over black people; RIP, Claude Garrett

Greetings, Watch subscribers. Here’s your roundup of criminal justice and civil liberties stories:

• Claude Garrett has died. Garrett was convicted with junk arson forensics, and served nearly 30 years in prison. He was exonerated in May, and enjoyed five months of freedom before he passed away this week. The world can be a cruel, cruel place.

• Los Angeles man freed by DNA testing after 38 years in prison. He had been seeking DNA testing since 2000, but was denied by then-district attorney Gil Garcetti.

• Kris Kobach (he’s still trying to run for office?) releases pro-death penalty campaign video featuring . . . Tiger Woods?

• Fox News coverage of crime appears to correlate not with actual crime rates, but with proximity to Election Day.

• The Midland County Sheriff's Office and Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counter Terrorism divisions ran a massive sting operation to catch . . . see if you can guess. Terrorists? Human traffickers? Dangerous fugitives? (*Answer below.)

• How Iran controls the cell phones of protesters.

• The great Joanna Schwartz explains how the federal courts have misapplied qualified immunity to insulate municipal governments from liability for police misconduct.

• Should your local government have the power to fly drones over your property without a warrant to look for zoning violations?

• New DOJ policy bars the federal government from seizing notes and recordings from journalists.

• The state and city of New York will pay a $36 million settlement for wrongly convicting two men in the murder of Malcolm X.

• The New York Times reports on the long history of abuse at a juvenile corrections facility in Louisiana.

• Attorneys for the city of San Jose obtained a restraining order against the mother of an unarmed man killed by police.

• New report finds that California sheriffs deputies disproportionately stop black motorists. That’s bad, but not terribly surprising. The newsier finding is that in L.A., Riverside, and San Diego, deputies spend 80-90 percent of their time on duty making traffic stops.

• Since Michigan legalized marijuana, the number of drug raids conducted by the Detroit police department dropped from 3,400 per year (or nearly 10 per day), to 186, or about one every two days.

• A state by state guide to the state supreme court elections next week. These elections have always been important, but they’ve grown more critical as the U.S. Supreme Court continues to defer important constitutional issues to the states.

• (*Answer: Eight guys who tried to hire a prostitute.)

• Tweet of the day:

  Peter Bonilla @pebonilla

  Natch

  

  

This week in dog history:

OKGo’s video for the song “White Knuckles” tops 1 million views on YouTube. The video features 12 trained dogs (and one goat)j performing a routine with the group — Riot, Spike, Justice, Jury, Sequel, Zuni, Kash, Bunny, Peanut, Tin Tin, Kobie, and Dazzle. The dogs trained for several weeks to perform the tricks on the video. Proceeds from video sales and donations went to an animal rescue group.

— Associated Press, October 31, 2009

Photo:

Nineveh River, Denali National Park, Alaska, 2022