Voter ID Rules Fail Court Tests Across Country

New York Times
Ethan Bronner

A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday blocked the key component of a highly contested state law requiring strict photographic identification to vote in next month’s election, saying the authorities had not done enough to ensure that voters had access to the new documents.

Commonwealth Court, had upheld the law in August when liberal-leaning and civil rights groups challenged it. But the state’s Supreme Court instructed him two weeks ago to hold further hearings to focus on whether enough had been done to ensure “liberal access” to the picture ID cards, which are available at driver’s license centers, or alternatives.

Judge Simpson said that on Nov. 6, voters in Pennsylvania could be asked to produce the newly required photo ID but, if they did not have one, could still vote on a normal voting machine, not using a provisional ballot. The state may appeal the decision to the State Supreme Court, but few predicted victory for it, given what the justices had asked of the lower court.

The law’s opponents said the victory was only a partial one.

“While we’re happy that voters in Pennsylvania will not be turned away if they do not have an ID, we are concerned that the ruling will allow election workers to ask for ID at the polls, and this could cause confusion,” said Penda D. Hair, co-director of Advancement Project, one of the groups that challenged the law. “This injunction serves as a mere Band-Aid for the law’s inherent problems, not an effective remedy.”

Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, a right-of-center research group that supports the law, said: “While this may seem to be a win for opponents of common-sense election reform efforts like voter ID, it is actually a loss.”

“The court simply found that the state could not effectively implement the ID requirement in only a month,” he added. “The law is still in place and remains valid.”

The Pennsylvania law, passed in March without any Democratic support, is one of 11 similar laws around the country approved by Republican-dominated legislatures. The laws’ backers say they are trying to ensure the integrity of the electoral process by preventing fraud. But Democrats accuse them of seeking to suppress the votes of the poor and members of minority groups, who are less likely to have the needed ID or the means to go to state offices and obtain one, and who tend to vote Democratic.

In opinion surveys, substantial majorities of Americans back the ID requirements even though repeated efforts to demonstrate the existence of in-person voter fraud have found very little.

Pennsylvania is one of a number of swing states that could make the difference in the race between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate. Increasingly, however, Mr. Obama, who won Pennsylvania in 2008, has been pulling consistently ahead of Mr. Romney in key states. A Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll released last week showed Mr. Obama ahead in Pennsylvania by 12 points.

The Pennsylvania law’s challengers said their focus now would be to press the state to alter its voter education campaign to make clear that no picture ID is required in this election.

“The state has a large budget to spend on advertising this fact, and we want to make sure it does it,” said Benjamin D. Geffen, a lawyer with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, which took part in the law’s challenge.

Nick Winkler, director of public relations for Pennsylvania’s Department of State, said there would indeed be a change.

“Our education campaign is in full swing, and all we have to do is retool it from talking about requiring voter ID to requesting it,” he said. “Poll worker training has not begun in some counties and will now take this into account as well.”

The state has issued 13,000 IDs purely for the purpose of voting, Mr. Winkler said.

Judge Simpson said in his Tuesday decision that the issuing of the new documents across the state had not been fast enough.

“I expected more photo IDs to have been issued by this time,” he wrote. “Under these circumstances, I am obliged to enter a preliminary injunction” preventing the law from being fully carried out. He said there might eventually be a full trial to determine whether the law could be put into effect in a way that did not burden voters.

District Court Refuses to Dismiss Claim That IRS Ties Tax-Exempt Status to Agreement With Administration's Israel Policy

TaxProf

Following up on my previous posts (links below): the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has refused to dismiss Z Street's claim that the IRS unconstitutionally tied its application for tax-exempt status to whether the group's positions on Israel are "contradictory to those of the Administration." Instead, the court transferred the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Z Street v. Shulman, No. 10-4307 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 13, 2012):

The Complaint states, inter alia, “Wherefore, Plaintiff seeks a Declaration that Defendant’s substance and application of the Israel Special Policy to any application for tax-exempt status constitutes discrimination among viewpoints and a violation of the Plaintiff’s right to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”  The Court shares Plaintiff’s view that this is a case about constitutionally valid process, and finds that 26 U.S.C. § 7428 is the statute which establishes Plaintiff’s right to challenge the IRS’s 501(c) classification process. ... 26 U.S.C. § 7428 reads, in pertinent part: “upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, the United States Tax Court, the United States Court of Federal Claims, or the district court of the United States for the District of Columbia may make a declaration with respect to such initial qualification or continuing qualification.”

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• NY Times: Charitable Deduction Subsidizes Israeli Settlements, Contrary to U.S. Policy (July 7, 2010)
• Lawsuit: IRS Using Bob Jones University to Deny Tax-Exempt Status to Pro-Israel Charity (Aug. 26, 2010)
• Is Failure to Support Obama Administration's Foreign Policy Grounds to Deny Charity's Tax-Exempt Status? (Nov. 24, 2010)

The Prison: "Humane Alternative" or A Tool of Social Control? A Historcial Review

Global Research
Devon DB

In researching and examining the reasons for the existence of prisons, one may find an array of answers. There are many of those who would state that the creation of prisons is the common sense argument that it was a response to criminal activity and whose purpose was to rehabilitate those deemed “criminals” by society. Yet, the creation of prisons was actually a product of the Enlightenment Period, as can be seen in Cesare Beccaria’s book On Crimes and Punishment, where he applies Enlightenment concepts to punishment and imprisonment. However, prisons can also be viewed in a much different light, as Michel Foucault does in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, where he extols the idea that prisons were created as a tool of social control. The arguments of both Beccaria and Foucalt should be examined and applied into how they fit into the creation of prisons in early 19th century America.

The logical reasons for imprisonment were first conceived by Cesare Beccaria, an Italian philosopher of the Enlightenment age. In his book On Crime and Punishment he stated that people, wanting to live in relative peace and security, willingly gave up some of their liberty to establish laws which were enforced by an administrator or judge. However, having a judge is not enough due to the fact that it is “necessary to defend [liberty] from the usurpation of each individual, who will always endeavour to take away from the mass, not only his own portion, but to encroach on that of others.” [1] Thus, in order to ensure that people do not attempt to limit the freedom of others, punishments must be established for those who break the law. Imprisonment came into play as Beccaria thought that prison was the most rational of punishments as it was based in solid evidence due to the law determining “the crime, the presumption, and the evidence sufficient to subject the accused to imprisonment and examination.” [2] This manner of thinking not only established a logical basis for prisons, but it also represented a humane alternative to other punishments such as death and flogging. This would have a major impact on Quakers in 19th century Pennsylvania.

In colonial America, there existed buildings which were there mainly to lock up vagrants and those whose crimes didn’t warrant capital punishment. While these were called prisons, they were little more than holding cells and were not used to reform prisoners. That changed, however, with the state of Pennsylvania. After the Revolutionary War, in 1786, the penal system was revised and allowed for the death penalty in all but two major crimes. (This was in the spirit of Beccaria as he argued that swift punishments aided in the deterrence of crime.) In this revisement, a provision was included which allowed for public hard labor by prisoners. While this may have seemed like a good idea, it backfired as it only led to more crimes being committed and an overall increase in the number of prisoners. This caused widespread fear and panic, resulting in Quakers coming together to form prison reform groups such as The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Misery of Public Prisons. In addition to this, many Quakers also wanted a more humane system of punishment. Groups such as these pressured the Pennsylvanian government to create a state-run prison because due to “the severity of the laws, with the disgraceful mode of carrying them into effect” [3] such a prison was warranted. These demands resulted in the creation of the Walnut Street prison, which made Pennsylvania the first state to use prison to rehabilitate criminals.

Yet, one must ask the question: What is rehabilitation? Does it simply mean that the criminal no longer breaks laws or can it mean that in prison, he is socialized to become more compliant with the status quo? While the latter idea may seem far-fetched, it is exactly what Michel Foucault argues in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

As was previously stated, the want for a more humane system of punishment is why many Pennsylvanians argued for a prison system. The creation of the prison system was the most humane of punishments, not only due to its lack of barbarity when compared to other means of punishment, but also was the fairest means of punishment as prisons “[make] it possible to quantify the penalty exactly according to the variable of time” thus creating “wages-form of imprisonment that constitutes, in industrial societies, its economic ‘self-evidence’- and enables it to appear as a repartition.” [4]

The creation of the Walnut Street prison was also due to fear and panic on the part of Quakers. This fear, spurred by the increase in crime due to prisoners being out in public, would logically lead to the creation of prisons as “How could the prison not be immediately accepted when, by locking up, retraining and rendering docile, it merely reproduces, with a little more emphasis, all the mechanisms that are to be found in the social body?” [5] Essentially, what prisons do, are to take those who are deemed “criminals” by society (who are in reality social deviants) and funnel them into a system that reinforces societal norms on larger scale, with the hopes that the “criminals” will come out of prison being more compliant to status quo.

Examples of using punishment to force the behavior of criminals can be seen in 18th century Pennsylvania, in the form of the use of solitary confinement to force individuals to conform themselves to what was deemed “acceptable behavior.” Caleb Lownes, an active manager of the Walnut Street prison’s work program, tells such a story of one man who was put in solitary confinement for refusing to work and after several weeks of having little to no social interaction and unbearable living conditions, caved into the pressure and decided to work in the prison. It was noted that “The utmost propriety of conduct has been observed by this man ever since.” [6] Lownes noted earlier that “a change of conduct was early visible” when prisoners were informed “that their treatment would depend upon their conduct.” [7]

Pennsylvania cops do not have immunity from charges of urine, pepper spray torture

Washington Post
Elizabeth Flock

A federal judge ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania woman can go forward with her lawsuit claiming that state police pepper sprayed her, doused her in cold water and then urinated on her while she was in restraints, The New Jersey Herald reports.
Derena Madison was taken into custody after police arrested her friend for driving under the influence, Courthouse News Service reported Friday.

The troopers initially claimed sovereign immunity from the suit, saying that “subduing persons is one of the acts of law enforcement officers are employed to perform,” and that they were “serving the purposes of ... the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” in doing so.
Judge Gary Lancaster ruled that sovereign immunity doesn’t apply in this case, as the alleged misconduct is not included in their duties.

Lancaster was not making a call on the merit of her allegations — only on the fact that the sovereign immunity can't be used.

Under sovereign immunity, a state is immune from lawsuits or criminal prosecution because it cannot commit a legal wrong. It is most often exercised in Pennsylvania.
 
According to Madison’s suit, she was arrested after she exited the car for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. An officer then “twice sprayed [her] face, head and body with pepper spray, without justification ... for the purpose of torturing her,” according to the suit.

After calling for help, Madison says several officers put large quantities of cold water over her head, which caused her to fall to her knees in the snow and briefly black out.
When she regained consciousness, Madison alleged that she “felt and smelled urine on her head, face, neck and person. She believes that while she was unconscious, one or more of the defendants urinated on her.”

Madison says she was manacled during all three instances, and so the police force was clearly used to “degrade and humiliate” her, not subdue her. She sued two officers, an individual identified as “Cooley,” and two other unidentified individuals.

New Hearing Date Set for Mumia Abu-Jamal

AFRO

Death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal will receive a new hearing on Nov. 9 to review his death sentence for the 1982 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Sept. 21 agreed to hear arguments in the case, under a directive from the U.S. Supreme Court to review Jamal’s death sentence for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

In an e-mail to supporters, Jamal’s defense lawyer Robert Bryan said “We are cautiously encouraged that the federal court has taken this step.”

Abu-Jamal was convicted in a unanimous decision by a majority white jury and sentenced to death.

Born Wesley Cook, he has maintained his innocence from death row in a Pennsylvania state prison, submitting appeal requests based on allegations of judicial bias, police brutality, and an inadequate defense during his arrest and trial 28 years ago.

At the time of his arrest, Abu-Jamal was a radio announcer and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He was known for his outspoken political views and commentary on racial injustice and police brutality.

During his incarceration he has written several books, appeared on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and continues to protest his conviction on prisonradio.org, a non-profit organization run by The Redwood Justice Fund.

Opponents to Abu-Jamal's claims of innocence include the Fraternal Order of Police and Maureen Faulkner, the widow of the murdered officer. At a recent screening of the film “Barrel of a Gun,” a documentary about the case, Faulkner’s widow said the movie “will put people’s mind at rest,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“There is no doubt that Mumia Abu-Jamal wanted to murder a police officer that night, and that person was my husband,” she said.

His trial and subsequent attempts at an appeal have gained international attention and support including former South African president Nelson Mandela, Amnesty International, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, members of Congress and celebrities.