Quick Truths

CNET has revealed that the FBI has begun to use cellphone mics to create "roving taps". Apparently by sending a maintenance code to the phone, it's mic can be used to capture and transmit sounds within the entire room. The mic can be activated even while the phone is turned off, and can only be reset by removing the battery. In addition software can be remotely sent to the phone which will case it to activative the active mic and/or notify the FBI when the phone is used to make a call. Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr phones are especially vulnerable to this type of software manipulation.

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Newsweek has reported that prosecutors for the DOJ are attempting to suppress evidence that American Terrorist Suspect Jose Padilla was tortured.

The matter could prove even more awkward because, according to a source close to Padilla’s defense team—who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters—any hearing could end up requiring the Pentagon to turn over highly classified video and audiotapes allegedly made of Padilla’s interrogation sessions at the U.S. military brig in Charleston, S.C. The content of the tapes has been the subject of recent discussion among lawyers in the case, the source said.

Padilla was kept in a state of "complete sensory deprivation," confined for months at a time in a "tiny cell" where the temperatures were manipulated to "extremely cold" levels and "noxious fumes" were introduced, causing his eyes and nose to run. Loud clanging noises were repeatedly heard making it impossible for him to sleep, the motion stated. Padilla himself was hooded, forced to stand in uncomfortable stress positions and kept "shackled and manacled with a belly chain," the motion further states. He was also threatened with being forcibly removed from the United States to another country....

"Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylmamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PACP) to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations."

The government is concerned that if a jury became aware of the conditions in which Mr.Padilla was held, it would "shock the consience" and tend to inspire jury nullification. This of course would be in addition to the general ban on the use of coerced testimony and self-incrimination under the 5th and 8th Amendments.

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This week Oregon Attorney Brandon Mayfield was awarded $2 million in damages for being mistakenly linked to the Madrid Train Bombing, kept under surveillance, arrested and then....

...held without contact, and visited with all the "non-torture" the CIA could deliver including "strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation." All this despite the fact that the Spanish government told the CIA Mayfield was not involved weeks before he was arrested.

Mayfield was linked by the FBI to the bombing through a partial fingerprint match - but apparently this "match" was mistaken.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School has demonstrated time and again that even death penalty cases -- which pro-death advocates are quick to point out are subject to far more review than other crimes -- are often decided on poor evidence or no real evidence at all. In a surprising number of cases, the CWC has found false evidence, created to fit a scenario favored by law enforcement, or suppression of evidence that would have exonerated the accused.

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