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Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder December 28, 2020
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- Commentary On Julian Assange’s Case By Attorney Jim Lafferty
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Capital Punishment: Mumia Abu-Jamal And Heidi Boghosian
Journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal spent 40 years on death row in Pennsylvania. As listeners will recall, in 2012 his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal Court and he entered general population. While on death row he published 13 books and numerous commentaries on issues of social justice and the carceral state. In a special interview, Mumia joins us to reflect on capital punishment and its relationship to our modern society.
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CCR: A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days
Some political skeptics , distrusting of the incoming Biden administration, are saying that it’s “ out with the old in with the older.“ That is that the old neo-liberal crew from the Obama/Clinton days are back in power and that little will change, nothing fundamental.
They are especially concerned about the impending climate catastrophe, systemic racism, the threat of nuclear war, the shifting of wealth from the bottom to the top, and the never ending forever wars. The Center for Constitution Rights has developed a comprehensive program to challenge this. It is called A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days.
Guest – Center for Constitutional Rights Advocacy Director attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Boston College of Law. She has worked with the Adalah Justice Project for Palestinian rights In the Negev in southern Israel.
Law and Disorder December 21, 2020
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Federal Death Penalty Analysis Under President Trump
Donald Trump is on a killing spree, according to an article by noted death penalty expert Austin Sarat in the Guardian. After a 17-year hiatus, Attorney General William Barr restarted the federal death penalty by executing Daniel Lewis Lee on July 14, 2020, even though Lee’s ringleader accomplice received life in prison. Thus far the administration has put ten persons to death with three more executions on the docket in the days before Joe Biden’s inauguration. A new DOJ rule allows the US to use more methods for executions, including firing squads, gas, and electrocution.
William Barr says his justice department is simply upholding existing law. But the timing of the executions is just weeks before Joe Biden takes office, and the uptick in numbers is a departure in past practice. After the Supreme Court reinstated the federal death penalty in 1988, federal executions have been rare.
Guest – Attorney Marc Bookman, an internationally recognized expert in the field of capital litigation. Marc is the Co-Founder and the current executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation. From 1993 to 2010, he served in the Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. He has taught at countless death penalty conferences and hands-on trainings across the nation. Marc has published widely on various aspects of capital jurisprudence. He earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and his JD from the University of North Carolina.
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Technology and Activism
During the Trump administration the United States has witnessed an uptick in dissent and activism after a rash of attacks on social services and human rights. As we’ve seen throughout history, a groundswell of youth activism has led the way in fighting for climate protection, racial justice, gun control, and many other critical issues. Driving this increase in activism is accessibility and advancement of specific technologies that help people use mass communication tools more easily and affordably.
At the same time, in the past four years Donald Trump installed a new FCC head with ties to big tech. One of the first orders of business was to get rid of net neutrality—the principle that Internet providers treat all users equally. That means that big tech can’t slow down a student or community blog while affording wealthier companies and advertisers with high speed service. Trump has also banned TikTok and WeChat, and his Commerce Department added the Chinese tech giant Huawei to its “entity list,” which curbed the company’s ability to use American-origin chips, software and other technology.
During the Covid pandemic, the shift to online learning and online physicians’ appointment has witnessed a dramatic increase in cyberattacks which pose a threat to the overall security of our virtual world.
Guest – Ken Montenegro, Technology Director at the Center of Constitutional Right. Before he was the Information Technology Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Los Angeles. He is a long-time activist with grassroots communities and movements, in particular around immigration and racist policing. Montenegro is also the current Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild. He’s a co-founder of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and one of the founding members of the Radical Connections Network.
Law and Disorder December 14, 2020
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- Commentary from Attorney Jim Lafferty, Host of the Lawyers Guild Show
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The Aftermath And Momentous Turning Points
The year 2020 will be seen as historically momentous, as a turning point in American history. The summer saw mobilizations of tens of millions of people, white and Black, mostly young, from small towns and large cities,under Black leadership and under the banner of Black Lives Matter. This tremendous mobilization was a reaction to the systemic racism and gross inequality that exists in the United States.
The manifestations were followed by the defeat of the cruel racist billionaire demagogue Donald Trump by 6 million votes in the fall election. All the institutions of the ruling elite collaborated to bring about Trump’s defeat. The main stream media, the CIA, the FBI, renegade Republicans, and 131 billionaires all supported Joseph Biden.
Only a tiny number of people refused to support either party candidate. Most of the progressive movement was swept back into the Democratic party seeing it is the lesser of two evils and hoping that change could be wrought from the inside. Will it? Where does social change come from? Historically the Democratic Party has been the graveyard of social movements. Will this continue to be the case?
After he won, Biden posted that “I am the guy that ran against the socialist, OK. I’m the guy that’s the moderate.“
Guest – Jeff Mackler. Jeff is a longtime California bay area socialist activist, he recently authorized “A Manifesto for Our Times: The Challenge to Abolish Systematic Racism“. He is the chair of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal and active in the defense of Julian Assange.
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Complaint Filed Against Judge Demanding Release of Attorney In Chevron Case
Dozens of legal organizations representing more than 500,000 lawyers along with more than 200 individual lawyers submitted a judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in New York. The violations were directed at human rights lawyer Steven Donziger whose case we’ve been following on Law and Disorder. Donziger, listeners will recall, won a historic judgment against Chevron in Ecuador to clean up the pollution caused by decades of oil drilling with no environmental controls.
The complaint was filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). The Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Robert Katzmann, has a duty to read the complaint and determine if he will appoint a committee to investigate and issue findings.
The complaint documents is a pattern of ethics violations committed by Judge Kaplan, a former tobacco industry lawyer.
Kaplan denied Donziger a jury trial, put in place a series of unusual courtroom tactics, severely restricted Donziger’s ability to mount a defense, and detained him at home for more than one year on contempt charges that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney. Kaplan allowed Donziger to be prosecuted by a private law firm that has Chevron as a client. He imposed enormous fines on Donziger that have all but bankrupted him.
The complaint alleges that the “statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.”
Despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador, Chevron came back to the US and filed a civil “racketeering” case against the Donziger and all 47 named plaintiffs. They potentially sought $60 billion in damages — the highest personal liability in US history. Judge Kaplan denied Donziger a jury and let Chevron pay a witness at least $2 million while moving him and his entire family from Ecuador to the US. Chevron lawyers coached the witness, Alberto Guerra, for 53 days before Kaplan let him testify against Donziger; Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied on the stand. Kaplan also refused to let Donziger testify on direct examination.
Twenty-nine Nobel laureates and several human rights organizations have criticized the harassment of Donziger by judicial authorities and have demanded his immediate release.
Guest – Lauren Regan, a member of Steven Donziger’s defense team. She is also executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.