This week, we reported that the Food and Drug Administration left medicines on the market for years after discovering they were approved based on fraudulent studies by Cetero Research, which did testing for drug companies worldwide. Turns out that wasn’t an anomaly: The agency’s slow, secretive response in the Cetero case mirrors how it handled an earlier instance of scientific misconduct at another contract research organization, MDS Pharma Services. The FDA found that data produced from 2000 through 2004 at two MDS facilities in Quebec, Canada, were questionable. Continue Reading… … Read More
New claims of prosecutor misconduct in Aaron Swartz case
Since Aaron Swartz’s suicide in January, severe criticism has been directed at the federal prosecutors who brought hefty felony charges against the technologist. While I have written here previously on how the prosecutor’s actions in Swartz’s case reflect a broader tendency of prosecutorial overreach and activist targeting in this country, recent revelations have shed light on the specific misconduct claims levied at Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, the lead prosecutor in Swartz’s case.In a letter (made public Wednesday) to an internal Justice Department ethics unit from January 2013, Swartz’s lawyers argue that Heymann engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by “withholding key evidence from Swartz’s defense team and overreaching in his attempt to coerce Aaron into waiving his right to trial.” A press release regarding the letter to the ethics unit noted:Continue Reading… … Read More
Prosecutorial Misconduct Under the Magnifying Glass in Texas
Michael Morton
was convicted in 1986 in Texas of beating his wife to death. It
turned out he was innocent, and DNA evidence ultimately freed him
after 25 years behind bars.But his story doesn’t end there. Morton has gone after Ken
Anderson, the prosecutor behind his conviction, now a Texas judge.
Anderson stands accused of withholding holding important evidence
that should have been turned over to Morton’s attorney.Remarkably, Texas is formally examining Anderson’s case in a
“court of inquiry” to determine whether or not the judge’s behavior
as a prosecutor should be punished – perhaps even prosecuted. Via
the
Los Angeles Times:
A “court of inquiry,” part of Texas law since 1965, has usually
been used to examine allegations against elected officials, never
to address suspected misconduct by a prosecutor. Some hope this
week’s hearings lead to a greater examination of alleged
prosecutorial misconduct that has led to wrongful convictions not
just in Texas, but nationwide.
“There is no doubt that the eyes of Texas are going to be on
this proceeding,” said Kathryn Kase, executive directror of Texas
Defender Service, a nonprofit that trains and assists lawyers who
represent death row inmates. “Bad forensic science is not the only
reason people get wrongfully imprisoned, and we have to be
dedicated to trying to stop that.”
This court of inquiry begins today. The hearings are open to the
public, and should the judge conclude Anderson may have broken
state law in prosecuting Morton, he faces an arrest warrant and
possible criminal trial.The State Bar of Texas has also filed suit against Anderson
seeking a civil trial that could end with his disbarment (or other
penalties).Jacob Sullum looked at the Morton case back in 2011 when he was
officially exonerated. … Read More
Air Force appalled by the number of sex assaults
A US Air Force general has referred to sexual misconduct within the service as a “cancer”, shedding new light on the extent of the problem in wake of a sex scandal that occurred at the Air Force training headquarters.Gen. Mark Welsh, chief of staff of the US Air Force, disclosed disturbing sexual assault statistics at a congressional hearing on Wednesday. Sexual assault ranging from inappropriate touches to rape has been on the rise, with 2012 seeing 796 reported cases. Last year’s figures show a 30 percent increase from 2011, during which 614 cases of sexual assault were reported, according to AP.“Calling these numbers unacceptable does not do the victims justice,” Welsh said in a testimony in front of the House Armed Services Committee. “The truth is, these numbers are appalling.”Welsh pledged never to stop attacking the problem, which he said might be greater than currently believed, since many cases go unreported. US airmen are responsible for conducting most of the sexual assaults, which raises an alarm over the problem among the Air Force’s own members.All of these airmen have at one point reported to the training headquarters at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, which is the site of a major scandal that erupted two years ago. Starting in 2009, 43 female trainees were allegedly assaulted – and in many cases, raped – by their military training instructors during and after basic training. An investigation led to the termination of 35 such instructors, including two commanders who oversaw the men. There are about 500 military training instructors who oversee about 35,000 airmen, 7,000 of which are women.Fifteen instructors are currently still under investigation for charges ranging from adultery, rape and acting unprofessionally, while six have been convicted and nine more are waiting for their courts-martial.But punishing the offenders in the Lackland sex scandal does little to tackle the problem. Welsh attributes the rising number of sexual assaults to a culture in the Air Force that needs to be addressed. Binge drinking and the sharing of obscene sexual images, songs and stories may contribute to the inappropriate actions of the airmen.“A young man who routinely binge drinks and loses control of himself is going to conduct bad behavior,” Welsh said. “That bad behavior could result in sexual assault. Let’s stop the binge drinking.”But the problem of sexual assault has a greater range than just the Air Force. Almost half of all US military women deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan say they were sexually harassed or assaulted, with 47 percent of those alleging the perpetrators were US military men who held a higher rank.“Women in the armed forces are now more likely to be assaulted by a fellow soldier than killed in combat,” Newsweek’s Jesse Ellison wrote last year. And similarly to that of the US Air Force, the inappropriate behavior among US troops is at least partially attributed to a sexist culture.“It comes down to culture. (It) hasn’t changed, no matter what the generals or the secretaries of defense say about zero tolerance,” California Rep. Jackie Speier told USA Today in December. “They have not scrubbed the sexism… out of the military.” … Read More
Military Firings: Sex-Related Offenses Major Reason Behind Commander Dismissals
WASHINGTON — Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, fired from his command in Afghanistan last May and now facing a court-martial on charges of sodomy, adultery and pornography and more, is just one in a long line of commanders whose careers were ended because of possible sexual misconduct.Sex has proved to be the downfall of presidents, members of Congress and other notables. It’s also among the chief reasons that senior military officers are fired.Read More…
More on David Petraeus
John Liu Urges Central Park Five Settlement, Becoming First New York City Elected Official To Do So
NEW YORK — For the first time in the decade since a New York court overturned the convictions of five teenagers in the 1989 rape and beating of a woman known as the Central Park Jogger, a New York City elected official has called on the city to settle a $250 million federal civil rights suit brought by the now-grown men.On Friday, New York City Comptroller John C. Liu said the city’s legal department and lawyers representing the men, known collectively as the Central Park Five, should sit down immediately for settlement talks. Liu cited concerns about mounting and likely multimillion-dollar legal costs in the now 10-year-old case. Similar cases of alleged police misconduct that were settled by the city after far shorter periods of litigation left New York to pay large legal bills and millions of dollars in damages to those harmed.”As the financial steward of the City, my goal is to ensure that we strike a delicate balance between making those with meritorious claims whole while minimizing taxpayer costs,” Liu said in a statement released after his Harlem press conference. “In the case of the ‘Central Park Five,’ I am extremely concerned that the longer we wait, the more the legal bills mount.”Read More…
Buju Banton Drug Charges: Reggae Singer Awaits Ruling In Mistrial Request
TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida juror who voted to convict Jamaican reggae singer Buju Banton on drug charges has denied improperly researching the case during trial, in spite of a weekly newspaper’s report that quoted her as saying that she did.Banton is serving a 10-year prison sentence on two drug charges. The Grammy winner faces an additional five years on a related gun possession charge, but his resentencing hearing was postponed to investigate the report of juror misconduct.Read More…
More on Video
