ACLU of Ohio Volunteer Attorney Jeffrey Gamso discusses in Newsweek why Ohio must immediately stop all executions following the failed execution of Romell Broom.

Can a vein save a convicted killer? It the case of Romell Broom—it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn’t supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton’s death—but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the first attempt.

[…]

This may be the first time in Ohio history that an execution was halted and rescheduled—but it’s not the first time the state has had trouble administering a lethal injection. Ohio has had at least two other executions in the past three years that didn’t go according to plan. In 2006 it took prison officials 87 minutes to execute Joseph Clark, and in 2007 an execution team struggled for one hour and 53 minutes before Christopher Newton was pronounced dead. The process should run about 18 minutes, said Jeff Gamso, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. “Ohio is incapable of consistently and reliably finding a way to perform lethal injections competently,” Gamso said.

There is only one U.S. Supreme Court case that addresses the issue of failed executions. In 1946, Willie Francis was set to be electrocuted for murdering a drugstore owner, but there were problems with the electrical current, and Francis did not die. He returned to death row for almost a year while the court considered whether a second electrocution was constitutional. In a 5-4 ruling, the court held that a second execution did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In the case of Francis, it was unclear how much pain he experienced from the first execution attempt. Broom will have to argue the stress, pain, and trauma of the lethal injection procedure was substantial.

A recent Ohio Supreme Court decision limited the public’s access to test records of Ohio students taking annual semester exams.

The Ohio Supreme Court today sided with the Cincinnati Public School officials who argued that annual semester exams given to all ninth-graders are not public records subject to disclosure.

In a 5-2 decision, the court said the tests fall within an exemption to public records law for trade secrets. School attorneys argued that allowing public access to the tests could induce cheating and cost the district more than $270,000 each year to replace questions on the test, making it unaffordable.

“Ordering disclosure of the semester exams would open the door for students to have access to these tests as well, undermining the tests’ effectiveness in measuring student ability if the test is given in the future,” Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote for the majority.

This week the Ohio Supreme Court heard a case challenging whether police have a right to search through a person’s cell phone without a court order.

Police may be able to take cell phones from people they arrest, but that doesn’t give them the right to scroll through call logs in search of incriminating information without a warrant, a defense attorney told the Ohio Supreme Court yesterday.

[…]

The case has attracted interest from outside groups. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief on behalf of Smith, while the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association filed a brief in favor of police and prosecutors.

The court is expected to rule in several months.

On Friday, Judge Frost of the Federal District Court for Southern Ohio granted Romell Broom a temporary restraining order preventing the state from executing him for another 10 days. The state agreed to this order and will not contest it.

A federal district court has temporarily halted the second execution attempt of an Ohio inmate scheduled for Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost issued a temporary restraining order Friday. The ruling against the state is effective for 10 days and prevents the second lethal injection attempt on Romell Broom from going forward.

[…]

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio filed a public records request with the state in an attempt to learn information about the preparation for the first attempt, details about the attempt and information about preparations for the next scheduled attempt. The Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers sent Strickland a letter Thursday asking him to place a moratorium on Ohio executions given Tuesday’s events.

The City Beat takes a holistic view of the capital punishment system in light of the recent botched execution and other troubling statistics.

Released Monday, the FBI’s annual crime report for last year further underscores the fact that imposing capital punishment on criminals doesn’t act as a deterrent to homicides.

The report, Crime in the United States 2008, reveals that in 13 of the 14 states that didn’t have the death penalty last year, the murder rate was below the national rate of 5.4 homicides per 100,000 people.

In the state that was the sole exception to the trend, Michigan, the homicide rate was equal to the national rate.

The states with the highest murder rates in 2008 were in the Deep South.

[…]

The ACLU wants Strickland to issue a moratorium pending a review of Ohio’s execution procedures.

“If the state is going to take a person’s life, they must ensure that it is done as humanely as possible,” said Carrie Davis, an Ohio ACLU attorney. “With three botched executions in as many years, it’s clear that the state must stop and review the system entirely before another person is put to death.”

It was a troubling week for opponents of the death penalty in Ohio after another botched execution. Now, courts and officials debate whether they can try to execute Romell Broom again.

As executioners poked his limbs with an IV needle, Romell Broom initially tried to speed along his own demise, flexing his arm and tugging on a rubber tourniquet to better expose a vein on the inside of his elbow.

[…]

“Ohio has a history here. It’s not just him. He’s the third guy in three years where we’ve had essentially variations on the same problem,” said Jeff Gamso, volunteer attorney and former legal director for the ACLU of Ohio. He was referring to the executions of Joseph Clark in 2006 and Christopher Newton in 2007 in which prison workers took more than an hour and two hours, respectively, to kill the inmates because of trouble locating veins.

The Lima News discusses the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror.

[…]

One of those examples lies 90 miles off the shore of Florida. The military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, continues to be a black eye for our country around the world. President Barack Obama promised during last year’s campaign to close the military prison, but now he has found it not so easy to do.

It should be unimaginable that a country that prides itself on the rule of law has held people suspected of being terrorists — and in some cases, known not to be — based only on belief. Yes, our country was attacked. Yes, dangerous people still mean to do us harm. But forgetting our principles, giving up our way of life, lets the terrorists win, as Bush would have put it.

And another is going on here in this country. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Congress rushed through the Patriot Act. It’s a law most commonly used for drug offenses, but Bush got members of Congress to pass without reading an act Republicans rightly refused to pass for President Bill Clinton.

But the nation is at war, right? So what rights to privacy should Americans expect to have? The same ones the U.S. Constitution says we have, actually.

ACLU of Ohio Associate Director Gary Daniels discusses the advantages of Tasers when they are used correctly by police officers.

Columbus police used the Taser brand to shock 326 suspects in 2008. How many of those incidents were subject to CPD’s Firearms Review Board?

That would be exactly none.

That’s because the Taser is not considered a firearm.

[…]

Neither Amnesty International nor the American Civil Liberties Union quibbles with the Taser not being deemed a firearm.

“Some people out there think Tasers are inherently bad. That is not our position,” said Gary Daniels of the ACLU of Ohio. “It provides something aside from pepper spray and getting shot and it’s the something-short-of-getting-shot aspect of Tasers that we appreciate.”

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court categorically forbidding schools from doing so, a school in Iowa strip searched a group of students because a sum of money went missing.

School’s in! September’s here; pencils are sharpened, apples are polished, and — in one Iowa town where administrators’ summer reading list clearly did not include Safford Unified School Dist. #1 v. Redding — female students are strip-searched on suspicion of theft.

The Des Moines Register reported over the weekend that on Aug. 21, the third day of school, a student at Atlantic High reported $100 missing from her purse. Five girls who were somehow deemed persons of interest in the case were asked to strip in front of a female counselor and their accuser (!?). (No boys were involved because apparently none were around when the theft was believed to have occurred.) Lawyers (yuh!) for the girls’ families told the Register that (paraphrase) each girl stripped in varying degrees. One 15-year-old “was asked to remove all of her clothing including her undergarments.” Another asked if she could lift up her bra and was told that wasn’t good enough. One was searched twice. At least two were permitted not to remove their underwear because it was more revealing than the others’ and therefore an unlikely hiding place. [End of repellent soft-core juvie prison scene]

Students, have you been strip-searched at school? Tell us about it.

The DDN posits how the sale of Diebold to Premier Election Systems may impact the voting rights of Ohioans.

The company that makes voting machines used in Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Darke and Butler counties has sold that operation to the company that makes the machines used in all the other counties in the Miami Valley: Warren, Preble, Clark, Champaign, Shelby and Clinton.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound like a great thing. The big get bigger. Less competition.

In this case, however, there’s good news.

The hyper-controversial Diebold Inc. makes the touch-screen, ATM-like machines used in the first group of counties. In recent years, it changed the name of its election-machine subsidiary to Premier Election Solutions Inc. and has taken a hands-off approach. But the machines are still associated with Diebold.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has asked a Canton-area school to remove a reference to the belief in God in its mission statement.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation wants Lake Local Schools to change its values.

The school district’s mission statement includes the phrase “we value” followed by a list that includes “belief in God and religious freedom.” The statement is on the front page of a newsletter mailed to Lake Local residents this month.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president, called the statement “shocking” and “one of the most egregious” violations she has seen of the Constitution’s language separating church and state.

The Health Department takes steps to improve the conditions at the Cuyahoga County Jail.

The health department has recommended that the Cuyahoga County Jail take steps to reduce the spread of drug-resistant staph infections among inmates.

The number of confirmed cases at the jail has risen from 63 in 2005 to 173 last year. The jail had reported 66 cases as of Aug. 18 — a pace that would total 106 cases by the end of the year, said Matt Carroll, director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health.

While the projected total would be a decline from last year, the department wants to monitor the situation more closely and has asked the jail to provide monthly reports.

The ACLU draws attention to a troubling provision in Ohio Senate Bill 77 that would allow DNA collection of anyone arrested for a felony. While the ACLU opposes this part of the legislation, it supports other aspects such as increased access to DNA testing for convicts, and reforms of interrogation practices

A justice reform bill endorsed by Gov. Ted Strickland and passed by the Senate designed to prevent wrongful convictions also includes a controversial measure to expand the collection of DNA samples to those arrested on felony charges.

Currently, Ohio only takes DNA from people convicted of felonies and violent misdemeanors.

Law enforcement groups support the expansion, saying it gets violent offenders off the street quicker and prevents future crimes.

But others say DNA collection before conviction crosses the line, especially because the bill does not address what happens if a person isn’t convicted.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio opposes the measure, saying it poses a “myriad of civil liberty risks” including violating a person’s constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure, is ripe for abuse and is an invasion of privacy.

“This is certainly troubling,” said ACLU staff lawyer Carrie Davis. “There is no useful purpose of collecting DNA after arrest to avoid wrongful convictions and it poses all kinds of civil risks.

“Collecting DNA from all arrestees is a search and there should be some process, a court order or warrant, for a search,” Davis said.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol has adopted a policy that limits the free speech of its employees to post certain information on social networking sites.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol has forbidden employees from mentioning their jobs on personal Web sites after a trooper posted sexually suggestive photos on her MySpace page.

The policy, enacted July 28, also prevents troopers from posting pictures of themselves or others in uniform and from using the patrol’s “flying wheel” insignia on social-networking sites without permission.

The policy acknowledges that employees have a right to personal Web sites but says that references to the patrol must be reviewed to ensure they do not “cause a lack in public confidence or discredit or disrespect” the agency.

The policy is denounced as a violation of employees’ First Amendment free-speech rights by an attorney for the troopers union and the lead lawyer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, who counseled the patrol to avoid the action.

A troubling situation out of Canton in which a man was silenced in court when the judge instructed the bailiff to place duct tape across the defendant’s mouth because he refused to comply with directions.

Municipal Court Judge Stephen F. Belden had an unconventional tool for silencing an argumentative defendant last week — duct tape.

The unique confrontation played out in Municipal Court on Thursday and quickly became a topic of courthouse gossip. It was also recorded on the courtroom’s audio and video systems.

Belden was holding a preliminary hearing to see if there was sufficient evidence for Harry Brown’s case to be reviewed by a county grand jury.

The Blade reasons that the government is right to investigate reported use of torture during CIA investigations.

THE appointment by Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., of a federal prosecutor to look into reports of CIA torture of prisoners was controversial but necessary.

A fundamental argument against such a move was that the new administration of President Obama should focus on the problems of the present and future rather than dig up the bones of the more odious deeds of eight years of President George W. Bush. In general, Mr. Obama has done that.

Another case against the probe is concern that it may set off bureaucratic combat or, more seriously, inflame the sort of noncooperation between the CIA and the Justice Department, which includes the FBI, that contributed to the failure of U.S. agencies to read and share intelligence that could have headed off the tragic 9/11 attacks.