Results matching “FDA ”

The question whether the Attorney General can, strictly on his own initiative, take pot off Schedule I of the federal schedule of controlled substances has been kicking around for some time now.

Under federal law, the attorney general can move to add, reschedule or remove drugs on his own, at the request of the health and human services secretary or in response to a public petition. But the law also requires the attorney general to gather data and scientific and medical evaluation from the HHS secretary before doing so.

Congress can pass laws to change the scheduling of drugs. Even if the attorney general does decide to move toward rescheduling, Congress can overturn his decision, experts say.

The Drug Enforcement Administration already has denied a petition to reschedule the drug, based on findings by HHS. HHS determined that marijuana has a "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," leading the DEA to reject the petition in 2011. The petition was filed nearly a decade earlier, in 2002.

It's a grim day in the news today.  Here are several articles from the WSJ:

Qasim Nauman, Safdar Dawar, and Saeed Shah report on the horrifying story of the Taliban in Pakistan taking over a school and methodically shooting schoolchildren in the head, killing 141 people.  That anyone with any political or religious cause, however fanatical, could deliberately and specifically target children for mass murder staggers the imagination.

Rebecca Thurlow and Lucy Cramer report from Sydney on the rememberance of the deceased hostages Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson.  Mr. Johnson, the cafe manager, grabbed the perpetrator's gun when he saw an opportunity, beginning the termination of the siege and the freeing of all but himself and Ms. Dawson.  There is also a report that "Ms. Dawson was shielding her pregnant friend from gunfire."

Sony Pictures has received threats of terrorist attacks on showings of its comedy film "The Interview," which paints an unflattering portrait of North Korea's leader (who does such a good job of self-parody, he really doesn't need any help from Sony).  Ben Fritz, Danny Yadron, and Erich Schwartzel have this story.  Although the threats are "viewed as far-fetched by U.S. officials," they can't be taken lightly given the Aurora massacre.

Most claims of ineffective assistance of counsel are baloney.  They're simply a way to deflect attention from the client's behavior to that of his supposedly all-important lawyer.  What gets lost in the hubbub is that what wins and loses cases is seldom the lawyer.  It's the evidence.

Willie Trottie is scheduled for execution in Texas today for killing his wife and her brother. David Ingram reports for KTRK:

"I shot my brother-in-law in self-defense and I shot my wife by accident," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "There's no doubt I committed this crime. The dispute is the sequence of how it happened."

Actually, not too much of a dispute.  That "accidental" shooting involved 11 bullets.  The gun was a semiautomatic, not a full automatic, so that requires pulling the trigger "accidentally" 11 times.  And there were multiple witnesses.  Trottie told his wife as he was killing her, "Bitch, I told you I was going to kill you."

So when you are stone cold guilty of a crime for which the death penalty is clearly appropriate, what do your lawyers argue about at the last minute?  Drug expiration dates.  Really.

Park Dietz & Associates, forensic psychology experts, have an email newsletter.  The current issue has an article on Ambien:

The "Ambien Defense" has been getting a lot of press in 2014.  Sometimes called the "Zombie Defense," it's the argument that someone charged with a crime--and the crimes have ranged from DWI to child sexual abuse to murder-- took Ambien (or generic zolpidem) beforehand and had no memory of the crime.

 â€¢  August 19:  A Montana man was sentenced to 100 years for murdering two sisters in their early 20s.  He stabbed one victim over 130 times, including 34 times in the face, and beat, gagged, strangled, and stabbed the other.  A judge called the killings "ritualistic" and "systematic."  The man said he took Ambien before the killings and had no memory of them, but pleaded no contest to avoid a trial.

A few similar examples follow. 

Ha An reports for Thanh Nien News:

The Hai Phong man who outraged the nation by killing and dismembering an ex-girlfriend was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday night, despite his pleas for mercy.

*                                    *                                  *

Nghia was watching his new girlfriend's apartment while she was out of town when he called Linh, his one-year college lover, to come over.

After they made love, he stabbed Linh to death, wrapped her torso in a blanket and stashed it on the building's rooftop.

He pawned her motorbike, laptop and mobile phone for VND5 million (US$240).

He was arrested on May 22, 2010 while hiding out in Thai Nguyen Province, one day after police discovered Linh's naked, rotting body.

*                                    *                                  *

Starting in late 2011, Vietnam officially switched from dispatching convicts with firing squads to lethal injections. An EU ban on exports of the lethal cocktail to Vietnam caused a lengthy backlog and drove many convicts to insanity and suicide--until Vietnam began manufacturing its own lethal serum.

So there is a source of supply.  We need the House of Representatives to slip a provision exempting lethal injection drugs from FDA importation requirements into a bill that the Senate politically cannot refuse to pass and the President politically cannot veto.  See prior post.

Stalker Released From Jail to Kill ex-Girlfriend: A Northern California woman was shot and killed Monday by an ex-boyfriend who had been stalking her. 32-year-old Renne Pinkston was shot and killed as she sat in her vehicle in downtown Winters on Monday morning.  Pinkston leaves a young daughter.  Lauren Keene of the Daily Republic reports that the suspect, 30-year-old William Carl Gardner III, was allowed to repeatedly post bail and be released back into the community despite a lengthy history of failing to appear in court and repeatedly violating the terms of his probation related to a separate domestic-violence involving another woman.  Pinkston had gotten a restraining order to prevent his continued and sometimes violent harassment. Gardner had been released from jail on a no bail warrant last Friday.  An alert sent out Friday to warn Pinkston of Gardner's release was not received until Monday, at about the time she was killed.  Gardner is still at large. 

Jury in Cop Killing Case Recommends Death Sentence: A Florida man convicted of killing two Tampa police officers in 2010 must now wait for a judge's final penalty decision after the jury presiding over his case unanimously recommended a death sentence.  Beau Zimmer of CBS Tampa Bay reports that the defendant, 28-year-old Dontae Morris, an habitual criminal,  was convicted earlier this year for a murder he committed just 30 days before killing the two Tampa officers.  In Florida, a judge has the final say when it comes to sentencing an individual to death, but is required to give great consideration of the jury's recommendation.

Mandatory Testing for Drug Felons on Welfare:  Residents of St. Louis County, Minnesota who receive state welfare benefits and who have been previously convicted of a felony drug crime are now required to take a mandatory drug test in order to receive benefits.  John Myers of the Duluth News Tribune reports that those drug felons receiving benefits will be subject to a random urinalysis prior to their eligibility reviews every 6-12 months. A positive test will result in a sanction under the state Department of Health and Human Services policy.  A second failure requires disqualification from receiving benefits. About 4 percent of the 4,616 individuals in St. Louis County receiving welfare benefits have been identified as convicted drug felons.

Serial Killer Executed in Missouri: Convicted serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was put to death Wednesday morning after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted two stays that were granted Tuesday evening seeking to delay his execution.  Karen Brooks of Reuters reports that Franklin was the first Missouri inmate to be executed under the state's new execution protocol which allows the Department of Corrections to use pentobarbital created in a compounding pharmacy rather than in an FDA approved pharmaceutical factory.  Franklin was the 35th death row inmate in the U.S. to be executed this year.

The Fifth Circuit yesterday decided Whitaker v. Livingston, No. 13-70031.  A co-plaintiff in the case is Michael Yowell, a Texas triple murderer scheduled for execution at 6:00 p.m. CDT today. Walter Nett has this story in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The notion that getting execution drugs from a compounding pharmacy presents an unconstitutional risk of severe pain is speculative to start with.  It is negated to a near certainty if the state has the drug tested to ensure purity and potency, which Texas has done.  An excerpt from the opinion follows the jump.

Poll: Californians Are Concerned About Crime: A poll conducted by Public Policy Institute of California reports that the public is concerned about the amount of crime in their communities, 18 months after the implementation of Realignment. Jim Miller of the Press Enterprise reports that 61% of CA residents were concerned about crime rates, which may be the result of thousands of  felons being released into local communities which have overwhelmed local police and probation departments.  Realignment shifted the responsibility for property felons and drug dealers from the state to the counties, resulting in county jails having no choice but to release many because of overcrowding. 

Teen Arrested for Murder of Mother and Brother: A 16-year-old Nevada boy has been arrested after police believe he stabbed his mother and 9-year-old brother to death last week.  Aaron Barker of Fox 5 Las Vegas reports that authorities found the bodies of the boy's mother and brother in the family home last Friday after conducting a welfare check and at one point feared for the boy's safety when they were unable to locate him.  Police revealed a few days after discovering the bodies that the 16-year-old was the lone suspect in the murders, he has since been apprehended and charged with two counts of murder.

Sex Offenders get 'Halloween Victory': Registered sex offenders in a California town have settled a legal battle after an ordinance requiring them to post a sign on their front door for Halloween was repealed.  ABC News reports that the ordinance, which was passed in 2010, required registered sex offenders to post a sign on their door stating "No candy or treats at this residence".  Despite the repeal, registered offenders will still be banned from decorating their home and are restricted from answering the door to any children who are trick or treating.  

Nothing sends our friends on the left side of the aisle into ecstasy quite like warming up relations with former enemy nations that remain communist.  Those of us who are old enough remember the China-mania that followed ping-pong diplomacy and the Nixon trip.  Later, there were the media rhapsodies over the soon-to-collapse Soviet Union that Rush Limbaugh called "Gorbasms."

So this story from AFP suggests a fruitful new basis of expanded trade with Vietnam that should make our friends delirious.

Vietnam executed its first prisoner by lethal injection on Tuesday, state media said, after a two-year hiatus in carrying out capital punishments due to problems procuring the chemicals.

The communist country stopped using firing squads in July 2011 in favour of "more humane" lethal injections but was unable to import the necessary drugs due to a European Union export ban.

In May this year, Vietnam amended the law to allow locally-produced chemicals to be used, a move which was widely expected to bring about a resumption of executions.

On Tuesday the first death row prisoner, convicted murderer Nguyen Anh Tuan, was administered three injections "for anaesthesia, paralysing the nervous and muscle system, and stopping the heart", according to an online report in the Thanh Nien newspaper.

We will probably have some FDA issues to clear out first.  But then let's start placing orders.

Suspect in Young Girl's Death Captured After Shootout: Three weeks after a 6-year-old girl's body was found wrapped in a tarp in the middle of a northern Texas street, police finally identified the suspect as being her 17-year-old neighbor and arrested him after engaging in a shootout at his home.  Fox News reports that an officer was being treated for a gunshot wound to the leg and the suspect, Tyler Holder, is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head after authorities were forced to return fire.  Authorities believe that Holder sexually assaulted and suffocated the young girl before leaving her body in the middle of the road near her home.

Federal Court Rules States may Keep Lethal Injection Drug: A federal court ruled in the favor of several states and decided that they won't need to surrender their  lethal-injection drug supply despite the fact that the drugs were imported illegally.  Kevin O'Hanlon of the Lincoln Star Journal reports that states were forced to buy the lethal-injection drug, sodium thiopental, oversees after U.S. manufacturers quit producing it due to death-penalty opposition coming from their over-seas customers.  The court also decided that the FDA will no longer be allowed to accept shipments of the drug to the U.S. in the future.  Our Foundation filed a brief in this case encouraging Tuesday's holding.

NY Child Pornography Charges to be Dropped After Search Warrant Error: A New York man facing child pornography charges after more than 100 videos were seized off of his home computer may walk free because the search warrant executed by police listed the wrong address.  Fox News reports that Yuri Bershchansky was being pursued by Department of Homeland Security agents who "accidentally switched" the number of his apartment when writing out the details of the search warrant.  Prosecutors are reviewing their options, and may appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Woman Found to be Posing as a Pro-Zimmerman Rally Supporter: A Texas woman who generated a lot of controversy after holding a sign that said "We're racist & proud" at a pro-Zimmerman rally appears to have been planted there to draw negative attention.  Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit reports that the protestor, Renee Vaughan, has worked for a "far left environmental group" and was attempting to smear the pro-Zimmerman campaign by saying things like "we're better because we're white."  When asked if she was a racist by a reporter Vaughn replied  "there are people here who are racist and apparently think that's OK. I'm not one of them. I'm being sarcastic."     

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today decided Cook v. FDA, the lethal injection drug importation case. CJLF filed an amicus brief in this case.  The point we briefed related to the portion of the order directing the FDA to recover the sodium thiopental previously imported and presently in the possession of the States.  Agreeing with our brief, the court held that the District Court had no authority to issue this part of the order.  By doing so, it adjudicated the interests of parties not before the court, the States, in violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19.

In the remainder of the opinion, the Court of Appeals affirmed the holding that the FDA was required by law to stop the importations at the border.  This part will likely have no immediate practical effect, because no States are presently importing lethal injection drugs as far as we know.  Even so, Congress should amend the statute.  The baseline requirement for FDA approval of drugs is that they be "safe" and "effective," and for lethal injection those requirements are mutually exclusive.

Federal Court Considers Lethal Injection FDA Case: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit court heard argument in Cook v. FDA today. Michael Doyle of McClatchy Newspapers had this pre-argument article. In the lawsuit, death-row inmates from multiple states argue that the FDA's importing of lethal-injection drug sodium thiopental for executions is not part of the approved uses of the drug. The lawsuit was initially filed by torture killer Daniel Wayne Cook of Arizona, who sexually assaulted and murdered two men. Cook was executed last August. At one time, 35 states nationwide and the federal government, had the anesthetic drug included as part of a three-drug protocol to carry out the death penalty. Since 2009, several states stopped using the drug, and began using a single-drug protocol, when domestic manufacturing ceased. California is still considering switching to single-drug executions. Discussed by CJLF Legal Director Kent Scheidegger here.  Mike Scarcella has this post at BLT on the argument.  "[District Judge] Leon ordered the three states to return unused thiopental. The states, however, were not a part of the litigation in the trial court. In court today, [Circuit Judge] Sentelle questioned whether Leon had the authority to force the states to return their supplies of the drug."

GA Prison Gang Violence Becomes More Deadly:  Rhonda Cook of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports gang-related violence is on the rise in the Georgia prison system. In less than 11 months, 12 inmates and a guard were fatally stabbed in state prisons. The numbers represent a violent upward trend from nine deaths last year, seven inmate homicides in 2010 and 2011, and four in 2009. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, seven of the deaths last year were related to prison gang activity. Lax security in GA prisons is cited as part of the problem. Also, cell phones being smuggled into prisons are helping gangs coordinate assaults. So far, three homicides have occurred in 2013.

Federal Judge Rules Against Mental Evaluation of WY Death Row Inmate:  The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson of Cheyenne ruled against a request from Wyoming to examine Dale Wayne Eaton's mental status. The lawyer for the state argued what is relevant to the case is Eaton's mental health at the time of the state court trial, not a current evaluation. Eaton, 59, is disputing his death sentence for the 1988 rape and murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell, 18, of Montana. Eaton's legal team had argued his trial lawyer failed to note his mental issues. A federal appeal is the only thing in the way of his lethal injection. A multi-week hearing on the evidence is set for July.

West Virginia Delegate Wants to Reinstate Death Penalty:  David Gutman of the Associated Press reports that Del. John Overington has introduced a bill to reinstate West Virginia's death penalty, his 27th consecutive attempt. Overington cites West Virginia as the only state in its region without the death penalty, aside from Maryland, as an enticement for dangerous criminals. He points out that if his state had the death penalty, convicted killer Ron Williams would not have been able to take more lives. Williams escaped after four years of incarceration. He killed a police officer in 1975 and another person in 1981. The state's last execution was carried out in 1959, and the death penalty was abolished in 1965.

Next Monday, the D.C. Circuit will hear argument in Cook v. FDA, No. 12-5176.  In that case (formerly Beaty v. FDA), the District Court held that the FDA had acted illegally in allowing importation of sodium thiopental for executions.  The court went on to order the FDA to inform the states that use of their existing stocks of thiopental is illegal and to take steps to recover it.  In issuing the latter part of the injunction, the court was untroubled by the fact that not a single word of the briefing or the court's opinion provided a legal basis for the order.  It was also untroubled by the facts that the states with a powerful interest involved were not parties to the action, the plaintiffs had not taken any steps to make them parties, and the plaintiffs had not shown any reason for an exception to the general rule against adjudicating the rights of nonparties in their absence.

In the Court of Appeals, CJLF appeared as amicus pointing out these problems.  The nonparty problem is the subject of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19.  The plaintiffs largely ignored the brief, just dropping one footnote about the general rule of not considering issues raised only by amici.  That rule has exceptions that the plaintiffs simply ignored.  Some issues must be considered whether a party raises them or not.  Subject matter jurisdiction is one, and Rule 19 is another.

Today the court issued the following order:

It is ORDERED, on the court's own motion, that the parties be prepared to address at oral argument on March 25, 2013, (1) the standing of the appellees to bring this case, with particular reference to the requirement of redressability; and the (2) Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 19 and remedial issues raised in the brief of the amicus curiae Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

A prior post with links to multiple earlier posts on this case is here.  CJLF's summary of argument and a link to the full brief are in this post.

Todd Ruger has this article in the NLJ (registration required) on sequestration cuts to the judicial branch, including federal defenders.

Money for federal defender organizations would be reduced by $53 million, which "could compromise the integrity of the defender function," [AOUSC Director Thomas] Hogan wrote. Allocations for defender salaries would be reduced by 4 percent, non-salary funds by 25 percent and training funds by 50 percent. Payment of Criminal Justice Act panel attorney vouchers could be deferred for almost three weeks at the end of the fiscal year.

Well, the first thing to cut is representation not authorized by law at all.  The second thing to cut is representation authorized only by Joe Biden's drafting error.

In Cook v. FDA, presently pending in the D.C. Circuit, the Federal Public Defender for Arizona is representing murderers from several states in a suit against the Food and Drug Administration for allowing importation of thiopental.  The cases federal defenders are authorized to take on at public expense are listed in 18 U.S.C. §3006A(a)(1)&(2), and civil suits against the FDA do not come remotely within any of the categories.  It's hard to have much sympathy with an office complaining of budget cuts when that office has been making patently illegal expenditures from its existing budget.

Many years ago, then-Sen. Biden snuck a provision into a drug bill, 21 U.S.C. §848(q)(4), to provide representation in capital cases for both federal defendants and state prisoners on habeas corpus.  A provision for continued representation in such things as successive petitions and executive clemency, which only makes sense for federal defendants, was misdrafted so that it applies to state prisoners as well.  (As a matter of code maintenance, the language was later moved without substantial change to title 18, where it belongs, as 18 U.S.C. §3599.)  Now we have federal taxpayer dollars paying for representation in purely state proceedings that follow the appointment in federal habeas, including representation in state collateral reviews and clemency petitions.  Congress needs to fix this so that the continuing representation provision only applies to federal defendants.

Tennessee Looks for New Execution Drug:  Brian Haas of the Tennessean reports that his state is looking for a replacement drug for its lethal injection process after its stock of sodium thiopental was confiscated by the federal government.  The confiscation was the result of a federal judge's March 2012 order announcing that the drug has been illegally obtained by states which use it as part of their three-drug execution protocol.  The ruling in Cook v. FDA (formerly Beaty v. FDA) has been appealed to the DC Circuit as reported in earlier posts available here.  Death penalty opponents were pleased with the ruling because it has delayed executions in some states.  The state is considering switching to the more widely available drug pentobarbital, which is in use in a single drug execution protocol is several states.   

Get Your Pot from a Vending Machine:  NBC news writer Jeff Black reports that California-based Medbox is gearing up to install vending machines dispensing marijuana for recreational users.  The company, which already has machines in Arizona, Massachusetts and Connecticut for "medial marijuana" users, is negotiating with officials Colorado and Washington, which recently legalized pot for recreational use.  A spokesman for Washington's Liquor Control Board said that their law requires that marijuana be sold within the confines of a retail outlet.  McDonalds, Wal Mart, Rite Aid?

Can it be a crime to give a lecture?   Has the FDA enforced the FDCA that way?  Harvey Silverglate has this op-ed in the WSJ:

Peter Gleason was a psychiatrist who devoted much of his professional life to caring for what government officials call "underserved populations." He would have been thrilled to learn that on Dec. 3 in New York, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ringing opinion that vindicated the conduct for which he was indicted and arrested in 2006.

Unfortunately, Gleason did not live to see this welcome reversal of the federal government's crusade against him and the promotion of Xyrem--a drug widely used by physicians, including Gleason, to treat a number of medical conditions beyond what the federal Food and Drug Administration approved it for. Hounded for years, he saw his career and finances ruined by the relentless war waged against him by FDA bureaucrats and Justice Department prosecutors. Gleason committed suicide on Feb. 7, 2011.

Silverglate neglects to mention that the panel was actually divided 2-1.  The opinion is here.  The majority's concluding paragraph reads:

Accordingly, even if speech can be used as evidence of a drug's intended use, we decline to adopt the government's construction of the FDCA's misbranding provisions to prohibit manufacturer promotion alone as it would unconstitutionally restrict free speech. We construe the misbranding provisions of the FDCA as not prohibiting and criminalizing the truthful off-label promotion of FDA-approved prescription drugs. Our conclusion is limited to FDA-approved drugs for which off-label use is not prohibited, and we do not hold, of course, that the FDA cannot regulate the marketing of prescription drugs. We conclude simply that the government cannot prosecute pharmaceutical manufacturers and their representatives under the FDCA for speech promoting the lawful, off-label use of an FDA-approved drug.

The opinion strikes me as narrower and less "ringing" than one would gather from Silverglate's description.  Nonetheless, it does move the ball in the direction of less regulation, and less criminalization, of commercial speech.  Given the importance of the subject and the fact that the panel was divided, further review en banc or in the Supreme Court is a substantial possibility.

The murderers' suit against the FDA for allowing importation of the sodium thiopental used in lethal injections has been set for oral argument in the D.C. Circuit March 25.  The panel is Judges David Sentelle, Judith Rogers, and Douglas Ginsburg. 

Prior posts:

The FDA and Thiopental
South Dakota AG Defies Thiopental Seizure Effort
Another Great Plains AG With Backbone
State AGs to Holder: Appeal Beaty v. FDA
FDA Appealing Thiopental Ruling
Calif. defies order to turn over execution drug
CJLF Files Brief in Imported Thiopental Case

CJLF has filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit in the case of Cook v. FDA.  This is the case where convicted murderers got an injunction against the FDA allowing any more imports of thiopental, and the judge also order the FDA to "notify" the states that their continued possession and use of the previously imported thiopental is illegal.  The latter holding is remarkable in that it was issued without a single sentence in the opinion to support it and in a case where the entities most affected were not parties.  The Summary of Argument is after the jump.

Maxine Bernstein has this story in the Oregonian:

A slide shown to the Governor's Public Safety Commission this summer categorized one quarter of the offenders who were sent to Oregon prisons in 2011 as "low risk."

That's fairly typical of the claims we hear all the time from the soft-on-crime crowd, trying to convince us we are wasting money and committing injustice by locking up people who neither need nor deserve to be locked up.  But it didn't sound credible to Clackamas County DA John Foote, and he poked beneath the surface to see how this classification was done.  He got the list and asked his fellow DAs check them out.

The list compiled was chilling: 57 committed a homicide or tried to kill someone; 78 assaulted someone, many in cases of domestic violence; 53 had committed robberies. Two were on death row, and 21 faced life sentences.

The offenders had been deemed low-risk based on a new actuarial tool Oregon adopted this month that's being used to determine an offender's likelihood of committing a new crime. Called the Public Safety Checklist, it considers an inmate's age, gender and adult criminal history in Oregon.  [Emphasis added.]

Wow.  A risk classification instrument that takes no account whatever of crimes committed in other jurisdictions or as a juvenile!

Craig Prins, executive director of Oregon's Criminal Justice Commission, helped create the new risk assessment. He acknowledged it doesn't consider an offender's out-of-state, federal or juvenile convictions. He called it simply one "piece of information" that can assist sentencing decisions.

I used to be general counsel for a company subject to FDA food labeling requirements.  If we had mislabeled our product the way Prins mislabels "low-risk" offenders, our entire inventory would have been confiscated, and we would have been shut down.

This is a serious matter.  Misclassifying criminals so that they are released when they should be locked up can kill innocent people.  Policy makers and the people must not accept the representations of "low risk" at face value.  They must be challenged and examined, and frauds like this one must be exposed.

Three cheers for DA Foote.