San Francisco's efforts to alleviate juvenile hall overcrowding by diverting less serious offenders to community facilities has hit something of a snag. Turns out the juvie hall is chock full of major offenders. "Officials were less willing to direct the youths into community-based alternatives to jail because they were arrested for more serious crimes, including robbery, assault and homicide, Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Bill Siffermann said" in this SF Chron story.

Lethal Injection Debra Saunders has a piece in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle which is mildly critical of last week's PLos study on lethal injection. At one point she asks "Do those who argue that lethal injection is painful think that judges and voters are stupid?"

DNA: The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that a law that gives district attorneys the authority to deny a defendant's request for DNA testing is unconstitutional as reported in an AP story by Andrew Welsh-Huggins. The court's ruling came in 1991 case in which the defendant pled guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl.

Terrorist In a one sentence order the United States Supreme Court has refused to hear enemy combatant Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita's petition to block his transfer from Gitmo to Libya, his home country. The court's action is reported by Jeannie Shawl in Jurist