"They take off their tops and let the guys touch them."

That's Hugo Rodriguez quoted in this New Times article about the "paralegals" visiting FDC (the federal jail in downtown Miami). More:

But attorneys swear the scam is ongoing. One "discovery room" normally used to discuss trial strategy was recently closed, they say, after guards caught an inmate and a paralegal "discovering" more than legal documents.

Lawyers claim that lax rules have let phony paralegals pamper their narco clients
​"Everyone knows about it," says a private investigator who is familiar with the FDC and asked not to be named. "We call them the 'little hoochie mamas'... They are making a mockery out of the prison system here."

Among the offenses allegedly committed by so-called paralegals: smuggling in a Playboy, feeding alcohol to an inmate by slipping a straw through a grate, and sneaking in $3,000 inside a purse.

In a scene straight out of a porno, one woman was caught on video stripping for an inmate in the jail's Special Housing Unit, attorneys say. The stripper was banned from the FDC.

Money quote from the article:

"If you want some good people-watching, try the FDC," attorney Marc Seitles says. "It certainly beats paying a cover and waiting on lines to get into LIV."

We should treat inmates more humanely (especially first-time non-violent offenders) by letting them have limited internet access and occasional conjugal visits. We should also let them wear their own clothing and eat their own food, like they do in most other countries. There would be lots less violence and abuse. If an inmate messed up, these benefits would be taken away.

Monday morning notes

1. The Supreme Court will hear the GPS case tomorrow. Really interesting issues. SCOTUS Blog has all the news and analysis.

2. Speaking of SCOTUS Blog, there is an excellent interview of Justice Stevens posted there. His former clerk Jeffrey Fisher asks some intriguing questions:

Question: Turning to the different chapters of the book, one of the things that leaps out to me are the different internal procedures the Court has used over the years. For example, you mention that when you were a law clerk under Chief Justice Vinson, the Court’s conferences [at which the Justices cast their initial votes on cases and vote on cert. petitions] ran differently than they do now. Back then, there was a rule that everybody had a chance to speak once before anyone voted. Now, by contrast, Justices vote in conjunction with making their initial comments. Do you think that difference matters in terms of outcomes?

Justice Stevens: I think there might well be cases in which the outcome could be affected. I remember debating this with Byron White, among others, who said, “Well really the vote is never firm until the whole conference is over — in fact until the opinion is released.” And, as you know, votes change from time to time.

But I do think that the old model tends to give the junior Justice a better opportunity to convince more senior members of the Court if everybody has withheld his or her vote until everybody has had something to say. It just seems to me it’s a better way to proceed. And as I think I say in the book, Bill Rehnquist and I used to sit next to each other in the conference when I was a junior Justice and he was next most junior, and we both raised it once or twice, and he felt the same way then. But he became Chief, and he changed his view.

Question: What do you think changed his view?

Justice Stevens: He became Chief.

Question: He wanted to vote first, do you think?

Justice Stevens: I think — that’s right, he recognized the fact that the order of precedence may have an impact.

3. Could hackers free everyone at FDC:

Federal authorities are concerned about new research showing U.S. prisons are vulnerable to computer hackers, who could remotely open cell doors to aid jailbreaks.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is “aware of this research and taking it very seriously,” spokesman Chris Burke told The Washington Times.

Mr. Burke was reacting to research by private experts who found that the security systems in most American prisons are run by computer software vulnerable to hackers.

“You could open every cell door, and the system would be telling the control room they are all closed,” said John J. Strauchs, a former CIA operations officer who helped develop a cyber-attack on a simulated prison computer system and described it at a hackers’ convention in Miami last week.

The security systems in most American prisons are run by special computer equipment called industrial control systems, or ICS. They are also used to control power plants, water treatment facilities and other critical national infrastructure. ICS has increasingly been targeted by hackers because an attack on one such system successfully sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program in 2009.
A malicious cyber-intruder could “destroy the doors,” by overloading the electrical system that controls them, locking them permanently open, said Mr. Strauchs, now a consultant who has designed security systems for dozens of state and federal prisons..

Hackers could “shut down secure communications” through the prison intercom system and crash the facility’s closed-circuit television system, blanking out all the monitors, he added.

4. Should those who view child porn on the internet get the same sentence (life) as murderers? The NY Times examines that question here:

A circuit court judge in Florida clearly thinks so: On Thursday, he sentenced Daniel Enrique Guevara Vilca, a 26-year-old stockroom worker whose home computer was found to contain hundreds of pornographic images of children, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But the severity of the justice meted out to Mr. Vilca, who had no previous criminal record, has led some criminal justice experts to question whether increasingly harsh penalties delivered in cases involving the viewing of pornography really fit the crime. Had Mr. Vilca actually molested a child, they note, he might well have received a lighter sentence.

“To me, a failure to distinguish between people who look at these dirty pictures and people who commit contact offenses lacks the nuance and proportionality I think our law demands,” said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, who highlighted Mr. Vilca’s case on his blog, Sentencing and Law Policy.

Sexual offenses involving children enrage most Americans, and lawmakers have not hesitated to impose lengthy prison terms for offenders. In Florida, possession of child pornography is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Mr. Vilca was charged with 454 counts of possession, each count representing one image found on the computer.

5. Can police set up a fake cell phone tower to get information from your phone without a warrant? Via Wired:

Federal authorities used a fake Verizon cellphone tower to zero in on a suspect’s wireless card, and say they were perfectly within their rights to do so, even without a warrant.

But the feds don’t seem to want that legal logic challenged in court by the alleged identity thief they nabbed using the spoofing device, known generically as a stingray. So the government is telling a court for the first time that spoofing a legitimate wireless tower in order to conduct surveillance could be considered a search under the Fourth Amendment in this particular case, and that its use was legal, thanks to a court order and warrant that investigators used to get similar location data from Verizon’s own towers.

The government is likely using the argument to avoid a court showdown that might reveal how stingrays work and open debate into the tool’s legality.

Stingrays spoof a legitimate cellphone tower in order to trick nearby cellphones and other wireless communication devices into connecting to the tower, as they would to a real cellphone tower. When devices connect, stingrays can see and record their unique ID numbers and traffic data, as well as information that points to a device’s location. To prevent detection by suspects, the stingray sends the data to a real tower so that traffic continues to flow.

By gathering the wireless device’s signal strength from various locations, authorities can pinpoint where the device is being used with much more precision than they can get through data obtained from the mobile network provider’s fixed tower location.

"Unequal Justice"

That's the title of this riveting Miami New Times piece about prison rape at the Miami FDC. We blogged on this issue before here. Below is the intro to the in depth article that is worth a read:

On the fifth floor of the Federal Detention Center in Miami, a short and stocky inmate stood sweeping the floor. Her name was Shonda Ross, and in her 32 years, she had seen the inside of more than a few prisons like this one — Tallahassee, Raleigh, and Danbury, Connecticut, among them. She had learned to survive in prison; she knew how to make friends with people who could protect her and get her the things she needed, such as the girlfriend in Tallahassee who smuggled in drugs from the back fence. But nothing prepared her for this place.
Built in 1995, the prison featured a Depression-era Art Deco exterior that was a cheery nod to South Beach, but other than that, everything was standard: a white-washed concrete shell for a room, a metal bunk with a thin mattress, a toilet made of steel. There were television sets in the common area, a rec room with Ping-Pong tables, and a place to smoke and get a bit of fresh air. But here in her room with the metal door shut, she was blocked off from all of that. She couldn't hear the traffic humming outside on NE Fifth Street; she couldn't feel the muggy summer heat or hear the music from cars going to the beach. She was sealed off, a stark fluorescent bulb above her, alone with her thoughts.
She churned her broom, picking up dust bunnies off the gray linoleum floor. She was an attractive woman, with disarming, fawn-like brown eyes that had attracted both men and women. The name of one lover decorated her right arm; a tiny red heart adorned her left breast.
She heard the door click open. Through the reflection of the stainless-steel plate that served as her mirror, she could see the figure of a large black man entering her cell.
He sported the uniform of a federal corrections officer: crisp white button-down shirt, neatly pressed gray slacks, sharp black tie, and shiny black shoes. He stood five-foot-nine — four inches taller than her — and carried 200 pounds of taut, sinewy muscle. She recognized him right away. He'd been here before, and every time it was the same thing.
As he moved closer, she could feel his hot breath on her neck. He unbuttoned her jumpsuit, pulled it off her soft shoulders, and let the red cotton garment fall to the floor. He led her to the bottom bunk and sat her down. He didn't have to say anything. They both know why he was there. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and waited for it to end.

Padilla co-defendant attempts suicide at FDC

Jay Weaver is reporting here that Jose Padilla co-defendant Adham Amin Hassoun attempted suicide last week at the Federal Detention Center. Sentencing on Padilla, Hassoun, and Jayoussi was supposed to begin tomorrow, but we're told that it has been pushed off until January.

In other news, the Liberty City 7 jury has the case (via Vanessa Blum). Over/under on verdict? As with the Padilla verdict, I say verdicts by the end of the week. (Rumpole never did send me my check...)

There's a new warden in town

The current warden of the Federal Detention Center in Miami, Florida -- Loren Grayer -- is moving. No word yet on the new warden.