Dershowitz stated the facts "do not add up" in the murder conviction of Cooper when issuing his request that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger grant Cooper clemency. America's largest death row is in California with 697 persons.
U.S. representatives responding to their international critics stated that despite legitimate debate on the propriety of the death penalty as a matter of law at the federal level and in 35 states "that punishment is permitted" according to the draft report issued by the UN Human Rights Council.
While the America's governmental scheme makes it structurally difficult for the federal government to outright ban states from conducting executions the federal government could end its use of the death penalty. The U.S. government death row holds nearly 70 persons.
One U.S. death row inmate -" Pennsylvania's "Death Row Journalist' Mumia Abu-Jamal -" received mention by name in one recommendation. Abu-Jamal, perhaps the most recognized among the 25,000-plus under death sentence worldwide, observes the macabre anniversary of spending 29-years inside a prison cell on December 9th.
Cuba called on the U.S. to "end the unjust incarceration of political prisoners including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal." Ample evidence supports international claims that Native American leader Peltier, repeatedly denied parole and ex-Black Panther Abu-Jamal are unjustly incarcerated for deaths involving law enforcement officers.
The issue of political prisoners in the US is a subject generating interest internationally yet one ignored by Americans said Efia Nwangaza, a lawyer who attended that UN human rights review session held in Geneva, Switzerland.
"There are over 75 political prisoners in the US most of them former Black Panther or Black Liberation Army people," said Nwangaza, a Philadelphia native now living in South Carolina who helped prepare documentation on US political prisoners for that UN review.
"We've made progress through an admission by omission with the US not denying it has political prisoners."
In addition to criticisms about death penalty policies in the U.S. nations around the world raised concerns about racial profiling practices in America against blacks, Latinos and persons perceived as Muslim inclusive of U.S. citizens, immigrants and visitors.
U.S. representatives, responding to criticisms about racial profiling, "assured delegations" that it condemns racial and ethnic profiling in all forms" according to the Human Rights Council's report.
Ironically the same week when U.S. representatives offered their assurances the ACLU of Pennsylvania filed a class action lawsuit against the Philadelphia Police Department for racial profiling in that city where the U.S. Constitution was drafted and approved.
That lawsuit involves the police practice called "stop-&-frisk' -" where police detain and search persons. This practice in Philadelphia impacted 253,333 persons in 2009 -" a 148 percent increase from 2005 -" with 72.2 percent of those subjected being blacks who comprise 44 percent of that city's population, according to the lawsuit.
This dragnet-style policing only produced arrests in 8.4 percent of the "stops' with the majority of those arrests being for "interactions following the initial stop" like disorderly conduct and resisting arrest -" i.e. alleged crimes that most likely resulted from objections to being stopped without cause.
One of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit is State Representative Jewell Williams, a veteran of 20-years in law enforcement work, who was roughed up by Philadelphia police in March 2009 while inquiring about a police stop of two 65-year-old black men during an encounter around the corner from Williams' house.
Exposing a paradox in America's race-based policing, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and its Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey (named in the ACLU lawsuit) are both black but back their Stop-&-Frisk policy downplaying its racially disproportionate impact.
"Mayor Nutter repeatedly promised that this policy [Stop-&-Frisk] would be carried out in a way that respected the Constitution," said Mary Catherine Roper, an ACLU-Pa staff attorney. "But instead of stopping people suspected of criminal activity, the police appear to be stopping people because of race."
Former Philadelphia Mayor John Street told a reporter recently that the excessive Stop-&-Frisk practices are actually counter-productive to effective crime fighting because the practices alienate citizens that police need to assist them in crime fighting.
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