Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has directed his administration to purge the state’s voting rolls of thousands of registered voters prior to the November election. But his list, which purports to include only “non-citizens,” targets mostly Democrats and Hispanics and, as ThinkProgress has documented, may disenfranchise hundreds of citizens who are eligible to vote.

The story of a sitting governor of a state with a history of presidential election shenanigans knowingly purging his own, eligible constituents from the voter rolls is the definition of major news, and yet remarkably, in the first five months of the year, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today have published a total of zero articles about Scott’s actions. The New York Times did slightly better, printing one story on page 16 of the Friday, May 18th edition. The article ran under the credulous headline: “Florida Steps Up Effort Against Illegal Voters.”

Florida’s local newspapers, led by The Miami Herald, have been far more diligent in reporting the governor’s effort to disenfranchise eligible voters. While it may be easy to dismiss this as local fare, the implications of Scott’s purge could potentially swing the presidential election come November. Remember, months before anyone had ever heard of hanging chads, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (R) conducted a similar cleansing of the voter rolls in 2000, which resulted in thousands of eligible voters being knocked off the rolls in time for the infamous Gore v. Bush election.

In 1987, Miguel Bacigalupo was sentenced to die for a double murder. Yet a case now pending before the California Supreme Court raises very serious questions about whether Bacigalupo belongs on death row. Although there is little question that he killed two men, new evidence suggests that he may have done so only to save his family:

Bacigalupo, however, maintained that the Colombian mafia ordered him to kill the brothers and that his family would have been murdered if he failed to carry out the “drug hit.” The jury heard scant evidence to back up a connection with drug traffickers.

But evidence unearthed during the appeal suggested Allegro and particularly her lead investigator, Sandra Williams, had strong information from a confidential informant that might have supported Bacigalupo’s claim. And the appeal has hinged on the fact the prosecution team did not share that information with Bacigalupo’s defense attorney before trial, as the law requires.

At the Supreme Court’s direction, retired Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Richard Arnason held lengthy hearings over several years. One witness flown in from Venezuela confirmed that shortly before the murders Bacigalupo had met with Jose Angarita, a cocaine trafficker with ties to Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel, according to court papers.

Defendants in a criminal case have a constitutional right to certain evidence held by the prosecution. In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that withholding exculpatory evidence violates Due Process “where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment.” Prosecutors are also required to turn over exculpatory evidence held only by the police. Any evidence supporting Bacigalupo’s claims that his family was threatened by the Colombian mafia should have been turned over to the defense if for no other reason than because such evidence may have persuaded a jury to impose a penalty other than the death penalty.

For four decades the Supreme Court has recognized that the death penalty is reserved only for the most severe crimes and only for the very worst offenders. Indeed, American juries impose the death penalty on only 2% of convicted murderers. If Bacigalupo’s claims are true, then his actions likely do not amount to a crime severe enough to be punished by the death penalty. At the very least, however, this decision must be left to the jury, not decided for them by a prosecutor who fails to turn over evidence.

–Alex Brown

An eight-part series by New Orleans’ Times-Picayune describes how Louisianans became the most incarcerated people anywhere in the world: “Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.” As Charles Blow explains, much of the blame for this result rests at the feet of prison privatization:

In the early 1990s, the state was under a federal court order to reduce overcrowding, but instead of releasing prisoners or loosening sentencing guidelines, the state incentivized the building of private prisons. But, in what the newspaper called “a uniquely Louisiana twist,” most of the prison entrepreneurs were actually rural sheriffs. They saw a way to make a profit and did. . . .

But in order for the local prisons to remain profitable, the beds, which one prison operator in the series distastefully refers to as “honey holes,” must remain full. That means that on almost a daily basis, local prison officials are on the phones bartering for prisoners with overcrowded jails in the big cities.

It also means that criminal sentences must remain stiff, which the sheriff’s association has supported. This has meant that Louisiana has some of the stiffest sentencing guidelines in the country. Writing bad checks in Louisiana can earn you up to 10 years in prison. In California, by comparison, jail time would be no more than a year.

This is hardly an unusual story from the for-profit prison industry. The industry spends millions lobbying lawmakers to put more people behind bars. Two Pennsylvania judges were recently convicted of a “cash for kids” scandal where they took bribes from corporate prisons in return for sentencing juveniles to lengthy sentences for very minor offenses. Meanwhile, corporate prisons pad their profits by skimping on basic services for inmates or by hitting prisoners with inflated fees. A prison corporation in New Mexico was recently hit with $1.1 million in fines for understaffing its facilities, and another corporate prison in Georgia charges inmates $5 a minute for phone calls — while paying them only $1 a day for their work.

During the GOP presidential primary, Newt Gingrich called presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney the “most anti-immigrant candidate” in the race and ran Spanish-language ads calling Romney “anti-immigrant,” and it appears that Gingrich was right to worry that Romney’s policies would turn off Latinos in the general election. A recent poll shows that only a quarter of Latino voters see Romney positively.

Now that the primary’s over, however, Gingrich suddenly wants to sing a different tune. In an interview with Meet the Press’ David Gregory last Sunday, Gingrich claimed that by emphasizing his economic and education policies — which include massive cuts to education in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy — Romney can erase nearly all of his deficit among Latinos:

GINGRICH: The question is, if you campaign on those issues…does that overcome whatever the Democratic attack is? And I think he’ll probably get the same percent that George W. Bush did, which will be up in the 40s.

Watch here:

It’s unlikely that Latino voters, or any voters, for that matter, will embrace Romney’s less-education-and-more-tax-cuts-for-Donald-Trump polices if Romney campaigns openly on what he stands for. Such an open campaign appears unlikely, however. Romney has already attempted to obfuscate his views in the general election by trying to Etch-A-Sketch away the hardline immigration policies that he espoused during the GOP primary before he needed to woo moderate voters.

Back in January, Romney said his immigration plan would be to make undocumented immigrants “self-deport.” And he proudly accepted the endorsement of Kris Kobach, the anti-immigrant author of Arizona and Alabama’s immigration laws, who is still advising the Romney campaign about immigration. Since he effectively locked up the nomination, however, Romney tried (and failed) to distance himself from Kobach and a Republican Party official even tried to claim that Romney is “still deciding what his position on immigration is.”

Today, Texas Republicans go to the polls to decide whether Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, tenther Ted Cruz, or one of a handful of dark horse candidates will emerge as their nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Dewhurst, who needs to earn at least 50 percent of the vote today to prevent a runoff, decided to close his primary campaign with an ad suggesting that his Cuban-American primary opponent supports “amnesty” for “illegal immigrants”. The ad cites Cruz’s board membership on two conservative Hispanic groups as evidence for this claim.

Listen:

Cruz responded to Dewhurst’s ad by immediately accusing his opponent of racism — claiming that it’s real purpose is to communicate to Texas Republicans that “anyone with a ‘Z’ in their name is unelectable.” Cruz, however, would have much more credibility as a crusader against anti-Hispanic bigotry if he had not launched his own television campaign with a racially charged ad touting his efforts to ensure that Texas could execute an “illegal alien”:

When the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury’s verdict to execute an illegal alien for raping and murdering two teenage girls, Ted Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and he delivered. . . . Politicians cut deals, principled conservatives deliver.

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress previously explained, the case Cruz flags here had nothing whatsoever to do with whether Texas is allowed to kill Mexican nationals who commit capital offenses. Rather, the case presented the very narrow question of whether Texas must comply with America’s then-existing treaty obligation to inform foreign nationals who are arrested in the United States of their right “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” What Cruz won in the Supreme Court is Texas’ right to ignore an international legal obligation that even North Korea has honored.

Nevertheless, Cruz chose to open his campaign with an ad suggesting that he was all that stood between poor, vulnerable Texas Republican families and a marauding Mexican “illegal alien.” He hardly has the moral high ground to protest against someone else’s attempts to inject race into this campaign.

Bill Internicola is a 91-year-old, Brooklyn-born, World War II veteran. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and received the Bronze Star for bravery. He’s voted in Florida for 14 years and never had a problem.

Three weeks ago, Bill received a letter from Broward County Florida stating “[Y]ou are not a U.S. Citizen” and therefore, ineligible to vote. He was given the option of requesting “a hearing with the Supervisor of Elections, for the purpose of providing proof that you are a United States citizens” or forfeit his right to vote.

This decorated World War II veteran is just one of hundreds of fully eligible U.S. citizens being targeted by Governor Scott’s massive voter purge just prior to this year’s election, according to data obtained from Florida election officials by ThinkProgress. The purge list, according to an analysis by the Miami Herald, targets mostly Democrats and Hispanics.

The Advancement Project, a voting rights group in Florida, has asked the Justice Department to investigate, alleging that Scott’s voter purge violates federal law.

Bill appeared at a press conference this morning with Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), who has called on Scott to “immediately suspend” the voter purge.

During a Republican primary debate last week, Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin told voters that he may support eliminating the direct election of Senators — the right guaranteed by the 17th Amendment:

This is a very interesting question, and I haven’t jumped up and down and taken a firm position on it. I think in general, my, I have a very serious concern about erosion of states rights. Very serious concern of that, and this, reversing this decision might pull that balance back. I am, as I’ve mentioned, a strong conservative, I don’t think the federal government should be doing a whole lot of things that it’s doing and it well may be that a repeal of the 17th Amendment might tend to pull that back but I haven’t written any thesis on it or anything like that.

Watch it:

A repeal of the 17th Amendment would make America fundamentally less democratic, and calling for the repeal shows a distrust of the American people. Moreover, the Amendment wasn’t enacted as some sort of federal power grab, as Akin suggests. Rather the call for the Amendment was driven largely by state legislatures and only one state, Utah, voted against it.

The 17th Amendment was adopted in no small part because state legislatures were caught selling seats or were unable to fill them because of electoral deadlocks. And in case Akin doesn’t think corruption or incompetence would be a problem for today’s state lawmakers, he need only look at Rod Blagojevich or the failures of a variety of state legislatures to disabuse himself of that notion. Reformers who called for the 17th Amendment believed that it would clean up corruption and give power to the people. Akin apparently believes that power may be safer in the hands of state governments than the people.

Akin isn’t the only Republican candidate who has called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Other major Republicans have also come out against the 17th Amendment, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Justice Antonin Scalia.

Nevertheless, Akin’s main Republican rivals distanced themselves from him on the 17th Amendment. State Treasurer Sarah Steelman said she is favor of direct election of senators and implied that she worries about the kind of interests that would have influence if the state legislature chose Senators. Similarly, businessman John Brunner is also in favor of direct election of senators and said he is “highly sympathetic to the whole concept of the 17th Amendment, and doing everything we can to bring the power back to the people.”

–Alex Brown

On June 6, Ohio is scheduled to execute Abdul Awkal for the murder of his estranged wife and brother-in-law unless Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) grants a pending clemency petition, or a court steps in with a last minute order. Here are the facts about the mental health of the man set to be executed next Wednesday:

• Survived a Civil War: In 1975, when Abdul was sixteen years old, a civil war erupted in his home country of Lebanon. Abdul lived through this war for eight years before he was able to escape to Michigan to live with family members. Although Abdul never sought treatment during his first months in the United States and thus was not diagnosed with a mental illness until sometime later, he said that he spent his first four months in America sitting on his brother’s couch — behavior an Ohio clemency board said was “as if he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
• History of Mental Breakdowns: Abdul eventually found work as a gas station attendant. About a year after he arrived in the United States, however, he was wrongfully accused of stealing from his employer. According to the Ohio Supreme Court, he then suffered a mental breakdown. Abdul “became hysterical, cursing and breaking things, vomited and then collapsed.” He was taken to a Detroit hospital in a straitjacket and later released with instructions (that he disregarded) to seek psychiatric treatment. Some time later, Abdul suffered at least one more mental breakdown as his marriage to the woman he eventually killed became increasingly dysfunctional. A mental hospital again told him to seek psychiatric care, but he did not follow up because he says he could not afford treatment.

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