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

Mitt Romney, though, thinks that HP’s CEO would make a great governor.

Just last week, Romney stated that if HP CEO Meg Whitman had won her bid for governor, the state of California would be in a much better financial situation:

I wish Californians had elected Meg Whitman. She would have been more successful and explained to Californians the need to cut back on spending and eliminate unnecessary programs. There are other states that have very different records. I think it’s interesting that the state with the highest or among the highest tax rates in the nation also has the worst or near the worst deficit.

California does have a devastatingly high unemployment rate — 10.9 percent — but if all of the HP workers who are getting laid off lived in the state, its unemployment rate would be pushed over the 11 percent line.

Meanwhile, the spending cuts Whitman and Romney advocate wouldn’t actually help the state economy. As Center for American Progress economist Adam Hersh noted in 2011, the states that have cut the most spending have shed the most jobs.

In 1999, California enacted a law guaranteeing that many employer-provided insurance plans include coverage for birth control. Catholic Charities sued, raising very similar claims to the ones raised in today’s lawsuits. When the case reached the state supreme court in 2004, however, five of the court’s six Republican justices held that, even if the law were examined under the strictest level of constitutional scrutiny, California’s contraceptive access law is constitutional:

The [law] serves the compelling state interest of eliminating gender discrimination. Evidence before the Legislature showed that women during their reproductive years spent as much as 68 percent more than men in out-of-pocket health care costs, due in part to the cost of prescription contraceptives and the various costs of unintended pregnancies, including health risks, premature deliveries and increased neonatal care. Assembly, Senate and legislative staff analyses of the bills that became the [birth control law] consistently identify the elimination of this economic inequity as the bills’ principal object. . . .

Strongly enhancing the state’s interest is the circumstance that any exemption from the WCEA sacrifices the affected women’s interest in receiving equitable treatment with respect to health benefits. We are unaware of any decision in which this court, or the United States Supreme Court, has exempted a religious objector from the operation of a neutral, generally applicable law despite the recognition that the requested exemption would detrimentally affect the rights of third parties. . . . [I]n rejecting a religious employer’s challenge to a law requiring him to pay Social Security and unemployment taxes for his employees, the [Supreme C]ourt wrote that “[g]ranting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.“

Only one justice dissented from this outcome, Justice Janice Rogers Brown, who President George W. Bush later appointed to a federal appeals court in D.C. In her new job, Judge Brown wrote an opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is unconstitutional. In other words, eight years ago, the case against contraceptive access earned barely any support even on one of the most Republican courts in the country, and the sole justice who voted to strike California’s law down — Judge Brown — is the same judge who once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.”

On Friday, CNN did some excellent reporting on the bill and the therapy in question. One segment featured the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Ted Lieu (D), as well as American Prospect’s Gabriel Arana, who himself is an ex-gay survivor. Then, Anderson Cooper 360 highlighted another ex-gay survivor, Ryan Kendall, and confronted his therapist, the infamous Joseph Nicolosi.  Nicolosi claimed he couldn’t even remember having Kendall as a patient, even though Kendall has been a very vocal proponent of gay rights, including testifying against Proposition 8. Watch the segments:

These two reports are worth noting because they both avoided significant pitfalls that plague much of the media coverage around ex-gay therapy. One major problem, as epitomized by a poorly defended NPR report last year, is that reporters often create a false balance, calling ex-gay therapy “controversial” and treating the topic like it’s still open for debate. The other significant problem is that the voices of ex-gay survivors are often not included. In both of these reports, CNN included survivors and avoided false balance by focusing on the scientific reality that the therapy is harmful and ineffective.

Legislation like Sen. Lieu’s bill, supported by appropriately framed reporting like CNN’s, could be the key to closing the book on this ugly anti-science invention of anti-gay activists.

Ana Casas Wilson, a California homeowner who has cerebral palsy that forces her to use a motorized wheel chair, waited on Sloan’s front porch so she could hand him a payment on her foreclosed home. Casas Wilson has lived in her home for 27 years, but fell behind on her payments during a hospital stay. Wells Fargo, she said, has been unwilling to negotiate a modification, even though she is again able to make regular payments. After police allowed her to remain on Sloan’s porch for 15 minutes, she was arrested when she refused to leave, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Just before 8 p.m., about 90 minutes into the demonstration, police formed a line around the home, declared the assembly illegal and ordered the group to move 75 feet up the street.

Casas Wilson refused to go and was taken to San Marino police headquarters with the assistance of San Marino Fire Department paramedics.

Casas Wilson isn’t alone. Banks have used shady foreclosure processes throughout the housing crisis, and Wells Fargo has been one of the worst offenders. It has used fraudulent practices like robo-signing, foreclosed on homes over clerical errors, and used a process known as dual-tracking — in which it advises customers on loan modifications while also pursuing foreclosure. Wells Fargo was part of a $25 billion mortgage fraud settlement with state attorneys generals and the federal government and has had to pay multi-million-dollar settlements when homeowners took the bank to court.

The practices have hit homeowners who are struggling for various reasons, whether because of unemployment, rising health care costs, or disability. In March, Bank of America foreclosed on a homeowner who took out a loan to make her house more accessible to her disabled daughter, even after the bank offered a modification. “I’m doing this because people need to see what the banks are doing. It’s awful. It has to stop,” Casas Wilson told the Pasadena Sun. “When I was down and out in the hospital they took my house.”

Having a lesbian, gay, or bisexual sexual orientation is not a mental disorder. There is no scientific evidence that any types of therapies are effective in changing a person’s sexual orientation. Sexual orientation change efforts can be harmful. The risks include, but are not limited to, depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior.

Medical and mental health associations that oppose the use of sexual orientation change efforts include the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

This is model legislation that applies scientific knowledge to the benefit of the general welfare. Ex-gay therapy has been debunked repeatedly and deserves the marginalization that this bill would implement.

Of course, groups that promote ex-gay therapy insist that the evidence supports their traumatic practices, but it’s an empty claim. One of the witnesses at today’s hearing speaking on behalf of NARTH (National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) cited two studies that have been debunked and disavowed. The intention behind the therapy, as essentially admitted in NARTH’s alert email today, is to simply reinforce religious bias against homosexuality. (The same email also mistakenly described the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Ted Lieu (D), as openly gay, in an apparent attempt to further bias the group’s followers.) SB 1172 is an important step forward to protect gay youth and limit the dangerous impact of such stigma.

The Reynoso Task Force Report takes a close look at the events of November 18, 2011, when UC-Davis campus police moved to evict occupiers from campus. In an incident made instantly famous on YouTube, Lieutenant John Pike stepped over a line of peaceful students seated on the ground and calmly proceeded to douse them with military-grade pepper spray. The shocking video quickly went viral, and outrage over the conduct of the police department and UC-Davis’ failure to properly reprimand the officer spread nationwide.

Throughout more than 100 pages of the two reports — one conducted by the task force itself, the other by an outside company at the behest of the university — virtually all of the claims initially made by the police department and its defenders in the UC-Davis administration were debunked.

The task force found that the use of MK-9, the pepper spray discharged by Lt. Pike (and called a food product by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly), was not an authorized weapon for the department and its use “was objectively unreasonable.”

When asked why they felt the need to use the spray, officers initially told the task force that they felt the mob was hostile and needed to create a pathway for the officers to leave the quad. The task force concluded that “a detailed review of the evidence undermines this conclusion.”

The report is damaging to both the police department and to UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who beat back calls for her resignation. The union representing the police department went as far as to seek judicial intervention in blocking the release of the report, but a judge ruled against them on nearly every count.

California State Senator Leland Yee issued a statement following the release of the report:

I am very pleased with the thoroughness of the task force report. As the report indicates, the pepper spray incident was a massive failure by the UC Davis administration and police force. This report allows President Yudof to hold his campus leadership accountable. It also lays the blue print for effectively handling such situations in the future and helps ensure such an incident never happens again. I commend the task force for recognizing the scope of this problem and respecting the free speech rights of students.

Just last week, students at Santa Monica College who were protesting increased tuition costs were similarly pepper sprayed by police, and observers immediately drew comparisons to the events at UC-Davis.

Watch it:

While Romney is right that California’s schools have gone from among the best to among the worst in the past 30 years, he misses one of the main reasons why, and he might not like it — tax cuts.

Specifically, a ballot initiative enacted in 1978 called Proposition 13 that capped property taxes, which were, at the time, the primary funder of public schools. As the Santa Monica, California-based think tank The Rand Corporation noted:

Indeed, Proposition 13 marked a dramatic turning point in funding for K–12 public education in California. Revenues and expenditures per pupil had grown fairly rapidly both in California and nationwide until the early 1980s. But California fell well behind the nation by the late 1980s. Despite recent funding increases for K–12 education, California schools have continued to spend far below the national average. Measured in year 2000 dollars, spending per pupil in California went from more than $600 above the national average in 1978 to more than $600 below the national average in 2000.

Prop. 13 — which also makes it next to impossible to raise any new revenue in California to address the state’s dire budget problems — is a good example of what happens when taxes are cut without regard for the consequences. And it appears Romney is in denial about the consequences.

Students protest at Santa Monica College (Getty Images)

Santa Monica students attempted to attend a Board of Trustees meeting yesterday but were largely denied, with only a limited number of students allowed in and requests to move to a larger venue rejected. When more students attempted to enter the meeting, about 30 were pepper sprayed by police, the Associated Press reports:

Two officers were apparently backed up against a wall, and began using force to keep the students out of the room. Steinman said both officers used pepper spray. “People were gasping and choking,” he said.

Marioly Gomez said she was standing in a hallway outside the meeting with several hundred other students who wanted to get into the meeting. “I got pepper-sprayed without warning,” she said.

Tuition has skyrocketed across the country, but the increase has been incredibly sharp in California over the last decade. After being virtually free for California residents for decades, budget cuts and changes to the University of California and Cal State systems have caused a rise in prices resembling the housing bubble:

Students and university faculty have vowed to continue protesting to preserve education funding for the UC and Cal State systems, each of which is facing threats of further budget cuts after losing $750 million in state funding during the 2011-2012 school year.

The story of Trayvon Martin’s death has gripped the nation’s attention for much of the last two weeks. While questions abound in Sanford, Florida as details slowly trickle out, Trayvon’s death has also prompted closer examinations of other, similar shootings around the country.

In Pasadena, California 19-year-old Kendrec McDade was shot and killed by police after they responded to a 911 caller who said he had been robbed at gunpoint by McDade and another young black man. According to police, McDade was seen reaching towards his waistline when officers opened fire from a close distance. He died after being transported to a local hospital, and no gun or weapon of any kind was found at the scene or on his person.

Pasadena police arrested Oscar Carillo, the man who called 911, and charged him with manslaughter for allegedly lying to police about the perpetrators having a gun. Local activists are now calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice, raising concerns about the legal regime that is giving rise to “shoot-to-kill” incidents:

Local black leaders said the event highlights the need for reforms in the Pasadena Police Department, and have called for the Department of Justice to investigate.

“With African-American teens, the perception is that they are all gangbangers, or they are all packing,” said Joe Brown, president of the Pasadena chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “It does increase the instances of shoot-to-kill with law enforcement, and Pasadena is no exception.”

In Wisconsin, a second story has local leaders drawing comparisons with Trayvon as well. Bo Morrison, a 20-year-old black man, was shot and killed by a homeowner after he ended up on the homeowner’s porch while fleeing a police break-up of a garage party next door. The shooter, Adam Kind, was not arrested thanks to Wisconsin’s newly expanded “Castle Doctrine” laws, which, much like Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws, protect citizens who use deadly force if they feel threatened. Morrison, like McDade and Trayvon Martin, was unarmed when he was killed.

In each case, local leaders have begun campaigns to demand justice and changes in the legal system. In Pasadena, a group of civil rights leaders are demanding a meeting with Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez to discuss the exact details of the shooting, and in Wisconsin, over 150 people rallied in nearby West Bend demanding the state’s Castle Doctrine law be repealed. And this week, demonstrators in D.C. protested these so-called “kill at will” laws.

by Rebecca Friendly

California, a state that’s historically been at the cutting edge of environmental and climate policies, continues to take bold steps in order to address climate change.

Climate studies and projections indicate that California will be hit hard by climate change, losing a great deal of its snow pack (a vital source of freshwater), and experiencing at least one meter of sea level rise by 2100. With the most advanced climate plan of any state, California is taking these threats very seriously (see “Study Confirms Optimal Climate Strategy: Deploy, Deploy, Deploy, Research and Develop, Deploy, Deploy, Deploy“).

What if the rest of the country were as motivated as California? The answer: we’d definitely be one of the leading countries in leading the fight against climate change.

California-based author Mark Hertsgaard recently wrote an eye-opening piece for Yale Environment 360 asking that question. He highlights the various mechanisms California has implemented, including aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals, vehicle emission standards, and renewable energy targets.

In fact, if the rest of the United States had done what California has over the past 40 years, the world might be well on the way to slowing climate change. For in that case, the U.S. today, like California, might be consuming the same amount of energy as it did 40 years ago….  What’s more, the international community might have had a better chance of reaching a deal at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, because the U.S. might have embraced rather than shunned the goal of 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050.

As we move through this vapid period in America’s national clean energy strategy, it’s important to remember what California has done in recent years.

Through bold and innovative policies, California state officials are working to reduce pollution, protect the health of residents, and stabilize climate change — all while attempting to transition to an economy where sustainability is profitable. Hertsgaard’s column shows that such an economy is already taking shape due to the bipartisan Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the continuity of climate policy under Gov. Brown.

The passage of AB 32 in 2006 signaled the state’s commitment to green policies and long-term progressive thinking over partisanship. It established the first-ever mandatory reporting guidelines for global warming pollution, and set a limit for carbon, requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020 and cut them by 80 percent by 2050. To accomplish these goals, the state was to establish a price for carbon, a low-carbon fuel standard, create energy efficiency standards, and create a statewide renewable electricity standard of 33% by 2020.

This January, the California Air Resources Board approved a sweeping package of progressive automobile standards known as the California clean car rules. These policies are an important first step in the larger goal of bringing state emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020.  This package will increase the number of low-pollution and zero emission vehicles available to consumers by 15% by 2025. Half a million of these cars are expected to be fuel cell or electric powered.  This new package is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 52 million tons a year by 2025.

California utilities are also pushing forward to meet the statewide renewable electricity standard. While there are still a number of integration challenges that need to be dealt with, the state has maintained its leadership in solar deployment thanks to the Million Solar Roofs program and the installation of large-scale concentrating solar power plants.

In August of this year, California will also follow up on its AB 32 mandates by holding its first auction of emission allowances under its carbon cap-and-trade program. Under this program the allowable emissions for each individual sector will be capped at 90 percent of the previous year’s emissions. Corporations that don’t utilize all of their allotted emission allowances will be able to auction their remaining allowance to companies that go over their limit. Governor Jerry Brown projects that these auctions will earn over $500 million in extra revenue each year.

So what drives this holistic, unprecedented range of investments? Hertsgaard writes about the culture that contributes to such aggressive action in the state:

Matt Rodriquez, the state’s Secretary for Environmental Protection, said he believed it is partly because many Californians, including policymakers, came to the state in the first place “because of its natural beauty and resources” and thus want them protected. The continuity between the climate policies of governors Brown and Schwarzenegger illustrates how the environment is less of a partisan issue in California; Republican and Democratic politicians alike understand that voters value green policies more than party labels. “Even though there may be a variety of political viewpoints, we share the goal of preserving our agricultural land, our forest lands, maintaining a good quality of water, and preserving the California way of life,” explained Rodriquez.

Of course, climate change isn’t just a California issue. Even if the state continues on this path, the lack of action elsewhere will continue to make the problem worse. If we want to truly combat the problem, we need to follow California’s lead on a broader scale.

Rebecca Friendly is a special assistant in the California office of the Center for American Progress.

Blanca Cardenas' family

Cardenas was arrested outside her Los Angeles home on February 22 after protesting against what she believed was an illegal foreclosure on her home. According to a release from the California-based Occupy Fights Foreclosures, Cardenas disputed the eviction because it believes Bank of America filed fraudulent paperwork to begin the foreclosure process, and also because she was a part of federal bankruptcy proceedings, which protects against foreclosure.

After Cardenas was the subject of a citizen’s arrest (allegedly initiated by an investor who had bought the home), she was detained by Los Angeles Police Department officers and turned over to ICE, leading to another legal dispute. According to the activists backing Cardenas, the local Sheriff’s Department, not LAPD, has jurisdiction over foreclosures and evictions. ICE deported Cardenas to Mexico on February 29.

“It’s been devastating since they took her,” said Gerardo Quinones, Blanca’s husband. “She was deported with nothing but the clothes on her, she didn’t have money or anything else. She had every right to fight for her home and believed the authorities would protect her.”

As Firedoglake’s David Dayen noted, the Obama administration had ordered reviews of undocumented immigrants with no prior criminal record. Occupy activists claim that Cardenas has no prior record and is a “non-priority” undocumented immigrant, but according to ICE officials, she had been previously deported to Mexico in 2002. Upon her arrest, ICE “reinstated her prior order of removal,” according to a statement, which also said the agency’s enforcement “prioritizes the removal of criminal aliens, recent border crossers and egregious immigration law violators, such as those who have been previously removed from the United States.”

Foreclosure fraud and abuse has been prevalent across the country and particularly in California. Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) launched an investigation into foreclosure fraud in December, and a recent audit of 400 San Francisco-area foreclosures found that nearly all of them had legal issues. California Occupy activists have called on banks and federal housing authorities to halt foreclosures until a full investigation into foreclosure fraud is complete.

Most nurse practitioners and physical assistants are skilled at administering a wide range of routine gynelogical care to women — including Pap smears, IUD insertions, prenatal care, and labor and delivery assistance and in California, non-physician professionals are allowed to provide medication that causes an abortion under a doctor’s supervision. Bill SB1501 would only expand the law to include aspiration abortions:

“We believe it will give many California women access to earlier, safer procedures in the first trimester of their pregnancy,” Kehoe said at a news conference in Sacramento on Tuesday.

Abortion rights proponents celebrated Kehoe’s measure as one that bucks the national trend of restricting access to the procedure. The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health issues, found that legislators across the country proposed a record number of laws limiting abortion last year and that 135 became law.

California isn’t alone in expanding women’s access to abortion, however. Washington state is currently considering a measure that would require all health insurers who cover maternity care to also insure abortions, so that women “continue to have easy access to abortions once changes in federal health-care laws take effect in 2014.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, New York is the only other state considering similar legislation.

– Fatima Najiy