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New York Times - Editorial
November 23, 2006
Public Colleges as 'Engines of Inequality'

Democrats who ran for Congress this fall made the cost of college a big campaign issue. Now that they've won control of the House and Senate, they can prepare to act swiftly on at least some of the factors that have priced millions of poor and working-class Americans right out of higher education. The obvious first step would be to boost the value of the federal Pell Grant program -- a critical tool in keeping college affordable that the federal government has shamefully ceased to fund at a level that meets the national need.

But larger Pell Grants can't solve this crisis alone. Policy changes will also be required in the states, where public universities have been choking off college access and upward mobility for the poor by shifting away from the traditional need-based aid formula to a so-called merit formula that heavily favors affluent students. The resulting drop in the fortunes of even high-performing low-income students -- many of whom no longer attend college at all -- is documented in an eye-opening report released recently by the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation devoted to education reform.

The public universities were founded on the premise that they would provide broad access in exchange for taxpayer subsidies. That compact has been pretty much discarded in the state flagship campuses, which have increasingly come to view themselves as semiprivate colleges that define themselves not by inclusion, but by how many applicants they turn away, and how many of their students perform at the highest levels on the SAT, an index that clearly favors affluent teenagers who attend the best schools and have access to tutors.

The flagship schools compete for high-income, high-achieving students who would otherwise attend college elsewhere, while overlooking low-income students who are perfectly able to succeed at college but whose options are far more narrow.

In recent years, aid to students whose families earn over $100,000 has more than quadrupled at the public flagship and research universities. Incredibly, the average institutional grant to students from high-income families is actually larger than the average grant to low- or middle-income families.

Partly as a result, high-performing students from low-income groups are much less likely to attend college than their high-income counterparts -- and are less likely to ever get four-year degrees if they do attend.

These are ominous facts at a time when the college degree has become the basic price of admission to both the middle class and the new global economy. Unless the country reverses this trend, upward mobility through public higher education will pretty much come to a halt.

* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

::: posted by Stewart at 9:19 PM


 

nytimes.com

November 2, 2006

Despite Flawed Defense, A Death Sentence Stands

By ADAM LIPTAK

Defense lawyers in capital cases are often criticized for conducting superficial investigations of their clients' backgrounds, but Ferdinand Radolovich's performance in a Kentucky case, one that ended in a death sentence, may have set a new standard.

''Apparently,'' a federal judge wrote in 2001, ''neither attorney Radolovich nor the prosecution knew of petitioner's actual identity until his case had been affirmed on appeal.''

When he was later challenged about the quality of his work on the case, Mr. Radolovich testified that he was an accomplished death penalty lawyer at the time, having tried four capital cases. The real number was zero, the federal judge, Jennifer B. Coffman, found, and Mr. Radolovich has been indicted for perjury for his statement.

But none of this has helped the inmate in question, who was sent to death row as James Slaughter but whose real name is Jeffrey Leonard.

Yesterday in Cincinnati, splitting 7 to 7, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declined to rehear the case. A dissenting judge, R. Guy Cole Jr., said the decision to allow Mr. Leonard to be executed even though the jury did not even know his real name, much less his background, opens a ''new chapter in our death penalty history.''

The case is not one of mistaken identity, and there is substantial evidence that Mr. Leonard is guilty of murder. But Mr. Leonard's current lawyers say a competent investigation of his background would have yielded a trove of evidence that might well have persuaded the jury to spare his life. He is, for instance, apparently brain damaged, and he endured a brutal childhood.

In June, the federal appeals court's three-judge panel agreed that Mr. Radolovich's performance was so bad that it violated the Constitution. But the two judges in the majority ruled against Mr. Leonard anyway, saying that better legal work would not have caused the jury to sentence him to life in prison instead of death.

Mr. Leonard, as James Slaughter, was sent to death row in 1983 for the stabbing death that year of Esther Stewart at a Louisville consignment store she owned.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Radolovich defended his work.

''Mr. Slaughter admitted that he had lied to me, that he had given me a false name, a false date of birth, a false Social Security number.'' Mr. Radolovich said. ''He told me he had no living relatives. Where was I supposed to go? What was I supposed to do?''

He added that the perjury charge, to which he has pleaded not guilty, was a result of a misunderstanding. While he acknowledged that the Leonard case was his first capital trial, he said that his testimony, at a 1994 state court hearing on Mr. Leonard's motion to vacate his conviction, meant to refer to experience he gained after the trial.

Judge Coffman, of Federal District Court in Lexington, Ky., wrote that Mr. Radolovich's investigation was inadequate.

''Petitioner could not even correctly spell the name, Slaughter, which he misspelled phonetically as being 'Slawter,' '' Judge Coffman wrote. ''This fact alone would cause the effective attorney to wonder about the veracity of his client's background information.''

In yesterday's dissent, Judge Cole listed some of the information that Mr. Radolovich had failed to locate. Mr. Leonard ''has possible brain damage from an untreated childhood skull fracture.'' His mother and stepfather ''beat him so badly as a child that scars remain all over his body.'' His stepfather ''once fired a gun at him as he ran out of his home carrying his younger brother.'' And ''his mother, brothers and grandparents (who did not know about the trial) would have testified on his behalf.''

The judges who declined to rehear the case yesterday did not give reasons. In the panel decision in June, the two judges in the majority said that ''we do not find it reasonably probable that the outcome of Slaughter's sentencing would have been different if Radolovich had unearthed'' the additional information.

Judge Cole, dissenting yesterday, said that was speculation.

''Although we cannot be absolutely certain,'' Judge Cole wrote, ''that a single juror sentencing Jeffrey Leonard -- a brain-damaged man whose family would corroborate his testimony and plead for his life -- would come to a different conclusion, this court's decision leaves one aspect of this case indisputable: We will never know.''

Judge Cole noted that one juror in the 1983 trial, in a sworn statement, said she would have voted to spare Mr. Leonard's life had she known more about him.

Kathleen K. Schmidt, a lawyer for Mr. Leonard, said she would ask the United States Supreme Court to hear the case.

Mr. Radolovich said he had mixed sentiments about yesterday's decision. ''I'm heartsick that James went to death row,'' Mr. Radolovich said. ''But after he told me he did it and after he lied to me, I'm a little less sympathetic.''

* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

::: posted by Stewart at 9:17 PM


 

nytimes.com

November 11, 2006

Egyptian Says He Was Tortured After Being Kidnapped in Milan
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

A militant Egyptian cleric who prosecutors say was kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency said in a newly published account that he was tortured with electric shocks while he lay on a wet mattress in a Cairo prison and was repeatedly beaten and forced to eat rotten bread in a pitch-black cell, while rats and cockroaches ran over his body.

The cleric's recounting was contained in an affidavit given to Italian prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction. Excerpts were published in a Milan daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, on Thursday.

''I am writing my testimony from this, my tomb,'' writes Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, at the start of an 11-page letter that was excerpted Thursday by the newspaper. His face has been transformed, he claims, ''as a result of the torture.''

Milanese prosecutors have appended the account to the case they are building against 39 people, including 25 C.I.A. operatives. Prosecutors accuse them of abducting Mr. Nasr and sending him to Egypt for questioning, in the American practice of rendition. Members of the Italian secret services, including Nicolo Pollari, the country's top spy, are also under investigation in the kidnapping, which took place in Milan in February 2003.

Earlier this year, an Italian military police officer confessed to having participated in the kidnapping, which he believed was jointly organized by the American and Italian intelligence services.

In the letter, Mr. Nasr says he was stopped by an American, asked for his documents and then forced into a white van where he was ''beaten on my stomach and my entire body'' before being bound and gagged and taken to Cairo by plane.

In the Cairo prison, he says, he was subjected to weeks of torture while he was being interrogated. ''It lasted seven months,'' he wrote, but ''it felt like seven years.'' His wife, Nabila, told Milanese prosecutors that Egyptian officials had tried to bribe her husband so he would deny that he had been kidnapped.

Writing from Egypt, she said that her husband had been offered $2 million ''to say that he had not been kidnapped and to say that he had come of his own free will'' to Egypt, the Milan newspaper reported Friday.

Milanese prosecutors have asked that the United States extradite the 25 operatives they believe organized and executed the kidnapping.

* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

::: posted by Stewart at 9:12 PM

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