The federal government is considering various regulations on the commercial harvesting of hemp, and hemp farmers are none too thrilled.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released an interim rule last October, nearly 11 months after 2018 Farm Bill legalized the production of industrial hemp. The rules dictate that hemp farmers must harvest within 15 days of testing their crop for THC. Farmers must then take samples from the top of the plant, where THC levels are the highest, and send them to a certified Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lab.
Under federal and most state regulations, cannabis plants with a THC level of 0.3 percent or lower are considered hemp. Crops that test above 0.3 percent for THC combined with THCA, a nonpsychoactive component of the plant, must be destroyed. Farmers whose crops repeatedly test above 0.5 percent could be suspended from growing hemp altogether.
In an attempt to gauge more feedback, the USDA extended its public comment period until the end of January. Many farmers expressed their skepticism about the pending regulations.
“The 0.3 percent limit is fine if you give 30-40 days to harvest afterward,” wrote Minnesotan hemp farmer Jeremy Sauerssig. “The 15 days is fine if you raise the total THC limitations.” He doubted that these requirements can work for any geographical location.
Susan Corbett from Virginia suggested that the USDA raise the THC limit to 1 percent. “No one is getting high on 1% THC,” she said. “That latitude will allow farmers to grow plants with 16% to 18% CBD, making this very stressful and labor-intensive crop worth the effort.”
There is also confusion about whether the 15-day rule marks the beginning or end of the harvest period. Some hemp fields take multiple days to harvest, so they could miss the 15-day window even if they began cultivation before the allotted time. THC concentration typically increases as plants mature, so a crop could potentially rise above the threshold if the testing process isn’t completed early enough in those 15 days.
“I would have to grow at least three times as many plants under the USDA rule to produce the same amount of CBD as I get out of one plant now,” said Dennis Kulesza of Vermont.
“A reasonable and viable solution,” Kulesza noted, “would be to allow certified testing laboratories to extract any THC-A from a crop when it is processed and turn it over to medical marijuana facilities such as hospitals and dispensaries.”
The proposed rules also complicate states’ plans. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture has now been urged by the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association tostick with the rules outlined in its 2014 hemp research pilot program until the USDA’s requirements are further clarified. “Maintaining the pilot program while these issues are addressed will help stabilize Kentucky’s hemp program, give the farmers some certainty, and promote much needed rural economic development,” said Jane Groda, the vice president of the organization.
South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to reconsider the testing requirements. “We believe that several provisions in the interim final rule lack the flexibility necessary for our farmers to be profitable and for SCDA to be able to implement a successful hemp program,” Weathers said.
The USDA ought to listen closely lest these regulations kill a promising new industry.
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Virginia has now become the 38th state to vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which arguably crosses the ratification threshold set out in Article V of the U.S. Constitution for constitutional amendments. And so, Virginia has forced us to think seriously about the question of how the Constitution can be validly amended.
Back in June of 2018, as the National Organization for Women was gearing up a campaign to push the ratification of the ERA over the finish line, I argued that the effort was misguided and that the states should properly consider the proposed amendment dead and no longer available for potential ratification. Although the Virginia legislature apparently disagrees, I still think the ERA has not been properly ratified and should not be considered to be part of the Constitution.
There are a host of issues here. Some are purely procedural. The Office of Legal Counsel has recently issued an opinion concluding that the ERA is dead. The key issue for the OLC is whether Congress has the authority to set a time limit on the ratification of a constitutional amendment, which Congress purported to do in the case of the Equal Rights Amendment. When Congress voted to adopt the ERA in 1972 and send it to the states for potential ratification, it conditioned its approval on a seven-year ratification deadline (Congress subsequently voted to extend the deadline to the summer of 1982).
This is consistent with the relatively modern practice by which Congress has attempted to limit how long the ratification process can take. The text of the Constitution provides very little guidance about the ratification process and says nothing about whether or not Congress can set a deadline on the process. The OLC says that it can, and the national archivist, who is tasked with registering a successful ratification, has deferred to the OLC. For the moment, the executive branch of the federal government at least has concluded that the ERA has not yet been ratified and cannot be ratified in its current form. (Even if the OLC is right about the initial deadline, there is a further interesting question of whether Congress could now vote to further extend the deadline and retroactively validate the tardy ratification votes.)
Some issues are conceptual, and those were the focus of my earlier post. Why do we have this kind of process for revising the Constitution and what are the implications of this design? Ultimately, I think Article V is best understood as creating a supermajoritarian process of democratic deliberation on constitutional change. It requires broad democratic agreement to change the constitutional rules. That process of democratic deliberation becomes incoherent if adoption and ratification is not more-or-less contemporaneous. Most amendments to the U.S. Constitution have taken about two years to be ratified, and nearly all of them have been adopted well within the seven-year limit set by Congress when it adopted the ERA. The singular outlier is the Congressional Pay Amendment, which was adopted by the First Congress and was recognized as successfully ratified in 1992. The Office of Legal Counsel (mistakenly in my view) accepted the Twenty-Seventh Amendment as validly ratified.
Now the ERA would be the only other example of a constitutional amendment that was adopted through a multi-generational process of ratification with votes separated by decades. It might be the case that there is currently a national supermajority to adopt the ERA, but we have no idea if that is true. In truth, we are effectively adopting the ERA on the basis of the votes of three state legislatures that responded to the new NOW ratification strategy that presumed that the ERA was not dead after all. Swept under the rug are the state legislatures that subsequently rescinded their ratification votes and those that conditioned their own ratification votes to the original congressional deadline. NOW would prefer to play the game of “heads I win, tails you lose” with the constitutional amendment process.
Finally, this unorthodox ratification process also raises interpretive issues. At least with the Congressional Pay Amendment we had a clear technical rule that raises very few interpretive quandaries. Legislators in 1789 and 1992 both understood themselves to be adopting the same rule. No one can confidently say what constitutional rule the ERA embodies. It does not embody a straightforward technical rule. It references deeply contested political principles, and there is little guidance about which potential principle is actually being enshrined in the Constitution through the language of the ERA.
Some urge that it should simply be adopted for the sake of political symbolism. That’s fine if we can all agree that it has no legally consequential effects, but I suspect those who say today that this is just symbolism will say tomorrow that it has consequences that courts should enforce against democratically elected legislatures. Perhaps we should just think that the ERA is a cypher that effectively delegates to federal judges the authority to make up and enforce whatever rule they want in the name of gender equality. That might well be the practical effect of accepting the validity of the ERA. For those who might generally favor originalism as the proper guide to constitutional interpretation, the ERA is an interpretive nightmare. An amendment that was initially proposed to alter a legal environment that has not existed for decades in the United States but that is somehow still seen as necessary by current proponents hardly has an obvious public meaning. Perhaps we should just think that Congress and the states have now endorsed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 decision of Reed v. Reed?
If we think there is a serious need for the ERA and genuine support for it in the contemporary United States, then there is a ready solution—draft a new amendment, push it through Congress, and send it to the states. If we think that the ERA could not currently be adopted and ratified in a reasonable amount of time, then perhaps we should not be eager to say that the ERA is part of the Constitution because exactly three states legislatures have endorsed it since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
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It’s not often that one hears of seven correctional officers and personnel, the family of a murder victim, and former jurors ask for the life of a death row inmate to be spared. That’s exactly what’s happening in Tennessee. A clemency petition asking Gov. Bill Lee to spare the life of Nick Sutton was filed on Tuesday.
Tennessee has executed six death row inmates over the past two years. Sutton, 58, has been on death row for over half of his life and will be the seventh to die if his execution, scheduled for February 20, 2020, proceeds.
Sutton was convicted of four murders, all carried out while he was between the ages of 18 and 23. His victims include Dorothy Sutton (his paternal grandmother), Charles Almon, John Large (a friend of his), and Carl Estep, who he killed while in prison. The Tennessean details the murders here.
“Nick Sutton has gone from a life-taker to a life-saver,” reads the petition that now asks the governor to commute his death row sentence to a life sentence.
Supporters argue Sutton is one of the “most rehabilitated” prisoners they’ve met. A few of them credit Sutton with literally saving their lives. A website created on behalf of Sutton’s appeal shares testimonies from at least five different people sharing stories of how he stepped in to help them and others while behind bars.
Tony Eden, a retired Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) lieutenant, said five armed inmates surrounded him during a prison riot in an attempt to take him hostage. That’s when Sutton and another inmate confronted the others. They managed to get Eden out of the situation before escorting him to safety. “I owe my life to Nick Sutton,” he added.
Eden was quoted in the clemency petition saying that he would welcome Sutton into his home if he were released tomorrow. In Eden’s opinion, Sutton, “more than anyone else on Tennessee’s Death Row, deserves to live.”
Other correctional officers explained how Sutton assisted them in situations where he or other inmates could have easily taken advantage of them. The petition notes examples of how the man who once killed another man behind bars has since taken it upon himself to care for his ailing fellow inmates.
Sutton received high compliments from seven current and former correctional officers and counselors for his behavior:
“Living proof of the possibility of rehabilitation and the power of redemption.”
“An honest, kind and trustworthy man who has used his time in prison to better himself and show that change is possible.”
“A man who has not only rehabilitated himself but works to help other inmates improve their lives.”
Sutton also has support from the family members of his grandmother, as well as the families of two of his other victims.
“It breaks my heart that Mr. Sutton has lost so much of his life on death row for killing my father,” said Rosemary Hall, Estep’s eldest daughter, in the petition. Speaking on behalf of her family, Hall expressed that killing Sutton would bring further suffering.
Nick’s cousin, Lowell Sutton, said his family supports a life sentence for the death of his aunt. Sutton added, “although the loss of my aunt was very hard on our family, I forgive Nick, our family forgives Nick, and we do not want him to be executed.”
Five members of the jury who sentenced Sutton to death row over 30 years ago also want him removed from death row. The jurors wrote that while they previously were in favor of Sutton receiving the death penalty, they now support a life sentence because of his rehabilitation.
Sutton is being represented pro bono by Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge. Sharp notably stepped down from his lifetime appointment after being forced to impose a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison, which he deemed unfair in the case.
“Nick has worked tirelessly to change his life during his 34 years on death row and his transformation is nothing short of extraordinary,” Sharp said in a statement provided to Reason. “We should trust the correction professionals who have seen how Mr. Sutton behaves and are taking the highly unusual step of personally advocating for clemency in his case. Their support demonstrates that justice and the public good would be best served through granting Nick executive clemency.”
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The hashtag #CNNIsTrash is the number one trend on Twitter as of this writing due to the network’s appalling treatment of Bernie Sanders in last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Iowa.
The joint smear job against Sanders had many arms, including wildly biased questions like Wolf Blitzer deliberately associating Bernie with “Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei” by pointing out that they both want US troops out of the Middle East and demanding to know how he was going to avoid “bankrupting the country” with a healthcare plan used in nations all over the world.
But by far the most glaringly egregious assault on the Vermont Senator’s image was when CNN moderator Abby Phillip took a completely evidence-free sexism smear which defies all logic and presented it to the debate audience as an established and undeniable fact. You can watch the exchange here:
Phillip brought up a transparently ridiculous claim that was “leaked” to the press and confirmed by Warren that in 2018 Sanders had told Warren he did not believe that a woman could win a presidential election. It’s a completely unproven allegation about an unwitnessed private conversation, yet Phillip did not ask Sanders if he had said such a thing, she asked him why he said it, presenting it as a given fact.
Sanders explicitly denied ever saying any such thing. He said there’s Youtube footage people can look up of him saying a woman could become president many decades ago, adding that he only ran for president in 2016 because Warren refused grassroots efforts to persuade her to run (efforts which he’d supported).
“So Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?” asked Phillip.
“That is correct,” Sanders replied.
“Senator Warren,” Phillip then asked without missing a beat. “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you that a woman could not win the election?”
It was such a brazen manipulation that even CNN’s heavily pro-establishment crowd audibly reacted. Warren then cooperated with this manipulation by responding as though the allegation was a proven fact, without acknowledging Sanders’ denial or defending her claim.
In CNN’s post-debate analysis, pundits actively reinforced the completely fact-free narrative that this allegation was an established reality, with Van Jones referring to “a banana peel sitting out there for Bernie to slip on when it came to his comments about women,” an idea premised on the position that those comments are known to have actually happened.
CNN’s Jess McIntosh took it even further, overtly dismissing Sanders’ denial and saying, “I think what Bernie forgot was that this isn’t a he said/she said story. This is a reported out story that CNN was part of breaking, so to have him just flat out say no I think wasn’t nearly enough to address that for the women watching.”
“I think what Bernie forgot is that this *isn’t* a he said she said story, this is a reported out story that CNN was part of breaking…”
Of course, the allegation absolutely is a he said/she said story, per any possible definition: Warren says it happened, Sanders said it didn’t. The fact that CNN “reported out” on that he said/she said story doesn’t magically turn it into a fact, as should be obvious to any grown adult who isn’t suffering from a severe head wound.
More importantly, nobody actually believes that Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren a woman cannot be president. Not Jess McIntosh, not Abby Phillip, not Van Jones, not Elizabeth Warren, not CNN, and not any of the establishment loyalists who are trumpeting this allegation as fact. Anyone who claims to believe that this interaction occurred is simply lying to advance a political agenda, and they know it.
The belief that a woman cannot be elected president in 2020 is not a thing. Nobody believes that, and anyone who pretends to believe that anyone believes that is simply telling you that they are an unprincipled liar who would rather take a nonsense stand on a nonsense issue than promote actual policies and changes. The heavy favorite to win the 2016 election was a woman, and were she not literally in the middle of an FBI investigation during that election she would have overcome the narrow margins she lost by.
It’s been years since anyone has believed that a woman cannot win a US presidential election. If you claim that the one person in the world who does believe this is a senator who’s spent decades advocating for feminism and women in politics, you are a liar. It absolutely is that simple.
So angry Berners have been rightly decrying the despicable manipulations of CNN, which can only be a good thing. A massively influential news corporation owned by the largest telecommunications company on the planet should not be able to determine who voters select to the highest elected office in the most powerful country in the world.
This is oligarchic election interference, plain and simple. If the US government is going to call a few thousand dollars in Russian facebook memes election meddling, then the billions which get poured into the billionaire media tilting the scale to advantage the billionaire class is far worse by orders of magnitude.
Last May I wrote an article titled “The Worst 2020 Election Interference Will Be Perfectly Legal” saying that the most egregious forms of election meddling we’ll see in this presidential race will not be perpetrated by the Russians, nor by the DNC, nor by sleazy gerrymandering or voter ID requirements, nor by hard vote tally manipulation, but the everyday, in-your-face manipulations of corporate media outlets like CNN. Unsurprisingly, this is already proving undeniably true.
What you just saw tonight IS rigging an election. But go on, CNN, Nancy Pelosi, and corporate dems, do keep telling us how Russia is the real boogie man trying to destroy our democracy. #CNNisTrash
— beth, purity test enthusiast (@bourgeoisalien) January 15, 2020
In fact the power of these vast news media corporations to manipulate the way the populace thinks and votes stretches far beyond the consequences of a mere presidential election. The ability to manufacture consent for the agendas of the plutocratic class which controls these corporations enables war, ecocide, militarism, soul-crushing oligarchic neoliberalism, increasingly Orwellian surveillance programs and an increasingly militarized police force to destroy lives and this very world without it ever occurring to a critical majority that it would be possible for us to use the power of our numbers to force real changes to our advantage.
It is good that people are loudly criticizing this dynamic. It’s important to keep drawing attention to the way we’re being manipulated out of having any control over not just what happens in our world, but over what we think about what happens in our world. Hopefully public trust in the mouthpieces of oligarchy can be weakened to such an extent that people stop buying into their deceptions.
A Burning Sensation: Gwyneth Paltrow’s $75 Vagina Scented Candle Is Already Sold Out
Gwyneth Paltrow is either insane, or a marketing genius. We’re going to guess the latter.
Why? Because she is selling a candle through her online “Goop” store for $75 and it’s already sold out. We’re not sure what the margins run on $75 candles, but they’ve got to be pretty good.
So what’s the hook that’s bringing people in? The name of the candle is “This Smells Like My Vagina”.
Yes, for just $75, perverts around the world can fool themselves into thinking they are living in the nether regions of the famous 47 year old actress by shelling out for and burning the candle, which according to Fox News actually is made up of geranium, citrusy bergamot and cedar smells.
The idea for the candle supposedly started as a joke and the product description online reads: “This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP — the two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, ‘Uhhh … this smells like a vagina’ — but evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent.”
The candle is sold out online.
Paltrow has often garnered headlines for her lifestyle company’s products. Last holiday season, it sold $43,000 earrings, an animal cruelty-free moisture bar shaped like an egg for $65 and a BDSM kit.
Goop called its holiday gift guide the “ridiculous but awesome gift guide.”
The federal government is considering various regulations on the commercial harvesting of hemp, and hemp farmers are none too thrilled.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released an interim rule last October, nearly 11 months after 2018 Farm Bill legalized the production of industrial hemp. The rules dictate that hemp farmers must harvest within 15 days of testing their crop for THC. Farmers must then take samples from the top of the plant, where THC levels are the highest, and send them to a certified Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lab.
Under federal and most state regulations, cannabis plants with a THC level of 0.3 percent or lower are considered hemp. Crops that test above 0.3 percent for THC combined with THCA, a nonpsychoactive component of the plant, must be destroyed. Farmers whose crops repeatedly test above 0.5 percent could be suspended from growing hemp altogether.
In an attempt to gauge more feedback, the USDA extended its public comment period until the end of January. Many farmers expressed their skepticism about the pending regulations.
“The 0.3 percent limit is fine if you give 30-40 days to harvest afterward,” wrote Minnesotan hemp farmer Jeremy Sauerssig. “The 15 days is fine if you raise the total THC limitations.” He doubted that these requirements can work for any geographical location.
Susan Corbett from Virginia suggested that the USDA raise the THC limit to 1 percent. “No one is getting high on 1% THC,” she said. “That latitude will allow farmers to grow plants with 16% to 18% CBD, making this very stressful and labor-intensive crop worth the effort.”
There is also confusion about whether the 15-day rule marks the beginning or end of the harvest period. Some hemp fields take multiple days to harvest, so they could miss the 15-day window even if they began cultivation before the allotted time. THC concentration typically increases as plants mature, so a crop could potentially rise above the threshold if the testing process isn’t completed early enough in those 15 days.
“I would have to grow at least three times as many plants under the USDA rule to produce the same amount of CBD as I get out of one plant now,” said Dennis Kulesza of Vermont.
“A reasonable and viable solution,” Kulesza noted, “would be to allow certified testing laboratories to extract any THC-A from a crop when it is processed and turn it over to medical marijuana facilities such as hospitals and dispensaries.”
The proposed rules also complicate states’ plans. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture has now been urged by the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association tostick with the rules outlined in its 2014 hemp research pilot program until the USDA’s requirements are further clarified. “Maintaining the pilot program while these issues are addressed will help stabilize Kentucky’s hemp program, give the farmers some certainty, and promote much needed rural economic development,” said Jane Groda, the vice president of the organization.
South Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to reconsider the testing requirements. “We believe that several provisions in the interim final rule lack the flexibility necessary for our farmers to be profitable and for SCDA to be able to implement a successful hemp program,” Weathers said.
The USDA ought to listen closely lest these regulations kill a promising new industry.
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Virginia has now become the 38th state to vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which arguably crosses the ratification threshold set out in Article V of the U.S. Constitution for constitutional amendments. And so, Virginia has forced us to think seriously about the question of how the Constitution can be validly amended.
Back in June of 2018, as the National Organization for Women was gearing up a campaign to push the ratification of the ERA over the finish line, I argued that the effort was misguided and that the states should properly consider the proposed amendment dead and no longer available for potential ratification. Although the Virginia legislature apparently disagrees, I still think the ERA has not been properly ratified and should not be considered to be part of the Constitution.
There are a host of issues here. Some are purely procedural. The Office of Legal Counsel has recently issued an opinion concluding that the ERA is dead. The key issue for the OLC is whether Congress has the authority to set a time limit on the ratification of a constitutional amendment, which Congress purported to do in the case of the Equal Rights Amendment. When Congress voted to adopt the ERA in 1972 and send it to the states for potential ratification, it conditioned its approval on a seven-year ratification deadline (Congress subsequently voted to extend the deadline to the summer of 1982).
This is consistent with the relatively modern practice by which Congress has attempted to limit how long the ratification process can take. The text of the Constitution provides very little guidance about the ratification process and says nothing about whether or not Congress can set a deadline on the process. The OLC says that it can, and the national archivist, who is tasked with registering a successful ratification, has deferred to the OLC. For the moment, the executive branch of the federal government at least has concluded that the ERA has not yet been ratified and cannot be ratified in its current form. (Even if the OLC is right about the initial deadline, there is a further interesting question of whether Congress could now vote to further extend the deadline and retroactively validate the tardy ratification votes.)
Some issues are conceptual, and those were the focus of my earlier post. Why do we have this kind of process for revising the Constitution and what are the implications of this design? Ultimately, I think Article V is best understood as creating a supermajoritarian process of democratic deliberation on constitutional change. It requires broad democratic agreement to change the constitutional rules. That process of democratic deliberation becomes incoherent if adoption and ratification is not more-or-less contemporaneous. Most amendments to the U.S. Constitution have taken about two years to be ratified, and nearly all of them have been adopted well within the seven-year limit set by Congress when it adopted the ERA. The singular outlier is the Congressional Pay Amendment, which was adopted by the First Congress and was recognized as successfully ratified in 1992. The Office of Legal Counsel (mistakenly in my view) accepted the Twenty-Seventh Amendment as validly ratified.
Now the ERA would be the only other example of a constitutional amendment that was adopted through a multi-generational process of ratification with votes separated by decades. It might be the case that there is currently a national supermajority to adopt the ERA, but we have no idea if that is true. In truth, we are effectively adopting the ERA on the basis of the votes of three state legislatures that responded to the new NOW ratification strategy that presumed that the ERA was not dead after all. Swept under the rug are the state legislatures that subsequently rescinded their ratification votes and those that conditioned their own ratification votes to the original congressional deadline. NOW would prefer to play the game of “heads I win, tails you lose” with the constitutional amendment process.
Finally, this unorthodox ratification process also raises interpretive issues. At least with the Congressional Pay Amendment we had a clear technical rule that raises very few interpretive quandaries. Legislators in 1789 and 1992 both understood themselves to be adopting the same rule. No one can confidently say what constitutional rule the ERA embodies. It does not embody a straightforward technical rule. It references deeply contested political principles, and there is little guidance about which potential principle is actually being enshrined in the Constitution through the language of the ERA.
Some urge that it should simply be adopted for the sake of political symbolism. That’s fine if we can all agree that it has no legally consequential effects, but I suspect those who say today that this is just symbolism will say tomorrow that it has consequences that courts should enforce against democratically elected legislatures. Perhaps we should just think that the ERA is a cypher that effectively delegates to federal judges the authority to make up and enforce whatever rule they want in the name of gender equality. That might well be the practical effect of accepting the validity of the ERA. For those who might generally favor originalism as the proper guide to constitutional interpretation, the ERA is an interpretive nightmare. An amendment that was initially proposed to alter a legal environment that has not existed for decades in the United States but that is somehow still seen as necessary by current proponents hardly has an obvious public meaning. Perhaps we should just think that Congress and the states have now endorsed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 decision of Reed v. Reed?
If we think there is a serious need for the ERA and genuine support for it in the contemporary United States, then there is a ready solution—draft a new amendment, push it through Congress, and send it to the states. If we think that the ERA could not currently be adopted and ratified in a reasonable amount of time, then perhaps we should not be eager to say that the ERA is part of the Constitution because exactly three states legislatures have endorsed it since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.
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It’s not often that one hears of seven correctional officers and personnel, the family of a murder victim, and former jurors ask for the life of a death row inmate to be spared. That’s exactly what’s happening in Tennessee. A clemency petition asking Gov. Bill Lee to spare the life of Nick Sutton was filed on Tuesday.
Tennessee has executed six death row inmates over the past two years. Sutton, 58, has been on death row for over half of his life and will be the seventh to die if his execution, scheduled for February 20, 2020, proceeds.
Sutton was convicted of four murders, all carried out while he was between the ages of 18 and 23. His victims include Dorothy Sutton (his paternal grandmother), Charles Almon, John Large (a friend of his), and Carl Estep, who he killed while in prison. The Tennessean details the murders here.
“Nick Sutton has gone from a life-taker to a life-saver,” reads the petition that now asks the governor to commute his death row sentence to a life sentence.
Supporters argue Sutton is one of the “most rehabilitated” prisoners they’ve met. A few of them credit Sutton with literally saving their lives. A website created on behalf of Sutton’s appeal shares testimonies from at least five different people sharing stories of how he stepped in to help them and others while behind bars.
Tony Eden, a retired Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) lieutenant, said five armed inmates surrounded him during a prison riot in an attempt to take him hostage. That’s when Sutton and another inmate confronted the others. They managed to get Eden out of the situation before escorting him to safety. “I owe my life to Nick Sutton,” he added.
Eden was quoted in the clemency petition saying that he would welcome Sutton into his home if he were released tomorrow. In Eden’s opinion, Sutton, “more than anyone else on Tennessee’s Death Row, deserves to live.”
Other correctional officers explained how Sutton assisted them in situations where he or other inmates could have easily taken advantage of them. The petition notes examples of how the man who once killed another man behind bars has since taken it upon himself to care for his ailing fellow inmates.
Sutton received high compliments from seven current and former correctional officers and counselors for his behavior:
“Living proof of the possibility of rehabilitation and the power of redemption.”
“An honest, kind and trustworthy man who has used his time in prison to better himself and show that change is possible.”
“A man who has not only rehabilitated himself but works to help other inmates improve their lives.”
Sutton also has support from the family members of his grandmother, as well as the families of two of his other victims.
“It breaks my heart that Mr. Sutton has lost so much of his life on death row for killing my father,” said Rosemary Hall, Estep’s eldest daughter, in the petition. Speaking on behalf of her family, Hall expressed that killing Sutton would bring further suffering.
Nick’s cousin, Lowell Sutton, said his family supports a life sentence for the death of his aunt. Sutton added, “although the loss of my aunt was very hard on our family, I forgive Nick, our family forgives Nick, and we do not want him to be executed.”
Five members of the jury who sentenced Sutton to death row over 30 years ago also want him removed from death row. The jurors wrote that while they previously were in favor of Sutton receiving the death penalty, they now support a life sentence because of his rehabilitation.
Sutton is being represented pro bono by Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge. Sharp notably stepped down from his lifetime appointment after being forced to impose a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison, which he deemed unfair in the case.
“Nick has worked tirelessly to change his life during his 34 years on death row and his transformation is nothing short of extraordinary,” Sharp said in a statement provided to Reason. “We should trust the correction professionals who have seen how Mr. Sutton behaves and are taking the highly unusual step of personally advocating for clemency in his case. Their support demonstrates that justice and the public good would be best served through granting Nick executive clemency.”
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The House of Representatives voted 228-193 on Wednesday to formally send articles of impeachment to the Senate, signaling the start of President Donald Trump’s trial. While the tally fell mostly along party lines, Rep. Collin Peterson (D–Minn.) voted against the articles’ advancement and Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) voted in favor.
Also announced on Wednesday were the impeachment managers, who will prosecute the case against Trump. Rep. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) is at the helm with help from Reps. Jerry Nadler (D–N.Y.), Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.), Jason Crow (D–Colo.), Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif.), Val Demings (D–Fla.), and Sylvia Garcia (D–Texas).
The move capped off a contentious back-and-forth between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), after the former initially said she would withhold the articles for an unspecified period of time. Pelosi told ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos that she primarily did so to make the public case for witnesses after McConnell intimated that he would resist allowing any during the trial. The Kentucky senator, who has emphasized his desire for speedy proceedings, has since said that he will follow the impeachment model used during the Clinton administration, where senators vote on a resolution to start the trial and later vote on whether or not to allow witnesses.
Pelosi has come under fire for charging ahead with impeachment without waiting to hear from many in Trump’s close circle, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whom the White House had instructed not to testify. Bolton recently announced that, if subpoenaed, he would comply.
Trump was impeached by the House in December amid accusations that he improperly leveraged his position to pressure Ukraine into publicly announcing investigations into his political foes. He is the third president in U.S. history to face a Senate trial.
Wednesday’s House vote coincided with the Tuesday release of records that provide additional fodder for the notion that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, and his associate, Lev Parnas, were working to ensure that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced those probes. The tranche of documents includes a handwritten note from Parnas that says, “get Zalensky to Annouce that the Biden case will Be Investigated.” It further contains a correspondence between Parnas and Robert F. Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut, where Hyde implies that he is surveilling Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who was ousted by Giuliani.
After informing Parnas that Yovanovich’s computer was off, Hyde said he could solicit help in tracking her whereabouts. “They are moving her tomorrow. The guys over [there] asked me what I would like to do and what is in it for them,” Hyde said via WhatsApp. “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price. Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money.”
Additionally, a letter from Giuliani to Zelenskiy requests a meeting between the two. In the letter, Giuliani tells the Ukrainian leader that the president has “knowledge and consent” of his actions. Democrats are likely to emphasize the latter, as Republicans have argued that Trump may have been unaware or not directly involved in Giuliani’s actions.
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In a 1964 speech delivered at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson announced his plans for what he called “the Great Society,” a sweeping set of programs that marked the most ambitious expansion of the federal government since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Johnson declared war on poverty, jacked up federal spending on education, and pushed massive new entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which promised to deliver high-quality, low-cost health care to the nation’s elderly and poor. When Republican Richard Nixon succeeded Johnson, a Democrat, as president after the 1968 election, he continued and even expanded many of the Great Society programs despite being from a different political party.
But did the Great Society achieve its goals of eradicating poverty, sheltering the homeless, and helping all citizens participate more fully in the American Dream? In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes argues that Lyndon Johnson’s bold makeover of the government was a massive failure despite the good intentions of its architects and implementers.
Shlaes, who is the author of The Forgotten Man, a best-selling history of The Great Depression (read her interview with Reason), and the chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, says remembering the failure of the Great Society is especially relevant in an election year when presidential candidates are promising to spend huge amounts of money on all sorts of new government programs. “Once again, many Americans rate socialism as the generous philosophy,” writes Shlaes. “But the results of our socialism were not generous. May this book serve as a cautionary tale of lovable people who, despite themselves, hurt those they loved. Nothing is new. It is just forgotten.”
Nick Gillespie sat down to talk with her about the origins of the Great Society, its failure, and what it all means for 21st century America.
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
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