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A technicality in the law stands in the way of a daughter’s attempt to prove that the state of Tennessee put her innocent father to death.

Sedley Alley was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of Marine Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins. Collins was jogging in a park near a naval base in Millington when she was abducted. Three witnesses said her abductor was driving a brown station wagon. Alley drove a similar vehicle. He was pulled over and told naval security that he was driving around town and drinking beer the night of the abduction.

Alley was brought in for questioning on the naval base. When the questioning was completed, Alley started his vehicle so he could leave. The witnesses, who happened to be present, said the sound of his car matched the sound of the perpetrator’s vehicle.

Collins’ mutilated body was discovered the next day and law enforcement arrested Alley.

The Commercial Appeal has more details on Alley’s case.

Alley confessed to the murder and led police to the crime scene. However, there are several problems with the state’s case. The Innocence Project, a civil liberties group, now believes Alley was coerced into making a false confession by the police. An expert would later testify that police tainted Alley’s confession by telling him non-public details about the crime.

The group also notes inconsistencies with the evidence used to convict Alley. The witness description of the suspect did not match Alley’s features. Alley’s supposed recollection of the crime also did not match up with the details uncovered by investigators. In fact, he repeatedly said that he did not remember committing the crime.

Alley was executed by lethal injection in June 2006. April Alley, his daughter, is now working with the Innocence Project to clear her father’s name posthumously.

The Innocence Project has called for testing physical evidence from the case, which includes red underwear believed to be owned by the assailant and stains on Collins’ shirt and bra. The group received information about another possible suspect: a man who attended the same training school as Collins. They believe that this man, most recently indicted for homicide and rape in St. Louis, is a serial offender.

In May, April Alley and the Innocence Project filed a petition with the Criminal Court for Shelby County in Memphis, asking the state to DNA test the evidence in her father’s case. The petition also asked Gov. Bill Lee (R) to use executive authority to order testing.

On Monday, Judge Paula Skahan dismissed the petition.

Skahan’s opinion says that April Alley “does not have standing” as Alley’s estate to file a petition for post-conviction DNA testing of evidence held by the state. Skahan’s decision rests on Tennessee’s Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act of 2001, which merely allows “a person convicted of and sentenced for the commission of first-degree murder” to file a petition of this nature.

The cruel irony of this legal predicament is that Alley, who is deceased because of the state’s actions, is the only person who has the authority to file a petition asking the state to test the evidence that could exonerate him.

Worse, as the Innocence Project petition explains, Alley previously sought post-conviction testing under the act and was denied due to “a now-reversed and clearly incorrect interpretation” of the 2001 law, which was not cleared up by the Tennessee Supreme Court until 2011.

“I’m heartbroken. Frankly, I’m numb. I’m very grateful for all who have supported me in this effort to find the truth. We will see this through to the end, no matter what it takes,” April Alley said in response to the ruling.

The Innocence Project wrote in a statement that it has “already filed a notice of appeal.” The group criticized Skahan’s ruling, saying, “The petition simply asks for testing of available DNA evidence, which could be done within 30 to 60 days. It will now take months, if not years, to go through the courts to finally get to the truth in this matter.”

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Are you thoroughly invested in the impeachment drama? Do you thrill to the clash of good guys and villains in the ring of democracy, with the fate of the republic as the prize?

Have fun with that. There’s a good case to be made that all this political heat and light is little more than professional wrestling for flabby people. If Democrats really feared Donald Trump’s exercise of the powers of the presidency, why would they propose extending the surveillance powers of the controversial Patriot Act?

Buried on the next-to-last page of the Continuing Appropriations Act, meant to keep the government’s lights on and dated yesterday, is the following language:

Section  102(b)(1)  of  the  USA  PATRIOT  Improvement  and  Reauthorization  Act  of  2005  (50  U.S.C.  101805  note)  is  amended  by  striking  “December  15,  2019”  and inserting “March 15, 2020”.

This relatively innocuous language pushes back the sunset provision of the Patriot Act by three months, leaving its vast powers in the hands of a president who Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden charges with “failure to uphold basic democratic principles,” who House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused of “alarming connections and conduct with Russia” and, joined by Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, says is making an attempt to “shred the Constitution.”

Many Democrats flat-out call Trump a “traitor.”

If you take those comments seriously, that’s a hell of a guy to trust with the powers granted by the Patriot Act. And frightening powers they are.

“The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement’s surveillance and investigative powers and represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, privacy, and democratic traditions in US history,” notes the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The law “eliminates checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused,” the group adds.

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees, calling the Patriot Act “an overnight revision of the nation’s surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens, while simultaneously reducing checks and balances on those powers like judicial oversight, public accountability, and the ability to challenge government searches in court.”

Passed in the panic-stricken wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act was basically a dusted-off wish-list of surveillance-state powers drafted after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Although the bill failed, at first, to gain congressional approval, it sat ready and waiting for the right set of circumstances to come along. That happened as America watched buildings burn and fellow citizens die six years later. Even in that environment of fear, lawmakers included a sunset provision in the Patriot Act, meaning it would expire after four years. With some changes, it was reauthorized in 2005, 2011, and 2015.

The alleged authorship of the original surveillance proposal provides a helpful hint as to why Democrats might be so eager to extend expansive surveillance power, even for a president they say they despise: They had a hand in its creation.

“I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing,” then-future veep and perennial presidential wannabe Joe Biden boasted to The New Republic in 2008. “And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill.”

Whether or not Biden really authored what became the Patriot Act, he and many of his fellow Democrats certainly take pride of ownership and show plenty of enthusiasm for its powers. The 2011 and 2015 reauthorizations occurred under Democratic President Barack Obama, with Biden as vice president.

The Trump administration also favors reauthorization of the Patriot Act, including a dropped provision allowing the National Security Agency to gain access to records of Americans’ communications. That part had been somewhat defanged under the Obama administration amidst public uproar over revelations of domestic surveillance by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Biden, as vice president, threatened countries that considered offering asylum to Snowden—another feather in his surveillance-state cap.

The Democratic Party, by and large, seems to be right there with Biden. This year’s proposed reauthorization of the Patriot Act isn’t exactly a one-off; last year, donkey party leaders kneecapped an effort in the House by dissident libertarian-leaning Republicans and liberal Democrats to roll back some of the more intrusive elements of the Patriot Act.

“It became quickly apparent that leading Democrats intended to side with Trump and against those within their own party who favored imposing safeguards on the Trump administration’s ability to engage in domestic surveillance,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time. “The most bizarre aspect of this spectacle was that the Democrats who most aggressively defended Trump’s version of the surveillance bill—the Democrats most eager to preserve Trump’s spying powers as virtually limitless—were the very same Democratic House members who have become media stars this year by flamboyantly denouncing Trump as a treasonous, lawless despot in front of every television camera they could find.”

When the 2018 surveillance reform measure was defeated, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who now leads the impeachment inquiry against President Trump, gloated that Congress had avoided “a crippling requirement in national security and terrorism cases.”

Like I said, it’s professional wrestling for flabby people. When it counts—with civil liberties and the (un)trustworthiness of the state to handle its dangerous toys—there’s little to distinguish leading Democrats from leading Republicans. Their major real disagreement is over who should be in charge of misusing and abusing those excessive powers. Ultimately, though, Democrats are happy to keep the surveillance state up and running and in the hands of a president they denounce as dangerous.

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Today the Justice Department announced that three people have been indicted on federal charges because of their roles in a fraudulent no-knock drug raid that killed a middle-aged Houston couple on January 28. The indictment alleges not only that Gerald Goines, the narcotics officer who spearheaded the operation, lied in his search warrant affidavit, but that Patricia Ann Garcia, whose 911 calls prompted Goines’ investigation, lied when she implicated Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas in drug dealing.

The upshot is that the basis for the raid was a lie from start to finish. That realization contradicts Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo’s insistence that there were sound reasons, apart from Goines’ prevarications, to think Tuttle and Nicholas were selling heroin.

Goines, who already faced state murder charges in connection with the raid that killed Tuttle and Nicholas, has been charged with violating their Fourth Amendment rights under color of law. The Justice Department says “Goines faces up to life in prison” if convicted of those charges, although the statute also allows the death penalty for violations with lethal consequences.

Goines, who retired in March after 34 years with the Houston Police Department, claimed in his affidavit that a confidential informant had purchased heroin from a middle-aged “white male, whose name is unknown,” at the house on Harding Street that Tuttle and Nicholas shared. But the raid, which was executed the day after that purported sale, discovered no heroin and no evidence of drug dealing. Soon afterward Houston police investigators concluded that the confidential informant described by Goines did not exist. Goines then changed his story, claiming he had bought the heroin himself. According to the federal indictment, that was also a lie.

The Justice Department says Goines “made numerous materially false statements in the state search warrant” and afterward repeatedly lied about the circumstances of the raid. In addition to the civil rights charges, Goines is accused of falsifying records and obstructing an official proceeding.

The indictment also charges Steven Bryant, a Houston narcotics officer who helped back up Goines’ story, with obstructing justice by falsifying records. Bryant, who supposedly identified the “brown powder substance” that the nonexistent informant never bought as black-tar heroin, already faced a state charge of tampering with a governmental record. The federal charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

The biggest revelation in the indictment is that the January 8 report about drug activity at the Harding Street house was completely false. Yet Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has repeatedly cited that report as evidence that his department right to investigate Tuttle and Nicholas.

According Acevedo, a woman called police on January 8 to complain that her daughter was “doing heroin” inside the house. At a press conference three days after the raid, Acevedo described the call this way: “The caller wanted to remain anonymous but said that her daughter was inside the residence ‘doing drugs, and they have a lot of guns in the residence.’ She stated there was also a female in the house.” The woman said she had looked through a window, and she saw that “her daughter was in the house, and there were guns and heroin.”

When two patrol officers arrived in response to that call, the woman was nowhere to be found. According to Acevedo, they questioned a passer-by and afterward heard her say into her cellphone, “Hey, the police are at the dope house.” When the officers called the woman who had made the report, Acevedo said, “She stated she did not want to give any information because they were drug dealers and they would kill her. She wanted the officers to go into the house and get her daughter.” The officers explained that they had no authority to enter the house.

The federal indictment says the caller, which it identifies as Garcia, made all of that up. Garcia is charged with “convey[ing] false information by making several fake 911 calls,” an offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

Acevedo said Garcia’s calls showed there was legitimate basis for the investigation that led to the Harding Street raid. He called the home a “problem location” and a locally notorious “drug house.” He even claimed that people who lived nearby had thanked police for raiding the house. Yet neighbors interviewed by local news outlets described Tuttle and Nicholas, who had lived on Harding Street for two decades, as perfectly nice and said they had never seen any signs of criminal activity.

Even after Goines’ lies were revealed, Acevedo insisted that police “had probable cause to be there,” relying on Garcia’s false report. “I still think they’re heroes,” Acevedo said of the officers who killed Tuttle and Nicholas after breaking into their home without warning. If the lack of oversight that allowed this disastrous operation to unfold were not reason enough to demand Acevedo’s resignation, his dogged defense of the investigation and his casual defamation of Tuttle and Nicholas would be.

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Dan Carlin is the host of the popular podcast Hardcore History and author of the new book The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses.

Hardcore History is notable not only for its immense audience (millions of people listen to it) but the length of its episodes. The most recent episode, part of a sequence about Imperial Japan in the 20th century, stretches over four hours.

The 54-year-old Carlin, who has been described as a “social libertarian” and always stresses that he is an amateur historian, talks with Nick Gillespie about what motivates him to go so deep on topics in a moment when we’re constantly being told we all have short attention spans, whether he’s optimistic or pessimistic about the present and especially the future, and why we haven’t yet had a world-ending nuclear catastrophe.

Along the way, Carlin and Gillespie talk about how the media landscape has changed radically (and mostly for the better) over the past 30 years, the deep lesson we should all learn from the original Planet of the Apes movie, and whether, as Carlin puts it in his new book, “the idea of progress is not without bias.”

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

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