Bill to keep pregnant women out of jail while they await trial reaches governor's desk

What started as a shouting match in a Cook County courtroom last year is now on the verge of shaping state policy for pregnant women in jail waiting for trial.

The contentious case heard in August before a longtime judge inspired a bill — passed last week by the Illinois House and Senate — that seeks to reduce the likelihood that expectant mothers charged with nonviolent offenses will be held in jail as they wait for their cases to be tried.

The measure, which requires judges to hold additional hearings before ordering a pregnant woman be held in jail, has reached Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desk and needs his signature to become law.

“This is commonsense and compassionate public policy, and I hope that (Rauner) signs it quickly,” said state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who sponsored the bill. “I go back to contemplating the birth stories for these children and that we have the opportunity to impact those kids’ lives. … It’s worth it.”

Cassidy, a Democrat from Rogers Park, filed the bill after learning about a Chicago woman who gave birth in June while in jail. The woman, Karen Padilla, was seven months pregnant when Cook County Judge Nicholas Ford revoked her bond on a theft case after she was pulled over for a traffic violation and police noticed a warrant for her arrest. She was ultimately released after the jail and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office got involved.

Eric Sussman, then second in command of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, helped get Padilla released — and got into a shouting match with Ford over the case. Padilla could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

“Having three kids myself, I know it is a critical, critical period for a child to be with his or her mom,” Sussman said Tuesday. “I was shocked that this was going on, particularly for a nonviolent, low-level offender who was essentially pulled over for having a nonfunctioning headlight.”

The bill requires judges to find an alternative — such as electronic monitoring, placement in a drug-treatment facility or personal-recognizance release — for women likely to give birth while in custody. Judges can order pretrial detention only after holding a hearing to determine if a woman poses a threat to others. The provisions apply only to women awaiting trials in county jails, not those sentenced to prison.

It’s difficult to assess how widespread jailhouse pregnancies are because Illinois does not keep centralized data about them, according to Cassidy and Alexis Mansfield, lead attorney at Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers. National data on the issue are scant too.

In Cook County, the jail housed more than 300 pregnant detainees between April 2016 and May 2017, according to the sheriff’s office. Seventeen of those women gave birth in custody.

As of Tuesday, the jail had 16 pregnant detainees awaiting trial, two of whom were out of jail on electric monitoring, said Hanke Gratteau, director of the Sheriff's Justice Institute.

Over the last several years, the number of pregnant women in jail and the overall female population have fallen dramatically with countywide efforts to decrease the incarceration of poor and nonviolent people, Mansfield said.

Pregnant women in Cook County Jail are rushed to a hospital to give birth, Sussman said. The baby is sent to relatives or referred to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Sussman said.

Gratteau said the jail tries to give mothers several days in the hospital with newborns.

Mansfield said the legislation could have a huge impact, allowing mothers to breastfeed and bond with their children and to better fight charges from outside of jail.

“This is a great start, and I’d like to see it expanded to include caregivers of children in general.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-pregnant-inmates-bond-20180515-story.html

Report Nears Release on Justice Department’s Handling of Probe Into Clinton Email Use

May 16, 2018 2:30 p.m. ET

Multiple subjects of a report on the Justice Department’s handling of a 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use have been notified that they can privately review the report by week’s end, signaling t he long-awaited document is nearing release.

The report is likely to reignite the volatile debate over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of the Clinton probe, and it will put Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, in a familiar place—taking aim at members of the law enforcement community.

Those invited to review the report were told they would have to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to read it, people familiar with the matter said. They are expected to have a few days to craft a response to any criticism in the report, which will then be incorporated in the final version to be released in coming weeks.

Mr. Horowitz told lawmakers last month he expected to issue the report in May, but Tuesday’s notification is the first indication that Mr. Horowitz has largely completed his inquiry. Congressional committees are expected to review the report in coming weeks.

Mr. Horowitz’s office issued a related report last month, which laid the groundwork for the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, finding that he misled investigators probing his role in providing information to a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. McCabe disputed the allegations, which have been referred to the Washington U.S. attorney’s office to determine whether he should be charged with a crime.

The inspector general’s yearlong review is expected to yield sharp criticism of actions by several top officials, including former FBI Director James Comey’s announcement in July 2016 that Mrs. Clinton had been reckless with the nation’s secrets but he was recommending against prosecuting her.

The report is also expected to scrutinize whether Mr. McCabe should have recused himself from the Clinton investigation, since his wife’s campaign for the Virginia legislature was aided by then- Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally. And it is likely to criticize the numerous texts exchanged by two FBI employees critical of President Donald Trump and others.

Beyond that, the document’s release will shine an unusual spotlight on Mr. Horowitz, the Justice Department’s in-house watchdog since 2011.

Inspectors general, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, don’t automatically change with administrations, a way of maintaining their independence. Their probes often involve interviews with dozens of witnesses and can produce reports months or even years after a problem comes to light.

In January 2017, Mr. Horowitz announced a review of Mr. Comey’s public statements on the Clinton investigation and related matters. Since then, officials have been bracing for his report, which has occasionally been in the news, such as when he released the related report on Mr. McCabe last month.

The McCabe report drew the ire of one of Mr. Horowitz’s predecessors, Michael Bromwich, an attorney who now represents Mr. McCabe and who said he had evidence that contradicted the initial report’s findings.

No stranger to antagonizing his colleagues, Mr. Horowitz spent several years as chief of the public-corruption unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office in the 1990s. In that role he helped prosecute more than a dozen police officers from New York’s 30th Precinct who were accused of stealing money and drugs from criminal suspects and reselling the drugs.

He authorized the arrest of the officers just as a colleague was planning to use them as witnesses in a major drug case.

“It not only involved proceeding against law enforcement, which is your day-to-day partner in fighting crime…it also had negative impacts on other cases in the office, and needed to be handled with skill, sensitivity and all those things Michael has,” said Mary Jo White, who was U.S. attorney and Mr. Horowitz’s boss at the time.

Mr. Horowitz also served as an official at Justice Department headquarters in Washington and spent a decade in private practice before being nominated by then-President Barack Obama to the inspector general post.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Horowitz cited the police corruption case and another prosecution involving the Teamsters that also disrupted colleagues’ work, saying they showed he could maintain his independence from people he had worked with for many years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/report-nears-release-on-justice-departments-handling-of-probe-into-clinton-email-use-1526495401

Official: South Korea Working to Determine ‘True’ Reason for Cancelled Inter-Korean Dialogue

SEOUL—North Korea abruptly called off high-level talks scheduled with Seoul early on Wednesday morning, citing provocation from the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the south as their reason for the indefinite delay in dialogue.

However, South Korean official Cheong Wa Dae said the south is working to determine the underlying reason for North Korea’s announcement, reported Yonhap News Agency.

A report on North Korea’s official KCNA angrily attacked the “Max Thunder” air combat drills, which it said involved U.S. stealth fighters and B-52 bombers, and appeared to mark a break from the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration and the months of warming ties between North and South Korea and between Pyongyang and Washington.

The “Max Thunder” drills, aimed at “boosting the capability of pilots”, would go on as planned and were not aimed at attacking a third party, the South’s defence ministry said.

The KCNA report called the air drills a “provocation” that went against the trend of warming ties.

“The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities,” KCNA said, in what some security experts say could be an attempt by the communist state to gain some higher ground before the summit, reported Yonhap.

South Korea’s National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong said after meeting Kim in early March that the North Korean leader understood that “routine” joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States would continue in spite of warming ties.

That was widely considered to be a major North Korea concession, although Pyongyang never publicly withdrew its long-standing demand for an end to the drills.

“Kim Jong Un had said previously that he understands the need and the utility of the United States and the Republic of Korea continuing in its joint exercises,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing.

“We have not heard anything from that government or the government of South Korea to indicate that we would not continue conducting these exercises or that we would not continue planning for our meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un next month,” she said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the United States would examine the North Korean statement “and continue to coordinate closely with our allies”.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/official-south-korea-working-to-determine-true-reason-for-cancelled-inter-korean-dialogue_2525870.html

Sessions strikes down Obama policy

And another plank of the Obama legacy hits the wood chipper: Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed an Obama policy that allowed transgender felons to move from men’s prisons into women’s prisons. The new policy will instead base prison location on the prisoner's “biological sex.”

This will be spun as an attack on transgender rights that will expose transgender prisoners to physical and emotional abuse in men’s prisons, although threats to the prisoner’s safety will be taken into account. Its opponents will do their darnedest not to mention the potential physical danger and emotional abuse that the Obama policy inflicted on women prisoners, who were to be deprived of privacy and personal safety and security by being locked inside cells with male criminals – most of whom, it should be noted, have not undergone surgery to become physically female, but who simply claim to “identify” as female. In fact, the change was sparked by a lawsuit by four female Texas inmates who were frightened for their own safety.

As I’ve pointed out again and again, in the current “progressive” atmosphere of dividing people into victim identity groups and pitting them against each other to promote the leaders’ power, women are increasingly finding themselves at the very back of the line for civil rights protections.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?p=latest-news&id=1B4B80D2-624A-4BEC-89E2-F1A5C104EF51

https://www.westernjournal.com/sessions-strikes-down-obama-transgender-prison-policy/

House conservatives ask Trump to intervene in fight with DOJ over documents

Leading conservatives are asking President Trump to intervene in a fight between Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and House Republicans over a stalled request for documents.

In a letter obtained by The Hill, several members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus called on Trump to use his power to release the remaining documents they’ve been trying to obtain from the department.

They said Trump should instruct Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “immediately produce all documents requested by Congress relating to our investigation of certain prosecutorial and investigative decisions made by the Department of Justice and FBI in 2016 and 2017.”

“As a separate and equal branch of government, we have a constitutional right to these documents,” the lawmakers wrote. “The Department of Justice has obstructed Congressional oversight by refusing to supply necessary and relevant documents.”

The letter, which comes nearly one year after the DOJ appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, is signed by Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) — some of Trump’s top allies in the House.

“We’ve been consistent from the beginning that the American people have a right to know the truth about what happened at the highest levels of the Justice Department,” Meadows said in a statement. “This letter is another step in that effort for transparency.”

House conservatives ask Trump to intervene in fight with DOJ over documents

© Getty

Leading conservatives are asking President Trump to intervene in a fight between Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and House Republicans over a stalled request for documents.

In a letter obtained by The Hill, several members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus called on Trump to use his power to release the remaining documents they’ve been trying to obtain from the department.

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They said Trump should instruct Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “immediately produce all documents requested by Congress relating to our investigation of certain prosecutorial and investigative decisions made by the Department of Justice and FBI in 2016 and 2017.”

“As a separate and equal branch of government, we have a constitutional right to these documents,” the lawmakers wrote. “The Department of Justice has obstructed Congressional oversight by refusing to supply necessary and relevant documents.”

The letter, which comes nearly one year after the DOJ appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, is signed by Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) — some of Trump’s top allies in the House.

“We’ve been consistent from the beginning that the American people have a right to know the truth about what happened at the highest levels of the Justice Department,” Meadows said in a statement. “This letter is another step in that effort for transparency.”

House Republicans have been seeking a tranche of documents that touch on a wide range of issues, including the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the FBI’s decisionmaking during its initial investigation into the Trump campaign and the memo outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

But conservatives have complained that the DOJ has slow-walked their request. Of the 1.2 million documents they have requested, the department has only handed over a few thousand documents, some of which have been heavily redacted.

Meadows and Jordan have previously threatened to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or hold him in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t work more quickly to turn over documents.

But now, the conservative ringleaders are asking their most powerful ally to step in — and in Trump, who has long blasted the Justice Department’s Russia investigation, they could have a sympathetic ear.

“We believe the best course of action would be for you to exercise the powers vested in the executive to make the documents we require available to Congress,” they wrote.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/387969-house-conservatives-ask-trump-to-intervene-in-fight-with-doj-over