Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
16, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
17, 2003
Better Justice Through
Chemistry?
The
Supreme Court and Forced Drugging
By HEIDI LYPPS
The June 16 Supreme Court decision in the celebrated
forced drugging case of Dr. Charles Sell set off a mix of jubilation,
confusion, and frustration among both advocates and opponents
of involuntary medication. The 6-3 decision overturned two previous
rulings allowing Sell's forcible drugging to stand trial for
63 counts of fraud. Sell's case differs from previous forcible
medication cases, such as February's Eighth Circuit court decision
allowing the forcible drugging of murderer Charles Singleton
to make him sane for execution. A dissenting judge called that
decision a "barbarity." Sell, on the other hand, is
non-dangerous and accused of nonviolent crimes.
News sources had trouble interpreting
the complex decision. While some, like the Christian Science
Monitor, trumpeted "To stand trial, defendants can be medicated
by force," others, including the New York Times, led with
"Court Limits Right To Drug Mentally Ill Defendants"
with equal vigor.
The central question of Sell's case was
this: can the government drug the mentally ill, even against
their will, to force them to stand trial? Trying the insane is
unconstitutional. But what to do if a defendant could be involuntarily
drugged and returned to sanity-is this even possible, let alone
legal and ethical?
Sell will be spared the needle for now,
and a stringent new legal test will have to be applied to all
future attempts to drug nonviolent defendants for trial. Nonetheless,
future defendants may not be as fortunate as Sell: the high court
upheld the delusional dentist's "liberty interest,"
in avoiding forced drugging, but stopped short of spelling out
the constitutional rights of the accused. Sell v. US is a landmark
decision, to be sure. But what "liberty" was it, exactly,
that the Sell decision protects?
The Center for Cognitive Liberty &
Ethics, a civil liberties nonprofit that filed a friend of the
court brief on Sell's behalf, saw an opportunity for the Supreme
Court to uphold Sell's freedom of thought as a First Amendment
right. To the CCLE, interfering with Sell's brain chemistry is
tantamount to mind control-the ultimate prior restraint on freedom
of speech. Instead, the decision acknowledged Sell's liberty
interest in avoiding the involuntary administration of antipsychotic
drugs, which can cause a host of damaging side effects. Richard
Boire, CCLE director and author of the brief, said of the decision,
"They made a good ruling, but they missed a major opportunity
to recognize that thought is, at least partly, rooted in brain
chemistry and that giving the government broad powers to directly
manipulate the brain chemistry of a non-violent citizen would
go against our nation's most cherished values."
Sell's Fifth Amendment due process rights
were also considered-after all, he did spend five years in jails
and psychiatric hospitals without trial. The decision says that
Sell's liberty would be infringed by the prospect of forced medication;
and that the government's "important" interest in bringing
him to trial was compromised by Sell's lengthy confinement. Justice
Breyer's majority opinion takes this into account, suggesting
that the time Sell has spent in the US Medical Center for Federal
Prisoners would count as "time served," and noting
that Sell has already served more time than his maximum sentence
for fraud ever would have been. But the thundering silence of
the Court on the issue of a defendant's freedom of thought frustrated
those who had urged the court to hand down a decision protecting
the mental autonomy of pre-trial defendants.
The case has relevance that reaches far
beyond Sell; if the case had been decided against him, any mentally
ill person accused of a crime might have been drugged in order
to make him stand trial. The mental autonomy of all citizens
was also at stake. In the decision, the justices acknowledged
the "significant constitutional issues" the case raised,
but focused on only one. The court stuck fast to the Fifth Amendment
question alone: did the case violate Tom Sell's right to due
process of law? CCLE attorney Julie Ruiz-Sierra put it this way;
"they're not exactly saying that there's a constitutional
right to avoid forced medication; they're saying there is a right
not to be forcibly medicated without due process."
The ruling limited forced drugging of
the non-violent accused to occasions that Justice Breyer hopes
will be "rare," but avoids talk of a defendant's freedom
of thought, a right that would be violated by forcing mind-altering
drugs on him despite his protests. The decision does set a high
standard; it mandates that forced medication orders for each
nondangerous defendant pass a four-part test. Future prosecutors
who want to drug a defendant into competence will have to demonstrate
that the medication is necessary to significantly further the
government's interest in adjudicating fair trials and is medically
appropriate.
There's also the question of whether
antipsychotic medications can really force anyone to be sane
enough to face trial, not to mention the ethics of forcibly changing
the mental state of the accused with mind-altering drugs. The
justices could have said, yes, the contents of our brains are
deeply private and must be inviolable. They had an opportunity
to protect both the bodily integrity and the mental freedom of
the accused, but instead handed down a decision that simply tightens
the standards of forcible drugging.
In any case, antipsychotic medications
are not panaceas-they don't suddenly render a person sane. Many
would go so far as to say that Thorazine, Mellaril, Haldol, and
the rest simply mask the symptoms of mental illness, creating
"artificial sanity" rather than providing a cure. The
side effects of many of these drugs can be severe, as well: facial
twitches, drooling, depression, altered speech, permanent neurological
damage.
As Morpheus said in the latest Matrix
sequel, "It's about control." Sell's prosecutors wanted
to force a mental state on an insane and unwilling person in
order to prop him up on the stand and convict him. Justice Scalia's
dissenting opinion in the case reflects this desire.
Scalia, (joined by Justices Thomas and
O'Connor) fretted that defendants will see Sell v. US as an open
invitation to misuse the system and delay trial. To permit pretrial
appeals like Dr. Sell's, Justice Scalia claimed, provides an
"obvious opportunity for gamesmanship." Further, he
wrote, it will encourage "the disruption of criminal proceedings"
by defendants who might be eager to sidetrack the progression
of a trial. But it isn't as if Sell is attempting to avoid trial;
he's been insisting he be brought to trial, unmedicated, all
along. Though the decision allows him to avoid the indignity
of having a needle filled with some very potent drugs shoved
into his vein, too, he will likely remain incarcerated indefinitely.
The idea of an altered mental state forced
on us against our will haunts our culture: the popularity of
books like 1984 and Brave New World, not to mention films like
Jacob's Ladder and The Matrix, testify to this recurrent fear.
Pharmacology and psychiatry are easy routes for this sort of
abuse of power; in fact, in the former Soviet Union, dissidents
were often declared insane, then drugged and imprisoned in psychiatric
hospitals to keep them quiet. With the Sell decision, the US
won't become that nightmarish anytime soon. Yet, faced with one
of the more persistent dystopian horrors of the era, the justices
evaded the core issue: the defendant's right to cognitive liberty.
Ironically, one of the delusions that
led to Dr. Sell's diagnosis of delusional disorder was the idea
that the government was "out to get him;" a contention
that, in retrospect, is a bit difficult to argue with. The Court
did recognize Dr. Sell's catch-22; by refusing medication, he
ensured his continued confinement. The price of Sell's resistance
to drugging is high: the odds are good that he will "rot
with his rights on" in a mental institution, and never be
brought to trial.
Fortunately, the Sell decision will be
strictly limit the involuntarily drugging of the accused. It
is hubris, pure and simple, to believe that a person can be chemically
forced into sanity; it is worse for the government to believe
that it has the right to do so.
Heidi Lypps
is director of communications at the Center
for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. She can be reached at:
nemo@cognitiveliberty.org.
Weekend Edition Features for July 12/13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|