A federal judge has approved a land swap that could end an 11-year legal battle over the right to display a cross memorializing war veterans in a remote part of the Mojave Desert.

U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin in California on Monday signed an order that will allow the Mojave Cross to return to Sunrise Rock. According to the settlement, the National Park Service will transfer the title for the one-acre parcel on which the cross sat to the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Barstow, Calif., in exchange for five acres of donated land.

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The parcel is near the community of Cima, about 12 miles south of Interstate 15 in the Mojave National Preserve, a 1.6 million-acre park established in 1994.

The VFW erected a wooden cross at the site in 1934 as a tribute to fallen World War I vets. The cross was later replaced with one made of steel pipes.

The cross stood quietly for 67 years until the American Civil Liberties Union sued in 2001, contending religious symbols shouldn’t be displayed on public land.

After a district court ruled that the cross shouldn’t be displayed on federal land, Congress passed legislation directing the Interior Department to transfer an acre of land including the cross to the VFW in exchange for a parcel of equal value.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2010 that the cross may stay but also sent the case back to the lower courts to review the proposed land swap. The next month, vandals tore down the 7-foot-tall cross and made off with it.

Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal group that represented the VFW, said the settlement approved Monday paves the way for veterans to eventually restore the memorial. The group had launched a national awareness campaign dubbed “Don’t Tear Me Down” to bring attention to the cause.

“This is a great victory that brings the veterans one step closer to restoring this World War I memorial to its rightful place in the desert and in history," Hiram Sasser, litigation director for Liberty Institute, said in a news release. "We are pleased the government and the ACLU could resolve their remaining differences and begin the healing process for the millions of veterans who have endured this case for over a decade."

The ACLU did not immediately return a telephone call for comment.

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The next step is to complete the land exchange, which could happen before the end of the year, the National Park Service said.

After the swap is finalized, the Park Service will install a fence around the parcel with signs indicating that the plot is private property.

“We look forward to working with the Veterans of Foreign Wars in completing the land exchange,” said Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Stephanie R. Dubois in a press release. “We are requesting that everyone be patient as we complete the land exchange, and we would like to remind folks that no cross can legally be displayed until the land exchange is complete.”

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A Virginia school district dropped a proposed ban on cross-dressing by students.

References to gender-specific clothing have been removed from a proposed student dress code, which was first considered on Feb. 9. The Suffolk School Board is scheduled to consider the revised dress code on Thursday.

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The original version proposed by Superintendent Deran Whitney would have explicitly banned “clothing worn by a student that is not in keeping with a student’s gender and causes a disruption and/or distracts others from the educational process or poses a health or safety concern.”

The school board claimed that it was necessary to protect students from being bullied or harassed for wearing gender nonconforming clothes.

Virginia school district considers ban on cross-dressing

Civil liberties groups said the proposed ban was too vague and discriminated against students based on their gender. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia said that, rather than banning the “nonconforming behavior,” schools should instead address the bullying or harassment.

The initial Suffolk proposal didn't prescribe a uniform for students, but instead aimed to prohibit “sexually suggestive or revealing attire,” spandex, ripped clothes, sagging pants, short skirts, sleepwear, open-toed shoes, sunglasses, head coverings unless worn for religious or medical purposes, and clothes advertising alcohol or illegal substances.

The revised dress code includes all the previous prohibitions, except for the one referencing gender-specific clothing, whose language has now been changed to ban "any clothing worn by a student that causes a substantial disruption and/or substantially distracts others from the educational process, or poses a serious health or safety concern."

“By abandoning the original policy, the school has properly recognized that students cannot be disciplined for failing to conform to gender stereotypes,” ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis said in a written statement Monday. 

Willis added that there are concerns that the new policy may be the old one dressed up in a different language to deflect a legal challenge.

“If the new proposal is adopted on Thursday," his statement read, "we’ll be asking students and parents to closely monitor its implementation to make sure it is not applied in a way that discriminates based on gender or sexual orientation."

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Edwin Hart Turner is no stranger to mental illness.

According to his lawyer and acquaintances, his grandmother and great-grandmother were committed to state hospitals. His mother attempted suicide twice. His father was killed in a dynamite explosion that some believe was a suicide.

At age 18, Turner tried to kill himself with a rifle but the barrel of the weapon slipped just enough to spare his life; the bullet that blasted through his face left him permanently disfigured. He was hospitalized five years later when he tried to slit his wrists in another suicide attempt.

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So when Turner robbed a gas station near Carrolton, Miss., early on Dec. 13, 1995, and fatally shot a clerk in the face and a customer in the head, his lawyers say, it’s almost certain that he was – and still is  – mentally unbalanced.

For that reason, says Turner’s attorney, Jim Craig of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, Turner should not be put to death.

Turner’s accomplice, Paul Murrell Stewart, pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to life without parole. Turner was convicted at trial and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

In what he hopes will be a precedent-setting case, Craig is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court and to Mississippi’s new governor, Phil Bryant, to halt the scheduled Feb. 8 execution of the 38-year-old Turner.

“The Supreme Court has not decided the question of whether a prisoner with a severe mental disorder or disability which significantly impairs that person’s ability to rationally process information, to make reasonable judgments and to control their impulses, whether people in that category can be executed,” Craig told msnbc.com in a telephone interview Thursday.

“So we’re asking the Supreme Court to establish that it would be contrary to consensus of moral values, that it would be cruel and unusual punishment, to execute someone with severe mental illness.”

The Supreme Court in 2002 banned the execution of mentally retarded criminals. In 2005, justices ruled that it was also unconstitutional to put to death juvenile criminals. But the circumstances regarding the execution of inmates who are mentally ill - but not insane - are less clear-cut, though previous high court rulings have held that the mere presence of mental illness doesn’t necessarily exempt someone from execution.

Craig said he will also ask a federal judge on Friday to order the state to put the execution on hold so Turner can get a mental exam, including a modern type of neuroimaging scan that wasn’t available in 1995. Craig said he thinks the so-called “functional MRI” scan will show that the portion of Turner’s brain “that controls conduct that works for everyone else in this country just doesn’t work for him.”

“It’s like expecting someone with a broken arm to quarterback the Super Bowl,” Craig said. “It’s just not fair.”

Other rights groups are also backing Turner's cause.

“We’ve come a long way in our understanding of mental illness and the deep and terrible pain it inflicts on sufferers – but not far enough, at least not in Mississippi,” wrote Denny LeBoeuf, the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project director, in a blog post titled "Too Crazy to Kill." 

 “Most mentally ill people are not violent. Those who are should not be executed."

Gov. Bryant’s office and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood’s office did not immediately return telephone calls Thursday from msnbc.com for comment.

On Wednesday, Hood told The Associated Press that Turner has been evaluated numerous times in the past.

"He has raised the issue of mental health problems at every level and has been denied relief at every turn. We argue that his mental health claims have been fully addressed, and that this present action is nothing more than an attempt to re-litigate a claim that has been properly adjudicated at every turn," Hood said, according to the AP.

Earlier, in asking the state to set the Feb. 8 execution date, Hood said in a press release that Turner has exhausted his state and federal appeals. “These crimes were brutal and nothing short of cowardly,” he said.

Ann Dugger, executive director of the Justice Coalition, a victims' advocacy group, said mental illness in and of itself is not a reason to rule out execution.

"What's cruel and unusual is that a perpetrator would have taken the life of someone else and murdered him," she said.

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Juveniles 16 and under would have to be off New Orleans' streets by 8 p.m. every night under legislation under consideration by the City Council.

A vote on a proposal to extend a curfew for juveniles in the French Quarter across to the entire city, initially scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed until Feb. 2.

The proposed ordinance has drawn vociferous opposition from community and black activists and civil rights groups. They contend it is discriminatory, could lead to more racial profiling of black youngsters by police and doesn’t address the root causes of youth violence.

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Tracie Washington, a lawyer with the Louisiana Justice Institute, a civil rights legal advocacy organization, said studies have shown that curfews don’t have  the desired effect of reducing teen crime.

“This is stupid. You can pass this curfew, and we’re still going to have this problem,” she told msnbc.com.

Expansion of existing curfew
New Orleans has actually had a citywide curfew since 1994, when murders were happening at the rate of nearly one a day. The 1994 ordinance had set curfew times for those 16 and under to 8 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

On Jan. 5, the City Council voted 6-0 to amend the ordinance to make it 8 p.m. every night in the tourist-heavy French Quarter and the hip Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.

Now, the council is weighing whether to extend the 8 p.m. curfew time citywide.

“The existing citywide juvenile curfew law was passed in 1994 at the request of then-Mayor Marc Morial and Police Superintendent Richard Pennington. At that time, the curfew law was a component of a comprehensive strategy to reduce crime in neighborhoods and protect our city's young people,” City Council member Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who authored the amended French Quarter ordinance, wrote in an op-ed column Wednesday. “Today, at a similar time of escalating crime and neighborhood violence, it is our duty as elected leaders to stand up, be bold and consider any and all methods that will keep our families and our communities safe.”

Flozell Daniels Jr., president and CEO of the Foundation for Louisiana, a grantmaking philanthropic organization, and Dana Kaplan, executive director for the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, an organization that seeks reforms in the justice system, argued against the proposal in a separate op-ed column.

“We share the council's commitment to reducing the crime that is plaguing our city, and to protecting our youth. However, we must work for substantive solutions, based on what is demonstrated will work,” they wrote.

One of the strictest
An 8 p.m. curfew citywide would give New Orleans one of the strictest curfew laws in the nation. Violators would be taken to a holding center until they are picked up by a parent. The ordinance provides for several exceptions, such as for youths who are with a parent or guardian, going to or from work, or are involved in an emergency.

The ACLU of Louisiana, in an open letter signed by other city civil right leaders and legal advocates, said such a proposal could hurt local businesses and “drastically reduce the amount of free time teenagers have outside of school, limiting their ability to date, go to the movies, or attend nighttime Mardi Gras parades,” wwltv.com reported.

Black teens could also face unfair treatment, the ACLU said, according to wwltv.com.

“In New Orleans, African Americans are arrested for curfew violations at a rate 19 times greater than are white youth. There is, then, a significant risk that some teens will be disproportionately and unfairly affected by this change in the law.”

Washington, of the Louisiana Justice Institute, says the proposed citywide curfew does nothing to address the scarcity of teen resources and recreational outlets, such as movie theaters and bowling alleys.

“Our children are dying. We had two murders last night. Twelve murders in first 12 days of the year.  Children are getting shot sitting inside their homes, sitting on their front porches. I live in a war zone,” she said.

“If you are really concerned about health safety and welfare of juveniles, then do something. “

 

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The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing new rules that could make it easier for law enforcement agencies to use drone aircraft in the U.S., raising concerns about privacy at a time when the aircraft are already conducting surveillance missions in some parts of the country.

The American Civil Liberties Union released a report Thursday demanding better protections against a surveillance society, “in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded and scrutinized by the authorities.”

“Our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values,” warns the ACLU report, "Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft."

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The report follows a weekend story by the Los Angeles Times that detailed how the unmanned aircraft are being used in domestic law enforcement cases, and not just along the country’s borders to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers as was originally authorized by Congress in 2005.

 

The Times said a North Dakota county sheriff asked federal authorities to employ a drone for surveillance in a standoff with three men on a farm June 23, resulting in the first known arrest of U.S. citizens involving the spy planes in a domestic case.

Since then, the Times said, two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base have flown at least two dozen surveillance flights for local police. The Times reported the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration have also used drones in domestic investigations.

Next month, the FAA is expected to issue proposed rules that the ACLU warns could expand their use by domestic law enforcement agencies.

The FAA declined comment for this story but in a recent fact sheet acknowledged the growing interest by law enforcement in unmanned aircraft.

“The FAA is working with urban police departments in major metropolitan areas and national public safety organizations on test programs involving unmanned aircraft,” the FAA statement said. “The goal is to help identify the challenges that UAS (umanned aircraft systems) will bring into this environment and what type of operations law enforcement can safely perform.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has supported expanding the use of domestic drones along the border with Mexico. In October, the Sheriff's Department in Montgomery County, north of Houston, bought a $300,000 ShadowHawk drone from Vanguard Defense industries using federal homeland security grant funds.

“It's an exciting piece of equipment for us," Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the sheriff's office told the Houston Chronicle at the time. "We envision a lot of its uses primarily in the realm of public safety -- looking at recovery of lost individuals and being able to utilize it for fire issues."

McDaniel said the aircraft would not be used to track suspects’ vehicles but may provide surveillance for officers serving warrants.

M. Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, says widespread use of drones domestically seems inevitable, particularly since they are an efficient and cost-effective alternative to helicopter and airplanes.

“Drones are capable of finding or following a specific person,” he writes in a recent article in the Stanford Law Review. “They can fly patterns in search of suspicious activities or hover over a location in wait. Some are as small as birds or insects, others as big as blimps. In addition to high-resolution cameras and microphones, drones can be equipped with thermal imaging and the capacity to intercept wireless communications.”

In addition to privacy concerns, Calo said, drones also raise safety and security issues, particularly because they can crash and their guidance systems can be hacked. He cited the case of the CIA drone recently lost in Iran. The Christian Science Monitor on Thursday reported a claim by an Iranian engineer that the Iranians were able to exploit a navigational weakness in the drone’s technology to make it land in Iran.

Catherine Crump, the ACLU report’s co-author and staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said the organization isn’t against the use of all domestic drones but rather wants to make privacy a central issue as the technology becomes more available.

"We have a clear opportunity to get ahead of the game,” she said.

Some of the ACLU’s recommendations include not deploying drones unless there is certainty that they will collect evidence of a specific crime. If a drone will intrude on reasonable privacy expectations, a warrant should be required, the ACLU said. The report also calls for restrictions on retaining images of identifiable people, as well as an open process for developing policies on how drones will be used.

“Historically, the fact that manned helicopters and airplanes are expensive has imposed a natural limit on aerial surveillance. But the prospect of cheap, flying video surveillance cameras will likely open the floodgates,” said Jay Stanley, the report’s other co-author and senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project.

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