Washed It!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday called the state’s inability to stop scores of convicted felons from working in its home healthcare program a “public safety crisis” and demanded that lawmakers take action to address the situation.

The governor made his comments in a letter to legislative leaders after The Times reported that people convicted of such crimes as rape, murder and elder abuse are paid to provide services for some of the most vulnerable Californians in their residences.

Data provided by state officials show that at least 210 workers and applicants with felony convictions flagged by investigators as unsuitable for the In Home Supportive Services program are nonetheless scheduled to resume or begin employment. State and county investigators have not reported many others whose backgrounds include violent crimes because the rules of the program, as interpreted by a judge this year, permit felons to work in the program.

In the letter, the governor said numerous attempts by the administration to “engage” the Legislature on the issue have failed.

“I am hard pressed to imagine that any member of the Legislature would allow a convicted sex offender to take care of their own grandmother in a nursing home,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “But if the Legislature continues to resist making changes in the law, the Legislature is essentially saying it is OK for that to occur to someone else’s grandmother in their own home.”

Legislative leaders could not be reached for comment late Friday afternoon. But officials from the United Domestic Workers Homecare Providers Union, which represents 65,000 home healthcare workers in California, expressed skepticism about the governor’s motives.

“Even if all of these 210 providers reported to the media as allegedly ‘dangerous’ felons had past convictions, that represents .00005% of the 380,000 homecare providers in IHSS,” union executive director Doug Moore said in a statement. “That is hardly a crime wave.”

But officials at SEIU California, which represents more than 300,000 homecare workers, embraced the governor’s call for action.

“Putting vulnerable adults in harm’s way — either through cutting needed services or by exposing them to dangerous individuals — is unacceptable,” SEIU California President Bill A. Lloyd said in a statement, “and we are committed to working with the Legislature and the administration on any measure to increase their safety, health, and well-being.”

evan.halper@latimes.com
Governor sees ‘public safety crisis’ in home healthcare program

Pistachio vinyl covers the gurney in the state’s new lethal injection chamber, the only splash of color in a sterile white room where corrections officials intend to put to death rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown next week.

An Elgin clock, the only other furnishing, ticks above the death bed, tracking the time to the first execution to be carried out in California in nearly five years — unless a judge moves to stop it.

The hexagonal room surrounded by viewing compartments and a holding cell where Brown is expected to spend his last six hours were built to comply with a federal court order that state officials correct deficiencies in the execution regimen. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel halted the February 2006 execution of murderer Michael Morales after hearing testimony about inadequate anesthesia and cramped conditions in the former gas chamber.

Fogel’s order set in motion a legal duel between those who want capital punishment practiced in a state where two out of three citizens support the ultimate penalty and those who oppose executions on moral, religious and economic grounds and have used the hiatus to challenge its validity in state and federal court.

“We are fully prepared to carry out an execution on Sept. 29,” San Quentin State Prison Warden Vincent Cullen said as he accompanied journalists on a tour of the facility housed in a cinderblock annex to the prison’s teeming East Wing.

At 200 square feet, the lethal injection chamber built with inmate labor and $853,000 in taxpayer money is more than four times the size of the old metal-walled gas chamber used for two executions by lethal gas and 11 by lethal injection since capital punishment was restored in 1977.

Vials of the three drugs used to execute the condemned are stored in a caged and locked refrigerator in the death chamber’s adjacent Infusion Control Room. Sodium thiopental would be pumped through first, to anesthetize the inmate, then pancurium bromide to paralyze him and, finally, potassium chloride to stop his heart. Two grommeted holes in the wall on either side of the gurney would be threaded with tubes to carry the lethal infusions from the masked execution team in the control room to the veins of the inmate. The inmate would be restrained by five black straps across the body and cuffs to steady his arms and ankles. Four tan wall phones with red warning lights stand ready to receive calls from the governor, the warden, the state attorney general and the U.S. Supreme Court, should a last-minute clemency be granted.

Fogel has yet to inspect the new death chamber or review the revised execution procedures drafted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over the last three years and approved by a state agency in July. But department spokeswoman Terry Thornton pointed out Tuesday that the Morales case wasn’t a class action on behalf of all death row inmates and posed no barrier to Brown’s scheduled death by lethal injection.

The warren of rooms being readied for their first use are silent, in stark contrast with the grunts and shouts and thunderous footfalls emanating from the concertina-wire-enclosed rooftop recreation yard where maximum-security inmates exercise high above the sparkling waters of San Francisco Bay. A fog-shrouded skyline is visible on the horizon.

Lethal injection is the “default” method of execution in California, with the gas chamber still available and fully functional if a condemned prisoner should choose that over lethal injection, said Lt. Sam Robinson, public information officer for San Quentin.

Brown’s attorney, Jan B. Norman of Los Angeles, has petitioned Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant her client a reprieve so that the next governor can consider the prisoner’s request for clemency. Schwarzenegger, who leaves office in January, has said he wants to resume executions as soon as possible. Norman criticized the rapid-fire moves to resume executions since the new protocols were adopted six weeks ago and accused the governor and his lawyers of “a headlong rush to execute as many people as quickly as possible and to sabotage the ability of inmates’ counsel to respond.”

Brown, who raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl in 1980, is one of 708 California prisoners on death row, including 18 women. Only a handful have exhausted all appeals and are eligible to be issued death warrants.

A state appeals court on Monday lifted an injunction against executions that had been imposed by a Marin County judge, clearing away the last legal hurdle to fulfilling the death warrant issued by a Riverside County judge for 56-year-old Brown.

carol.williams@latimes.com
Clock is ticking on first execution at San Quentin’s revamped death chamber

An American woman who spent 410 days in an Iranian prison said Sunday that she hoped her plight and that of two companions still imprisoned in Iran would nudge Washington and Tehran toward improved relations and that the “humanitarian gesture” that led to her freedom would not go unrecognized.

In her first extensive public comments since being freed Tuesday, Sarah Shourd, a 32-year-old who grew up in Los Angeles, also expressed gratitude to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, Shourd, who walked into a hotel conference room hand in hand with her mother, Nora, said she felt only “one-third free,” because her fiance, Shane Bauer, and their close friend, Josh Fattal, remain jailed in Iran.

The three were captured after allegedly straying over the Iranian border while hiking in Iraq. Iranian officials accused them of being spies, a charge the three deny. In her prepared statement, Shourd repeated that denial. “We committed no crime, and we are not spies,” she said.

Shourd looked far different than she had upon arriving in Oman after her release. Her dark brown hair was not covered by a traditional hijab and was neatly trimmed. She wore a crisp white blouse, black pants and a black stone pendant around her neck. As Shourd spoke, the mothers of her companions stood nearby, clutching photographs of their sons.

Cindy Hickey, the mother of Shane Bauer, said she and Laura Fattal had requested a meeting with Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York on Sunday to attend the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, which opens Monday. “We’re hoping we can get one,” Hickey said. Fattal said they were hopeful that Shourd’s release on humanitarian grounds “will be continued” and eventually lead to their sons’ freedom.

Both admitted to mixed feelings on learning that Sarah Shourd would go free. Hickey described it as a “very bittersweet moment. … The cold hard truth is that Shane and Josh are still in prison.”

Sarah Shourd did not take questions, but in her statement she said the medical issues that apparently led to her release had turned out not to be a problem. Doctors in Oman assured her that she is “physically well,” she said.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, posed for photographs at the U.N. earlier Sunday but made no comments about the hikers.

tina.susman@latimes.com
Sarah Shourd feels only ‘one-third free’ after Iran prison release

A violent protest that left dozens of people injured in the Afghan capital Wednesday points to concerted efforts by the Taliban to keep alive the controversy over an American pastor’s discarded plans to burn copies of the Koran, Afghan authorities said.

White Taliban flags flew above a crowd of about 800 people who burned tires, shouted anti-American slogans and pelted security forces with stones. Police fired assault rifles into the air to break up the early-morning protest on the outskirts of Kabul.

At least 35 police officers and about 15 demonstrators were injured in the melee, the Interior Ministry said.

The demonstrations, which have persisted for days after the abandoning of plans by a small Florida church to burn the Muslim holy book, suggest an orchestrated campaign that could continue for some time, perhaps disrupting Saturday’s parliamentary elections.

The Taliban movement has already threatened to attack voters and polling places, and some districts are considered too dangerous for balloting to take place. The Taliban website this week carried a fresh denunciation of the Koran-burning plan, calling it part of a larger Western assault on Islam.

Afghan authorities say the insurgents are seeking to tap into the outrage generated by the church’s threat to whip up fury against Western forces and President Hamid Karzai. Wednesday’s rally featured fiery speeches denouncing the Afghan government and the presence of foreign forces, which now number about 150,000.

The organizing of a protest in the capital itself appears to mark an escalation from previous demonstrations, most of which have taken place in rural areas.

The demonstrations’ organizers are also able to exploit the fact that in a country where illiteracy is widespread, many people were unaware that Florida pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville did not carry out his plans, which had been condemned by the Obama administration and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of Western troops in Afghanistan.

Gen. Zahir Khan, head of the crime investigation department for the Kabul police, said that at this point the threatened Koran-burning was little more than a pretext to rally anti-government sentiment.

“This was a very violent protest,” he said. “And the Taliban were in the crowd.”

laura.king@latimes.com
Dozens injured in Kabul protest over Koran-burning threat

The young man, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and shackled at the waist, was poised on the witness stand, politely addressing attorneys as “sir” and “ma’am” as he matter-of-factly described the night he and other gang members took turns stabbing a suspected snitch 80 times in a cramped, cluttered garage.

“He didn’t scream or nothing,” testified Jose Covarrubias, now 24, describing how he plunged a folding blade hard into 21-year-old Christopher Ash’s stomach four or five times as he lay dying on his back.

The testimony of the 204th Street gang member with a youthful face and buzz cut, also known as “Chano” or “Criminal,” is at the center of a case on which a Los Angeles jury will resume deliberations Wednesday. Covarrubias’ testimony in the high-profile hate crime trial, should the jury choose to believe it, ties the gang to Ash’s death and to the slaying of a black 14-year-old girl, which authorities say was motivated by the Latino gang’s racial hatred.

Covarrubias, who took the stand last month in exchange for a lighter sentence and escaping the death penalty, offered the jury a firsthand look into the inner workings of a powerful Latino street gang prosecutors said used fear and intimidation to reign over the sliver of Los Angeles known as the Harbor Gateway.

Part of that reign, Covarrubias’ testimony showed, was an unsparing willingness to turn on the gang’s own members when the occasion arose.

Gang members suspected Ash of talking to police about the killing of Cheryl Green two weeks earlier. His body was found on the side of a road in Carson. Autopsy photos showed numerous gashes in his stomach.

Cheryl was shot and killed in December 2006 while hanging out with friends in broad daylight because of her skin color, prosecutors allege. Jonathan Fajardo, 22, has admitted to the shooting in a police interview; his defense attorney disputes that the killing was motivated by race.

“Basically, we’re against all black people,” Covarrubias said of the gang.

Fajardo faces the death penalty if convicted of Cheryl’s and Ash’s killings. A second defendant, Daniel Aguilar, 23, is charged with Ash’s murder for luring him to the garage and partaking in the beating and clean-up.

Because of his cooperation, Covarrubias will be allowed to plead to voluntary manslaughter and receive a 22-year prison term.

When police served a search warrant on Ash’s apartment in the days after Green’s death, the gang grew suspicious, Covarrubias said in his two-day testimony.

A week later, older gang members grilled the younger ones about whether anyone was snitching. Covarrubias testified that he, Aguilar and Ash were all under suspicion. Some mentioned that Ash may be keeping a journal about the gang’s activities, and his fate was quickly sealed. It was agreed that Aguilar, Ash’s best friend, would take him to the garage, Covarrubias testified.

An old-timer known as Raccoon, one of the gang’s leaders, allegedly pulled Covarrubias aside.

“He just told me if I was either with — with them or against them, if I was down for it. And I told him, ‘Yeah,’ ” he testified. “I had no other choice.”

After he stabbed Ash, Covarrubias said, he was overcome by the blood and smell and threw up, dropping the knife. Another gang member grabbed the knife and continued stabbing, he said

As Ash lay still on the floor, Aguilar, who had been watching, kicked him in the legs, Covarrubias said.

The body was rolled up in a blanket and tarp, then loaded onto the back of a van. Everyone worked quietly and methodically, helping with the cleanup, at first hosing down the garage, then turning to paint thinner to scrub the floor when bloody water started running down the sidewalk.

In cross-examination, defense attorneys pointed to what they said were inconsistencies between Covarrubias’ testimony and earlier statements to the police. He admitted under defense questioning that he was under the influence of methamphetamine the night of the killing.

Aguilar’s defense attorney, Antonio Bestard, attacked Covarrubias’ credibility, pointing out that he had been dating Ash’s sister at the time of his killing.

“You participated in the murder of your girlfriend’s brother, right?” Bestard questioned. “And right after that, you would go and then crawl into bed with her, right?”

A violent death retold

Meg Whitman’s record-breaking spending in the race for governor has enabled her campaign to blanket California with more TV ads and mailers than any other in state history, while also tapping new technologies to further broaden her reach.

With nine weeks left until election day, Whitman has donated $104 million of her own money to the campaign, more than any other candidate in California history and within striking distance of the national record for a non-presidential contest, the $109 million spent by businessman Michael Bloomberg to secure a third term as mayor of New York City.

Those donations have allowed her to target her campaign mailings to the smallest subsets of voters and sort out which television shows are popular among independent voters. (It turns out they are big fans of “Bones,” the crime show rife with romantic tension, on which Whitman has aired ads.)

Dozens of outside consultants and a paid staff the size of some presidential campaigns run an operation that seems to be the living embodiment of Whitman’s book title: “The Power of Many.” After record amounts spent on television advertising, mail and ground organization, there has even been enough money left over to sponsor a youth soccer team.

“She has the money to do everything,” said Garry South, a Democratic consultant who ran Gray Davis‘ campaigns for governor, “and she is doing everything.”

The heart of the race is still to come, yet Whitman’s personal donations already represent more than twice the amount Arnold Schwarzenegger spent in the last gubernatorial election from all sources of money.

Her campaign spent $25 million on television over the summer, more than what Schwarzenegger spent on TV in his yearlong reelection effort. By the beginning of July, she had spent $7.5 million sending mail to voters, almost double Schwarzenegger’s 2006 tally and a figure that does not count the more recent flurry of mail against her November rival, Democrat Jerry Brown.

Overall, she has nearly tripled the previous California record of personal donations to a campaign, set in 1998 by Democratic businessman and gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi.

Still, for all the spending, polls show Whitman and Brown in a competitive race. Although her campaign points to the millions of dollars organized labor is pouring into the contest on Brown’s behalf, that spending pales in comparison to Whitman’s.

Whitman campaign officials say her personal donations were needed to introduce the former EBay chief and first-time candidate to California voters, to whom she was a mystery a year ago.

“We’re doing things much more aggressively than they’ve ever been done before,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds. “The frequency of the activity and the size of the political organization is an enormous investment, but we believe it will pay off on election day.”

In its ability to do more of everything, Whitman’s campaign most resembles that of President Obama, who was able to translate his immense fundraising operation into a deep use of traditional campaign tactics and a broad reach into new ones, including those harnessing the Internet for his political benefit.

Much attention has been drawn to Whitman’s television outlay, but her spending in less-visible political arenas is eye-opening as well.

Through June, Whitman had spent more than $1.2 million on polling and research, dolling out nearly $227,000 to two firms in June alone.

Democratic consultant Darry Sragow said a typical candidate might spend $300,000 on polling in the primary and a like sum in the general election. Whitman’s figures suggest a sharply different strategy than anything seen before.

“They know as much as anybody could know about the mind-set of the California electorate,” he said.

Allan Hoffenblum, a former Republican consultant who runs the Target Book, a nonpartisan compendium of political races, said Whitman was “doing stuff that is on the level of what an incumbent president would be doing running for reelection.”

Whitman’s research contributes to a detailed voter file that identifies voters by their issue interests and then targets them through an aggressive direct-mail program. Whitman’s mail effort, and her simultaneous television barrage, was devastating to her primary election rival, Steve Poizner. His campaign estimates she sent as many as 20 mailers to Republican homes in the last month of the campaign.

Whitman is now unloading on Brown, releasing ads and mail pieces almost weekly. According to the Brown campaign, Whitman’s ads showed up at least 170,000 times in state media markets from the primary through third week of August, even as multiple mailers were arriving at selected voters’ homes.

Whitman demonstrates the power of her money

The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether all Americans, including the president’s critics, have a right to attend his public speeches, or whether the White House retains the right to screen out dissenters.

The Obama administration says it does not screen out critics; the issue arose under President George W. Bush. His aides were accused of removing individuals who wore anti-Bush T-shirts or otherwise indicated that they were critics of the president.

In West Virginia, Jeff and Nicole Rank were handcuffed and taken away from a July 4, 2004, rally on the state Capitol grounds shortly before the president arrived. They had tickets to the event, but wore homemade T-shirts with a line crossing out the word “Bush.” The government later paid $80,000 to settle their lawsuit.

But those who have taken their cases before judges have not fared as well.

In March 2005, Leslie Weise and Alex Young were removed from their seats at a town hall meeting in Denver where Bush was due to speak about Social Security. They had obtained tickets from a Republican congressman and had passed through security.

“I had no idea why we were being thrown out. We were dressed professionally. And we hadn’t done anything,” said Weise, a clean-energy consultant from Boulder, Colo.

She soon learned why she was removed. Her car had a bumper sticker that said: “No More Blood for Oil” — a reference to the war in Iraq. A Secret Service official told her the next day that her bumper sticker had been reported, and the White House advance team had insisted on having her and Young removed before the president arrived.

“He was very apologetic, and said it was not the Secret Service policy, and it should not have happened,” Weise said.

She and Young sued Michael Casper, the official with an earpiece and a lapel pin who ordered them out of their seats. He was not a Secret Service agent, but rather a government employee acting at the behest of two White House aides traveling with Bush.

Weise’s suit cited her right to free speech and argued that the 1st Amendment forbids the government, including the president, from excluding her from a public event simply because it disagrees with her views.

But a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that there is no such right.

“President Bush had the right, at his own speech, to ensure that only his message was conveyed,” Judge Wiley Daniel said in dismissing her suit. “Simply put, the president and his staff had broad discretion to decide who could attend his speech in Denver and who could not.”

That decision was upheld in January by a sharply divided panel of the 10th Circuit Court. The majority said the 1st Amendment does not “prohibit the government from excluding” people from presidential events “based on their viewpoint.”

But dissenting Judge William J. Holloway said that the “right of an American citizen to criticize public officials and policies” is at the heart of the 1st Amendment, and that it “is simply astounding that any member of the executive branch could have believed that our Constitution justified this egregious violation.”

The American Civil Liberties Union appealed Weise’s case and urged the Supreme Court to decide whether the Constitution “prohibits government officials who are speaking at events that are open to the public and paid for by the taxpayers from excluding people from the audience on the basis of viewpoint.”

The justices are due to vote in late September whether to hear the case. If they do not take the case, the appeals court ruling will stand.

Christopher Hansen, an ACLU lawyer, agreed that his client would not have a case had she shouted out a critical comment as the president spoke. “You don’t a right to disrupt an event,” he said. “If this had been a Republican campaign rally, then of course, they can exclude people who are not Republicans.”

Hansen said he did not know whether the Obama White House screens out critics from the president’s public events, but said, “We haven’t received complaints yet.”

Sean Gallagher, a Denver lawyer representing Casper, said his client worked for the General Services Administration in Colorado and was in charge of event security on the day the president spoke in Denver.

He said the White House advance team had been warned that members of MoveOn.org might try to disrupt Bush’s speech, and they suspected Weise and Young might have been part of such a plan.

He said the Denver-based courts ruled correctly. “There is no constitutional right to see the president,” he wrote in response to the ACLU’s appeal.

For her part, Weise said she was even more troubled by the judicial rulings than by what happened in Denver five years ago.

“We wanted to make it clear this should not happen to people,” she said. “The president is the leader of all citizens of this country and should not be accessible only to those who agree with him on every issue.”

david.savage@latimes.com

Civil disagreement over right to attend presidential addresses

There’s no doubt in Christian Vazquez’s mind why he was beaten up as he headed home from work late one night, and it wasn’t for the $10 the attackers stole from him.

“They were after me because I was a Mexican,” the 18-year-old said, his left eye still swollen shut from the assault July 31 while he was walking through Staten Island’s Port Richmond neighborhood. As his attackers punched him, they yelled, “Go home!” and anti-Mexican slurs, according to the police report, which had a familiar ring.

That’s because Vazquez was the 10th Mexican victim of a suspected hate crime in the neighborhood since April. “Why this is happening? If you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different answers,” said Ed Josey, president of the Staten Island branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, during a march Aug. 6 led by religious and civic leaders to condemn the violence.