Katie Buckland says justice was served in the second murder trial of Hollywood music producer Phil Spector. But the former prosecutor, now with the California Women's Law Center, says victim blaming was allowed to freely stalk the case.

Commentary follows announcements.

Correction: "NYC Hospitals Embark on 'Baby-Friendly' Quest," published April 14, 2009, said that Dr. Benjamin Mojica is acting New York City Health Commissioner. His actual title is senior assistant vice president in community health promotion and public health services for the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

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Here's today's update:

COMMENTARY

Spector Convicted; Victim-Blame Still at Large

Katie Buckland

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's Enews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--As a former domestic violence prosecutor, I am gratified and relieved by the jury's decision in the Phil Spector murder case in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County.

Spector, 69, a former music producer, was convicted Monday after his second trial of second-degree murder in the shooting death of Lana Clarkson almost six years ago.

The jury system is at best an imprecise arbiter of justice.

It is undoubtedly true, as one juror in the first trial in 2007, remarked, that Spector bought himself some forensic evidence by introducing bogus scientific evidence about the pattern of the blood splatter and position of the gun that tricked two jurors into thinking Clarkson had killed herself.

According to comments after the first trial, one of the jurors found it relevant that the county coroner's office did not produce a "psychological autopsy" of Lana Clarkson.

What exactly is a "psychological autopsy"? And are Americans really so addicted to crime solving shows that attaching the word "autopsy" gives this ridiculous concept some validity?

No, this is simply a made up term for the age-old practice of blaming women for the violence that pervades their lives.

Life Up for Grabs

Lana Clarkson's entire life was dissected and described with psychobabble during both trials, which may warrant taking another look at the California Evidence Code. The rules for what goes on in California state courts give the judge wide latitude in determining what evidence is relevant. Perhaps that code should be amended to specifically rule out trash psychology such as this.

The entire defense was premised on the theory that Clarkson was suicidal and thus planned to be in the presence of a gun-waving maniac with a history of violence against at least five other women.

There was never a scintilla of evidence to support this theory, yet it allowed her life to be on display.

The defense never introduced evidence that Lana Clarkson knew of Spector's previous violent behavior.

If she didn't know he was capable of such violence, how could her trip to his faux castle possibly have been motivated by a desire to end her life?

Let's Back Up

The implied theory was that she was so despondent over her circumstances that she threw caution to the wind when she got into the car with Spector to tour his house. But let's back up for a moment.

Before she accepted a ride in the chauffeured town car she clarified with the driver that he would accompany them during their visit to Spector's mansion and return her to the lot where her car was parked. This is hardly risky behavior by any stretch of the imagination.

So she hated her job at The House of Blues where she worked as a hostess in the VIP room and complained about it when e-mailing friends. That's a thought familiar to most working people, at least occasionally. She also went out and bought appropriate and comfortable shoes, a clear indication that she planned to be working as a hostess for the foreseeable future.

And then there is Phil Spector's statement to the chauffeur; "I think I killed someone."

Maybe my years as a prosecutor have made me cynical, but that sounds pretty close to a confession if you ask me.

Most chilling is the testimony of five other women who had guns waved in their face when they tried to leave his residence, behavior going back almost 20 years.

This is a man with a pathological hatred of women, a gun collection, and enough name recognition many years after his producing career ended, to lure Lana Clarkson to her death.

The details of her phone calls, her shoe shopping and her e-mailed intentions to attend a party that weekend had no place in this trial, and seemingly caused her family unnecessary pain.

The defense theory of "suicide by insane gun wielding former music producer" was enough to hang one jury, but not the second, and we thank those prosecutors who endured a second trial to ensure that justice was served.

Katie Buckland is the executive director of The California Women's Law Center and can be contacted at katie.buckland@....

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California Women's Law Center
http://www.cwlc.org

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We receive financial support from our readers, private donors, events, commercial publications that republish our material and from the following foundations. * The Bydale Foundation * The Carnegie Corporation of New York * The Charles Lawrence Keith & Clara S. Miller Foundation * The Ford Foundation * The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation * The Barbara Lee Family Foundation * The Livingry Fund of the Tides Foundation * Mary Kay Inc. * The McCormick Tribune Foundation * The Ms. Foundation * The Open Society Institute * The Rockefeller Brothers Fund * The Rockefeller Family Fund * The Sister Fund * The Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation * The United Nations Foundation * The Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention * The W.K. Kellogg Foundation * Working Assets The donations from readers are critical to our success. They are an important measure that we are serving our audience--the yardstick that our foundation supporters will measure us by. Donate now by going to http://www.womensenews.org/support.cfm

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Human Rights Watch released a report Tuesday finding that Los Angeles County has at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. Sarah Tofte, a researcher for that study, calls it a case of major injustice to rape survivors.

Essay follows announcements.

Here are just a few more names of women who once worked in the neighborhood where we now write the first draft of Women's History every day: Nellie Bly, investigative reporter for the daily World; Margaret Fuller, major figure in the Transcendentalist Movement, and Ida B. Wells, the journalist crusader against lynching and suffragist. Please visit us on line every day and please come visit us if you are ever in New York and take the tour!

And please support us. If you don't, who will?

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Here's today's update:

COMMENTARY

L.A.'s Untested Rape Kits Represent Lost Justice

By Sarah Tofte
WeNews commentator

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's Enews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Catherine, who lives with her young son in Los Angeles, was awakened at midnight by a stranger who raped her, sodomized her and forced her to orally copulate him--repeatedly. When it was over, the police brought her to a rape treatment center. As with all rape victims, her body was a crime scene. She consented to the collection of evidence.

The lab said it would take at least eight months for it to analyze the evidence gathered from Catherine's body, known as a "rape kit." For the detective, that was too long to wait. He personally drove the kit to the state lab, where it still sat for months.

When it was finally processed, it generated a "cold hit"--the DNA matched someone in the offender database, and Catherine's rapist was identified. During the months Catherine's kit sat on a shelf, unopened, the same rapist attacked at least two other victims; one was a child.

In this age of advanced DNA technology, and a heightened public understanding of how DNA testing can help solve crimes, one might assume Catherine's story wouldn't happen.

We know that testing a rape kit can identify a potential assailant, confirm a suspect's contact with a victim, corroborate the victim's account of the sexual assault and exonerate innocent defendants. National studies have shown that cases in which a rape kit was collected, tested and contained DNA evidence are more likely to move forward in the criminal justice system.

But today, Human Rights Watch, for which I work as a researcher, released a 68-page report that measures the scale of the neglect in Los Angeles.

Over 12,000 Kits Wait for Testing

Through dozens of interviews with police officers, public officials, DNA analysts, rape treatment providers and rape victims, I found that as of March 1, 2009, there were at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. In those cases, officers never sent the kits along for forensic testing.

Of these untested kits, at least 1,218 are from unsolved cases in which the attacker was a stranger to the victim. And 499 kits are attached to cases that have passed the 10-year statute of limitations for rape in California, making it impossible to prosecute the alleged assailants even if they were to be identified. Under California law, if those 499 kits had been opened within two years of the attack, the statute would no longer apply. Thousands more rape kits were destroyed untested.

The backlog grew even as the police and sheriff's departments received millions of federal dollars from the Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant, a program the U.S. Congress created to address rape kit backlogs. But the effect of the program is blunted by the fact that grantees can use the money to test any kind of DNA backlog.

Largest Backlog Leads to Injustice

Los Angeles County has the largest known backlog in the United States.

These untested rape kits represent lost justice for the victims who reported their rape to the police, and consented in good faith to the four-to-six hour rape kit collection process.

What makes Catherine's story unusual is that her rape kit was tested at all.

In New York City, rape survivors stand a much better chance.

New York eliminated its rape kit backlog in 2003 when city officials created a policy that every rape kit would be sent to the laboratory for DNA testing, and the lab built up its DNA testing capacity so that every rape kit would be tested within 60 days.

The lab also created a system in which every time a DNA profile from a rape kit matches a profile in the DNA database, the crime lab, prosecutor's office and police department are simultaneously notified. To deal with the increase of investigative leads in rape cases because of the testing, the prosecutors and police created a special investigative team. The result has been an increase in arrest and prosecution rates.

Los Angeles officials need to move quickly and decisively to catch up and end its reputation, when it comes to prosecuting rape, as a judicial backwater.

Sarah Tofte is a researcher with the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch and the author of the new report, "Testing Justice: The Rape Kit Backlog in Los Angeles City and County."

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For more information:

Human Rights Watch report, "Testing Justice"
http://www.hrw.org/node/81826

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We receive financial support from our readers, private donors, events, commercial publications that republish our material and from the following foundations. * The Bydale Foundation * The Carnegie Corporation of New York * The Charles Lawrence Keith & Clara S. Miller Foundation * The Ford Foundation * The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation * The Barbara Lee Family Foundation * The Livingry Fund of the Tides Foundation * Mary Kay Inc. * The McCormick Tribune Foundation * The Ms. Foundation * The Open Society Institute * The Rockefeller Brothers Fund * The Rockefeller Family Fund * The Sister Fund * The Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation * The United Nations Foundation * The Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention * The W.K. Kellogg Foundation * Working Assets The donations from readers are critical to our success. They are an important measure that we are serving our audience--the yardstick that our foundation supporters will measure us by. Donate now by going to http://www.womensenews.org/support.cfm

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The FDA is told to review its emergency contraception policy by a federal judge. Also in today's Cheers and Jeers column, Saudi activists criticize their government for failing to address women's equal rights.

Story follows announcements.

Here are just a few more names of women who once worked in the neighborhood where we now write the first draft of Women's History every day: Nellie Bly, investigative reporter for the daily World; Margaret Fuller, major figure in the Transcendentalist Movement, and Ida B. Wells, the journalist crusader against lynching and suffragist. Please visit us on line every day and please come visit us if you are ever in New York and take the tour!

And please support us. If you don't, who will?

http://womensenews.org/support.cfm

A podcast of Women's eNews' enormously popular Cheers and Jeers column is now posted on the Women's eNews Web site: http://www.womensenews.org.

AOL subscribers: To view the Commentoon by Ann Telnaes and HTML e-mail, please remember to click on the "Show images and enable links" in the header of your e-mail.

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Here's today's update:

CHEERS AND JEERS OF THE WEEK

FDA Told to Think Again; Saudi Clerics Ban Images

By WeNews Staff

(WOMENSENEWS)--

Cheers

A federal judge ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make Plan B emergency contraception available to 17-year-olds and to reconsider its 2006 policy implemented during the Bush administration that requires a prescription for those under 18, the Washington Post reported March 24. In the ruling, Judge Edward R. Korman said the age restriction was an "arbitrary and capricious" decision that was influenced by "political and ideological" considerations.

"I think FDA is now in a position where it can make a fair decision because of the change in leadership and the commitment by everyone involved to make science-based decisions," Susan F. Wood, a scientist who resigned from the FDA in 2005 to protest politically motivated delays in the agency's approval of the drug, told the Post. "This is a chance for the agency to demonstrate it is back on track."

More News to Cheer This Week:

• The Vermont state Senate passed a bill 26-4 on March 23 to legalize same-sex marriage, and on March 26 the New Hampshire state House did the same, 365Gay.com reported. Both votes represent an advance for advocates of equal marriage rights pressing for gains in all six New England states by 2012. If the Vermont bill wins final passage and overcomes a gubernatorial veto, the state would become the first to legalize same-sex marriage through a legislative--as opposed to judicial--measure.
• For the first time, health authorities in Northern Ireland have published rules to inform doctors about when abortions may be performed legally, the Associated Press reported March 17. Doctors have refused to perform all abortions because of the lack of official guidance over the two allowed exceptions: to preserve the life of the woman and to avoid long-term or permanent impacts to her physical or mental health.
• British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pressing for an end to England's rule of primogeniture, which gives precedence to male heirs over women in the monarchy's line of succession, the Times of London reported March 27. Brown also seeks an end on the prohibition against Catholics succeeding to the throne. If the law is changed, then Princess Anne, the queen's only daughter and her second child after heir Prince Charles, would rise from 10th in the line of succession to fourth, and a first-born daughter would not be displaced by a younger brother.
• After he blamed condoms for worsening the AIDS pandemic as a kickoff to a trip to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI condemned gender violence in a March 21 speech in Angola, the AP reported. "Particularly disturbing is the crushing yoke of discrimination that women and girls so often endure, not to mention the unspeakable practice of sexual violence and exploitation which causes such humiliation and trauma," the pope said.
• The European Parliament adopted a resolution report March 23 calling for a ban against female genital mutilation and a coordinated response in all member states. The resolution also calls for a grant of asylum to any girl or woman who is at risk of being cut in her home country but faces opposition from some parliamentarians.
• Fifteen women freed from California prisons on parole are scheduled to gather in a celebration in San Francisco on March 28 and make a public call for the release of 30 other women. Most of the women served time--between three and 30 years--for killing abusive husbands or partners in self-defense or to protect their children from abuse.
• Three female teens and their parents sued a Pennsylvania district attorney who threatened to file child-pornography charges after the teens "sexted" photos from a slumber party over their cell phones, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported March 26. In one photo, two teens are wearing their bras, and in the other photo a girl is stepping from the shower partly covered by a towel. The prosecutor is accused of abusing the power of his office.
• Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland introduced a bill to award all the female pilots who served during World War II with the Congressional Medal of Honor on March 12. Over 1,100 served in the Women Air Service Pilots corps, flying military aircraft on non-combat missions, and 38 were killed on duty. They were not officially recognized as veterans until 1977.

Jeers

Thirty-five Islamic clerics have asked Saudi Arabia's information and culture minister to ban women from appearing on television or print media, including TV broadcasters and anchors, the AP reported March 22. The minister, Abdel Aziz Khoja, was appointed by the king in a recent shake-up that was interpreted as a signal of the king's modernizing influence and desire to enact some social reforms.

The case of an 8-year-old girl who was married to a 47-year-old man to pay off her father's debts was reviewed by an appellate court, which refused to certify the marriage, CNN reported March 25. Although that decision allows the girl's mother to proceed with a legal case to nullify the union, the appeals court declined to end the marriage outright and returned the matter to the judge that first authorized the marriage last year.

Over 1,700 Saudi women say they are humiliated by having to buy undergarments and lingerie from male sales clerks. Now they are launching a national boycott and pressing for enforcement of a 2006 law that requires only female staff in women's apparel shops, the AP reported March 23. Currently, women are not allowed to try on their bras in the stores before purchase since that would require them to undress with men nearby.

Such indignities led Saudi activists with the National Society for Human Rights to call on March 22 for an end to discrimination against women. The group also criticized the religious police for heavy-handed and intrusive enforcement of gender segregation codes and called for judicial reforms, an end to child marriage and providing more opportunities for women to enter the work force.

More News to Jeer This Week:

• The Afghan government arrested the manager of a TV station after it broadcast pictures of women dancing in short skirts and "plunging necklines," the AP reported March 25.
• According to the official records of police in Lagos, only six women have been raped this year, Nigerian news site Next reported March 23. Lagos is the former capital city and has a population over 7 million. Activists estimate that at least 20 rapes occur for each that is reported to authorities.
• Forty percent of working women surveyed in Korea said they are delaying pregnancy because it risks their job and career advancement, the Korea Times reported March 24. National law provides for a paid 90-day leave for pregnancy, but women say they feel penalized when they return to the workplace. "I gave birth, and suddenly I became designated as a less competitive woman," said one 35-year-old mother who said she decided not to have additional children because her status was lowered at work.
• Women who are abused spend 42 percent more for health care per year than women who are not abused, according to a long-term study of 3,000 women published this week in Health Services Research. Five years later, women who were abused still faced costs 19 percent higher. Costs were 33 percent higher for women who suffered psychological abuse.
• Hiram Monserrate, a state senator in New York, was indicted on a domestic violence charge on March 23 and is accused of slashing his girlfriend's face with broken glass, the AP reported. Monserrate, a former police officer, claims it was an accident. Members of the New York State Senate were encouraged in a closed-door session to donate to Monserrate to cover his legal fees.

Jennifer Thurston is managing editor of Women's eNews.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@....

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Copyright 2008 Women's eNews. The information contained in this Women's eNews report may--with the prior written authorization of Women's eNews--be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. To obtain permission, go to http://www.copyright.com/ccc/do/showConfigurator?WT.mc_id=PubLink and provide the publication or broadcast date and the name of the newspaper, magazine, radio or television station, cable network, Web site, newsletter or list serve where it will be replicated. Please include the approximate size of the audience you intend to reach. Answers to your most frequently asked questions about permissions to reprint or repost Women's eNews content are available here: http://www.womensenews.org/reprint_faq.cfm

Women's eNews is a nonprofit independent news service covering issues of concern to women and their allies. An incubator program of the International Institute for Community Solutions, Fund for the City of New York, Women's eNews is supported by our readers; reprints and licensing fees; and foundations. Who Funds Us

We receive financial support from our readers, private donors, events, commercial publications that republish our material and from the following foundations. * The Bydale Foundation * The Carnegie Corporation of New York * The Charles Lawrence Keith & Clara S. Miller Foundation * The Ford Foundation * The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation * The Barbara Lee Family Foundation * The Livingry Fund of the Tides Foundation * Mary Kay Inc. * The McCormick Tribune Foundation * The Ms. Foundation * The Open Society Institute * The Rockefeller Brothers Fund * The Rockefeller Family Fund * The Sister Fund * The Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation * The United Nations Foundation * The Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention * The W.K. Kellogg Foundation * Working Assets The donations from readers are critical to our success. They are an important measure that we are serving our audience--the yardstick that our foundation supporters will measure us by. Donate now by going to http://www.womensenews.org/support.cfm

Women's eNews subscribers may select whether to receive a daily full text, daily summary or weekly summary. To change your email address, send mail to membersvcs@.... To change the frequency of your mail or to cancel your subscription, send a message to Member Services (membersvcs@...) or use our online form: http://www.womensenews.org/update_subscription.cfm