httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2KdfENYpTU

TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning. My name is Aja Riggs. I’m 48 years old, and I live in Santa Fe.

In March, I heard a report on the radio about two doctors asking a court to clarify the status of aid in dying under New Mexico law. I am here today to announce that I am joining the case, and asking the court to clarify the ability of mentally competent, terminally ill patients to obtain aid in dying from their physician if they find their dying process unbearable.

Less than a year ago I learned that I have uterine cancer. That news came as a complete surprise. I had had some difficult symptoms, but none of them by themselves were abnormal. Eventually I had an ultrasound and that led to a biopsy. Then the phone call came telling me the biopsy showed cancer.

I was stunned. I remember thinking in those first moments, “Cancer: That’s a life-threatening illness.” But I was told it was the least aggressive kind, and most likely stage one. A hysterectomy would probably be all that I needed to cure it. And then I would be able to go on with my life.

Surgery on October 5^th revealed a very different story. As I was coming out of anesthesia I asked what happened. I was told that the cancer had spread much further and was much more aggressive than we originally thought. Although I was still quite hazy, I understood that I was suddenly in a whole new ballpark and that my odds of long-term survival were now drastically reduced.

My doctor told me the cancer was stage 3-C, just one step away from Stage 4, and that I would need both radiation and chemotherapy.

At the end of December I had a biopsy of a lump that had grown during the time I was in chemo. That too turned out to be cancer. My doctor had taught me a lot by then, including that a tumor growing through chemo meant my chances for survival then looked even worse.

I’ve had some painful complications from the chemo, including a neutropenic immune system crash that sent me to the ER and required a few days in the hospital. That experience was pretty scary.  That, and the amount of pain and intensive medical treatment I’ve had, has made me think: If this disease is going to end my life, I don’t know if I want to go to the very end with it. When I say the very end, I picture being in pain or mostly unconscious in a bed, with my loved ones around me in distress.

When I was younger I studied counseling and psychology; I did an internship at a hospice and thought a lot about the dying process. I thought how interesting it would be to be aware you were dying, to be conscious of that fact and able to say your goodbyes to people.

Since I got this diagnosis, I’ve been thinking again, very seriously, about how to have some control over the end of my life. When I heard about this case on the radio, it answered a dilemma I’d been struggling with: I felt I couldn’t talk about my death with the people closest to me. I was afraid to talk about it with my doctor. I thought if it came to choosing a peaceful death, I would have to do it all by myself to keep from implicating anyone else.

To end that sense of fear and isolation that people have — about one of the most important events in our lives — that’s why I think aid in dying should be an option for terminally ill patients.

I am still getting chemotherapy and other aggressive treatments. I still have a chance, even if it’s a small one. I have a good life and I want to keep living. But if the cancer is going to kill me, I want the peace of mind of knowing that I have some choice at the very end. If my dying process becomes unbearable I want my doctor to be able to prescribe medication I could take to avoid further suffering and have a peaceful death.

I understand people can’t really know how they’ll feel until they actually get there. So I don’t know for sure how I will feel as I get closer to death. But I do know I want to have the choice.

I hope that the courts will agree with the doctors and me that nothing in the law prevents a doctor from providing aid in dying.

The ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights and the Southern Border Communities Coalition has worked to shed light on Border Patrol brutality and rights abuses—including the eight men and boys agents have shot and killed over the past two years. On April 20, we shocked the nation with the exposé “Crossing the Line,” which aired on the PBS show Need to  Know.

Watch Crossing the line at the border on PBS. See more from Need To Know. WARNING: Watching this video will take you to an outside website with a privacy policy that differs from ACLU of New Mexico. A copy of PBS’s privacy policy can be read here.

TAKE ACTION

SIGN THE PETITION: Demand Respect for Life from the U.S. Border Patrol.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiHvKOlpUb8&feature=player_embedded

In partnership with the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute, Need to Know investigates whether U.S. border agents have been using excessive force in an effort to curb illegal immigration. Eight people have been killed along the border in the past two years. One man died a short time after being beaten and tased, an event recorded by two eyewitnesses whose video is the centerpiece of the report. Both eyewitnesses say the man offered little or no resistance. One told Need to Know that she felt like she watched someone being “murdered,” and the San Diego coroner’s office classified the death as a “homicide.”

The report raises questions about accountability. Because border agents are part of the Department of Homeland Security, they are not subjected to the same public scrutiny as police officers who use their weapons. It also questions whether, in the rush to secure the border, agents are being adequately trained. And it raises the question: why aren’t these cases being prosecuted?

Watch the full segment on Friday, April 20 at 8:00 pm MST on KNME Channel 5.

John C. Bienvenu

Over the vigorous dissent of four justices, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit jails from routinely strip searching inmates, even if people are booked into facilities for minor offenses and officials have no reason to suspect they are carrying contraband. In other words, even people arrested for such nominal offenses as driving without a license or failing to use a turn signal could be forced to strip naked and let jail guards inspect their most intimate parts with no recourse under our Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted searches. This ruling strikes another blow to Americans’ vanishing guarantees of privacy.

Far-reaching as this ruling may appear, jail officials in New Mexico should not rush to assume that the Court’s ruling grants them carte blanche to begin blanket strip searches of all detainees. The New Mexico Constitution also prohibits unwarranted searches, and our state courts have shown greater enthusiasm for safeguarding that right than what the Supreme Court evidenced in its recent ruling. For example, New Mexico courts have consistently rejected the federal precedent that motorists lower their expectation of privacy, and are more subject to search, when they enter an automobile.

The jail that implements blanket strip searches runs the risk of inviting state constitutional claims that might be entirely undiluted by the high court’s ruling.

What’s more, even in federal court, the Supreme Court’s ruling might not protect a strip search policy that does not result in a higher incidence of detection of contraband or otherwise increase jail security. As our federal court of appeals observed nearly twenty years ago, “There can be no doubt that a strip search is an invasion of personal rights of the first magnitude.” Chapman v. Nichols, 989 F.2d 393, 395 (10th Cir. 1993). Other courts have aptly described strip searches as “demeaning, dehumanizing, undignified, humiliating, terrifying, unpleasant, embarrassing, repulsive, signifying degradation and submission.” (Id.)

The ACLU would not hesitate to represent someone who was forced to strip before a jail guard when they were accused of only a minor offense and gave no reason to suspect that they were connected to drugs, weapons, or violence. Among those who are booked into jails every day are people who have committed no crimes whatsoever, but who are the victims of bureaucratic snafus. Indeed, the plaintiff in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, is someone who was erroneously arrested in 2005 for failing to pay a traffic fine that he had already paid.

Other people are booked into jails on accusations of minor misdemeanor offenses that have no relationship to drugs, weapons or violence. They are mothers, spouses, grandparents, siblings. In short, they are all of us and all of our family members and friends who, at any moment, can find ourselves taken to a jail on minor or completely erroneous charges. There is no reason to suspect across-the-board that anyone arrested for such minor offenses is likely to be smuggling contraband into jail through their bodily orifices. In his dissent, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cited an Orange County, N.Y., correctional facility in which a study of strip searches detected one instance of contraband among 23,000 inmates searched.

Recent class action lawsuits throughout New Mexico have caused several jails to adhere to policies that restrict strip searches to circumstances in which jail officials have “reasonable suspicion” that a detainee may be harboring drugs, weapons or other contraband. Such policies strike a reasonable balance between the need to secure the facility and the need to protect the privacy and dignity of individuals who have not been convicted of any crime. They also agree with standards promulgated by the American Correctional Association, which rejects the need for suspicionless strip searches.

To cast aside the time-tested practice of using reasonable suspicion to guide strip searches on the basis of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling would be a grave error. We trust our government to use its powers judiciously, not to exploit them to their fullest extent just because it can. The ACLU guards against such gratuitous use of power, and we will as eagerly challenge it in the context of jail strip searches as we do in all other arenas of government authority.

John C. Bienvenu

Cooperating Attorney, ACLU-NM

Peter Simonson, Executive Director

“Why are some people so aghast at the idea that when we vote we should have to show a photo ID?”

This is the question that Diane Dimond poses in her recent column supporting mandatory photo ID for voting. If Ms. Dimond is sincere in her desire to understand why people would oppose this wrong-headed scheme, she should direct her question to Albuquerque voter Katy Sheridan. Katy is a retired grandmother of two and has been a voter for the past 49 years. It is a responsibility she takes seriously.

“It’s my voice, it’s one of the ways I can make an impact on the direction my country goes,” Katy told the ACLU of New Mexico in a recent video interview.

On October 4, 2011, Katy set out to make her voice heard in the Albuquerque municipal elections. The day was stormy, but Katy—who does not own a car—braved the weather and walked through the wind and the rain to her polling place to cast her vote. There poll workers turned her away because she did not have a government issued photo ID with her.

The truth is that unnecessary and expensive photo ID laws, like the one in Albuquerque, have nothing to do with improving elections. These laws are specifically designed to make it harder for qualified American citizens like Katy Sheridan to vote. We are living through a troubling new era in our nation’s history characterized by renewed efforts to strip American citizens of their right to vote.

Why are we aghast? Because these mandatory photo ID laws are nothing more than a 21^st century poll tax. Poll taxes and “literacy tests” were used in the Jim Crow south to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. We now find these tactics abhorrent and shameful, but let us not forget that many people thought them perfectly reasonable at the time: Why shouldn’t a person have to be literate to vote? Do we really want anyone voting who can’t afford a measly one-dollar fee?  You have to show an photo ID for all sorts of things today, why not voting?

Voting is not a privilege, it is a constitutional right, and no eligible citizen should have to pay to vote. Government issued photo IDs cost money and obtaining copies of birth certificates, passports or other required supporting documents can be expensive as well–sometimes running upwards of hundreds of dollars. This modern day poll tax burdens the citizens who are least able to afford it: people like the elderly who live on a fixed income and rural voters who live many miles from the nearest MVD.

Mandatory photo ID laws are the centerpiece in this new generation of vote suppression efforts, but such laws are only one tactic among many designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. In recent years, we’ve also seen efforts to suppress early voting and block civic groups like the League of Women Voters from registering new voters.

Voter participation and turnout is a key measure of the health of our democracy. American voter turnout is substantially lower than most other established democracies, rarely rising above 50 percent. Shouldn’t we work to reduce unnecessary barriers to voting, not make it harder? Shouldn’t we strive to ensure every eligible citizen has his or her voice heard?