Author Archives: Fred Yi

Mindfulness Goes Mainstream

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Listen to an excerpt from “Mindfulness of Breathing,” a guided meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
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CONGRESSMAN TIM RYAN (D-Ohio): You hear athletes talk a lot about being in the zone. What does that mean? Does anyone know what that means?

LUCKY SEVERSON: Ohio Democrat Congressman Tim Ryan, talking with kids on Capitol Hill about his favorite subject: mindfulness, what he sees as the result of meditation. Not a typical Washington fixation. Ryan believes everyone would benefit from the practice—individually, in Congress, and as a country. He says it’s what he needed.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: The pace was getting so demanding, between the fundraising and the campaigning and it was just… I was to the point where I thought, “I’m 35. If I keep on this trajectory, I’m going to be burned out by the time I’m 40.”

SEVERSON: Congressman Ryan has written a book called A Mindful Nation and now with the conviction of a missionary, he’s peddling its message to anyone who will listen.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: By being in the present moment, by taking that deep breath like you’re shooting a foul shot, then you can approach your life in a way that you actually have control of what you’re doing.

Tim Ryan (D-Ohio)SEVERSON: Ryan meditates daily before he comes to work. He says it’s a matter of sitting quietly and focusing on that very moment.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: I find that starting the day with a little bit of quiet time changes the whole complexion of the rest of the day. It’s almost like warming up before you go into an athletic event. But the key is that you can do it anywhere.

SEVERSON: He thinks it’s a practice needed now more than ever. Look around, he says, at the hectic and chaotic world we live in.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: I think everyone’s right there on the edge looking for something to help them deal with 24-hour news, information overload, texts, emails, always on the job. People are looking for something to help them deal with that.

SEVERSON: Congressman Ryan says contrary to what some believe, it’s not necessary to be a Buddhist to meditate. He’s a lifelong Catholic.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: I think mindfulness, by grounding you in the present moment, can actually enrich whatever religion you participate in. You don’t have to believe anything. You don’t have to accept certain precepts or principles. You just basically need to practice being in the present moment, and then you can take that to whatever religion you practice.

Jon Kabat-ZinnJON KABAT-ZINN (Speaking at Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY): There’s not separation between life and meditation practice, and when the meditation and life become the same thing, in a sense, we light up and become more alive.

SEVERSON: Congressman Ryan says it was a retreat like this that “rocked his world.” Those are his words. A retreat at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, where people come from all over the world to hear Jon Kabat-Zinn teach on mindfulness. He’s an MIT-trained molecular biologist who founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center 33 years ago. He says there’s nothing complicated about the practice of meditation or mindfulness.

JON KABAT-ZINN: The way I define it is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. So in a sense the cultivation of mindfulness is observing how mindless you are almost all the time. Certainly true for me. I mean the mind goes off and then with awareness you bring it back.

SEVERSON: This is Darrius Douglas. He started meditating about 10 years ago when he was in the fifth grade. Now he can slide into it almost instantly, even with a camera staring at him.

DARRIUS DOUGLAS: It gives you a quiet place inside of yourself whereas though you don’t have to feed and react off of the things that’s going around in the environment around you.

Darrius DouglasSEVERSON: Darrius learned how to meditate in a program started in some public schools in Baltimore by the Holistic Life Foundation 10 years ago. The program was created by brothers Atman and Ali Smith and Andy Gonzalez.

ALI SMITH (Holistic Life Foundation): Darrius in the fifth grade, he’s probably one of the toughest kids I’ve ever met in my entire life. He settled everything with his fists and then at some point it just clicked with him where he just decided that he was going to try something else.

SEVERSON: Ali and his brother Atman learned meditation from their parents. They thought it along with yoga might do some good in some of West Baltimore’s toughest neighborhoods.

ALI SMITH: We were kind of skeptical ourselves when we first started. I mean, we knew how the yoga and the meditation and stuff were affecting us and we thought it might work with kids.

JON KABAT-ZINN: The levels of stress down into the, you know, down into the elementary school are colossal. That fact that the digital age is upon us and the children that are being born now have never experienced analog life and, you know, are almost being born with these electronic devices that are very seductive, very addictive and distracting.

ATMAN SMITH (Holistic Life Foundation): They first started off fighting and, you know, doing the wrestle mania things, rolling up the mats, beating each other with the mats instead of sitting down and practicing the yoga and, you know, within time with the fights in the yoga room went down a lot, the amount of times that they were getting in trouble during the course of a day went down. The teachers would come and talk to us and tell us, like, “Man, whatever you all are doing keep doing it.”

SEVERSON: The principal sends some of the best and some of the most troublesome students to the meditation classes. Taaliyah and Keon, each 10 years old, seem to think the classes at Coleman Middle School have helped them become better students.

TAALIYAH EL-AMIN: Because I usually be yelling and stuff, but now I take the yoga class and I don’t yell.

SEVERSON: Are you doing better in school?

KEON BURNETT: Yes.

SEVERSON: How?

KEON BURNETT: Paying attention, doing my work, not talking, not fussing, not fighting.

Andy Gonzalez, Holistic Life FoundationANDY GONZALEZ (Holistic Life Foundation): I’ll pull two kids apart from fighting and I’ll tell them, put your hand on your heart. And they can feel it beating out of their chest, you know, and I say start taking some deep breaths. You know how to do it. Sometimes it may not work immediately, you know, but they do know the cues now, and so long as keep telling them take your breath, don’t forget, take your breath.

SEVERSON: With Congressman Ryan’s encouragement, some public schools in his home state of Ohio have started meditation classes.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: And I see these kids, my God, they have hope. They all of a sudden, boom, have hope, because you’ve taught them the most essential skill they need to live, and that’s to be aware of their own emotional state and to being to cultivate in some way their own ability to pay attention.

SEVERSON: If the congressman had written a book on mindfulness, say, 10 years ago, he says there likely wouldn’t have been much interest, but these days he says everyone is doing it.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: The United States Marine Corps is doing it. Google, Proctor and Gamble, General Mills, Target, Phil Jackson the great basketball coach used this technique with the Chicago Bulls.

SEVERSON: One reason meditation is becoming more mainstream is because of the reliable and consistent research by people like Jon Kabat-Zinn that show that it works.

JON KABAT-ZINN: Even short periods of training and mindfulness can actually change the thickness and the size of certain aspects of the brain that are important for dealing with stress, for working memory, for keeping things in mind that you need to know in order to solve problems.

SEVERSON: Congressman Ryan thinks mindful meditation would improve the low level of civility on Capitol Hill.

CONGRESSMAN RYAN: You’ll be more aware of what you say and what you don’t say. And that’s the whole thing with the practice is that you begin to respond to things as opposed to react to things. If we responded to problems as opposed to reacting to problems, it would shift the direction of the country.

JON KABAT-ZINN: In all Asian languages it’s said that the word for mind and the word for heart is the same word. So if you’re hearing the word mindfulness and you’re not in some way having a kind of simultaneous hearing of it as heartfulness, you’re not actually, really understanding it. So compassion and mindfulness are like two wings of the same bird.

ATMAN SMITH: Once you kind of like tap into that inner peace, that inner beauty inside of yourselves, you’re more empathetic. You will want to help everybody out. You will want to, you know, just, just give and not look for anything in return just give because you know it’s the right thing to do and you know, that is what’s missing in this world.

SEVERSON: Congressman Ryan says he has been stunned by how many members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, have told him they need some stress relief, which should come at no surprise to the millions of stressed-out Americans.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Washington.

Syria Monastery

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BOB ABERNETHY: The spiraling violence in Syria has affected all areas of life, including religious life.  The Syrian desert monastery Deir Mar Musa, north of Damascus, was once a center of pilgrimage and interfaith dialogue. But the Catholic priest who leads the monastery was expelled from Syria last month, and the future of his ministry is uncertain.  Fred de Sam Lazaro visited before the violence exploded and has our report about Deir Mar Musa and the work once done there.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: So this is where Saint Moses the Abyssinian actually prayed?

REV. PAOLO DALL’OGLIO, Deir Mar Musa Monastery: Yes. This is his house.

DE SAM LAZARO: About three decades ago, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio happened upon these caves about sixty miles north of Syria’s capital Damascus. It was in these remote mountains that a group of monks from Ethiopia first made a hermitage back in the sixth century A.D.

DALL’OGLIO: You see, this is one of the grottoes of the ancient hermits in this mountain. Now here, we have formed this place in a chapel.

DE SAM LAZARO: Back in 1982, this Italian Jesuit, then 28, was studying Arabic in neighboring Lebanon when he hiked up to this spot for a retreat, a retreat he had to extend because of a serious fall.

Father Paolo Dall'OglioDALL’OGLIO: There was no way out so I stayed here one week with my broken leg.

DE SAM LAZARO: He did find the stamina to explore the area and ruins of a long-forgotten monastery. It had been used for centuries before being abandoned in the late 1800s.

DALL’OGLIO: I have found really what I was looking for.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dall’Oglio was seeking a monastic life and he got permission from the local church authorities to rebuild and revive this monastery. His first task was to put a roof on this church built in the eleventh century itself on the ruins of a Roman castle.

DALL’OGLIO: I came in the night. And then, I came inside this church. There was no roof so there was an incredible roof of stars.

DE SAM LAZARO: It took years and a bit more than half a million dollars mostly from European church and individual donors to restore these almost 1,000 year-old images or those that could be restored. Worship services use a rite of the Syriac Catholic Church, one of the several eastern Christian traditions.

DALL’OGLIO: Here in the name of the Lord, asking for peace, brotherhood and extending consideration, respect, harmony.

DE SAM LAZARO: Traditional as the service is, Dall’Oglio is driven by what he calls a practical theology reaching out and building bridges to the Islamic community, the vast majority of their neighbors. Judaism and Christianity predated Islam in this ancient land but today very few Jews remain in Syria, and Christians account for just ten percent of this country’s population. On the eastern wall of the church, facing the Muslim holy city of Mecca, the Arabic symbol Allah. Christian monasteries were protected as holy places by the prophet Muhammad, Dall’Oglio says. And this one harkens back to a tradition he calls Abrahamic hospitality.

DALL’OGLIO: These people have been in the same villages working with the same people for fourteen centuries. We are together in front of God and recognize each other as believers. In the Islamic town, these Muslim, Christian and Jewish, they worship God in a kind of choir.

DE SAM LAZARO: Father Paolo encourages visits from and dialogue with Muslims, many of whom joined Christian visitors in the climb up 347 stairs to the monastery. Some, like scholar Atas Gomul exploring aspects of Islam’s relationship with Judaism and Christianity, stay for a while to conduct research in the growing library.

ATAS GOMUL, via translator: I was surprised to find so many books about Islam in a Christian monastery. I think it is very good to have a dialogue between the religions, to respect each other and to love one another. Politics always seems to take precedence over religious dialogue.

DE SAM LAZARO: Father Paolo has big plans to continue the dialogue. He’s expanding guest facilities and building a new conference center including, he adds, an access road that will allow those unable to make the long hike to visit.

For Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro at the Deir Musa Monastery in Syria.

ABERNETHY: In exile, Father Dall’Oglio has become a strong international advocate for peace in Syria.  He hopes to return and resume his ministry as soon as possible.

Muslim Olympic Athletes and Ramadan Fasting

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The world’s more than 1.5 billion Muslims have begun observing the holy month of Ramadan, when they fast every day from dawn to sunset and offer special prayers and gifts to the poor.

But what about Muslim athletes at the Olympic Games, which are set to open in London this coming week?  Should they participate in the fast?  And if they do, will it affect their chances of winning a medal?  Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Muslims observing the month-long Ramadan fast are not allowed to eat or drink anything at all—even water—from sunrise to sunset. All Muslims who are able to do so are supposed to fast. But the Quran does allow for some exceptions.

MOHAMED ELSANOUSI, Islamic Society of North America: There are verses in the Quran that talk about people who are sick, or people who are traveling. So, within that period of travel or people who are sick, they are actually exempted from fasting.

LAWTON: Many Muslim Olympians believe they come under the travelers’ exemption. Judo champion Maher Abu Rmeileh is the first Palestinian to qualify for the Olympics. He says, “We asked religious scholars and they said that if we’re out on a mission like this, out on a national mission, there is no problem with not fasting, on the condition that when you return, you fast the days you lost, because fasting, like prayer, is obligatory.”

Religious scholars have said there are several ways Muslims can make up for not fasting during Ramadan.

ELSANOUSI: You know, if you are able to fast on different days, you are able to do that. If you are not, you can also pay a kind of charity instead of fasting.

LAWTON: Mohammed Sbihi on the British Rowing Team says he’s decided not to fast this year.

MOHAMMED SBIHI, British Rowing Team: The decision was made very early on that I shouldn’t fast. It was a personal decision that I made between myself and my family and then I informed the coaches of this.

LAWTON: Instead, Sbihi says he’ll be making extra donations to needy families. Still, many other athletes say they will observe the Ramadan fast, and they’re not concerned about how it may affect their performance. In 2008, Saudi Paralympic triple jumper Ossemah Masoud Alshinqiti fasted and he won the gold medal. He says, “You can play while you are fasting without any problems.” And some Muslim Olympians are hopeful they may even get a special Ramadan blessing for doing so.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

ABERNETHY: An estimated 3,000 Muslims will be competing in the Olympics, but no American-Muslims this time.

Ramadan Quran Recitation

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During the month of Ramadan, Muslims traditionally read the entire Quran. In August 2011, at the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia in Fairfax, a well-known Quran reciter from Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Mohammad Alraee, led Ramadan worship every evening and completed the Quran recitation. Sheikh Alraee comes from a family of distinguished Quran reciters and teachers of Quran recitation and says he began memorizing the Quran at the age of four. Listen to the Quran being chanted and watch our interviews with Sheikh Alraee and with Muhammad Farooq, president of the mosque. Special thanks to Ismail Laher.

 

SHEIKH MOHAMMAD ALRAEE: When you are reciting the Quran you feel that you are talking to Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala [peace be upon Him], the creator, and you feel uplifted spiritually—not only the reciter, also the people who are listening as well. For each letter you get 10 blessings. When you listen to Quran, you are getting the same number of blessings as if you were reciter. It is God’s gift. I don’t believe that I could memorize this big book just on my own. It is from God.

DR. MUHAMMAD FAROOQ (President, Islamic Center Northern Virginia): When you have someone who is reciting in a sweet voice, then you are listening something which will impact your heart because, as we believe, words of Quran is from God. When he recites I feel like that I have sometimes goose bumps, sometimes I am overjoyed, sometimes I am literally crying, that it’s so powerful. We recite the Quran that we can understand what we are supposed to do, what God has given us the commands, what he’s saying to us and how we have to spend our life. If we understand Quran, then the chances are that we are going to do the exact same thing which God is asking us. We are being judged that what we have done. If there is something against God, he can forgive us if we asked for the forgiveness. In Islam we have the concept if you have done something wrong against any human being, you need to go back to that human being, you have to ask the forgiveness. A just society is the biggest blessing, and Quran is saying again and again in many ways that a just society is needed.

ALRAEE: Toward the end of Ramadan you feel sad that the blessing you were in you are going to be ending soon.

FAROOQ: This is such a blessing that we are able to finish. God has given us the chance to read the whole thing, and we try to remember the whole thing during the next coming year.

Kilimanjaro Trees

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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: The greeting is especially rambunctious because we’re traveling with the African version of Johnny Appleseed. Some call him the “Tree Bishop.”

BISHOP FREDERICK SHOO: The parish pastor has given us a copy of the report…

SEVERSON: Of all the trees they have planted…

BISHOP SHOO: Yes, showing the total number which has been planted only by this parish is 46,083.

SEVERSON: His name is Frederick Shoo and he is the Assistant Bishop of the northern diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. He oversees 500,000 members and 164 parishes. The Bishop is on a crusade to plant trees to save the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro.

BISHOP SHOO: At the beginning it was very difficult to be understood. I remember when I spoke even among some pastors, and they were saying, instead of preaching spiritual things, now he’s talking about the environment. What does it mean? I mean, they thought I would have, maybe I was out of…maybe my senses.

Bishop Frederick ShooSEVERSON: Today it’s not a hard sell. Maybe Tanzanians haven’t seen the NASA pictures showing the rapidly diminishing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, but they know something’s wrong. Moses Samizi is the district commissioner.

COMMISSIONER MOSES SAMIZI: Everyone knows how the condition of our region is changing, about the global warming. It is now too hot in our region. It wasn’t like this before.

SEVERSON: Bishop Shoo says he began noticing the changes in the weather about 30 years ago.

BISHOP SHOO: It does not need a PhD to see that already people are experiencing the impact of global warming. A simple farmer in the village can tell that something is wrong with our climate.

SEVERSON: Trees are an important part of the ecosystem because they trap the moisture that helps create glaciers. Without the forest’s humidity, the winds blow dry instead of adding moisture to the mountain’s environment.

BISHOP SHOO: We used to have water full from one bank to another. Now you can see very little water remaining.

SEVERSON: In this land of wonders, of animals roaming un-caged, and ancient tribes, Africa’s highest mountain is losing its legendary shining top.

In the last 100 years, 92 percent of the glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjaro have disappeared. Some estimates predict they will all be all gone by the year 2020. And without the ice and snow, the rivers that flow down the mountain that nourish millions of Tanzanians will simply dry up.

(to Bishop Shoo): If they don’t have the water and you don’t have the rain…

BISHOP SHOO: You’re absolutely right. Then there is no life here. The people will have to move or they die.

SEVERSON: Many former local skeptics are now believers in Bishop Shoo and the church’s mega tree garden with millions of saplings waiting to be planted.

(to Mary): So these are what kinds of trees? Orange? MARY: Orange…and avocado. Avocado trees. And what do we have over here? MARY: Mango. These are mango trees over here…

SEVERSON: They take trees very seriously here. There are plans for 152 more nurseries. Even the prison sends orange-clad inmates to load up on saplings. This is Bernadette Kinabo, the municipal director of the city of Moshe, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

BERNADETTE KINABO: We set the standards that every resident should grow 80 trees, and for this year we have 1,680,000 trees to be planted during this um, rainy season.

BISHOP SHOO: Today I am very, very happy, really.

SEVERSON: On this day, the Bishop has local officials and church leaders planting trees in a clearing near downtown Moshi.

BISHOP SHOO: Yes, I like this.

SEVERSON: They’re doing this because they’re convinced that they are the victims of global warming and that it is caused by man, here and around the world. Near Kilimanjaro it’s man cutting trees, sometimes giant trees, for export, for housing, for charcoal and to make room to grow food.

COMMISSIONER MOSES SAMIZI: You’ll find that people have really disturbed the environment. There is a lot of destruction.

Pastor NdosaSEVERSON: Pastor Ndosa preaches about global warming from the pulpit.

(to Pastor Ndosa): You think mankind has caused all these problems?

PASTOR NDOSA:  Yes, it was created by human being.

SEVERSON: Who cut the trees down?

PASTOR NDOSA: We can’t tell because people just encroach and cut them.

SEVERSON: That’s why they’re now planting trees in this old cemetery. He says no one would dare cut a tree in a holy place, and that God clearly values trees.

PASTOR NDOSA: He planted trees first before creating a human being. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

BISHOP SHOO: At the beginning of the bible, in the Book of Genesis, it is well stated that God created human being and other creatures but he gave the human being the greatest responsibility to take care of the creation. When we care for creation I would say then we care for life.

SEVERSON: At this parish, and in all those in the Bishop’s diocese, youngsters are required to plant trees before they can be confirmed. Pastor Martha Dusiri says she preaches God’s gospel and that includes caring for the environment.

Pastor Martha DusiriMARTHA DUSIRI: And they liked it. That’s why we have planted a lot of the trees, many of them. Even in their homes. God asked us to do that, yes.

SEVERSON: Some who come here wonder what all the fuss is about. They say, hey, there are trees everywhere and there are, but not nearly as many as before, and every year far more trees are being cleared and cut down than the millions that are now being planted.

BISHOP SHOO: Of course we cannot replace the amount of tree which has been cut in this short time but I think we must begin somewhere.

SEVERSON: This is a man who loves most all living things except critters who chew on trees.

BISHOP SHOO: What do they call it? Gopher. Yeah, they eat the roots. You can see. They destroy the plants like this one. It’s been eaten by this. This is terrible. This is terrible.

SEVERSON: He is a man with a mission who is frustrated that the whole world isn’t as concerned as he is.

BISHOP SHOO: If the snow on the top of Kilimanjaro goes away then it’s going to be really big blow, not only to the people living around here, but also to the… to the humanity, I would say, because this is one of the world’s wonders, I would call it. If there is no snow there, you can imagine what it will mean.

SEVERSON: We were staying in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro for 6 days and we never got to see it because of the constant cloud cover—clouds, but not a lot of rain.

This is a wedding ceremony for a prominent local couple. Aside from the pageantry, the horn blowers wearing wildebeest headdresses, this occasion is unique in one other way – the bride and groom agreed, at Bishop Shoo’s insistence, that they plant a tree at the end of the ceremony.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Prosecutorial Misconduct

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TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Remember the infamous Duke rape case? Where a prosecutor accused three members of the school’s lacrosse team of rape and knowingly withheld evidence that would have cleared them? We like to think of such cases as aberrations, but in recent years, several high profile Justice Department cases have been thrown out because of similar misconduct.

Joseph DiGenova, the former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia says Justice Department prosecutors routinely withhold evidence that could be helpful to the defense and rarely is anything done about it.

JOSEPH DIGENOVA: I’m a former United States Attorney. I locked up a lot of people. I believe in the Department, I believe in its mission. But the Department is in real trouble. This is serious business. These career prosecutors believe that nobody can touch them. Nobody! That’s a very dangerous thing in a free society and the Stevens case proves it in spades.

Late Sen. Ted StevensO’BRIEN: The “Stevens case” is the botched prosecution of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, one of the longest serving and most influential members of Congress. The Justice Department had accused the Senator of accepting home improvements from an oil executive and then misleading Congress about it.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): Few prosecutions cut as close to the relationship of the American people to their government as this one did. If the Justice Department is going to allow a case involving a sitting Senator seeking re-election to go to a jury weeks before that Senator’s general election, it must be absolutely certain that the defendant’s rights were meticulously observed.

O’BRIEN: What is now certain in the Stevens’ case is that the Senator’s rights were not observed at all. He was convicted and, eight days later, narrowly lost his bid for re-election, altering the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. But Stevens might well have been acquitted—and re-elected—had prosecutors not repeatedly withheld critical evidence.

The trial judge, Emmit Sullivan, berated government prosecutors, saying “In nearly 25-years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”

The Senator’s attorney, Brendan Sullivan, is famous for winning cases by uncovering the misconduct and ethical violations of the accusers.

Brendan SullivanBRENDAN SULLIVAN (Attorney for Senator Ted Stevens): When prosecutors get into the heat of battle, something takes over the competitive spirit—their reputational implications—and they want to win at all costs. They then begin to think if I lose this case it will be very bad for me professionally because I’ll be known as the lawyer, the prosecutor, who lost a case that may be very visible.

O’BRIEN: A 1963 Supreme Court case called Brady versus Maryland requires prosecutors to turn over to the defense any material evidence that might be helpful.

That case involved John Brady, convicted and sentenced to death for murder even though a co-defendant had actually confessed to the crime. Prosecutors never shared that confession with Brady’s lawyers.

In throwing out Brady’s death sentence, Justice William O. Douglas alluded to the inscription over the door to the Attorney General’s office at the Department of Justice: “The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts.” The idea: the goal is “justice,” not merely winning convictions.

For some prosecutors, that is a tough pill. Assisting those they believe to be guilty goes against the grain. Whatever the motivation in the Stevens case, the end result was a black-eye for the Justice Department.

Attorney General Eric Holder had only been in office two months, but he found the prosecution’s case so riddled with misconduct, he asked the court to dismiss all charges, and has been widely praised for doing so. Holder declined our request for an interview and the Department would not provide any other spokesman to speak on the record. But the Department could not decline a call from the Senate Judiciary Committee which has been looking into the Stevens case and all of its ramifications.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole told senators the case has prompted a department-wide training program to educate all U.S. prosecutors about their obligations to share exculpatory evidence with the defense.

Deputy Attorney General James ColeJAMES COLE (Deputy U.S. Attorney General): …to a point where everybody, every supervisor, every trial attorney is required every year to take the training. As the Deputy Attorney General, I am required to take this training every year.

O’BRIEN: Committee Chairman Pat Leahy is himself a former prosecutor.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): In the Stevens case, they seemed to be driven by “let’s get a conviction, at all costs” and somehow justice, the question of justice, just gets lost.

COLE: I think it should be noted, again, the failures in this receive a lot of attention, but they’re actually very rare.

SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): Doesn’t the very nature of the Brady rule, and the violation of the Brady rule, make it somewhat difficult to detect by its very nature?

COLE: Well, it can be.

O’BRIEN: No one can know how common Brady violations are. Some defense lawyers claim they happen all the time. But over the years, some prosecutors have treated the Brady decision, and the obligations it imposes, as a game.

In one of the cases stemming from the collapse of the energy giant Enron, the government agreed to provide everything it had: 80-million pages, without any guidance as to what might be important or otherwise helpful.

The Brady decision requires prosecutors to turn over only evidence that is “material”—a judgment made unilaterally by the prosecutor. And if the prosecutor gets it wrong, who’s to know?

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)SULLIVAN: Right now, the standard is a prosecutor says to himself, “Well, this information that I have, is it really material to the defense?” Can you imagine such a standard? Here’s your adversary deciding whether it’s material to your defense. They don’t think defensively. They don’t know what your defense is, and yet they’ve got to make that decision.

SEN. MURKOWSKI: S2197 would eliminate the materiality requirement as a matter of statutory law.

O’BRIEN: Alaska’s Senator Murkowski has introduced legislation that would require that any evidence that can help the defense be turned over. But the Justice Department opposes that, Deputy Attorney General Cole testifying no new laws are needed.

COLE: …because the problem was not what the rules were that were in place. The problem was that the prosecutors in the case didn’t follow the rules.

O’BRIEN: Cases get reversed when prosecutors don’t follow the law, but very little ever happens to the offending prosecutor. Notwithstanding a finding of “reckless professional misconduct” in the Stevens case, only two prosecutors were punished—one suspended for 45 days, another for 15 days.

Sullivan’s law firm issued a written statement calling the sanctions “pathetic” and “laughable” and conclusive proof that “the Department of Justice is not capable of disciplining its prosecutors.”

Recent history might seem to bear that out. An investigative report by USA Today identified more than 200 cases thrown out by judges as a result of misconduct or ethical violations, but only one of those offending prosecutors was removed.

Prosecutors—whether at the Justice Department or down at the county courthouse—are the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system. They decide who gets charged and what they are charged with, life and death decisions in some cases. And when they themselves violate the law, when they withhold evidence or even fabricate a case, they cannot be sued. They have absolute immunity for their official acts.

SULLIVAN: They can intentionally engage in wrongdoing, obtain a conviction, put a person in jail for decades and when caught, there’s no lawsuit that can be brought by that individual person who’s just lost a decade or two of their lives.

O’BRIEN: Senator Stevens won his fight with the Justice Department, but lost his life 16 months later in a plane crash. The Justice Department’s prosecution, and how it backfired, will surely be part of his legacy.

But will it make any difference in how prosecutors go about their work? That will take better education and training, as Attorney General Holder has promised. It will also require accountability, meaningful sanctions for those prosecutors who themselves fail to follow the law.

In the end, it is a matter of trust, which, as the Department of Justice is now learning, can be elusive. Once it’s gone, it’s difficult to get back.

For Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

Attorney Brendan Sullivan Extended Interview

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Famed criminal defense attorney Brendan Sullivan rarely gives interviews, but he did sit down with contributing correspondent Tim O’Brien recently to discuss the ill-fated prosecution of the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK). The charges were ultimately thrown out because of ethical violations of the prosecutors who withheld critical evidence from the defense and stood silently as some of their key witnesses testified falsely. Sullivan talks about what went wrong in the case and offers some suggestions for improvements at the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

Converting the Masai

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LUCKY SEVERSON: Early morning in a remote part of Tanzania at the foot of Ol Doinyo Lengai, known to the Masai as the Mountain of God, the center of their universe. When it spews lava, the Masai think God is angry. The last angry eruption was in 2007. Legend has it that centuries ago, God dropped cows from the sky as a gift to the Masai and now all the cows on earth belong to them.

Christian missionaries have proselytized the Masai for over 150 years with little success. But within the last decade, the tribe started converting. Now as many as a quarter of the Masai have become Christians.

GARY WOODS: Through this area we’ve had 700 new Christians in the last two years.

SEVERSON: Gary Woods has been preaching in the bush for 25 years.

WOODS: When we first came into this community the witch doctors were very strong here and they cursed the church to die. And now today the witch doctors are seeing that they, they were defeated.

SEVERSON: In the small villages, or Bomas, that speckle the countryside, it’s as if time has stood in place, although these traditionally nomadic people are no longer quite as leery of outsiders.

WOODS: I remember one day when I first came here I heard two ladies talking and they said, is it an animal or what is it. Look at, he has hair on his arms. They were trying to figure out what I was cause they’d never seen a white man before.

SEVERSON: Woods is missionary with a U.S. based non-denominational organization called Christian Missionary Fellowship, or CMF. They call what they do “planting churches.”

WOODS: We empower national Masai to do the ministry. I didn’t start any of these churches. I’m not the leader of any of these churches. But we’ve trained these people so that they could move out and do it. When a Masai comes into a community it doesn’t quite, it doesn’t cause a stir, like when I come. When I come everybody is oh, the White man’s here. But when they come they know the culture, the language, and it’s easier to integrate into the community.

SEVERSON: (speaking to Joseph Nekenia Ngida) This is one of your churches Joseph?

PASTOR JOSEPH NEKENIA NGIDA: Yes. I am pastor here.

SEVERSON: This is Joseph, one of CMF’s planted pastors. He says his church is budding.

PASTOR JOSEPH: We started with 3 people.

SEVERSON: How long ago?

PASTOR JOSEPH: One year ago.

SEVERSON: And now you have 58?

PASTOR JOSEPH: 58. Yeah.

SEVERSON: Wow.

SEVERSON: Before he converted, Joseph, like all young Masai men, served a period of time as a hunter-warrior for the tribe.

(speaking to Ngida): Did you ever kill a lion?

PASTOR JOSEPH: No, I kill a leopard.

SEVERSON: A leopard with a spear?

PASTOR JOSEPH: With a spear. Yeah.

SEVERSON: Oh, that must have been very scary.

SEVERSON: Until a new tiny school can be built, the classroom for these young orphans of mother’s with AIDS is under an acacia tree. Pastor Joseph said he would rather have the church take care of them than put them in a state orphanage, of which there are many.

(speaking to Pastor Joseph): So you have two missions here. One mission is to help people learn to live better? Another mission is to convert people to Christianity? Is one more important than the other?

PASTOR JOSEPH: No. We normally say it is holistic, so if you treat one side and leave another side, it is like dividing your body, so it is holistic.

SEVERSON: Which means CMF’s planted churches also help with more temporal challenges, like building schools, water systems, clinics, roads…

WOODS: We want to make the people have a better lifestyle but we want them to know Jesus Christ because there’s a life after this one.

SEVERSON: Converting to Christianity Is a big step for a traditional Masai, one that can have significant and painful consequences. Jacob Loserian is a Masai and a convert.

JACOB LOSERIAN: You lose friends. You lose friends. Completely you lose your friends. You will not companion with them, they will not come to your house because you already get cursed.

SEVERSON: Jacob says what convinces and converts Masai is the promise of something better.

LOSERIAN: The people become Christian because they think to be Christian you will be a good person, you know. If you were a thief you will not steal anymore. If you were a killer, you will not kill anymore, because the church will be only teach good things.

SEVERSON: The good things may have more to do with culture than religion. Traditionally the Masai eat meat almost exclusively. Vegetables are not part of their diet. Among Christian Masai that’s no longer true

WOODS: They have a proverb that says that God would be angry with you if you scratch the earth or, you know, did some digging. We can see right here, these people have broken that proverb and they planted and now they’re taking care of themselves, able to feed themselves.

SEVERSON: These young are men attired and painted this way because they were recently circumcised. In the Masai culture, girls also must go through the painful process. But now, among the Christians, this no longer happens. Those who have benefited the most may be women.

WOODS: Masai culture, the women are just a possession. It’s something that they own like their donkeys or sheep, their goats, cattle. And I asked a man why, how many donkey he had and he said he didn’t have donkeys, ’cause he had five wives.

SEVERSON: Critics argue that bringing the white man’s civilization to indigenous people isn’t always a good idea. Woods says he’s seen changes that can only be good. Girls are now going to school, husbands now know it’s wrong to beat their wives. Health care is better.

WOODS: They begin to treat their families different. We see husbands playing with their children. We see families caring about each other in a way they never did before.

SEVERSON: These are people who worship a volcano, live in constant fear of evil spirits, throw milk at the sky to thank the spirit God, make animal sacrifices at the base of a fig tree.

LOSERIAN: The Masai people are afraid especially for the owl. When the owl come, you know, fly, flying up on the house, then start make the sound, then the Masai, they are afraid, especially when they have a sick person, then they’ll be afraid that maybe this person is going to die.

SEVERSON: And when a person does die…

WOODS: What they traditionally did with dead bodies is they wrap them up in a sheet like that. The put them out in the bush here for the hyenas. The hyenas eat everything.

SEVERSON: To call the ruts we were on roads is an gross exaggeration. And the further into the bush we went, the worse they got.

We were invited to a Masai village for a goat barbeque which is a special privilege for outsiders. But the road is so washed out and after hours of digging, we just can’t make it. So we’re going to have to turn around for the long, rutty, bumpy ride home.

But then, with the help of some Masai warriors, we were on our way again.

The village chief here, James, is the only one in the village to live in a cement house. He’s an important man, and a converted Christian.

WOODS: You don’t drink this everyday, but when a man goes on a safari, when he comes home, his wife will have sour milk for him to drink. So now we get some special treat here.

SEVERSON: Becoming a Christian was particularly difficult for James who’s father is a witch doctor, a practice James now believes comes through the devil.

JAMES: The witch doctor uses roots of many kinds of trees to bewitch people. There is a very big difference. Because a miracle from God is through prayer.

SEVERSON: At the barbeque the women stood by and watched as the men ate the goat, and James talked about being a Christian and how painful it’s been to be cut off from his family and friends. Most no longer attend his barbeques. Still he insists he’ll remain a Christian because, he says he now knows where to get his prayers answered, and it’s not a volcano.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in the Tanzanian bush.