The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on a case addressing the legal standard for assessing whether an individual is mentally retarded in order to determine that person’s eligibility for the death penalty. In Hall v. Florida the court will decide “whether the Florida scheme for identifying mentally retarded defendants in capital cases violates [...]
Prosecutors at Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) , on Monday requested life imprisonment in the case against two former leaders of the Khmer Rouge. The former leaders, Nuon Chea, also known as “Brother Number 2,” and Khieu Samphan , the regime’s head of state, are accused of [...]
Three companies behind private juvenile detention and treatment facilities involved in a northeastern Pennsylvania juvenile justice scandal have settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5 million. The scandal involved two former judges for the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas , Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, who allegedly received $2.8 million in kickbacks from a [...]
JPMorgan Chase & Co. may still face potential criminal liability regardless of a tentative $13 billion deal to settle civil disputes resulting from the US government’s probe into mortgage-bond sales made by the banking giant and its subsidiaries in the run-up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, according to a Bloomberg report Sunday. The report cites [...]
The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled Monday that the state’s statute prohibiting the solicitation of sodomy is constitutional. The case concerned a former police officer named James Edwin Watson who was convicted of soliciting sex from a 17-year-old boy . Watson argued that the statute violated his privacy and due process rights under the US [...]
The government of Uganda is failing to hold senior officials accountable for corruption, according to a report released Monday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Yale Law School’s Allard K Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic . The Ugandan government has reportedly also arrested at least 28 anti-corruption activists while the activists attempted to distribute information [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Ashish Goel, an LL.M. candidate at King’s College London, discusses a recent death penalty conviction and how to improve India’s current system…
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Monday that Spain must release a member of the Basque Separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) because her detention violates EU law. Ines del Rio Prada was convicted of plotting ETA terrorist attacks in the 1980s and was due for release in 2008 . However, Spain has [...]
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos called on all parties to the Syrian conflict to cease fire in rural Damascus to allow humanitarian agencies to evacuate the remaining civilians and deliver medical aid and supplies to conflict areas. Amos noted that humanitarian agencies have been denied access to the region [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday criticized Libya for ongoing lawlessness and impunity for the militias responsible for the systematic executions of Muammar Gaddafi and his supporters. HRW further urged the Libyan government and its international allies to create and support a law-abiding state security force and an impartial justice system which applies the law [...]
