The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police must obtain a warrant before searching data stored in a cell phone, in the first ruling of its kind by a state high court. The court ruled 4-3 that a warrantless search of the contents of a suspect's cell phone violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable [...]
State of Ohio v. Smith, Supreme Court of Ohio, December 15, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on 4th Amendment rights.
The Obama administration said Tuesday that it plans to purchase the Thomson Correctional Center (TCC) in northwestern Illinois to house inmates from Guantanamo Bay . In a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn , the secretary of state, secretary of defense, attorney general, secretary of homeland security, and director of national intelligence said that the [...]
The Council of the District of Columbia on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would allow same-sex marriages to be performed in Washington, DC. The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009 passed with a vote of 11-2, despite opposition from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington , which has pledged [...]
A judge for the Canadian Federal Court on Monday struck down a security certificate that deemed Syrian-born Toronto resident Hassan Almrei a threat to national security. The security certificate law, which is used to arrest and deport non-Canadians considered threats to national security, has become controversial in recent years because it relies on evidence heard [...]
The African Court on Human and People's Rights (AfCHPR) issued its first decision Tuesday, finding that it lacks jurisdiction to hear a case against Senegal on whether charges against former Chadian president Hissene Habre should be dropped. Chadian national Michelot Yogogombaye filed a petition with the court last year seeking to suspend the planned Senegalese [...]
British government lawyers argued Monday that two UK High Court judges acted irresponsibly when they ruled last month that the details of the detention of Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002 must be released . Lawyers representing Foreign Secretary David Miliband were appealing the latest in a series of back and forth rulings on whether [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday denied Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Musa'ab Al-Madhwani's petition for habeas corpus, ruling that the government may continue to detain him. Judge Thomas Hogan excluded from evidence statements made to interrogators, finding them to be the product of abusive techniques, but admitted [...]
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that a raid of tax-preparer's office in order to build identify theft cases against suspected illegal immigrants was a violation of the immigrants' Fourth Amendment rights. In 2008, investigators raided Amalia's Tax and Translation, which caters to Spanish speakers, and searched through 5,000 files for instances of immigrants using [...]
A British magistrate court issued an arrest warrant Monday for Israel's opposition chairwoman on war crimes charges relating to Israel's Gaza offensive earlier this year, but withdrew the warrant after discovering she wasn't in the country. Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was scheduled to speak at the Jewish National Fund Vision 2010 conference in [...]
