The former acting head of the Civil Rights Division at the US Department of Justice (DOJ) routinely discriminated against job applicants and employees who did not share his conservative political views, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, dated July 2, 2008, was prepared by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Victor Hansen and Lawrence Friedman of New England School of Law say that although nothing is likely to come of calls for prosecuting President Bush and other administration officials for a variety of controversial actions, Congress should at least take the opportunity to create the mechanisms needed to hold senior leaders accountable [...]
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) prosecutor Justice Hassan B. Jallow on Tuesday appealed the 15-year sentence given to popular Rwandan singer-songwriter Simon Bikindi . Jallow appealed the sentence on the grounds that it was inadequate punishment for "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." The charge is based on a speech Bikindi gave during [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in three cases. In Montejo v. Louisiana , the Court heard arguments on whether an indigent defendant must affirmatively accept appointment of an attorney to invoke Sixth Amendment protection from police-initiated interrogation in the absence of counsel. The petitioner Jesse Jay Montejo was being questioned in connection [...]
Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld , as well as more than 100 military officers and personnel, have been sued for the wrongful deaths of two former detainees who committed suicide while at Guantanamo Bay . Family members of the deceased filed the complaint last Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of [...]
The US Court of Military Commission Review (USCMCR) on Tuesday heard arguments on whether to reinstate the allegedly torture-induced confession of Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad , which was thrown out by a military commission last October. Military judge Stephen Henley ruled that Jawad's confession to Afghan police commanders and high-ranking government officials on December 17, [...]
The European Union Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel on Tuesday said that Israel is not respecting international human rights law in the Gaza Strip. In an interview with the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique, Michel said that the evidence, which experts agree upon and denounce, shows that Israel is not respecting international human rights laws. [...]
The court-martial for US Marine Corp Sgt. Jermaine Nelson has been scheduled for February 16, according to a Monday report in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The trial was scheduled to begin earlier this month, but a delay was granted following a ruling in which the court approved the appointment of an expert witness for the [...]
The US Supreme Court decided two cases Tuesday. The Court ruled in Chambers v. United States that failure to report to prison does not constitute a "violent felony" for purposes of sentence enhancement under the Armed Career Criminals Act (ACCA) . Petitioner Deondery Chambers pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. [...]
Chambers v. United States, US Supreme Court, January 13, 2009 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
