Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh announced plans Tuesday to issue new guidelines significantly limiting the use of racial profiling in policing as an effort to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Frosh stated that police have a very dangerous job, but he hopes the adoption of these guidelines will help restore [...]
A Guatemalan court on Wednesday held that former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt can stand for trial for genocide and crimes against humanity but cannot be sentenced because he suffers from dementia. The court held that a special closed trial can be held where all evidence and witness testimony will be presented with representative of Ríos [...]
Germany’s highest appeal court on Tuesday affirmed a 2013 decision by a lower court that invalidated a series of Apple smartphone patents. The ruling by the Federal Court of Justice invalidates the patents regarding the “swipe to unlock” feature of the Apple iPhone. In the statement, the court stated that they invalidated the patents due [...]
A Pakistani court on Tuesday suspended the execution of a civilian man sentenced to death by a military court after a legal challenge, the first of such challenges since the Pakistan Supreme Court allowed these hearings. The Peshawar High Court suspended the sentence and demanded more details be presented by military and government officials surrounding [...]
A new Municipal Court judge in Ferguson, Missouri, on Tuesday ordered sweeping reforms of courtroom practices following a damning federal report of racial bias. Judge Donald McCullin handed down an order to withdraw all arrest warrants issued before December 31, 2014, as well as modifications to the city’s pre-trial release conditions. Under the new system, [...]
Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Tuesday that the Maldives government had taken a step back by sending former president Mohammad Nasheed back to prison. Nasheed was sent back to jail on Sunday, one month after his 13-year prison sentence was commuted to house arrest. Colville stated that the [...]
A Russian military court on Tuesday sentenced two Ukrainian activists to substantial jail time for the charge of conspiring to commit terror attacks. Oleg Sentsov, a filmmaker, and Aleksandr Kolchenko, an ecologist and antifascist activist, received 20 and 10 years in prison, respectively, for alleged arson attacks against pro-Russian groups during the Russian occupation of [...]
California lawmakers on Monday approved two bills intended to regulate drones. The Assembly voted 43-11 in favor of a bill that would make it a crime to fly a drone over private property without permission. The Senate voted 40-0 to approve a bill targeted a paparazzi that would make it a crime to use a [...]
El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that the country’s street gangs and those who support them financially will now be classified as terrorist groups. The ruling was made as part of a denial of attempts to challenge the constitutionality of the El Salvador’s Special Law Against Terrorist Acts . The court defined terrorism as the [...]
A spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday spoke against the execution of an Iraqi man and his two wives in the Kurdistan region. Human rights officials feared that the hanging could mark a move back towards greater use of the death penalty despite a 2008 “informal [...]
