[JURIST] US District Judge Reggie Walton [official profile] ruled [opinion, PDF] Thursday against allowing the testimony of memory experts in the CIA leak trial [JURIST news archive] of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby [defense profile; JURIST news archive]. Libby, charged [text, PDF; JURIST report] last year with perjury and obstruction of justice, blames faulty memory for the false statements made to investigators regarding his conversations with members of the press about former CIA operative Valerie Plame [JURIST news archive]. Plame’s identity was revealed days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the Bush administration's pre-Iraq war intelligence. Libby sought to use memory experts [JURIST report] to show that he innocently mis-remembered facts, and did not intentionally misrepresent his knowledge of the leak.

Walton found that the defense failed to conclusively show that the memory testimony would be helpful to the jury, but instead could potentially mislead and confuse them. He said the theories on memory advanced by the defense were common sense, and that "the Court has no doubt that aided by the normal trial processes, and the assistance of very capable legal counsel, the jurors will have the ability to collectively draw upon their common-sense understanding of memory and render a fair and just verdict." Last week special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald [official website; JURIST news archive] grilled a psychologist called by the defense to convince Walton to allow the testimony, challenging the validity of memory research [JURIST report], and dissecting her work until she eventually admitted some errors and misstatements. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Marshals Service [official website] captured over 10,000 fugitives last week, the largest number apprehended in a single enforcement effort in US history, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced Thursday. During the press conference [transcript], Gonzales said that the nationwide sweep, entitled Operation FALCON III [US Marshals backgrounder], "has broken all US Marshals records for the number of fugitives, sex offenders, and gang members arrested in one week," culminating in the arrest of some "1,600 sex offenders - 971 of whom were unregistered - and 360 gang members."

The operation took place in 49 US districts throughout 24 states and was similar to enforcement efforts that took place in April 2006 and April 2005 [DOJ press releases; JURIST report]. The US Department of Justice and the US Marshals Service partnered with other US agencies to implement the effort, including the US State Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. AP has more.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Thursday accused the British government of encouraging torture in a new report [text; summary]. HRW slammed the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair for attempting to lead evidence gained through torture [JURIST report] in court cases; for trying to deport terrorist suspects [JURIST report] to countries known for torture; and for failing to condemn the US for its own alleged use of torture [JURIST report]. In this last respect the report concluded:

This determination not to speak out, nor publicly to press Washington with difficult questions, made it easier for the US to continue this abusive practice. International pressure, together with decisions by the US Supreme Court, helped prompt the White House's September 2006 admission [of secret CIA detention centers]. But Britain has repeatedly avoided opportunities to exert such pressure, and even moved to prevent criticism by others of US secret detention facilities, where torture is known to have been carried out.

[JURIST] The German Federal Court of Justice [official website] ruled [press release, in German] Thursday that because the country was not directly involved in the 1999 NATO bombings that killed 10 Serbs [CNN report] and injured 30, it is not obligated to compensate victims. The 35 Serbs who brought the case against Germany [JURIST news archive], a member of NATO [official website], however, argued that the country could have used its veto power to prevent the air strikes [BBC backgrounder].

The attack, on May 30, 1999, was part of NATO's campaign to drive Serb forces out of Kosovo [JURIST news archive]. The court also ruled that German law allows for compensation between states, but not for compensation between states and individuals. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The Center for Digital Democracy and the US Public Interest Research Group [advocacy websites] have filed a 50-page complaint [PDF text; press release] with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking it to look into allegedly "deceptive and unfair" advertising practices of Internet companies [CDD backgrounder], including web giants Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! [corporate websites]. The consumer advocacy groups claim that current privacy protections mandated by the FTC [official website] are inadequate and that advertising practices "aggressively track us wherever we go, creating data profiles to be used in ever-more sophisticated and personalized 'one-to-one' targeting schemes."

The complaint further maintains that "the FTC has largely ignored the critical developments of the electronic marketplace that have placed the privacy of every American at risk." A Google spokesperson told the Washington Post that "the idea that trust of the user is paramount" is key in development of new advertising mechanisms. The Washington Post has more.

[JURIST] Former Computer Associates [corporate website] CEO Sanjay Kumar [Wikipedia profile] received a 12-year prison sentence and an $8 million fine Thursday after pleading guilty in April to charges [press release; JURIST report] of securities fraud and obstruction of justice for his role in the company's revenue-swapping of $2.2 billion with another company in 1999 and 2000. Though Kumar could have faced a life sentence under federal sentencing guidelines, US District Judge Leo Glasser said that was unreasonable. Glasser noted , however, that Kumar "did violence to the legitimate expectations of shareholders."

In June, the company's senior vice president Thomas Bennett also pleaded guilty [JURIST report] to obstruction of justice charges. Former sales chief Stephen Richards also entered a guilty plea to several charges at the same time Kumar pleaded guilty. AP has more.

[JURIST] Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks [JURIST news archives] has refused to meet with Australian consular officials in order to avoid punishment by US guards, his lawyer has told an Australian Senate panel. The lawyer said that Hicks believes he has been punished after previously complaining about his treatment at the US prison camp, but the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs [official website] said it did not know of any refusal by Hicks to meet with Australian officials. Hicks allegedly refused to meet with the Australian Consul-General to the US in September, but Australian officials said Hicks did not offer a reason for his refusal.

In October, Australia's justice minister denounced Hicks' five-year detention [JURIST report] without trial in Australia's boldest official statement in months concerning the Guantanamo prisoner. Hicks was taken to Guantanamo Bay after he was captured in Afghanistan, where he allegedly had been fighting with the Taliban. Hicks faces trial under the new Military Commissions Act [text, PDF; JURIST report]. His defense lawyers recently said they plan to challenge the act as unconstitutional [JURIST report]. Australia's ABC News has more.

[JURIST] Ohio absentee voters must continue to show proof of ID when applying for an absentee ballot, but absentee ballots already obtained without ID will still be counted after a settlement [PDF text] was reached Wednesday between the state and groups opposed to Ohio's voter ID law [Ohio SOS backgrounder]. The settlement, reached in a federal lawsuit [PDF complaint] challenging the Ohio law, also allows voters who go to the polls in person next week to provide Social Security numbers, ID cards from county or local governments and university IDs instead of government-issued identification cards.

A federal appeals court on Sunday stayed [order, PDF; opinion, PDF; JURIST report] a lower court order [JURIST report] that would have temporarily suspended Ohio's voter ID law. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [court website] granted Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's request for a stay in the case, effectively overruling the district court's temporary restraining order [PDF text]. Wednesday's settlement means the parties will not appear before US District Judge Algenon Marbley to determine whether people voting in Tuesday's election must show ID; last week's decision applied only to absentee ballots. AP has more. The Columbus Dispatch has local coverage.

[JURIST] UK Information Commissioner Richard Thomas [official website] on Thursday warned that Britain is becoming a "surveillance society" [press release], where the daily lives of citizens are increasingly monitored and privacy is being gradually - if often imperceptibly - eroded. He said governmental, commercial and even private surveillance activities, however ostensibly benign, may have serious social side-effects:

[U]nseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust...As ever-more information is collected, shared and used, it intrudes into our private space and leads to decisions which directly influence people's lives. Mistakes can also easily be made with serious consequences - false matches and other cases of mistaken identity, inaccurate facts or inferences, suspicions taken as reality and breaches of security

[JURIST] The retrial of two British National Party (BNP) [party website; BBC profile] officials on charges of inciting racial hatred began Wednesday in the UK, with hundreds of supporters protesting outside the Leeds Crown Court. BNP leader Nick Griffin [Wikipedia profile] and senior aide Mark Collett face two race hate charges based on speeches in West Yorkshire in 2004, taped by the BBC, that showed Griffin calling Islam a "wicked, vicious faith" and Collett referring to those seeking asylum as "a little bit like cockroaches." Griffin insists the speeches are legitimate political dialogue [BNP backgrounder, PDF; Griffin trial blog]. In February, the two men were cleared of similar charges of inciting racial hatred, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on all charges [BBC report], leading to a second trial.

The British National Party, formed in 1982, requires that all members must be of British or kindred European ethnic descent [BNP membership materials]. It has called for an immediate stop to all non-white immigration to the UK and for the voluntary resettlement of non-whites to the lands of their ethnic origin. The party has failed to garner widespread support, winning only thirty-three council seats [list, PDF] nationwide in May's local elections. AP has more.

[JURIST] Thai interim Prime Minister Chulanont Surayud [official website; BBC profile] Thursday promised to investigate allegations of human rights violations by the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra [BBC profile]. Speaking to Muslim leaders in the southern Pattani province, Surayud apologized for the former government's crackdown on an Islamic insurgency in the country's southern region and said the government will allow a limited use of Islamic Law in such cases as inheritance and family disputes. Nearly 2,000 people have died in sectarian violence in the Muslim-dominated provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat since 2004.

The Thai military seized power from Thaksin in a bloodless coup [JURIST report] in September and has imposed martial law [JURIST report] in the country. Surayud has said that the Thai government will maintain martial law until Thaksin supporters quell their protests [JURIST report]. Last week, Army Chief Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin [BBC profile], who led the coup, admitted that investigators are struggling to find evidence of corruption [JURIST report], the reason given for Thaksin's overthrow. AP has more. The Bangkok Post has local coverage.

[JURIST] The United States is violating its universal human rights obligations by its failure to protect millions of illegal immigrant workers from exploitation and discrimination in the workplace, according to a petition [PDF text; press release] filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) [official website] Wednesday. The petition was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Employment Law Project [advocacy websites] and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law with the IACHR on behalf of the United Mine Workers of America, the AFL-CIO, Interfaith Justice Network [group websites] and six immigrant workers [descriptions of petitioners, PDF] in order to draw attention to the six million illegal immigrants who make up nearly five percent of the US labor force.

Announcing the petition, ACLU attorney Claudia Flores said:

The most poorly paid and least desirable jobs in the United States are filled by undocumented immigrants, yet the government increasingly limits the safeguards available to this population, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and workplace discrimination. The United States government has an obligation under universal human rights norms to protect vulnerable populations, such as immigrant women, and has failed in this regard.

[JURIST] Germany's Federal Constitutional Court [official website, in German] has refused to rule on whether the European Constitution [official website] conforms with the German Constitution until a final decision on its ratification has been made. The German parliament ratified the document last year, but German President Horst Koehler [official website, in German] refused to approve the ratification until the court issued its decision in the case, in which German MP Peter Gauweiler argued that the European document represents an usurpation of the German parliament's powers. The German court, however, ruled Tuesday that the issue was not a priority and deferred its decision until Europe reaches consensus on the document, saying that it didn't want to interfere in the political process [DPA report].

German Chancellor Angela Merkel [official website, in German; BBC profile] has initially said that when Germany takes over the European Union presidency in January 2007, she plans to revive [JURIST report] the European constitution [JURIST news archive] ratification process. In June, Merkel stated that attempts to revive the European Constitution will be delayed until 2008 [JURIST report] and won't occur during Germany's six-month presidency of the European Council as Germany had hoped. European foreign ministers in May said there was little hope [JURIST report] that Germany would be able to achieve substantial progress on ratifying the document during its presidency in the first half of 2007.

Although the EU Constitution requires ratification by all member states, it was rejected by French and Dutch referendums [JURIST reports] in 2005 and ratified by only 14 member states. If enacted, the European Constitution would streamline voting procedure on EU laws, provide for an official EU foreign minister, grant new substantive oversight powers to the European Parliament [official website], create a bill of fundamental rights, and transfer new police and immigration powers to the European Union [official website]. EUobserver.com has more. Die Welt has additional coverage, in German.

[JURIST] Lawyers representing detainees held in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] Wednesday petitioned [brief, PDF; second brief, PDF] the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to declare a portion of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) [PDF text; JURIST news archive] unconstitutional. A key provision in the act, which was signed into law [JURIST report] by US President George Bush last month, strips US courts of jurisdiction to consider writs of habeas corpus filed by detainees who are detained as enemy combatants [JURIST news archive]. The lawyers argued that the MCA as written still permits detainees who have not been charged to pursue habeas claims and that the US Constitution gives prisoners the right to challenge their detentions in civil court. After the measure was signed, the US Justice Department sent letters [JURIST report] to the DC district and appeals courts, notifying the lower court that it no longer had jurisdiction over some 200 pending cases filed by Guantanamo detainees, and urging the appeals court to reach the merits on two cases currently on its docket in light of the MCA. Wednesday's briefs were filed in the two appeals court cases. Reuters has more.

Joining in the challenge Wednesday were seven retired federal judges who in an amicus brief urged [brief, PDF] the appeals court to rule that portions of the MCA violate the Constitution. Judges from both political parties said the MCA's prevention of civil courts from hearing cases brought by uncharged detainees "challenges the integrity of our judicial system." The seven also said the Act does not adequately prevent the military's use of torture [JURIST news archive] since there is no "check" on suspect methods of interrogation without prisoners having the opportunity to use the courts to challenge alleged torture. The Bush administration has until November 13 to respond in the cases, which are expected to eventually reach the US Supreme Court. The high court previously ruled that the commissions, as initially constituted, lacked proper legal authorization [JURIST report], a decision that prompted the new legislation. AP has more. SCOTUSblog has additional coverage.

[JURIST] US Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez [Wikipedia profile] retired from the military Wednesday saying he was "forced" to leave [Monitor report] because of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal [JURIST news archive] which occurred during his tenure as the commander of all US forces in Iraq. In an interview with the McAllen, Texas Monitor, Sanchez, who served in the Army for 33 years, said he retired because he was not given a comparable position upon his return from Iraq. He was once considered to take over the US Southern Command [official website], which has responsibility for the US prison base in Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], but was rejected for the position after the situation at Abu Ghraib made international news.

While he was commander of the Army V Corps [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] in 2003, Sanchez wrote three memos that called for harsher interrogation methods [JURIST report] including the use of dogs [JURIST report], sleep deprivation, and stress positions, but only with written approval. During court-martial proceedings for several Abu Ghraib dog handlers convicted of abusing detainees, Col. Thomas Pappas [Wikipedia profile], the senior officer running Abu Ghraib's interrogation center, testified that he was confused by the changing rules for interrogation. In 2005, US Army Inspector General Lt. Gen. Stanley Green determined that criminal accusations against Sanchez were unsubstantiated [JURIST report]. AP has more.