[JURIST] The Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law [advocacy website] this week released a guide [text, PDF; press release] addressing the legal rights of students seeking help for mental illness or emotional distress. The report, Campus Mental Health: Know Your Rights!, provides guidance to students on privacy, academic and disciplinary issues associated with mental health treatment at American colleges and universities. The guide advises students who are placed on involuntary leave or refused re-admission because of mental or emotional health issues to file grievances with their school's disability compliance officer. The Bazelon guide echoes the concerns of US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who introduced legislation [S 3311] in July to improve mental and behavioral health services on college campuses. The bill is being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions [official website].

On Tuesday, Congress passed legislation [H.R. 6983 text, PDF; JURIST report] to reduce inequities in the insurance coverage of mental health and addiction treatment by amending the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) [text]. The bill would bring insurance payments for such treatment in line with those for treatment of physical disorders. Mental health advocacy groups and insurance industry groups applauded the legislation, praising it as a step forward in the legal and social protection of those suffering from mental illness.

[JURIST] The US Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] on Thursday voted in favor of the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act [HR 3971 text, PDF], which as passed by the House reauthorizes a program requiring states receiving criminal justice assistance grants to report to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] information about people who die while incarcerated or in police custody. The Senate committee amended the bill to ensure that federal detention center authorities report deaths under the same circumstances. Joanne Lin, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) welcomed the revisions [press release]:

Today, senators closed the loophole that allowed deaths of immigration detainees in federal detention facilities to go unreported. The lack of transparency and accountability on the federal level under the current law meant that the public and advocacy groups have had to rely on word-of-mouth and media accounts to find out about deaths of immigration detainees. At least 69 people have died in immigration detention since 2004. A significant number of these deaths occurred in federal detention facilities.

[JURIST] A former US Marine filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] Thursday alleging that US Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) [official website] defamed him and violated his constitutional rights by suggesting that he had participated in killing innocent Iraqi civilians. In a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania [official website], former Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt [defense website] accused Murtha of slandering him by saying in televised comments [CNN report and video; JURIST report] that Marines had killed women and children "in cold blood" in the city of Haditha [USMC timeline; JURIST news archive] in November 2005. According to Sharratt's complaint,

Sharratt, as a direct result of Murtha's false, defamatory statements, has lost significant employment opportunities. ... Sharratt, also as a direct result of Murtha’s false, defamatory statements, has lost and will continue to lose significant associational opportunities. ... Sharratt, in being labeled repeatedly by Murtha as a "cold-blooded murderer", and by Murtha outrageously claiming that the Haditha incident was comparable to the infamous My Lei massacre of Vietnam, has suffered permanent, irreversible damage to his reputation.

[JURIST] A judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice [official website] on Thursday convicted one of the "Toronto 18" terrorism suspects for participating in a group which allegedly plotted to behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper [official website] while attacking parliament. Justice John Sproat [profile] rejected arguments that the defendant had known nothing of the plot even though he had attended a military-style training camp. Sproat found that the defendant had received clear direction from a "mentor" regarding the purpose of the camp and had "a full appreciation of the nature of the terrorist group." The defendant has not been publicly identified pursuant to the Youth Criminal Justice Act [text] because he was a minor at the time of his arrest [JURIST report] in 2006. Prosecutors have said they would seek an adult sentence of up to 10 years. AP has more. The Toronto Star has local coverage.

Thursday's conviction was the first under Section 83 [Canadian DOJ backgrounder] of the Anti-Terrorism Act [text], passed in 2001. The law allows the Canadian federal government, subject to judicial approval, to arrest and jail citizens to prevent terrorism. Although little information was released about the minors arrested among the Toronto 18 [defense website], the charges against the 12 adult males included participating in a terrorist group, receiving training from a terrorist group, training terrorists, and importing weapons and ammunition for terrorism. Trials for most of the adult defendants are expected to take place next year.

[JURIST] The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) [official website] declared Thursday that leaving a child at a hospital does not constitute per se termination of parents' legal rights. Nebraska's safe haven law (LB 157) [PDF text], which went into effect in July, prohibits prosecution when a child is left in a licensed hospital. LB 157 was enacted to protect infants, but the measure was expanded to include the undefined word "child." The director of the DHHS Department of Children and Family Services said [DHHS press release]:

If abuse or neglect is uncovered that occurred before the child was turned over to a hospital, County Attorneys do have the option of filing charges. The law only protects people from prosecution against the actual act of leaving the child at a hospital. There seems to be a misconception that when a child is dropped off at a hospital, the parents are absolved of responsibility. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

LB 157 was intended to protect helpless children who are in immediate danger, such as an infant who is left outside or unattended. It was not intended for those having difficulty parenting older youth who may be defiant, unruly or who have behavior problems.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] on Thursday affirmed [opinion, PDF] a district court's grant of judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) to Microsoft Corp. [corporate website] in a suit involving alleged infringement of digital music patents held by Alcatel-Lucent [corporate website]. The court ruled that of the two patents, Microsoft had not infringed one and had a license for the other. The court reasoned:

A grant of JMOL is appropriate when 'the evidence, construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, permits ony one reasonable conclusion and that conclusion is contrary to the jury's...A patentee may rely on either direct or circumstantial evidence to prove infringement. In order to prove direct infringement, a patentee must either point to specific instances of direct infringement or show that the accused device necessarily infringes the patent in suit. Lucent did not show specific instances of direct infringement. Instead, Lucent relied on circumstantial evidence to attempt to show that Microsoft's Windows Media Player necessary infringes [its] patent.

The district court found, however, that the circumstantial evidence presented by Lucent established only uncertainty and speculation as to whether [its technology] had run even once [in Windows Media Player]...Lucent has failed to provide sufficient evidence to establish that [its technology] actually runs on Windows Media Player and thus it would be too speculative to conclude that Windows Media Pladecisionyer necessarily infringes [Lucent's] patent.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] on Wednesday upheld [opinion, PDF] as constitutional a former National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) [DOJ backgrounder] program which required non-immigrant adult males from 25 predominantly Muslim nations and North Korea to register with immigration authorities and re-register annually or face deportation. Four men who have since been deported filed suit in 2006 arguing that Attorney General John Ashcroft [official profile] lacked statutory authority to pass such a measure, and claiming also that their constitutional rights had been violated because they were deported "based on their religion, ethnicity, gender, and race." The court disagreed, holding:

[I]mmigration regulation differs fundamentally from the legal contexts relied upon because classifications on the basis of nationality are frequently unavoidable in immigration matters . . . Indeed, the very concept of 'alien' is a nationality-based classification . . . [T]here is no tension whatsoever between Congress passing specific laws targeting terrorism and the Attorney General using broad powers granted under existing statutes toward the same end.

There was a rational national security basis for the Program. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were facilitated by the lax enforcement of immigration laws. The Program was designed to monitor more closely aliens from certain countries selected on the basis of national security criteria. The individual subject to special registration under the Program were neither citizens nor even lawful permanent residents. They were asked to provide information regarding their immigration status and other matters relevant to national security . . . In sum, . . . [we conclude] that the Program does not violate Equal Protection guarantees.

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Minnesota [official website] Wednesday ordered [decision, PDF] a new trial for a woman who had been ordered to pay [JURIST report] $222,000 to record companies for illegally posting copyrighted music on the file-sharing network Kazaa [corporate website]. Jammie Thomas had sought the new trial on the grounds that the court erred by instructing the jury [instructions, PDF] that making the music available on the network alone was enough to violate the Copyright Act [text], and that the damages imposed against her were excessive. Judge Michael Davis granted the request, holding that the plaintiff, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) [association website], would have to persuade the jury that others had actually accessed the songs in order to recover from Thomas. Without reaching the issue of whether or not the damages were excessive, Judge Davis urged Congress to distinguish damage amounts reasonable for personal users from those assessed for commercial use:

The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer?to?peer network cases such as the one currently before this Court. The Court begins its analysis by recognizing the unique nature of this case. The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts. The myriad of copyright cases cited by Plaintiffs and the Government, in which courts upheld large statutory damages awards far above the minimum, have limited relevance in this case. All of the cited cases involve corporate or business defendants and seek to deter future illegal commercial conduct. The parties point to no case in which large statutory damages were applied to a party who did not infringe in search of commercial gain.

[JURIST] Western lawyers involved with the trial of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] for crimes against humanity [JURIST report] in the Iraqi town of Dujail [JURIST news archive; BBC verdict summary] alleged in a New York Times exclusive [text] Wednesday that due process was violated in the trial, and that Iraqi government interference clouded the verdict and eventual execution [JURIST report] of Hussein. In the article, Canadian lawyer William H. Wiley, who assisted the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) during the trial of Hussein, claimed that Judge Munthur Hadi, one of the judges on the panel that issued the verdict [text, PDF] and death sentence against Hussein, was removed from the proceedings at the behest of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [BBC profile]. While the alleged rationale behind Hadi's removal is a recent revelation, a number of similar objections were raised at the time by Hussein defense counsel and others writing op-eds on the Hussein trial [JURIST Forum archive] for JURIST. Hussein lawyers Curtis Doebbler and Giovanni Di Stefano [JURIST op-eds] repeatedly complained of political interference with the IHT judiciary allegedly brought about by those seeking to secure a death sentence for Hussein. Chibli Mallat [JURIST op-ed], who was asked to serve on the special tribunal trying Hussein but declined to do so, also expressed process concerns.

The trial and execution of Hussein was met with widespread condemnation by international organizations and rights groups [JURIST reports], including Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy press releases]. HRW released a briefing paper [text, PDF; JURIST report] in June 2006 detailing factual and legal errors in the trial, including sole reliance on the political affiliation of the defendants to determine knowledge of the Dujail crimes, and failure of the judgment to establish clear lines of operation control needed to prove the culpability of the higher officials for the acts of the military. The report also found serious flaws in the decision issued by IHT Appeals Chamber, including instances where it came to faulty legal conclusions based upon factual findings never made by the Trial Chamber. HRW says that the trial was also plagued by political interference from the Iraqi government and emphasized that the procedural and substantive deficiencies in the Dujail trial remain prevalent in the Anfal genocide trial [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline], where six former Hussein-era defendants are facing genocide charges for their alleged involvement in the slaughter of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 "Anfal campaign" [HRW backgrounder].