[JURIST] The US District Court for the Southern District of California [official website] on Tuesday dismissed [press release] a consumer class action lawsuit against telecommunications company Qualcomm [corporate website]. Christopher Lorenzo sued Qualcomm in November, alleging that the chipset manufacturer holds patents on technologies necessary for CDMA [industry materials] cellular networks, and has used the licensing of these technologies to adversely affect competition in the CDMA market. The court reaffirmed its March 2009 decision [order, pdf], finding the harm that Lorenzo suffered as a result of the supposedly anti-competitive practices as an end consumer of cellular technology was too remote to serve as a basis for standing under the Clayton Act [text, PDF].

In April, Qualcomm settled [JURIST report] a patent infringement case with rival Broadcom [corporate website], with the companies agreeing not to assert certain patents against one another. A month earlier, a federal court had dismissed [JURIST report] Broadcom's suit seeking to declare several patents held by Qualcomm to be exhausted and unenforceable. Broadcom had filed the complaint in 2008, following the Supreme Court's decision in Quanta v. LG Electronics [opinion, PDF; JURIST report], which held that the sale of a patent triggers exhaustion. In December, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] affirmed in part [JURIST report] a holding against Qualcomm on the basis of patent holdup. In September, the federal appeals court affirmed an injunction against Qualcomm [Reuters report] on the basis of their alleged infringement of two Broadcom patents.

[JURIST] A German district court on Tuesday sentenced former Nazi army officer Josef Scheungraber to life in prison for the 1944 reprisal killing of 10 Italian civilians. Scheungraber was convicted of 10 counts of murder [Welt report, in German] and one count of attempted murder for ordering soldiers to blow up a barn in Falzano di Cortona, Tuscany, after forcing 11 civilians inside. In reaching the decision, Judge Manfred Goetzl relied on the testimony [AP report] of the attack's sole survivor and that of a former co-worker of Scheungraber's to whom he had previously suggested his culpability for the killings. Scheungraber lawyer Klaus Goebel had argued that Scheungraber was supervising the construction of a nearby bridge at the time of the killings, and said he would appeal the conviction. The 90-year-old Scheungraber will not begin his prison term until after the appeals process is finished.

In 2006, an Italian military tribunal convicted [Reuters report] Scheungraber in absentia and sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the killings. Last month, a German appeals court found [JURIST report] that suspected Nazi Waffen-SS [USHMM backgrounder] soldier Heinrich Boere is medically fit to stand trial for the 1944 murder of three Dutch civilians. In May, another accused Nazi, John Demjanjuk [NNDB profile; JURIST news archive], 89, was deported [JURIST report] from the US to Germany to stand trial for his alleged involvement in death camps during World War II. Demjanjuk's deportation marked the end a lengthy legal battle [Guardian timeline] centered around whether his age and health would permit him to stand trial. In 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death by an Israeli court, though the sentence was vacated by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993.

[JURIST] A military tribunal has ruled that lawyers for accused 9/11 co-conspirator Ramzi bin al-Shibh will not be made aware of what interrogation techniques were used on him by the CIA prior to his transfer to Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archives], according to a Monday report [text] by the Miami Herald. Bin al-Shibh's military defense lawyer, Navy Commander Suzanne Lachelier, had sought to learn the specifics of his interrogations in advance of a September competency hearing. Lachelier argued that interrogation details were relevant to determining whether bin al-Shibh suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [NIMH backgrounder] or a permanent psychological disability, which would in turn affect his competency to stand trial. However, presiding judge Army Colonel Stephen Henley [DOD biography, PDF] found on August 6 that the details of bin al-Shibh's interrogation were not relevant to determining his current mental competency but would risk disclosure of classified information. Henley said that the Supreme Court's 2006 decision in Boumediene v. Bush [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] required him to weigh the national security challenge invoked by prosecutors against bin al-Shibh's right to challenge evidence against him.

Last month, military prosecutors sought to delay [JURIST report] the cases against three terrorism suspects while the US government revises the system used to try them, fearing that changes made to the trial structure would require re-hearing of or invalidate entire proceedings. The Pentagon approved death penalty charges against bin al-Shibh and four other suspects in May, and they were arraigned [JURIST reports] in June. In February, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly acknowledged [JURIST report] that fellow co-conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] had been subjected to waterboarding [JURIST news archive] during interrogation. In January, Susan Crawford [official profile, PDF; JURIST news archive], the tribunal's convening authority, said in an interview with the Washington Post that torture tactics were used [article text; JURIST report] in the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani [JURIST news archive], a suspect held at Guantanamo under allegations of connections to the 9/11 attacks. Crawford made the statement after nearly two years of reviewing Guantanamo Bay practices as well as the strength of legal cases against detainees.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Monday that former Westar Energy [corporate website] CEO David Wittig and former Chief Strategy Officer Douglas Lake may face a third trial on charges of conspiracy. The court found that the third trial would not necessarily be barred by the double jeopardy [Cornell LII backgrounder] clause of the Fifth Amendment. Wittig and Lake were initially tried in 2004 on charges of fraudulently taking millions of dollars from the company, the largest electric utility in Kansas. That trial ended in a hung jury. A second trial resulted in convictions [JURIST report] in 2005, but those convictions were reversed [opinion, PDF] by the Tenth Circuit in January 2007 for insufficient evidence. When prosecutors decided to bring charges for a third time, Wittig and Lake sought a dismissal of the charges, arguing that that third trial would be barred by double jeopardy. The appeals court disagreed, but indicated that certain evidence might be barred and that prosecutors could have difficulty obtaining a conviction:

To the extent that the defendants do seek dismissal of the conspiracy charges against them, we hold, consistent with our last ruling and the district court's judgment, that double jeopardy doesn't categorically foreclose a new trial because the conspiracy charges in the indictment are considerably broader in scope than the wire fraud charges on which defendants were acquitted. At the same time, we readily acknowledge that today's opinion may not represent the last word on double jeopardy in this case. If, as the defendants predict, the government’s proof of conspiracy at trial is narrower than its indictment and seeks to rehash only matters on which the defendants have already been acquitted, more will remain to be said. But all that depends on a guess about the future, and the future must be left to the future. For the present, we are obliged to affirm.

[JURIST] The Bangkok Criminal Court on Tuesday refused to extradite a suspected Russian arms trafficker to the US to face prosecution for supplying weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [CFR backgrounder]. In denying the extradition request [AFP report], Judge Jitakorn Patanasiri said that the accusations made against Viktor Bout [BBC profile] by the US were not cognizable under Thai law. The court called the conflict between FARC and the Colombian government political, noted that Thailand does not recognize FARC as a terrorist group, and determined that it lacks authority to penalize a foreign defendant for actions committed abroad. James Entwistle [official profile], the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Bangkok, said that the US was disappointed by the decision because and that the US supports [Reuters report] a planned appeal by Thai prosecutors.

Last month, a Russian organized crime leader and suspected weapons trafficker Semyon Mogilevich [FBI profile], who is wanted by the US, was released [JURIST report] by a Russian court. Mogilevich is unlikely to stand trial on US racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering charges, as the US and Russia do not have an extradition treaty. In March, Armenian international arms dealer Artur Solomonyan was sentenced to 22 years in prison [JURIST report] for arranging to sell shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and other Russian-made weaponry to a confidential informant posing as an al Qaeda operative.

[JURIST] A Myanmar court on Monday convicted opposition pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] of violating the terms of her house arrest, sentencing her to an additional 18 months under house arrest. Suu Kyi had been charged with violating state security laws by allowing an American to stay with her after he swam across a lake to her home. The American, John Yettaw, was tried along with Suu Kyi and sentenced [BBC report] to seven years in prison, with four years of hard labor. Suu Kyi's conviction was condemned [BBC report] by many world leaders. The European Union (EU) [official website] issued a statement [press release] saying, "[t]he proceedings against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, on charges which were brought twenty years after she was first wrongfully arrested, have been in breach of national and international law. The EU urges the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release her." US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [official profile] said [press release], "she should not have been tried and she should not have been convicted. We continue to call for her release from continuing house arrest." UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown [official website] said [press release] he was "both saddened and angry at the verdict." French President Nicholas Sarkozy [official website, in French] called the verdict [press release, in French] "brutal and unjust."

Suu Kyi's trial resumed last month after a delay [JURIST reports] with the testimony of Khin Moe Moe, a member of Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD) [party website] party, who claimed the charges were politically motivated. In June, a Myanmar court sentenced [JURIST report] two members of the NLD to 18 months in prison after leading prayers for Suu Kyi's release. Her arrest was controversial and highly criticized [JURIST report] by the international community. She has spent 12 of the past 18 years in prison or under house arrest for alleged violations of an anti-subversion law [text, PDF]. News of Suu Kyi's trial has been met with criticism from numerous agencies and governments around the world. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] has said the charges [press release] against Suu Kyi are "trumped up."