The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought a lawsuit on Thursday against US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of two women who were detained in Montana after a Border Patrol officer heard them speaking Spanish. Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez, both US citizens, were in line to buy groceries at a convenience store [...]
Joaquín Guzmán Loera (El Chapo) was convicted on Tuesday of all 10 counts against him and faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. Guzmán Loera was extradited to the US from Mexico in January 2017, and his trial began last November in the Eastern District of New York before Judge Brian Cogan. The US Attorney’s offices [...]
US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday extending for another 90 days an earlier proclamation that banned migrants caught entering the US illegally from seeking asylum. The initial order was blocked by federal judge in the Northern District of California. The judge ruled that the policy directly conflicted with the text of 8 USC § 1158(a)(1). The judge’s ruling was [...]
UN human rights experts on Tuesday urged Brazil to comply with its international legal obligations to curtail torture. The UN experts expressed concern regarding São Paulo Governor João Doria’s veto of anti-torture legislation in January. São Paulo law N° 1257 would have established a State Committee for Preventing and Combating Torture and also included several controversial provisions regulating police [...]
The Arkansas Supreme Court issued two opinions on Wednesday striking down a city ordinance that banned discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Both decisions involved challenges to an ordinance, passed by the Fayetteville City Council and approved by the city in a referendum, to extend the protections of the federal Civil Rights Act and the Arkansas [...]
Long-time Trump associate and former campaign adviser Roger Stone pleaded not guilty in a federal DC court on Tuesday. Stone appeared in front of Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson following his arrest by the FBI on Friday. Stone has been charged with obstruction of a proceeding, witness tampering and making false statements to House Representatives regarding his involvement in WikiLeaks’ publication of stolen [...]
Angola’s parliament approved a new penal code Wednesday that drops provisions widely interpreted to criminalize homosexuality. The new penal code is Angola’s first since it gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. The prior code contained many holdover provisions from the colonial era, including a ban of “vices against nature,” which was understood to criminalize [...]
A Russian judge ruled in a closed pretrial hearing Tuesday that US citizen Paul Whelan will remain in Russian custody until his trial. Whelan has been imprisoned in Russia since December 28, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Whelan on suspicion of espionage while he was allegedly visiting Russia for a wedding. Whelan was later charged [...]
Ethiopia’s House of Peoples’ Representatives passed a law on Thursday that will grant expansive rights to the nation’s refugee population. These rights include the right to “obtain work permits, access primary education, obtain drivers’ licenses, legally register life events such as births and marriages and open up access to national financial services, such as banking.” Ethiopia [...]
Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo issued an order Monday rendering the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 void. Graffeo determined that the Memorial Preservation Act was unconstitutional in his resolution of Alabama v. Birmingham, a case that arose in August 2017 when Birmingham city officials requested the removal of the Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument from Linn Park. Then-mayor [...]
