A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday dismissed a four-decade class action lawsuit against Washington DC over the treatment of intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals housed at Forest Haven institution. The named plaintiff in the case, Joy Evans, died of aspiration pneumonia from inadequate medical treatment. In dismissing [...]
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A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday declined to delay the execution of convicted killer Ricky Gray, which is scheduled to take place January 18. Gray’s attorneys argued in December that the drugs to be used during the execution were untested and potentially torturous. Judge Henry Hudson [...]
Saudi Arabia has arrested two human rights advocates since the beginning of the year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Wednesday. The reason Essam Koshak, 45, and Ahmed al-Musheikhis, 46, were arrested has not been released, and HRW called on Saudi Arabia to disclose the reasons for their detention. If they have not committed any recognizable [...]
A California appeals court ruled Tuesday that the pioneer law that requires prosecutors rather than secret grand juries to decide whether to indict police officers who use lethal force is unconstitutional. The Third District Court of Appeal said the law impedes upon the California Constitution of 1979 by limiting a county grand jury’s authority . [...]
Perpetrators of war crimes in the Central African Republic (CAR) have not been prosecuted or investigated for their crimes, according to an Amnesty International (AI) report on Wednesday. According to AI, the country’s justice system needs to be reconstructed and a Special Criminal Court, tasked with trying suspected war criminals, and a witness protection program [...]
German Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere , released a plan Tuesday to overhaul the country’s antiterror enforcement following the December lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market . Police have been seeking to improve antiterror enforcement since Anis Amri killed 12 people and exposed holes in the country’s security architecture. The overhaul [...]
Tthe North Dakota Senate on Tuesday rejected a bill to update the definition of marriage and recognize same-sex marital relationships. The bill woud have updated the language in several state laws to change “husband and wife” to “two individuals married to each other” and other similar changes. The bill failed to pass with a vote [...]
UN Special Rapporteur Michel Frost will visit Mexico for the first time to assess the safety of human rights defenders, according to a statement Wednesday. Frost’s visit will take place from January 16 to 24, during which he will visit Mexico City, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Oaxaca and the state of Mexico. “My goal is to take [...]
A court in Pakistan issued a death warrant for a schizophrenic prisoner, Khizar Hayat, sentenced to death in 2003 for shooting a police officer. The execution date was set just months after Pakistan’s Supreme Court blocked the execution of another prisoner who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2012. Hayat, who is 55 years [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Hawaii has filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) , stating that overcrowding in the state correctional facilities is resulting in violations of the prisoners’ Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The complaint, filed Friday, shows that there is overcrowding in seven out of the nine [...]
