Former US soldier Steven Green was sentenced Friday to five consecutive life terms in prison for the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenage girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. A federal jury in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky , which convicted Green in May, failed to [...]

Lawyers for Myanmar opposition pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi said Friday that the Divisional Court in Rangoon has agreed to hear an appeal of her recent conviction for violating state security laws. Suu Kyi was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house for allowing American John Yettaw to stay in her home after [...]

A Canadian court on Thursday sentenced Saad Khalid to 14 years in prison for his involvement in plotting to attack targets in Toronto, Canada . Khalid, one of the so-called "Toronto 18" , was credited with seven years for time served. Khalid pleaded guilty in May to one count of participating in a militant plot [...]

The US Department of the Treasury on Thursday lifted travel restrictions and restrictions on money transfers between Cuban-Americans and their families in Cuba. The department also authorized US telecommunications companies work within Cuba to facilitate communication between families split between the two countries. The move was championed by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) , who said [...]

A federal judicial panel on Thursday denied California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to stay an order to reduce the prison population in the state. The request stemmed from an August ruling mandating that California reduce its prison population by nearly 43,000 inmates in response to a lawsuit by two inmates alleging that overcrowding in California [...]

A spokesperson for the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) said Thursday that the Canadian government will appeal a controversial decision by the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to grant asylum to a white South African man who claims he faced persecution in his homeland because of race. The ruling was issued last week [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnists Judith Sunderland and William Bourdon of Human Rights Watch say that the French government needs to ensure that all suspects in police custody have the right to see a lawyer immediately, have access to a lawyer during interrogation, and are informed of their right to remain silent, regardless of the crime [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday granted a request by Microsoft Corporation to stay an injunction that would have prevented the company from selling its popular word processing program Microsoft Word. The court ruled in a brief per curiam opinion that Microsoft had met its burden to stay the injunction. [...]

Sahar Aziz : "A recent ruling by a federal district court signifies an encouraging shift for Muslim charities in the United States. For many such non-profits, mere investigation by the Department of Treasury's Office for Asset Control (OFAC) into their humanitarian activities abroad has become a kiss of death. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, Treasury's [...]

Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, US District Courts for the Eastern and Northern Districts of California, September 3, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. More recent commentary available here. JURIST has more on California prisons.