Japanese officials executed three death row inmates Friday and publicly disclosed their identities for the first time under a new policy that the Justice Ministry of Japan says is designed to increase understanding about the death penalty. Previously only the number of prisoners executed and the time of their execution was made publicly available, but [...]

Representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross have visited for the first time with detainees held in Iraqi prisons, according to a statement from the ICRC Thursday. ICRC spokesperson Dorothea Krimitsas said that ICRC monitors met with some of the 1,700 detainees held at Fort Suse , an Iraqi-controlled prison in northern Iraq. [...]

CIA Director Michael Hayden sent a memo to CIA employees Thursday saying that the agency videotaped the interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002, but that the tapes were destroyed in 2005 amid concerns that they could be leaked to the public and compromise the identities of the interrogators. The videotapes were used as an [...]

Terry Kay Rockefeller : "I am a long time opponent of the death penalty, in all cases, for the fundamental reason that I do not want to be the citizen of a state that murders. My views were not changed when my sister, Laura, was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But, having a family [...]

Sierra Club et al. v. Dale Bosworth et al., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, December 5, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

J. Wells Dixon : "The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) returned to the United States Supreme Court yesterday for arguments in Al Odah v. United States and Boumediene v. Bush, which will likely decide the fate of about 300 men held without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay. At stake are questions directly impacting our [...]

Pakistani Attorney General Malik Qayyum has reversed a decision to cut the size of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the wake of the November 3 declaration of emergency, according to Pakistan's News daily Thursday. Qayyum told the News that he was acting at the behest of new Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, who had [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday approved a bipartisan bill that would allow television coverage of all open US Supreme Court hearings. The Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2007 would permit the Supreme Court to televise all open sessions, unless there is a majority vote amongst the justices that coverage in a particular case [...]

Russia has extradited an Uzbek man sought on charges of religious extremism to his native Uzbekistan in defiance of a request by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) , a representative from the Russian advocacy group Civic Assistance said Thursday. The ECHR had formally requested that Russia refrain from deporting Abdugani Kamaliyev until after [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled Thursday that Shirley Phelps-Roper, a member of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church , is entitled to a preliminary injunction preventing the enforcement of a Missouri state statute banning protesters from picketing near funerals while the law is under constitutional review. The appeals court found that [...]