The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that, despite a 2005 US Supreme Court ruling barring the death penalty for juveniles, the mental age of a death row inmate could not be invoked to stop the state from carrying out his execution. Though the Kentucky court acknowledged the top court's decision, it said that that plainly [...]
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Hudson v. Mitchell, Supreme Court of the United States, June 15, 2006 . Read the Court's majority opinion per Justice Scalia along with a concurrence from Justice Kennedy and a dissent from Justice Breyer, who was joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
One week after the US House of Representatives voted 379-35 to pass the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act , President Bush signed into law the legislation that will increase by tenfold the maximum fine for indecency, from $32,500 to $325,000 per station for each violation. The Senate passed the bill in May. The effort to increase [...]
Turkmen v. Ashcroft, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Judge John Gleeson, June 14, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted 11-7 to send to the full Senate a proposed constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the US flag. The amendment has 59 co-sponsors , but would require a 2/3 majority, or 67 votes if all Senators are present, to [...]
A European Union lawmaker calling for the US to close its detention center at Guantanamo Bay suggested Thursday that it should be replaced with an international criminal tribunal to hear the cases of the approximately 450 alleged terror suspects now detained. European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elmar Brok told German TV news program Tagesschau [...]
Israel's High Court of Justice , the Supreme Court of Israel sitting as a court of first instance in cases regarding state actions, on Thursday ordered the state to take down a five-kilometer section of the West Bank security barrier that separates Israelis from Palestinians. The Court found that the barrier section which surrounds the [...]
The US government has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey against New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber and other New Jersey officials, seeking to stop them seeking information from telecommunications companies on whether they cooperated with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its domestic surveillance program by [...]
The UN Security Council on Thursday voted to extend the mandate of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission probing the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri for an additional year until mid-June 2007. The Council's vote follows the recommendation of Serge Brammertz, deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and head [...]
A Chinese court Thursday sentenced Yang Xiaoging, a reporter for the state-run China Industrial Economy News , to one year in prison after finding him guilty of extortion. Xiaoging wrote articles about official corruption, accusing local Communist Party official Yang Jianxin of stealing state assets. Xiaoging's wife, Gong Jie, plans to appeal the ruling immediately, [...]
