The mother of Joseph Lewis Clark, a convicted murderer whose 2006 execution took approximately 90 minutes , Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit against Director Terry Collins of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and a dozen members of the execution team, arguing that the lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment. Irma Clark [...]

The International Criminal Court marked the fifth anniversary of its establishment Monday. Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo noted that in that time the court has substantially raised local awareness of the right to be protected from war crimes. In an interview with the UN News Service, he said that the large number of simultaneous investigations into [...]

Judges for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) entered pleas of not guilty on behalf of Bosnian Serb war crimes indictee Zdravko Tolimir Tuesday, after Tolimir refused to enter a plea for the second time since his initial appearance before the ICTY on June 4. Tolimir, charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit [...]

East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta has said that he will ask the Court of Appeal to issue an advisory opinion on whether an amnesty law passed by East Timor's National Parliament last month is consistent with East Timor's constitution and international law, saying Monday that he would not sign the law if the court [...]

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan indicated Monday that he may reconsider a 2006 ruling in which he threatened to dismiss all charges in an ongoing criminal tax shelters case against former employees of the accounting firm KPMG because federal prosecutors violated constitutional rights of the defendants by pressuring KPMG to not pay for their legal [...]

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt Monday announced the signing of a bill intended to protect the identities of individuals who provide direct support for the administration of the death penalty, formally prohibiting the disclosure of executioners' identities and creating a civil cause of action to recover damages against anyone who discloses an executioner's identity. The law, [...]

Kurdish security forces "routinely torture and deny basic due process to detainees" in northern Iraq, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . The report found that the Asayish security forces, which are maintained separately by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) , have detained [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) formally suspended the trial against former Liberian President Charles Taylor Monday, ordering the prosecution to resume its case on August 20. Taylor attended Tuesday's court session, marking the first time he appeared in court since his trial began in June. Taylor has been boycotting the proceedings , demanding [...]

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the New York Times against the US Defense and Justice Departments, ruling that the departments were not required to disclose classified records on the government's warrantless wiretapping program sought by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act . US District Judge Richard M. Berman ruled [...]

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano signed the Legal Arizona Workers Act Monday, legislation that requires employers to verify that employees are in the United States legally. In what Napolitano called "the most aggressive action in the country against employers who knowingly or intentionally hire undocumented workers," employers who violate the law could have their business licence [...]