Georgia Death Penalty Assessment Report, American Bar Association, January 30, 2006. Excerpt: Over the course of the past thirty years, the American Bar Association (ABA) has become increasingly concerned that there is a crisis in our country's death penalty system and that capital jurisdictions too often provide neither fairness nor accuracy. In response to this [...]

Michael J. Kelly : "Each new session of the Iraqi High Criminal Court, convened last year to try Saddam Hussein and his henchmen for the massacre of over a hundred Shi'a at Dujail in 1982, brings with it further evidence that the tribunal may simply not have the capacity to bring off a successful prosecution. [...]

The European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg, France, has awarded a landmark compensation payment of 250,000 euros ($300,000) to Alexei Mikheyev, a 29 year old Russian citizen virtually crippled from the waist down as a result of torture by Russian police. The court found Russia in violation of Articles 3 and 13 of [...]

Second Periodic Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Human Rights Situation in Sudan, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, January 2006. Excerpt: Unfortunately, to date efforts to improve the human rights situation on the ground have fallen short of what the CPA and the Interim National Constitution envisaged for [...]

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced Monday that the number of anti-Semitic and racist acts reported in France dropped significantly in 2005. Anti-Semitic acts (defined as violence or threats of violence) dropped 47 percent, while racist and xenophobic acts decreased by 22 percent. De Villepin noted the decreases while promising more measures to target [...]

Lucia Pinochet Hiriart, the eldest daughter of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet , was released on bail Monday after appearing in a Santiago appeals court two days after she returned to Chile to answer charges of tax evasion . Hiriart had fled to the US but was detained by immigration officials because of the international [...]

The US Senate has invoked cloture , voting 72-25 to end debate and cut off any filibuster on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court. A vote on whether to approve the nomination is scheduled for Tuesday at 11 AM ET. 5:55 PM ET – Alito's confirmation Tuesday is virtually assured, [...]

US District Judge Sim Lake Monday told potential jurors in the trial of Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling that it was not up to them to provide justice for the suffering caused by the collapse of the corporation. "We are not looking for people who want to right a wrong", [...]

Lawyers for former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers urged federal appeals court judges Monday to reconsider his 25-year prison sentence , questioning the fairness of the prosecution during trial proceedings. Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy in March 2005 in connection with an $11 billion fraud scheme which drove WorldCom into bankruptcy. Ebbers lawyer Reid [...]

US diplomats at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have expressed concern over Russia's newly adopted NGO law , which grants the Russian government tight control over the registration, financing, and activities of non-governmental organizations in the country, including a variety of foreign and domestic human rights groups. In remarks Friday to [...]