A California senior assistant attorney general testified Tuesday that the state of California failed to use a backup IV line during the execution of Crips gang co-founder and convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams which unnecessarily complicated his execution. The testimony was gathered during a four-day federal court hearing on whether lethal injection in California constitutes [...]

A Russia military court on Tuesday found a Russian army sergeant guilty of abuse of power and sentenced him to four years in jail for beating and torturing a conscript soldier this past New Year's Eve. Russian prosecutors had sought six years in prison for Alexander Sivyakov, who denied beating Private Andrei Sychev but has [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law says although leading Republican senators are to be praised for advancing legislation to protect detainees and give them a fair trial before military commissions, there are still so many open questions about the fundamental issues involved and so little time to resolve [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Jules Lobel, a lawyer for Maher Arar and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, says that the US government and federal courts should follow the lead of a recently-completed Canadian inquiry by acknowledging the injustice done to Arar in deporting him from the US for torture in Syria… [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Nancy Rapoport of the University of Houston Law Center says that the recent spate of guilty verdicts and stiff sentences handed out for corporate fraud committed by the erstwhile leaders of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia and other companies suggests that executives need to take personal responsibility for the propriety of their deals, [...]

China's Taiwan Affairs Office Wednesday reiterated the Chinese government's open hostility to Taiwan's intent to change its constitution to rename the island the Republic of Taiwan. China has already threatened military action against Taiwan in the event Taiwan declares independence, and a Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman said that renaming now being considered by Taiwan's ruling [...]

There are too many substantive differences between the Senate and House versions of a bill aimed at approving the NSA domestic surveillance program for legislation to be approved before the November elections, anonymous GOP staffers told reporters Tuesday. The Senate version, the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 , the product of a compromise between [...]

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday failed to pass the Private Property Rights Implementation Act of 2005 , a bill that its supporters said would provide easier access to federal courts to landowners seeking to challenge governmental actions under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The bill summary specifies that it would: Amend[] [...]

National Audubon Society et al. v. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretray of the Interior et al., United States District Court District of Alaska, Judge James K. Singleton Jr., September 25, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow was sentenced to six years in prison Tuesday after US District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt reduced the 10 year prison term he accepted as part of his plea agreement based on Fastow's cooperation in the prosecution of former Enron CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling . Hoyt also [...]