A federal judge Monday rejected Missouri's lethal injection protocols as unconstitutional for the second time. Last month, US District Judge Fernando Gaitan ordered Missouri to submit new protocols by October 27 for carrying out the state death penalty . The decision is in response to a lawsuit filed by convicted murderer Michael Taylor , who [...]

The music industry filed lawsuits Tuesday against 8,000 defendants in 17 countries for allegedly participating in illegal file-sharing. The industry, represented by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) , reported that its latest wave of lawsuits targets people who upload copyrighted songs to file-sharing networks. Many of those being sued are parents of [...]

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has said that the organization will monitor polling places during the upcoming mid-term elections on November 7 in ten states chosen in part because of a history of problems in those locations. NAACP President Bruce Gordon stated Monday that the organization "will take steps to counter [...]

The chief judge presiding over Saddam Hussein's genocide trial agreed Tuesday to allow two lawyers representing one of Hussein's co-defendants to return to court. The lawyers had been participating in a boycott of the trial , but Sultan Hashim Al-Tai, Hussein's defense minister, requested that Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa give the lawyers leave to return [...]

President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 Tuesday. The US Congress approved the bill late last month after leaders of the House of Representatives decided to forego the process of reconciling slightly-divergent House and Senate versions, with the House instead adopting the Senate version of the legislation. The military commissions bill [...]

A lawyer for former Guantanamo Bay detainee Murat Kurnaz , a Turkish citizen who is also a legal resident of Germany, said Tuesday that Germany is investigating allegations of abuse by German soldiers. Kurnaz, who spent almost five years at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay before being returned to Germany in August, has [...]

The trial of six suspected Islamic militants accused of planning an attack against Dutch politicians began Monday in the Netherlands. The defendants include twenty-year-old Samir Azzouz , whose previous acquittal sparked intense criticism of Dutch anti-terrorism laws. Azzouz has been arrested three times in the Netherlands and was acquitted last year of participating in a [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Anthony D'Amato of Northwestern University School of Law says that the recent UN Security Council resolution on North Korea passed in the wake of its nuclear test is a precedent-setting instance of aggressive collective action against would-be nuclear proliferation that could impact Iran, Israel, and other potential nuclear weapons states… The UN [...]

Jonathan Hafetz : "On Oct. 12, 2006, Mohammed Munaf, an American citizen, was convicted and sentenced to death by a criminal court in Iraq for his alleged role in a kidnapping. Mr. Munaf maintains his innocence. According to Mr. Munaf's Iraqi counsel, two American military officials appeared during the proceeding, met privately with the judge [...]

The number of hate crimes committed in the US in 2005 fell 6 percent when compared to 2004 numbers, but the percentage of race-based incidents increased slightly, according to figures in a new report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) . In 2005, police forces across the country reported 7,163 hate crimes based on [...]