Judge Alvin Hellerstein of Manhattan federal court refused Tuesday to accept an ex-AOL employee's plea of guilty to charges of conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property, saying that he wasn't sure the man had actually committed a crime under the new federal can-spam legislation. Jason Smathers, fired by AOL in June, used another employee's [...]

Updating a continuing story on JURIST's Paper Chase, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Baikal Finance Group, the little-known company that bought the production arm of oil giant Yukos at auction from the Russian authorities over the weekend, had a long history in the energy sector and that the sale, which took place in [...]

Mark Godsey, University of Cincinnati College of Law: "Handing a major victory to the Bush Administration, the Ninth Circuit on Monday in U.S. v. Afshari overturned a lower court decision and held Title 18 U.S. C. 2339B(a)(1) constitutional. This statute provides criminal penalties for providing "material support" to a designated terrorist organization.  The statute provides [...]

The French Foreign Ministry has announced that two French journalists held hostage in Iraq since August and whose release was initially made contingent upon the French government not allowing its ban on religious headscarves and regalia in public schools to go into force have been released and handed over to French authorities in Baghdad. The [...]

Los Angeles defense lawyer Mark Geragos, attorney for Scott Peterson, has launched a website to solicit donations for continuing the investigation into their deaths, insisting that "Scott Peterson has been unjustly convicted" of the murders of his wife Laci and unborn son Connor. Peterson is currently awaiting formal sentenecing after a jury recommended the death [...]

An anonymous donor has posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to charges in the unsolved "Freedom Summer" slayings of 3 civil rights workers in Mississippi in June, 1964 (read this background news report on the 40th anniversary opf the murders from WBLT in Jackson). The three volunteers, in the state to help to register [...]

An Indian court Tuesday granted bail to the co-founder of Baazee.com, an Indian auction service owned by EBay, pending his trial on indecency charges brought after an auctioner attempted to use the site to sell a home sex tape featuring two students from an elite public school. The case involving Avnish Bajaj, a graduate of [...]

The Iraqi Special Tribunal charged with trying Saddam Hussein and other members of his regime with crimes against humanity responded to recent criticisms about the transparaeny of its process Tuesday by issuing a statement proclaiming its commitment to fairness: "The Iraqi special tribunal wants to ensure that it is an Iraqi independent court and that [...]

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Monday overturned a lower federal court ruling and reinstated indictments against seven people from Los Angeles accused of providing "material support" to a group defined as a "terrorist organization" by the State Department which was involved in activities supported by the Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The lower court [...]

Log of (and links to) FBI records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents concerning the treatment and interrogation of detainees in United States custody, released December 20, 2004. Review the log of the documents here, with descriptions of contents. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase [...]