U.S.| UN calls on U.S. to “stop secret detention and abuse” ahead of report to Human Rights Council
The United Nations has called on the U.S. and others to put an end to secret detention policies and human rights abuses in their “war on terrorism”, IDN reports. Read more
U.S.| Obama administration urged to renew pledge to close Guantanamo, ensure accountability
Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Obama pledging to close Guantanamo Bay, human rights watchdogs have urged the administration to redouble its efforts to close the prison and ensure accountability for “war on terror” abuses. Read more
Event| “One Year and Counting: When and How Will Guantanamo Close?”
Location: New York City
Event Date: January 22, 2010
Event Time: 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Contact: The Constitution Project – [email protected]
The Open Society Institute, the Consitution Project, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund sponsor a lunchtime panel discussion to mark President Obama’s deadline for closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, which he set by Executive Order one year earlier, on his second day in office.
The discussion will examine the obstacles preventing the president from fulfilling his promise, when and how Guantánamo is likely to close, and the impact of the attempted Christmas Day airline bombing on the politics of closing the detention facility. The discussion will illuminate why it is essential that America comply with the rule of law as it continues its efforts to close Guantánamo.
A light lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. The discussion will begin promptly at noon.
Panelists
Confirmed participants include the following, with a representative of the U.S. government to be announced shortly:
* Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker (moderator)
* Stephen Abraham, Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.), U.S. Army Intelligence Corps (Reserves)
* Honorable John Coughenour, Federal District Court, Seattle, WA, who presided over the 2005 trial of Ahmed Ressam, known as the Millennium Bomber
* Talat Hamdani, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
* Shane Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney, Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, Center for Constitutional Rights
* Celeste Koeleveld, Chief of the Criminal Division, Chief Appellate Attorney, and Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York (1991-2008)
Location
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is located in the Interchurch Center. Please enter at 61 Claremont Avenue and 120th Street. The event will take place in the Interchurch Center’s first-floor conference room, the Sockman Lounge.
More here from Open Society Institute.
Event| “Evolving Justice: Locating the International Criminal Court in the Legal Landscape”
January 19, 2010 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Location: Room 302, Fordham Law School | 140 West 62nd St | New York, NY
Contact: Katherine Hughes, Crowley Fellow | [email protected]
Often the ICC and the ad hoc tribunals, such as those established for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, are conflated. Hamilton will talk about the novel features of the ICC compared to previous efforts at international justice, the challenges that the Court raises to business-as-usual in international relations, and the difficulties this new institution faces in attempting to live up to the ideal those who created the Court envisaged.
More here from the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.
China| Liu Xiaobo case indicative of harsh sentencing trend for freedom of expression
Sarah Cook, Asia Research Analyst and Assistant Editor of Freedom House, writes: “When Chinese democracy activist and author Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison last week, many around the world appeared stunned by the length of his sentence and absence of due process rights. Such harsh punishment for offering rational, constructive criticism of the government seems more compatible with Soviet times or Burma’s ruling junta than the modernized economic world power that China has become.
Unfortunately, Liu’s sentencing – in all its injustice and absurdity – is symptomatic of more systemic problems and politicization of the Chinese legal system, particularly in so-called “sensitive” cases. Moreover, in the past two years, signs have emerged that the situation may be getting worse, not better.
Over the past three decades, the Chinese legal system has been built from scratch – thousands of laws have been passed, judges trained, and state-of-the art courthouses built. Under this external facade of modernity, however, lies a system that still falls far short of the rule of law.
The Chinese Communist Party exercises significant influence over the judicial system via its political-legal committees and power to appoint judges, most of whom are party members and subject to its disciplinary procedures. Whether because of direct orders from the local party committee or fear of reprisals from other state actors, judges’ autonomy to decide cases based on the law and evidence remains circumscribed.
In recent years, greater space has been granted in commercial cases, disputes between private individuals, and some administrative decisions. Nevertheless, judicial independence remains dramatically curtailed in socio-economic and politically sensitive cases, where lawsuits may be automatically rejected and verdicts are routinely predetermined. Hence the need for no more than a few minutes or hours per trial. [...]
More here on JURIST.
U.S.| Profile: Sonia Sotomayor’s debut
Lauren Collins writes in “Number Nine”, in the 11 Jan 2010 issue of the New Yorker: On October 6th, at 10 A.M., Neal Katyal, an attorney for the Department of Justice, rose in front of the Supreme Court to argue the government’s position in the matter of United States v. Stevens. Standing at a mahogany lectern, surrounded by marble friezes of lawgivers—Draco, Hammurabi, Marshall—Katyal began his address, which, he announced, would amount to a four-pronged defense of Section 48 of Title 18 of the federal criminal code. The law, which Congress passed in 1999, had been intended to restrict certain depictions of animal cruelty. Chief among them were “crush videos,” in which small animals such as guinea pigs, kittens, hamsters, birds, and mice are taped or tied to the floor and—as a congressional report put it—stomped to “a bloody mass of fur” by women, often wearing spike heels, who “can be heard talking to the animals in a kind of dominatrix patter” (“What’s wrong, little man? Are you scared?”). The acts shown in the videos—“The Tales of Charlie’s Ankles,” “Smush”—were already illegal, but prosecutors had found it nearly impossible to identify the participants in the videos, and thus to enforce the existing laws. Congress responded by targeting the images, making it illegal, with some artistic and educational exceptions, to “knowingly create, sell, or possess . . . for commercial gain . . . any visual or auditory depiction . . . in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed.”
The law went unenforced until January, 2003, when Robert J. Stevens was arrested at his home, in Pittsville, Virginia. Stevens owned a business called Dogs of Velvet and Steel, and operated a Web site, pitbulllife.com, through which he sold dog-training paraphernalia and documentary films about pit bulls. Three of the films incorporated footage of dogs fighting. The government did not allege that Stevens had anything to do with staging or filming the fights. But, under Section 48, a jury found that his production and distribution of the films was criminal, and sentenced him to thirty-seven months in prison. An appeals court overturned the verdict.
The Stevens matter, having reached the Supreme Court, was shaping up to be one of the biggest cases of the term. In briefs, the government, along with animal-rights groups, asserted that depictions of animal cruelty were of such grievous harm to society that they—like depictions of child pornography, which the Court had prohibited with its decision in New York v. Ferber (1982)—were not shielded by the Constitution. Stevens’s lawyers, joined by an unlikely alliance of gun advocates and civil-liberties organizations, argued that the law infringed upon “a broad swath of never-before-regulated speech.” The case was a First Amendment depth bomb. If the Court upheld the statute, it would create a new category of unprotected expression for the first time in twenty-seven years. [...]
More here.
U.S.| Scalia says Supreme Court needs varied job experience
The Associated Press reports: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he’s concerned there aren’t more people with varying professional backgrounds being nominated to the nation’s highest court.
Scalia was a federal judge before President Reagan nominated him to the court.
He said there were three justices with no prior judicial experience back then and today there are none.
Scalia said he’s concerned about the practice because “every aspect of your career broadens your outlook” so “it’s good for the court to have people of varying backgrounds.” [...]
More here via Huffington Post.
U.S.| Supreme Court dismisses case on limits of immunity for prosecutors
From the Christian Science Monitor: The US Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over whether prosecutors who knowingly procure false testimony that leads to a wrongful conviction can later be sued for damages.
Lawyers announced that the parties in the underlying lawsuit had agreed to end the case in a $12 million settlement.
The two innocent men, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, had spent nearly 26 years in prison for a murder they didn’t commit. After the truth was discovered and they were released, they sued the prosecutors in Pottawattamie County, Iowa.
An investigation revealed that the prosecutors helped assemble and present false testimony that led to their convictions. Messrs. Harrington and McGhee had been sentenced to life in prison at hard labor with no possibility of parole.
The prosecutors fought the civil lawsuit, arguing that they were entitled to absolute immunity from such litigation for actions taken at trial.
The high court heard oral argument in the case on November 4. The case is Pottawattamie County v. McGhee and Harrington.
“Terry Harrington deserves this after his unwavering patience and perseverance as to his innocence,” said one of Harrington’s lawyers, Doug McCalla of Jackson, Wy. “Cases like Terry’s make it very clear that we need the powerful remedies provided by this country’s civil rights statutes.”
More here.
Related coverage:
- “Prosecutor Conduct Case Before Supreme Court is Settled”. 5 Jan 2010, David Savage, Los Angeles Times.
- “$12 Million Wrongful Conviction Settlement Is Hailed”. 5 Jan 2010, Lee Rood, Des Moines Register.
- “Supreme Court Appears Split on Tackling Rogue Prosecutors”. 5 Nov 2009, Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor.
U.S.| Airport scanners: privacy vs. security
From ABC News: Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates are urging federal officials to slow down the rush to buy more full body airport scanners until there is more proof that the machines would disrupt a future terror attack.
Nineteen airports already have 40 of the machines in use, 150 more are scheduled to be installed this year, and the Transportation Security Administration recently announced it has secured funding for an additional 300.
At the same time, officials in Great Britain and the Netherlands who had been slow to introduce the machines now say passengers on transatlantic flights will be required to pass through them.
Mike German, a former FBI agent who now serves as policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that while longstanding privacy concerns have not gone away, the real concern should be whether the machines will do anything to improve the safety of the traveling public.
“The question should be not whether it’s worth the privacy invasion, but whether it’s worth investing in technology that the terrorists are already showing can be defeated,” German told ABC News. “There is no reason to sacrifice our liberty or privacy if there is no security gain.” [...]
More here.
U.S.| Restriction on visas to HIV-positive foreigners lifted
From CNN: Foreign nationals who are HIV-positive will find it easier starting Monday to visit the United States.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed HIV infection from the list of diseases that prevent non-U.S. citizens from entering the country.
HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus — the virus that causes AIDS.
Advocates for HIV-positive people said the new policy was long overdue, calling it “a significant step forward for the United States.” [...]
U.S. laws and regulations enacted since 1952 have made persons “who were afflicted with any dangerous contagious disease” ineligible to receive a visa to enter the country. People infected with HIV have been restricted since 1987, when Congress directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to add HIV to its list of diseases of public health significance. [...]
More here.
