William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He filed this dispatch from Halifax. The atmosphere in Halifax was marked by contrasts Saturday. On the one hand, Canada’s largest east coast city and longtime Atlantic naval base was yet again hosting the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual conference attended [...]
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New York jury finds former US president Donald Trump guilty on all counts in hush money trial
JURIST News Managing Editor JP Leskovich and Deputy Editorial Director William Hibbitts contributed to this article. A Manhattan jury has found former US President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in his New York hush money criminal trial. Prosecutors alleged that Trump falsified records to [...]
Arizona Supreme Court determines abortion law from 1864 is enforceable
Arizona’s Supreme Court found on Tuesday that a 159-year-old law banning abortion is enforceable following the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn abortion rights case Roe v Wade, sending a 52-year-old case back to trial court. The case, Planned Parenthood v. Kristin Mayes/Hazelrigg, was initiated in 1971, two years before the US Supreme Court [...]
60 killed and 100+ injured in deadly attack on crowded Moscow music hall, ISIS claims responsibility
Camoflauge-clad individuals opened fire on a crowded concert hall and shopping complex just outside of Moscow on Friday before setting the structure ablaze, according to local official statements and media reports. According to a number of social media reports, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. In early March, the US Embassy in Moscow warned its [...]
Trump’s Executive Immunity Arguments Betray America’s Founding Principles
Last week, a US appeals court panel stood as guardians of America’s founding ideals against a would-be despot. Donald Trump told the court that he is immune to prosecution over the January 6 Capitol attack because at the time he was president, and thus anything he may have said or done in connection with the [...]
Explainer: US District Court Thwarts Latest Bid to Halt Alabama Nitrogen Hypoxia Execution
A US district court on Wednesday dismissed concerns about Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith potentially choking on his own vomit during his planned execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a novel and untested method of capital punishment. Smith’s legal team is urgently trying to stop the execution, which is scheduled for Thursday. They argue that [...]
William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director. He files this report from Halifax, Nova Scotia. A Canadian Federal Court judge ruled Tuesday in Ottawa that the Canadian government exceeded its authority and violated some protesters’ constitutional rights by invoking the federal Emergencies Act in response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests, which brought Canada’s capital [...]
Colorado Supreme Court disqualifies Trump from state's 2024 ballot
JURIST Deputy Editorial Director William Hibbitts and US Bureau Chief JP Leskovich from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law contributed to this report. The Colorado Supreme Court held on Tuesday that former US President Donald Trump is disqualified from holding the office of the presidency and held that he can no longer appear on the state’s [...]
William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director. He files this report from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Yesterday, March 30, the Mass Casualty Commission investigating the 2020 Nova Scotia spree shooting released its final report, marking the culmination of a prolonged investigation into Canada’s worst mass shooting and the RCMP’s ignominious response to it. In a country where [...]
More than two years after gunman Gabriel Wortman went on a shooting spree that killed 22 people in rural Nova Scotia, questions of why and how this atrocity happened still weigh heavily on Nova Scotian hearts. Families of the victims and the citizens of Nova Scotia have demanded accountability from the authorities under whose watch [...]