Search Results for: pardons

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case challenging a Mississippi felon voter disenfranchisement law. Several voters who were previously convicted of felonies challenged the law on the basis of it being an unconstitutional example of cruel and unusual punishment under the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. The [...]

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court invalidated on Wednesday, for the first time ever, a presidential pardon to former member of Parliament Duminda Silva. In a unanimous ruling, the court found that there was “no legal basis or even a factual basis to uphold the decision made by” former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to pardon Silva. Silva and [...]

“So far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.” Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) At the beginning of 2024, former President Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuously unsupportable legal claim has been his personal immunity from criminal prosecution. With this claim, Mr. Trump and his lead [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard oral arguments from federal prosecutors and former President Donald Trump’s legal team on the issue of presidential immunity earlier this week. Trump argued that he is shielded from criminal liability in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against him, which alleges that Trump interfered in the [...]

Daniela Pulido Ramírez from Facultad de Derecho Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and JURIST News Managing Editor Lauren Ban from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law contributed to this report.  The president of Ecuador has declared an “internal armed conflict” in the country against groups tied to an escaped gang leader following the taking of [...]

Sri Lankan Prison Commissioner Gamini Dissanayake announced earlier this week that President Ranil Wickremesinghe pardoned over 1,000 prisoners because of the Christmas holiday. The exact number released was 1,004, comprising 989 men and 15 women. A majority of those who were pardoned by the president Sunday were those accused of being unable to pay outstanding [...]

US President Joe Biden reduced eleven non-violent drug prison terms and pardoned potentially thousands of marijuana possession offenses under federal law or in Washington, DC on Friday. Biden used his pardon power authority under Article II of the US Constitution to pardon the offenders. This power is limited to federal offenses, and the president cannot [...]

An Australian appeals court acquitted on Thursday Australian mother Kathleen Folbigg, who was wrongfully convicted of both murder and manslaughter in May 2003 based on the death of her four infant children. In overturning her conviction, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal cited evidentiary issues with the prosecution’s reliance on circumstantial evidence and [...]

The Peruvian Constitutional Court ordered the immediate release of former President Alberto Fujimori on Monday, disregarding a resolution from the the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) that the release should be blocked. Despite Peru being bound by IACHR decisions, the Constitutional Court now asserts that the IACHR exceed its supervisory jurisdiction by ordering the [...]

Peruvian law students from the Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas, Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco are reporting for JURIST on law-related events in and affecting Perú. All of them are from CIED (Centro de Investigación de los Estudiantes de Derecho, a student research center in UNSAAC’s faculty of law dedicated to spreading legal information [...]