[JURIST] Democrats in the US Senate [official website] on Wednesday renewed efforts to pass legislation that would grant temporary legal status to illegal immigrant workers who work in agriculture, after House Republicans stalled bicameral negotiations last year. The Senate passed [JURIST report] a bill [S 2611 summary] in May that would set millions of illegal immigrants on a path to potential citizenship and would authorize a temporary worker program. Members of Congress must reconcile the bill with the more restrictive House version [HR 4437 summary] passed late last year [JURIST report] which makes unlawful presence in the US a felony subject to deportation and could punish humanitarian groups aiding illegals. The new proposal, dubbed the blue card program, will grant temporary legal status to immigrants working in agriculture once they pay a fine and satisfy tax obligations, and will likely appear in a broader immigration package later in the winter.

The New York Times reported last month that the bicameral committee, led by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Representatives Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), responsible for hammering out a comprehensive immigration reform package [JURIST news archive] may recommend [JURIST report] to the new Congress that illegal immigrants not be required to leave the country before petitioning for legal status. The committee expects to have a reconciled bill ready for the Senate to consider in March or April, followed by a House vote shortly thereafter. AP has more.

[JURIST] Lawmakers in the Italian Senate [official website] have started weighing proposals for legislation that would legalize civil unions in the country. The process in the Senate's Justice Committee comes a month after Senate leaders requested [JURIST report] that a bill be drafted by January 31 that would give legal status to unions of all unmarried couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, for tax purposes and otherwise. AFP has more.

The new center-left government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi [official website; BBC profile] promised before taking office last May to consider recognizing civil unions. The policy has already prompted condemnation from the Vatican [JURIST report], with Pope Benedict denouncing any legal recognition of same-sex couples.

[JURIST] Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website] on Wednesday filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] against the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) [official website] in the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website], seeking compliance with a CREW Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to the destruction of White House visitor record logs kept by the Secret Service. In October 2004 NARA ordered the Secret Service [official website] to suspend its routine destruction of the logs and maintain copies, but last year in the midst of the Jack Abramoff [JURIST news archive] lobbying scandal the White House and the Secret Service agreed to designate the logs as presidential records, effectively removing them from the public record unless the President authorizes their disclosure. CREW argues that NARA's communications with Secret Service over the visitor logs should be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [text]. AP has more.

In a related case, US Justice Department lawyers last month asked [JURIST report] a federal appeals court to overturn an October district court ruling [PDF text] that ordered the Secret Service to release visitor logs [JURIST report] for the personal residence and office of Vice-President Dick Cheney [official website] in the context of a FOIA request made by the Washington Post during a probe of lobbying practices.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [official website] has announced it will rehear arguments on a preliminary injunction imposed last year [JURIST report] which prevented South Dakota from enforcing a 2005 abortion law [text]. Enforcement of the law was initially halted [JURIST report] in 2005, pending a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota [advocacy website] to challenge its constitutionality. The statute, which the governor signed along with three other bills restricting abortion [JURIST report], requires doctors who perform abortions to tell women that abortion ends the lives of "human beings." South Dakota asserts that the legislation requires doctors to provide only medically accurate information and will not prevent access to abortion. Planned Parenthood argues that the law violates the free-speech rights of doctors.

Earlier this year, the South Dakota legislature passed [JURIST report] a law banning most abortions [PDF text] in the state, but voters rejected the ban [JURIST report] at the polls in November. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [transcript, PDF] Wednesday in the consolidated cases Davenport v. Washington Education Association and Washington v. Washington Education Association [Duke Law Backgrounder], 05-1589 and 05-1657 [dockets], where the Court must decide whether a state campaign finance law that prohibits labor unions and their officials from seizing and using the wages of nonmembers for partisan political campaigns without obtaining the nonmembers' affirmative consent violates the First Amendment rights of labor unions. AP reports that Justice Kennedy and "at least five other judges" seemed to agree with Washington that states have wide discretion over how to protect the First Amendment rights of their citizens. After a state trial court ruled that a union had to ask permission of union members to use their dues for political activity under a Washington state law, a state appeals court reversed, saying the statute placed an undue burden on the union's right to free speech, and the Washington Supreme Court [official website] affirmed. AP has more.

Also Wednesday, the Court heard oral arguments [transcript, PDF] in Zuni Public School District No. 89 v. Department of Education [Duke Law case backgrounder], 05-1508 [docket], a case evaluating federal funding for public schools. Three New Mexico school districts allege that the US Department of Education [official website] wrongly uses an equalization public school funding formula distributing federal funds to public school districts equally, instead of an Impact Aid [DOE backgrounder] formula that allocates additional funds for school districts encompassing a significant amount of federal land, such as Indian reservations, that does not generate local tax revenue. The school districts, which have many native American students coming from reservations lands, argue that Congress did not grant the Department of Education authority to use the equalization formula in 1994 public school funding legislation, and that the Impact Aid formula from 1976 legislation remains in tact. The state and the federal government oppose using a different funding formula because it will disturb statewide funding. The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website] last year favored the federal government. AP has more. The Cibola County Beacon has local coverage.

[JURIST] A federal appeals court heard oral arguments Wednesday on whether the government should be permitted to reinstate a charge against alleged terrorist Jose Padilla [BBC profile; JURIST news archive]. The charge, conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country," carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, unlike the other charges [JURIST report] now against him. In August, US District Judge Marcia Cooke dismissed the charge [JURIST report] as multiplicious, thus violating the Double Jeopardy Clause [LII backgrounder] of the Fifth Amendment. Federal prosecutors argued before the three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit that Cooke incorrectly applied the Double Jeopardy analysis.

Padilla, initially suspected of planning to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" NRC factsheet] in the United States and long detained in a Charleston military brig as an "enemy combatant," was finally charged [JURIST report] in November 2005 on unrelated terrorism counts. He was transferred to civilian custody [JURIST report] in January of this year, when he pleaded not guilty [JURIST report]. His trial is scheduled to begin [JURIST report] January 22, but Cooke has said she will not resume trial until the Eleventh Circuit resolves the Double Jeopardy issue. AP has more.

[JURIST] A coordinated hunger strike has halted proceedings before Bosnia's national war crimes after multiple defendants boycotted the court Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, demanding to be tried under the criminal code in place at the time of their alleged crimes, not under the 2003 criminal code [text] which authorizes forty-year maximum penalties for those crimes charged. The code enforced during the 1992-1995 civil war authorized maximum penalties of only fifteen years.

The war crimes Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website] was established [JURIST report] in 2005 to relieve the caseload of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and is organized under Bosnian law. The court has convicted nine war criminals since its creation, most recently sentencing a Bosnian Serb to twenty years [JURIST report] in December. Bosnian lower courts have already tried approximately 1000 war crimes cases. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Northern Ireland must abide by a gay rights bill that came into effect January 1 after the House of Lords voted Tuesday to keep the regulations in place. Lord Morrow opened debate [transcript] on the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 [text], a bill which prohibits businesses from withholding goods and services, including accommodation, from same-sex couples. The regulations were endorsed 199-68. Morrow and other critics argued that the bill violated the religious freedoms of Christian business-owners who will be forced to accommodate same-sex couples despite believing such relationships immoral. The regulations were passed last November.

The Equality Act 2006 [PDF text] will apply to England, Wales, and Scotland in April 2007. Christian opponents to the bill, who held a candlelight vigil outside the House of Lords during Tuesday's debate, have also petitioned Queen Elizabeth II to oppose the regulations [AP report]. The Independent has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] ruled Wednesday that the causation standard for railroad negligence under the Federal Employers Liability Act [45 USC 51-60 text] is the same as that for employee contributory negligence under the Act. In Norfolk Southern v. Sorrell [Duke Law case backgrounder], an employee of the railroad sued for injuries suffered and was awarded $1.5 million in damages. The railroad disputed jury instructions used at trial, arguing that the standard used to determine the railroad's negligence was "much more exacting" than the standard used for employee contributory negligence. The Supreme Court vacated the state appeals court decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.

Read the Court's opinion [text] per Chief Justice Roberts, along with a concurrence [text] from Justice Souter and a second concurrence [text] from Justice Ginsburg. AP has more.

[JURIST] Peru plans to mount a legal challenge to a decision from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) [official website] ordering a $20 million judgment be paid to the families of deceased rebels and calling for the government to publicly honor the rebels, Peruvian President Alan Garcia [official website] said Tuesday. The IACHR's November ruling [materials, in Spanish] held Peru liable for the death of at least 41 Shining Path rebels [FAS backgrounder] in a 1992 prison riot that took place weeks after former President Alberto Fujimori [JURIST news archive] disbanded congress, suspended the constitution, and seized government control with military assistance. Garcia said that taxpayers should not be required to pay the judgment. He has previously assured the international legal community that despite the unfavorable decision, Peru will remain a member of the IACHR.

Fujimori was released on bail [JURIST report] in May while Chile courts decide whether he should be extradited to Peru, where he faces corruption and human rights charges [Trial Watch backgrounder; JURIST report], including authorizing an illegal death squad and abuse of power. Human rights activists have said the decision presents Peru with an opportunity to admit culpability for human rights abuses committed during the civil war of the 1980s and 1990s [BBC timeline]. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] US military mental health workers had diagnosed an Army soldier as a homicidal threat three months before he was involved in the alleged rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl [JURIST news archive] and the murder of her family in the Mahmudiya (also "Mahmoudiya") area in March 2006, AP reported Tuesday. Former US Army soldier Pfc. Steven D. Green [JURIST news archive], who has pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to rape and murder charges, had sought treatment from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq in December 2005, complaining that he was angry about the war and that he felt driven to kill Iraqis to avenge the deaths of fellow soldiers. He was prescribed Seroquel, a mood regulator, and told to get some sleep, before he reported to duty the next day at a notoriously violent post in South Baghdad.

Green pleaded not guilty in November in his home state of Kentucky to the rape and murder allegations, where he faces a civilian trial in federal court. Green was discharged from the military before the Mahmoudiya allegations surfaced due to a diagnosed personality disorder. Another member of Green's 101st Airborne Division [official website], Spc. James P. Barker, pleaded guilty [JURIST report] in November to his role in the incident, and testified that he and other members of the Division were involved with the rape of the girl, while Green raped then shot her, after shooting her father, mother, and sister. AP has more.

[JURIST] The first US execution of 2007 took place Tuesday, when the state of Oklahoma executed a man by lethal injection for the 1992 murders of four people. The US Supreme Court denied [order, PDF; AP report] Corey Duane Hamilton's request for a stay of execution and certiorari review on Monday, with Justices Souter and Stevens voting to grant the request. The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) [official website] said Hamilton is one of thirty people in the US scheduled to be executed in 2007. Death sentencing in the US hit a 30-year low [JURIST report; DPIC report] in 2006.

Earlier this month, a New Jersey State commission recommended abolishing capital punishment [JURIST report] in that state altogether, replacing it with a life sentence without the possibility of parole. If the commission's report makes its way into law New Jersey will become the first US jurisdiction to ban capital punishment in over 35 years. In December, Florida Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions [JURIST report] in that state after a lethal injection execution there was botched, and a federal judge effectively suspended capital punishment in California [JURIST report] by ruling that that state's lethal injection procedure creates "an undue and unnecessary risk" of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US military prison for terror suspects at Guantanano Bay, Cuba [JURIST news archive] drew renewed criticism from rights defenders Tuesday as the camp approached the fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees from Afghanistan. Terry Davis [CV], Secretary General of the Council of Europe [official profile], the European rights watchdog organization, called [text] Tuesday for all the mostly uncharged detainees to be tried in courts of law:

If individuals are suspected of terrorist activities, they should be properly tried in a court of law- if not, they should be released, and the detention camp, set up five years ago this Thursday, should be immediately closed down...If we want to defeat terrorists, we must remain faithful to our ideas and values...We cannot win the war against terror with secret prisons, with torture, with inhuman and degrading treatment, with people being kept in a legal limbo and deprived of safeguards which are the foundation of our systems of justice and our democracies. These methods are exactly what terrorists want. They want us to give up the most fundamental, defining features of our freedom...

[JURIST] Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [official website, in Arabic; BBC profile] said Wednesday that the execution of two co-defendants of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] should be delayed "to see what the circumstances are," without offering any further explanation. Awad Hamed al-Bandar [Wikipedia profile], former chief judge of Iraq's Saddam Hussein-era Revolutionary Court, and former Iraqi intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti [GlobalSecurity profile; BBC profile] were sentenced to death [JURIST report] alongside Hussein for crimes committed in the Iraqi village of Dujail in 1982. According to an Iraqi government spokesman, the executions are expected this week [JURIST report] after being postponed [JURIST report] last week caused by "international pressure."

Talabani is personally opposed to the death penalty [JURIST report] and refused to sign Hussein's death warrant, but a panel of Iraqi judges ultimately ruled that the constitutional provision requiring a death warrant be approved by Iraq's president and vice-presidents was inapplicable in the context of the law governing the sentence handed down by the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website]. Lawyers for al-Bandar and al-Tikriti, meanwhile, are continuing last-ditch efforts to stop Iraqi officials from carrying out the executions [JURIST report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Moroccan-born Mounir al-Motassadeq [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday appealed the 15-year prison sentence [JURIST report] handed down by a German court earlier this week for Motassadeq's role in assisting the men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks [JURIST news archive]. Lawyers for Motassadeq also said Tuesday that they might take the case to the European Court of Justice [official website]. Motassadeq's defense team hopes to force a new trial with witnesses previously prevented from testifying by the United States government. Motassadeq's first conviction was overturned [JURIST report] in 2004, in part due to concerns over access to witnesses, but on retrial American officials refused to allow terror suspects in US custody to testify in court [JURIST report], instead agreeing only to provide summaries of its interrogations of prisoners.

In his second trial, Motassadeq was convicted as an accessory to the murders of the 246 passengers and crew aboard the four hijacked airplanes. In 2005, a German lower court determined that there was not enough evidence [JURIST report] to prove he knew about the plot, but the acquittal was overturned by an appeals court [JURIST report] in November 2006. Motassadeq has admitted to attending an al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and being friends with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but denies knowledge of the attack. The court held Motassadeq guilty due to his knowledge that his accomplices planned to hijack planes, even if he remained ignorant as to the details of the attacks. The Financial Times has more.

[JURIST] President Bush has cleared the way for drilling of oil and natural gas in parts of Bristol Bay, Alaska, and the central Gulf of Mexico [US Interior Dept. maps, PDF]. In a memorandum [text] to the secretary of interior dated Tuesday, Bush modified a moratorium [US Minerals Management Service fact sheet, PDF] that President Clinton imposed in 1998, forbidding drilling leases in those areas through 2012. In a press release [text], Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said that "[t]ogether, these actions will enhance America's energy security by improving opportunities for domestic energy production, and will also increase the revenues that the federal government collects from oil and gas companies on behalf of American taxpayers." The secretary said both areas would undergo "thorough environmental reviews," including public comment and an environmental impact statement, and noted that new leases for deep-water oil and gas drilling will carry a royalty rate of 16.7 percent, rather than 12.5 percent.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin welcomed the lifting of the Bristol Bay moratorium, a move that had been sought by the previous governor and other local politicians. "If we can be sure it will not threaten the fisheries that are the foundation of the region's economy and way of life, I'm all for it," she said in a press release [text]. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) [advocacy website], meanwhile, was among environmental groups that lamented the change. "I am very disappointed with the president's action today. Bristol Bay should be off the table for drilling," WWF managing director Bill Eichbaum said in a press release [text]. He pledged that WWF would work to resurrect a congressional moratorium on drilling in Bristol Bay, which was in place from 1990 until its expiration in 2004.

Under a provision of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act [text; backgrounder], the president may withdraw from leasing any parts of the outer Continental Shelf [MMS backgrounder], as Clinton did. Congress sanctioned drilling leases in the Gulf late last year when it considered the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act [JURIST report], which was signed by President Bush. According to the Interior Department, a final environmental impact statement on oil and gas leases for 2007-2012 is expected in the spring. AP has more. Environmental News Service has additional coverage. The Anchorage Daily News has local coverage.

This report was prepared in partnership with the Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law.

[JURIST] US Army Spc. Juston R. Graber pleaded guilty Tuesday to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the deaths of three Iraqi detainees in Thar Thar, a town near Samarra, some 60 miles north of Baghdad, but pleaded not guilty to more serious charges [JURIST report] of attempted premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. Graber, of the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division [GlobalSecurity backgrounder], will be required to testify against other soldiers implicated in the incident under the plea agreement [Reuters report]. Graber told the Fort Campbell [official website] military judge presiding over the court-martial proceedings that he knew his actions were unlawful.

Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, Spc. William B. Hunsaker and Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, still face courts-martial [JURIST report] for premeditated murder [JURIST report], attempted murder, and conspiracy for allegedly shooting three Iraqi men as they fled from a raid on a suspected insurgent stronghold in Thar Thar. Graber said Tuesday that after helping to secure the area, he returned to the helicopter for a body bag. He claims to have then heard gunshots and returned to the scene whereupon he saw three men on the ground. Graber admits to then shooting one of the wounded men in order to put him "out of his misery." AP has more.