[JURIST] The Council of Europe (COE) [official website] reported Wednesday that several member states frequently fail to comply with judicial decisions against public authorities handed down by their own domestic courts. A COE expert panel [program, PDF] determined last week that general non-enforcement of court decisions is widespread in Georgia, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

In a statement [text] summarizing its conclusions, the panelists said:

[I]t is incumbent on the State to execute spontaneously all judicial decisions rendered against public authorities, without compelling the claimants to go through enforcement proceedings. [However,] this spontaneous execution continues to be hampered by a number of persistent problems resulting in repetitive violations of the Convention in a number of states.

[JURIST] Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev [BBC profile] signed legislation Wednesday amending Kyrgyzstan's criminal codes and abolishing the death penalty [JURIST news archive]. According to the law, death penalty sentences will be replaced with life sentences. The legislation also mandates that arrest warrants be issued by courts and that prison sentences for some crimes be reduced.

The Kyrgyzstan constitution was amended [IPS report] in January to state that "no one in the Kyrgyz Republic can be deprived of life," which abolished the use of capital punishment in the central Asian country. Loopholes in the criminal codes nonetheless permitted judges to essentially ignore the new constitution [NB Central Asia report], and continue to hand down death sentences. Wednesday's legislation closes the loopholes in the criminal codes, ending the use of capital punishment by law. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Senate Wednesday voted down two proposed amendments to the comprehensive immigration reform bill [S 1639 summary] formally revived [JURIST report] Tuesday. Both proposals were part of Amendment 1934 [summary], sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA). A proposal by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) [official website] to limit permanent legal residency status only to immigrants who have been in the country at least four years was voted down 79-18 [roll call]. Without the amendment, the reform bill would make any immigrant who came to the US before January 1, 2007 eligible for legal status. The other proposal, by Sen. Kay Hutchison (R-TX), would have required all illegal immigrants to return temporarily to their home countries in order to be eligible for permanent legal status in the US. It was voted down 53-45 [roll call]. Votes continued Wednesday for other proposals amending S 1639, including one to halt the issuance of green cards to illegals and another to ease immigration limitations on family members of illegals living in the US.

President Bush has pressed the immigration proposal, which stalled after failing a cloture vote [JURIST report] earlier this month, saying [statement] Tuesday that he believed it would be "harder to enforce the border" if the bill failed to become law. The bill faces a test vote in the Senate on Thursday. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals [official website] Wednesday ruled 5-4 against reinstating a conspiracy charge [opinion, text; other opinions and filings] against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay [official profile; JURIST news archive] and two of his former associates. The holding affirmed a lower court decision that the charge of conspiring to violate the state's election code [text] could not be applied to the code as it was written before 2003. The charge was initially dismissed [JURIST report] by the trial court in December 2005. That action was upheld [JURIST report] by the Texas Third Court of Appeals [official website] in April of last year. DeLay still faces charges of money laundering [JURIST document] and conspiring to launder money.

DeLay and two other Republicans are accused of transferring $190,000 in corporate money directly to the Republican National Committee, which then donated the same amount to local Texas campaigns. DeLay and the other suspects have denied raising or spending money illegally. After he was indicted [JURIST report], DeLay stepped down as House majority leader and later resigned from Congress [JURIST reports]. DeLay withdrew his name from the November ballot [JURIST report] after several courts ruled that the Texas Republican Party could not name a new candidate to run in his place. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] issued formal subpoenas [press release] to the White House, the Vice President's Office, the Department of Justice, and the National Security Council [subpoenas, PDF] Wednesday, seeking documents related to the warrantless domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive]. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website] said the subpoenas were necessary because:

Over the past 18 months, this Committee has made no fewer than nine formal requests to the Department of Justice and to the White House, seeking information and documents about the authorization of and legal justification for this program. All requests have been rebuffed. Our attempts to obtain information through testimony of Administration witnesses have been met with a consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection.

[JURIST] The Louisiana State Legislature [official website] Tuesday approved a ban on dilation and extraction (D&X) abortions [HB 614 information], establishing fines between $10,000 and $100,000 and a jail term from one to ten years for any physician who performs the procedure when it is not necessary to save the life of the mother. The D&X abortion [JURIST news archive] procedure is often called "partial-birth" abortion by abortion opponents because the undeveloped fetus is partially extracted from the uterus before the abortion is performed. Sponsored by Republican State House Representative Gary Beard [official profile], the bill mirrors the federal "Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003" [PDF text], which recently survived challenge [JURIST report] in the US Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart [Duke Law case backgrounder]. Despite lobbying in Louisiana by abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood [advocacy website], only one legislator voted against the measure. The bill now moves to Governor Kathleen Blanco [official website], who opposes abortion, but she has not indicated if she will sign it.

Earlier this month the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a Michigan "partial-birth" abortion ban [JURIST report], because it deviated from the express limitations established in Carhart. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Council of Europe (COE) [official website] Wednesday called on member states to act with greater transparency [Resolution 1562 text; Recommendation 1801 text; press release] and exercise greater oversight of military and foreign intelligence services, giving support to a report [text; JURIST report] delivered earlier this month that accused Poland and Romania of assisting the US Central Intelligence Agency in operating secret prisons [JURIST news archive] for terror suspects. The report, by COE investigator and Swiss Parliamentarian Dick Marty [personal website], alleged that detainees were mistreated in the secret prisons, and described in detail stories of prisoners being kept naked or being placed in isolation conditions for months on end. Speaking to the COE Wednesday, Marty asked the international body to question why European governments have refused to respond to allegations [closing speech video; press conference video] that they have allowed the US to run secret prisons on their soil.

Despite COE support, Marty's report has been subject to much criticism. EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini [official website] has complained that the report quoted only anonymous sources, and could not be verified. Spokespersons for other implicated countries vehemently denied the allegations, with one Polish lawmaker quoted as calling the report a "piece of fiction." US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of the secret CIA prison program [JURIST report] last year, but did not disclose any details. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics [official website] announced Wednesday that the US prison and jail population, already the largest in the world, increased by 2.8 percent to reach over 2.2 million prisoners in 2006 [press release]. The findings, released in the DOJ's annual Prison and Jail Inmates report [PDF text], represent the largest increase in prison population since 2000, which the DOJ attributes to tougher sentencing laws, an increased number of drug offenders, and an increased crime rate. The report found prison population increases in 43 of 51 jurisdictions, and also found little change in the number of noncitizens in the prison population.

The report also found racial disparities among prisoners, with black males representing 37 percent of the prison population. More than 11 percent of black males between the ages of 25 and 34 are currently incarcerated, compared to 1.9 percent for Hispanics and 0.7 percent for white males. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, with approximately 750 per 100,000 of the national population, representing approximately 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population despite despite only having 5 percent of the world's population. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Adelphia Communications [corporate website] founder John Rigas and his son Timothy were ordered Wednesday to begin serving their prison sentences on August 13th; the two men have been free on bail since their 2004 convictions as they appealed their case. Judge Leonard Sand of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York said that because the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the fraud convictions [JURIST report] of the Adelphia executives last month, "the issue that led the court to grant bail pending appeal has now been clearly rejected." The Second Circuit threw out one count of bank fraud against the pair, but rejected most of the Rigases' grounds for appeal.

John and Timothy Rigas were convicted of numerous counts of conspiracy, 15 counts of securities fraud and two counts of bank fraud. In 2005, John Rigas, now 82, was sentenced [JURIST report] to 15 years in prison, while Timothy Rigas, now 51, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In November 2005, another son, Michael Rigas, pleaded guilty to falsifying a financial record [JURIST report] and was sentenced to ten months in prison under a plea agreement. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Pakistani government lawyer Malik Muhammad Qayyum told reporters Tuesday that he supports giving suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry [official website; JURIST news archive] a public trial, saying that the government should respect Chaudhry's desire that the proceedings be open to public access. Government lawyers have previously opposed a public trial, preferring the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) try Chaudhry behind closed doors. Chaudhry, who was suspended on March 9 [JURIST report] by President Pervez Musharraf on allegations of misconduct, resisted the SCJ's inquiry and has instead challenged the legality of his suspension as well as the SJC's authority before the Supreme Court of Pakistan [official website].

The top court ruled in June that it has jurisdiction over legal disputes [JURIST report] involving the suspension, rejecting arguments [JURIST report] by government lawyers the SJC's suspended inquiry [JURIST report] should be allowed to resume. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website; JURIST news archive] chairman Christopher Cox [official profile] defended the SEC's record from Democratic and Republican criticism before the US House Financial Services Committee [official website] Tuesday, testifying [transcript] that the SEC should not be perceived as being either pro or anti-business, but rather as a partnership with businesses to ensure that companies remember the interests of their investors. Cox said:

if a business is investor friendly, the SEC will be friendly to it. But anyone who seeks to drive a wedge between the interests of the business and the interest of the investors in that business will face a relentless and powerful adversary in the Securities and Exchange Commission

[JURIST] The European Commission (EC) [official website] reported Wednesday that new EU members Bulgaria and Romania need to do more to achieve judicial reform, fight corruption and organized crime [press release]. A report [PDF text; summary] on Bulgaria's progress in adhering to EU norms noted its passage of constitutional amendments relating to the judiciary [JURIST report] as a positive step that met EU benchmarks for judicial independence and accountability, but said more time was needed to assess whether the legislation had achieved its intended effects. It also found that efforts to counter corruption, especially among high level officials, remain insufficient as there is little indication that inconsistent asset declarations are "systemically" pursued by the judiciary. "Legal prosecution of alleged contract killings" was explicitly found to have been insufficient, although the study acknowledged Bulgaria's extensive judicial cooperation with other EU states in fighting organized crime.

The EC progress report on Romania [PDF text; summary] praised that country's establishment of an independent National Integrity Agency empowered to "verify assets, incompatibilities and potential conflicts of interests" amongst elected and high-level public officials, but it questioned Romanian officials' commitment to prosecuting high-level corruption, finding that the judiciary frequently issued suspended sentences that reduce the deterrent value of convictions. The report also took issue with the decriminalization of bank fraud, as well as the Romanian parliament's proposals to reduce the maximum duration of criminal investigations and attempts to dismiss senior officials at the National Anti-Corruption Department.

EC President Jose Manuel Barroso [official profile] said that the reports were a "reality check" that affirm Bulgaria and Romania's commitment to address the issues, but show that the focus needs to shift to the implementation of legislation already in place. Earlier this month, Bulgarian Justice Minister Georgi Petkanov resigned [JURIST report], saying in advance of the expected EC report that he was tired of the difficult job of judiciary reform.

In January, Bulgaria and Romania officially joined the EU [JURIST report] following six years of accession negotiations. Both countries have been required to comply with a series of benchmarks; failing to do so could result in EU intervention and the potential loss of economic aid under Articles 36-38 of the Act of Accession [text], which lays out safeguard mechanisms [EC backgrounder] in the event of problems posing a threat to the functioning of the EU. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The Seoul Administrative Court granted asylum Tuesday to a Chinese dissident who exposed allegations of human organ trading, overturning a ruling by the Ministry of Justice that denied asylum to the dissident and his family. The dissident, who is a member of the banned Chinese Democratic Party [HRW backgrounder] and has been in South Korea [JURIST news archive] since 2003, fears that he will be persecuted by Chinese authorities for exposing officials engaged in the illegal organ trade.

In May, China officially banned the sale of human organs [JURIST report], and codified penalties such as revoking medical licenses for doctors that engage in trafficking. International human rights groups allege that China routinely harvests organs [JURIST report] from executed criminals and accident victims without the consent of the donors' families, a charge that China has long denied. In March, an anonymous senior Chinese Supreme Court [official website] official told the state Xinhua News Agency that China uses the same strict organ donation procedures [JURIST report] when accepting organs from executed criminals as it does with any other organ donations, but doubt exists as to how the requirement for informed consent [JURIST report] is enforced. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) [official website] on Tuesday urged federal appellate court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh [official profile; JURIST news archive] to recuse himself in "all pending and subsequent cases involving detainees and enemy combatants," after the Washington Post reported Monday that Kavanaugh, while serving as the assistant to the president and staff secretary to President Bush, participated in discussions that formulated the administration's detainee policies [WP report]. The Post report was confirmed by NPR [NPR report], and in a letter [text] to Kavanaugh, Durbin wrote:

These reports appear to contradict sworn testimony you gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 9, 2006 at your nomination hearing. At that hearing, I asked you about the role you played, as one of the President's top White House lawyers, in the selection of William Haynes, a controversial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and proponent of permissive policies with regard to torture.

I asked: "What did you know about Mr. Haynes's role in crafting the Administration's detention and interrogation policies?"

You testified: "Senator, I did not - I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants - and so I do not have the involvement with that."

In light of the Washington Post and National Public Radio reports, your sworn testimony appears inaccurate and misleading. You participated in a critical meeting in which the Administration made a decision on whether to extend access to counsel to detainees, an issue that is clearly a "rule governing detention of combatants." By testifying under oath that you were not involved in this issue, it appears that you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the nation.

Therefore, I request that you provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with an explanation for this apparent contradiction.

In addition, I request that you disqualify yourself in all pending and subsequent cases involving detainees and enemy combatants. Your lack of candor at your nomination hearing suggests you cannot approach these cases with impartiality and an open mind.

[JURIST] Three former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime, including Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid - known in the Western media as "Chemical Ali" [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], will likely be executed in the Kurdish cities of Irbil or Halabja if their death sentences [JURIST report] are upheld by the Appeals Chamber of the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website], an Iraqi official said Tuesday. The trio, including former defense minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai [TrialWatch profile] and former deputy director of operations for Iraqi armed forces Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti [TrialWatch profile] were all convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal Campaign [HRW backgrounder]. Al-Majid was convicted of an additional count of genocide. If their sentence is upheld by the Appeals Chamber, it must be carried out within 30 days.

Al-Majid has repeatedly denied the allegations [JURIST report], saying that he does not know who used chemical weapons or "if they were ever used." Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] was also a co-defendant in the Anfal genocide trial [JURIST news archive] before he was executed in December 2006. AP has more.