[JURIST] Chile's Supreme Court [official website, in Spanish] Wednesday sentenced five former Chilean military officers for their role in the killing of five leftist political opponents as part of the so-called "Caravan of Death" [BBC backgrounder] in October 1973. General Sergio Arellano Stark was sentenced to six years in prison for his role leading a group that toured provincial cities in Chile eliminating political opponents at the behest of General Augusto Pinochet [JURIST archive] in the months following the military's violent overthrow of leftist president President Salvador Allende. Four other defendants received sentences [press release, in Spanish] ranging between six and four years in prison. Reuters has more.

In March 2006, Judge Victor Montiglio announced indictments and ordered the arrests of 13 retired Chilean military officers [JURIST report] accused of directly participating in the Caravan. In November that year, Montiglio indicted Pinochet himself [JURIST report] and placed him under house arrest in connection with the firing-squad deaths of two of Allende's bodyguards. Pinochet died in December 2006 before being brought to trial [JURIST report]. In the end, military officers killed as many as 75 Chilean dissidents, many of whom had turned themselves in to authorities.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [day call] Wednesday in two cases, including Waddington v. Sarausad [Cornell LII backgrounder; merit briefs], 07-772, in which the Court will consider whether a ruling [PDF text] by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit correctly overturned the murder conviction of a driver in a 1994 Seattle drive-by shooting on the grounds of incorrect jury instructions on accomplice liability. Appearing on behalf of the petitioner during Wednesday's arguments [transcript, PDF], Washington State Deputy Solicitor General William B. Collins noted that the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act [PDF text] provides a deferential standard of review and urged the Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit because "the Washington court's adjudication of this matter was not objectively unreasonable." Jeffrey Fisher, arguing on behalf of the respondent, said the "extraordinary record" in the case demonstrates that the Washington Court of Appeals "could not have reasonably concluded that there was a reasonable likelihood the jury understood the charge in this case."

In the second case argued [transcript, PDF] Wednesday, Hedgpeth v. Pulido [Cornell LII backgrounder; merit briefs], 07-544, the Court will review another ruling [PDF text] by the Ninth Circuit. The question presented is whether that court "fail[ed] to conform to 'clearly established' Supreme Court law ... when it granted habeas corpus relief by deeming an erroneous instruction on one of two alternative theories of guilt to be 'structural error' requiring reversal because the jury might have relied on it[.]"

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] a district court order requiring Ohio's secretary of state to establish a system that allows county elections boards to confirm newly registered voters' eligibility. The court, sitting en banc, vacated a stay [AP report] imposed by a Sixth Circuit panel last week. The temporary restraining order issued by the district court gives Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner [official website] until Friday to furnish county elections officials with lists of prospective voters whose information in state databases contains discrepancies, or to provide the officials with access to the statewide voter registration database so they can resolve the discrepancies. An anti-fraud provision [text] of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) [FEC materials] requires state election and motor vehicles officials to match information between their databases to ensure voter eligibility. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton [official profile] wrote on behalf of the Sixth Circuit majority:

[O]ne of the key obstacles to the Secretary’s request for relief is the lack of any affidavit or other factual support for her arguments that altering the relevant computer programs will be difficult or will create material risks to other aspects of the election process. In upholding the district court's October 10 order and its October 17 deadline, it is appropriate to assume what we should always assume in denying interim relief—that the district court will respond fairly to requests to adjust the TRO if the Secretary offers reasonable bases for doing so.

[JURIST] A report [PDF text; press release] issued Tuesday by Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] links the large number of executions in Saudi Arabia [JURIST news archive] to flaws in the Saudi judicial system. The report, titled Affront to Justice: Death Penalty in Saudi Arabia, noted a significant increase in executions from 2006 to 2007, when at least 158 death sentences were carried out, and a relatively high rate of execution for migrant or foreign workers. Malcolm Smart, director of AI's Middle East and North Africa program, said:

The government's continuing high use of the death penalty runs counter to the growing international trend towards abolition. Moreover, the death penalty is carried out disproportionately and discriminately on national or ethnic grounds against poor foreign workers and against Saudi Arabian nationals who lack the family or other connections that, fortunately, help others to be saved from execution.

[JURIST] Two classified memos sent from the Bush administration to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 explicitly sanctioned the use of certain harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding [JURIST news archive], the Washington Post reported [text] Wednesday. The documents were reportedly first requested by then-CIA director George Tenet [BBC profile; SourceWatch profile] in 2003 at a meeting with members of the National Security Council [official website], as Tenet hoped that a written statement of the administration's policy would offer legal protection for CIA subordinates. The Post report's sources, four anonymous Bush administration and intelligence officials, confirmed that a brief memo approving the use of the techniques was sent shortly after the meeting, and that a second memo confirming the policy was sent in 2004 despite growing concerns from the Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website]. The memos remain classified. The White House has not commented on the story. AFP has more.

Last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [official profile] became the first White House official to acknowledge that the Bush administration held talks [Washington Post report] as early as 2002 to consider the legality of waterboarding and other coercive techniques. Reports [JURIST report] in April alleged that top Bush officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, approved the use of controversial interrogation methods on terrorism suspects. In February, the DOJ launched an internal probe [JURIST report] into whether top department officials improperly approved the CIA's use of waterboarding. The DOJ released three memos [materials; JURIST report] in July indicating that certain harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, are lawful and that those who employ them in good faith lack the specific intent required to be charged with torture.

[JURIST] The International Court of Justice (ICJ) [official website] on Wednesday rejected [decision text, PDF; press release, PDF; case docket] an emergency request for provisional measures from the Georgian Republic to stop the alleged killing and mass displacement of citizens in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia [JURIST news archive], instead calling on both Georgia and Russia to meet their obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)[text]. The Court determined that it possessed prima facie jurisdiction over the case under CERD Article 22, but opted to use its power to indicate provisional measures [ICJ Article 41 text] to reach each side:

Both Parties, within South Ossetia and Abkhazia and adjacent areas in Georgia, shall
(1) refrain from any act of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions;
(2) abstain from sponsoring, defending or supporting racial discrimination by any persons or organizations,
(3) do all in their power, whenever and wherever possible, to ensure, without distinction as to national or ethnic origin,
(i) security of persons;
(ii) the right of persons to freedom of movement and residence within the border of the State;
(iii) the protection of the property of displaced persons and of refugees;
(4) do all in their power to ensure that public authorities and public institutions under their control or influence do not engage in acts of racial discrimination against persons, groups of persons or institutions.

[JURIST] Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin [party profile, in Turkish] apologized Tuesday on behalf of the Turkish government for the death of Engin Ceber, an anti-government protester who died after alleged torture while in police custody on Saturday. Sahin also announced that 19 prison officials were suspending pending an investigation into Cerber's death. The Guardian quoted Sahin as saying [Guardian report]:

"I apologise to the relatives of [Ceber] on behalf of my government and the state ... I am pushing this ahead with a high sensitivity. The number [of suspensions] could rise as the investigation widens. I am very sorry that such an incident was allowed to happen in Turkey at such a time."

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of the Philippines [official website] on Tuesday rejected [decision text] as unconstitutional a proposed peace agreement between the government and the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) [group website; BBC backgrounder]. The Memorandum of Agreement on the Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) [text] between the MILF and the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo [official website] would have given the minority Muslim faction expanded autonomy by creating the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) in the Mindanao region of the Philippine islands. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that Arroyo had exceeded her powers in negotiating the agreement. According to the court's decision,

[t]he MOA-AD cannot be reconciled with the present Constitution and laws. Not only its specific provisions but the very concept underlying them, namely, the associative relationship envisioned between the [Philippines government] and the BJE, are unconstitutional, for the concept presupposes that the associated entity is a state and implies that the same is on its way to independence.