[JURIST] A judge for the Erie County Court of Common Pleas in Ohio issued a permanent injunction [opinion, PDF] Thursday against a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) [official website] bylaw that restricted the eligibility of student baseball players who were assisted by legal counsel during negotiations with professional baseball clubs. The case, Oliver v. NCAA, concerned an Ohio resident playing collegiate baseball at Oklahoma State University (OSU) [official website] who had been drafted but never signed with the Minnesota Twins [official website] Major League Baseball franchise. The bylaw affected collegiate baseball players who were drafted by Major League Baseball (MLB) [official website] teams prior to enrolling in college, and who hired attorneys to represent them during negotiations between the drafted player and the MLB team. According to the bylaw, the player's status as an amateur athlete would not be negatively impacted by lawyer's representation, provided that the lawyer did not directly participate in the negotiations. The court granted a permanent injunction against the NCAA bylaw, holding that it is arbitrary and capricious and against public policy because it interfered with and limited the player's ability to negotiate a contract effectively. In finding for the plaintiff, Judge Tygh Tone wrote:

The process advanced by the NCAA hinders representation provided by legal counsel creating an atmosphere fraught with ethical dilemmas and pitfalls that an attorney consulting a student-athlete must encounter. Will the attorney be able to advance what is best for the client or will a neutral party, the NCAA, tie his hands? What harm could possibly befall the student-athlete if such a rule were not found? What occurs if the parents of a student are attorneys or for that matter sports agents? What would have happened if Tim Baratta [the lawyer hired by the plaintiff] had been in the kitchen or outside or on the patio instead of in the same room as his client when the offer from the Minnesota Twins was made to Plaintiff?

This Court appreciates that a fundamental goal of the member institutions and the Defendant is to preserve the clear line of demarcation between amateurism and professionalism. However, to suggest that Bylaw 12.3.2.1 accomplishes that purpose by instructing a student-athlete that his attorney cannot do what he was [sic] hired him or her to do, is simply illegitimate.

[JURIST] The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) [official website] announced Friday that no charges will be filed [CPS press release] against London Metropolitan Police Service ("Met") [official website] officers involved in the shooting death of Brazilian immigrant Jean Charles de Menezes [advocacy website; BBC profile] in a London Tube station. De Menzes was shot to death by officers in July 2005 after they mistook him for terrorism suspect. The De Menezes killing occurred the day after a failed attempt to replicate the July 7, 2005 London terrorist attacks [JURIST news archive], in which four suicide bombers killed 52 people. The CPS review focused on the actions of two Met officers, identified as Charlie 2 and Charlie 12, and was initiated after a jury found the Met guilty of violating laws [JURIST report] relating to health and public safety when it shot and killed de Menezes. The CPS inquiry concluded there was insufficient evidence that any offence was committed by individual officers. In the CPS statement, Stephen O'Doherty, the reviewing lawyer from the CPS Special Crime Division, said:

The answers the jury provided to specific questions they were asked by the coroner made it clear, albeit to a civil standard, that the jury did not accept the officers’ accounts of what happened. However, although there were some inconsistencies in what the officers said at the inquest, there were also inconsistencies in what passengers had said. I concluded that in the confusion of what occurred on the day, a jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events.

"I also considered the actions of the individual officers in the police management team on that day and considered whether there was sufficient evidence to charge any of them with gross negligence manslaughter. There was no fresh evidence from the inquest which caused me to change my original decision that there was insufficient evidence to do so.

[JURIST] The European Commission (EC) [official website] on Thursday reported [text, PDF; press release] that Romania has not made sufficient progress in its anti-corruption campaign since its accession to the European Union (EU) two years ago. The EC's report commended initial efforts, such as the drafting of amendments to the Criminal and Civil Codes, but noted that Romania has regressed [International Herald Tribune report] in recent months, with "investigations into some high-level corruption cases remain[ing] blocked by the Romanian Parliament." Romania's next evaluation is scheduled to occur sometime this summer.

The EC has previously chastised both Romania and Bulgaria for failing to make judicial reforms, permitting corruption, and for falling short in efforts to combat organized crime. These issues were addressed in the nations' July 2008 [EC report] evaluations and their June 2007 [JURIST report] progress reports. The two nations joined the EU [JURIST report] in January 2007 after six years of negotiations, at which time they were given benchmarks for implementing the rule of law.

[JURIST] The Kenyan Parliament [official website] rejected [press release] Thursday two bills that would have established a special national tribunal to deal with cases stemming from the December 2007 post-election violence [JURIST report]. The Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2009 [text, PDF] and the Special Tribunal for Kenya Bill, 2009 [text, PDF] were rejected by a vote of 101-93, with 145 votes needed to pass. The situation is complicated because the Commission of Inquiry on Post Election Violence (CIPEV), or Waki Commission, set a March 1 deadline for establishment of the courts [commission report, PDF]. If this deadline is not met, a sealed enveloped containing the names of ten high ranking government officials [Daily Nation report] accused of orchestrating the post-election violence will be given to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website].

Voting on the bills was postponed [JURIST report] following allegations that government officials tried to bribe or blackmail MPs into voting for the bill. More than 1,000 people were killed and 500,000 displaced by violence following allegations of fraud [JURIST report] in the country's presidential election. The defeated bills were proposed by CIPEV [JURIST report] in October 2008 after Kibaki and opposition candidate Raila Odinga approved a power-sharing agreement [JURIST report] in March 2008.

[JURIST] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay [official bio] on Thursday called on [press release] the new national government of Zimbabwe [JURIST archive] to reinstate the rule of law and to release all political prisoners who remain in custody illegally. Pillay's statements condemned the gross human rights violations which have allegedly occurred within Zimbabwe, and encouraged the new government to take immediate action:

It is vital that international attention is focused on preventing future violations in the country by ensuring that human rights defenders and independent media are able to carry out their work without being harmed, arrested or harassed...I call for the immediate release of all those people currently still being held in unlawful custody.

[JURIST] The backlog of cases pending in the Delhi High Court [official website] would take more than 460 years to clear, according to the court's annual report [materials]. Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah [official profile] released the report at a press conference Tuesday. According to the report, the Delhi High Court typically hears a case in less than five minutes [Hindu report], but the court has close to 10,000 cases still remaining on the docket. This is only the court's second annual report, although it was founded in 1966.

The ratio of judges in India to the population is believed to be around 11 judges per one million citizens. The judiciary in India has long been plagued by what India Supreme Court Chief Justice K. G. Balahrishnan termed an "enormous backlog" of cases in that court's annual report [text, PDF]. The report stated that the High Courts throughout the country disposed of 1,505,073 cases in 2007, but gained 805,350 new cases in the first six months of 2008. Many observers blame the problems in the judiciary on widespread corruption of the judicial system. In April 2008, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [official website] called for the establishment of special courts [JURIST report] to deal specifically with judicial corruption issues. In October 2008, Indian Supreme Court justice Justice B. N. Agrawal [official profile] withdrew from a corruption hearing [JURIST report] after lawyers publicly condemned the court for protecting other corrupt judges.

[JURIST] The National Assembly of South Africa [official website] voted 232-60 [press release] Thursday in support of the decision of President Kgalema Motlanthe [official profile] to fire the country's chief prosecutor Vusi Pikoli [Who's Who profile]. The vote endorsed [Times report] the findings [committee report, DOC] of a committee set up to investigate the dismissal. The report determined the firing was legal under § 12 of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, 1998, finding:

The majority of the Members of the Committee find that the President complied with the provisions of the National Prosecuting Authority Act, 1998. ... The Committee finds that the President applied his mind properly on this matter. The Committee endorses the President's decision to remove Adv Pikoli from the office of the National Director of Public Prosecutions. The opposition parties in the Committee, however, are unanimously of the view that Adv Pikoli should be reinstated to his position as National Director of Public Prosecutions.

[JURIST] Two Pennsylvania judges pleaded guilty [US DOJ materials] Thursday to federal corruption charges [criminal information, PDF] filed [DOJ press release, PDF] last month claiming they accepted more than $2.6 million in kickbacks for sentencing teenagers to two private juvenile detention facilities in which they had a financial interest. Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas [official website] President Judge Mark Ciavarella and former President Judge Michael Conahan [plea agreements, PDF] were specifically accused of honest services fraud and tax fraud. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center [advocacy website] said that juveniles arraigned before Ciavarella between 2003 and 2006 received excessive sentences. Both judges agreed to 87-month prison sentences for themselves, but the pleas will not be formally accepted until sentencing, which could take up to 90 days. The two issues yet to be determined are the amount the judges will be ordered to pay in restitution and whether Ciavarella wrongly incarcerated juveniles to benefit the two companies involved. These issues will be resolved [Scranton Times report] during the presentence investigation and through a possible hearing before the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania [official website]. The judges have also agreed to resign their positions and be disbarred. Also Thursday, families whose children were sentenced to the detention centers filed a lawsuit [Scranton Times report] against the judges and 14 other defendants, including the company that ran the detention facilities and two individuals who allegedly paid the judges. The judges allegedly received the payments into businesses they owned and in some cases falsely characterized the payments as rental income from a Florida condominium.

Judicial corruption cases in the US are relatively rare but not unprecedented. In the 1980s, 17 Illinois judges were indicted after the FBI and the DOJ joined forces in Operation Graylord [FBI backgrounder], aimed at judicial corruption in Cook County, Illinois. Fourteen judges were eventually convicted [list]. The first US federal judge convicted of corruption was Martin Manton [NYT backgrounder] of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who sold his vote in various patent cases after suffering financial hardship in the Great Depression. His conviction was upheld [NYT reports, PDF] by the Second Circuit itself in 1939 and he spent two years in federal penitentiary.

[JURIST] The credibility of the Khmer Rouge [BBC backgrounder] trials in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive] are at risk from political corruption and interference, according to a report [text, DOC; press release] by the Open Society Justice Initiative [advocacy website] released Thursday, just days ahead of the high-profile trial [JURIST report] of Khmer Rouge leader Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Duch," set to begin February 17. The report calls for the Cambodian government and others to address "grave flaws" in the tribunal, suggesting that the government may be blocking further indictments of former senior members of Khmer Rouge. The ECCC plans to try as many as eight suspects [JURIST report] for their roles in the regime but is urged by the report to "show it is relying on law and facts, not politics, in deciding how many suspects will be investigated." The Duch case is the first to reach the trial stage.

UN and Cambodian officials called for anti-corruption measures [JURIST report] in December after allegations were made of kickbacks for judicial appointments. ECCC judges denied [JURIST report] the corruption allegations in January, stating that they had no reason to pay kickbacks to government officials. A New Zealand judge serving on the ECCC insisted [JURIST report] in an August address to colleagues that the genocide trials "are so important for the people of Cambodia [that they] must not be tainted by corruption." The Khmer Rouge regime is generally held responsible for the genocide of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians [PPU backgrounder] between 1975 and 1979.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] denied Thursday a petition for an en banc rehearing by convicted former Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling [JURIST news archives]. Skilling's petition followed a ruling [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] last month by a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit that upheld his previous convictions and ordered him to be resentenced due to error in the lower court. The court denied the petition for rehearing without comment. Skilling's laywer Daniel Petrocelli said that he plans to appeal [CNBC report] to the US Supreme Court.

Skilling's appeal was based on a previous Fifth Circuit ruling [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that overturned convictions for other Enron executives based on "honest services theft" because they had acted in Enron's best interest by direction and did not profit from their actions. The panel ruled last month that Skilling's case differed from these previous rulings because "no one at Enron sanctioned Skilling’s improper conduct" and because Skilling's compensation structure was aligned with Enron's earnings. In 2006, Skilling was convicted [JURIST report] of 19 counts of conspiracy, insider trading, and securities fraud and is currently serving a 24-year sentence. Skilling initially appealed [JURIST report] his conviction in September 2007 claiming prosecutorial and judicial errors.