Guatemala’s Court for High Risks on Tuesday sentenced former vice president Roxana Baldetti to prison for 15 years and six months for committing corruption in the awarding of a multi-million dollar government contract to decontaminate a lake near the capital. A UN anti-corruption commission supported Guatemalan prosecutors in the case against Baldetti and 12 other people for [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal of a 2017 environmental ruling authored by the court’s newest member, Brett Kavanaugh. The opinion, issued by a three-judge panel of Kavanaugh’s former court, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, struck down a regulation issued by the Obama administration’s [...]
A Madrid court on Monday found Dr. Eduardo Vela, a gynecologist during the rule of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, guilty of abducting a child in 1969 but found that the 85-year-old’s crime fell beyond the statute of limitations, sparing him from sentencing. The Madrid Provincial Court agreed in June to hear the case of Ines [...]
Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the US Supreme Court Tuesday to hear oral argument in two cases challenging the mandatory sentencing enhancement provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). Both cases concern the “mandatory minimum 15-year prison sentence on any federal firearms offender who previously has been convicted of three ‘violent’ felonies.” The previous provision imposed a [...]
The Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the state’s lethal injection protocol over a challenge by several death row inmates who argued the three-drug injection inflicted unnecessary pain. In July the Tennessee Department of Corrections revised the protocol to eliminate pentobarbital, providing for a three-drug injection now including midazolam to provide pain relief. The 33 [...]
UN human rights experts called Tuesday for an investigation into the disappearance of Saudi journalist and government critic Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Khashoggi has not been seen since his fiancee saw him enter the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Sources in Turkey believe that Khashoggi was killed in a state-sponsored murder after entering [...]
The Supreme Court of Singapore on Tuesday convicted an activist and an opposition politician under the country’s new Administration of Justice (Protection) Act 2016, finding the Facebook remarks they made critical of Singapore’s judiciary to constitute contempt by scandalizing court. The Administration of Justice Act makes it illegal to commit the crime of “contempt by scandalising (sic) court,” which is defined as: Any [...]
A court of appeals in The Hague on Tuesday upheld a historic legal order that requires the Dutch government to make “a reduction obligation of at least 25% from the emissions in 1990 by end-2020” because that is within the “State’s duty of care.” The court cited Article 2 and Article 8 of the European Convention on [...]
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced alarm Tuesday over the current use of solitary confinement as the court declined to hear a case challenging the practice. Although she agreed with the decision to not hear this case, the justice expressed her overall concerns about the extreme mental anguish caused by solitary confinement and the [...]
Romania’s referendum Sunday to change the constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman failed due to lack of voter participation. The national election bureau reported that only 20.4 percent of Romanian citizens voted in the referendum, which required a 30 percent voter turnout. The Coalition for the Family, a conservative lobbying group, petitioned the Romanian government [...]
