A California proposal for a two-year death penalty moratorium hit a permanent stumbling block in the California Assembly's Appropriations Committee Thursday. The moratorium proposal intended to suspend executions in California until a commission completed a review of California's death penalty, including an analysis of any condemned inmates who were wrongly convicted. Democratic Assemblyman Paul Koretz, [...]

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock on Friday ruled against a 1973 state law that prohibits same-sex marriage , declaring that the statute subjects the plaintiff couples to a discriminatory classification based solely on their sexual orientation. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the case last July on behalf of 19 gay [...]

US District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday sentenced former Pentagon analyst Lawrence A. Franklin to 12 years and 7 months in federal prison for leaking classified information in 2003 about potential attacks on US forces in Iraq. Franklin, who pleaded guilty in October, passed the information to [...]

Alberto R. Gonzales v. Google, Inc., United States District Court for the Northern District of California, January 18, 2006 . Read the full text of the motion to compel . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

In a last-minute push to regain popular support in the final stages of the Canadian federal election campaign, Prime Minister Paul Martin has accused Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper of planning to pack the Supreme Court of Canada with judges who would advance a socially-conservative agenda, override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms , [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Friday unsealed the indictment of eleven people alleged to have carried out a series of arsons causing millions of dollars in damage in five Western states between 1996 and 2001 for the extremist ecology groups Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF). The indictment , returned by [...]

A Turkish appeals court on Friday ordered Mehmet Ali Agca , the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, to return to prison and Agca was subsequently taken into custody in Istanbul. Agca was serving a 36-year sentence for murdering Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci when he escaped from prison and shot the Pope [...]

Japanese Prime Minister and Liberal Democratic Party leader Junichiro Koizumi pledged to introduce a bill to reform the 1947 Imperial Household Law , allowing women to ascend to the country's imperial throne during his annual keynote speech to parliament Friday. Under current law, a male must ascend to the throne, but no male has been [...]

Former Serb commander Dragan Vasiljkovic was arrested in Australia Thursday at the request of the Croatian government, who want to prosecute Vasiljkovic for war crimes committed during Croatia's 1991-1995 independence war. Vasiljkovic, now a citizen of Australia, is accused of torturing and killing Croat soldiers, civilians and prisoners of war and of involvement in the [...]

Lawyers across the country filed motions Thursday asking immigration judges to reconsider sending illegal immigrants back to Haiti. The motions are in response to the decision of the Department of Homeland Security to continue deporting Haitian immigrants, despite the presence of widespread violence and human rights violations in the country. The United Nations and the [...]