Attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui {JURIST Newsmaker] have filed a petition to the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that reinstated the US government's right to seek the death penalty against Moussaoui for his alleged involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks. In government custody since December 2001 on 6 charges of terrorism [...]

Sixty-one members of the European Parliament have presented a plan to eliminate the European Union's current legislative process related to IT patents. The proposed changes reflect the debate over current European law that prohibits software patents, and the Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions . The directive, which places significant limits on the patentability [...]

Eric Muller, University of North Carolina School of Law: "A source (my mom) just called to tell me that my old boss Mike Chertoff is going to be the new head of Homeland Security. This does not surprise me, and I think him a strong choice. Chertoff is a straight shooter and one of the [...]

Ellen Podgor, Georgia State University College of Law: "Although the Supreme Court did not issue an opinion in the much awaited sentencing cases of Booker and Fanfan, it did rule in Whitfield v. United States. The Court held that a conspiracy to commit money laundering premised upon 18 U.S.C. 1956(h) does not require an overt [...]

Three former employees of Medical Manager Health Systems Inc., recently purchased by WebMD , pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud on Tuesday. Federal prosecutors in South Carolina filed charges against the three, including Robert W. Davids, a vice president of Medical Manager, that alleged a systematic plan to receive kickbacks from companies aquired by [...]

A former US Navy SEAL testifying Monday in the Article 32 military hearing of a fellow SEAL lieutenant said that on two separate occasions he witnessed SEALs and CIA officials abusing Iraqi prisoners, in one instance punching, choking and poking in the eye a recalcitrant Iraqi detainee who later died. The alleged incidents took place [...]

The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled Tuesday in a decision written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor that a count of conspiracy to commit money laundering does not require proof of an overt act to further the conspiracy. The full text of the ruling in the consolidated cases of Whitfield v. US and Hall v. US [...]

A former civilian Arabic translator at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp pleaded guilty Monday to charges of mishandling classified information and lying to investigators. Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, a naturalized US citizen of Egyptian origin, has been incarcerated since his arrest at Logan Airport on September 29, 2003 where he was found to be carrying computer [...]

AP is reporting that President Bush has selected US Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge and former Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff to be the new secretary of Homeland Security, according to officials speaking Tuesday. The President's previous nominee, former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, withdrew his name from consideration after revelations about non-payment [...]

Six individuals, two former AOL executives and four former executives from the now-defunct PurchasePro software company, have been charged in an ongoing investigation into a secret negotiation between the two companies to artificially increase PurchasePro's revenues. Federal prosecutors have already charged six other PurchasePro executives, and all have pleaded guilty to the charges. Kent Wakeford [...]