Gitmo doctor denies using feeding tubes to punish striking detainees News
Gitmo doctor denies using feeding tubes to punish striking detainees

[JURIST] Dr. John Edmondson, chief medical officer at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], has denied accusations that feeding tubes are being used to punish detainees. In an affidavit filed in federal court, Edmondson stated that only trained doctors and nurses were inserting feeding tubes and that anesthetic and lubricants were being used to ease the pain. The affidavit was filed in response to accusations [JURIST report] by an attorney for several detainees that troops were using dirty tubes and violently inserting feeding tubes into detainees participating in a rolling hunger strike [JURIST report] that began August 9. Defense lawyers filed an emergency petition [JURIST report] last week asking US District Judge Gladys Kessler for more frequent access to their clients, medical records and to allow their own doctors to visit the striking detainees. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.