New Orleans courts prepare to resume trials News
New Orleans courts prepare to resume trials

[JURIST] A New Orleans judge said Tuesday that criminal trials in New Orleans could resume by March when the courts will try to deal with the 3,000 trials [JURIST report] pending before Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive] swept through the city. The first post-Katrina grand jury may convene in February to hear the case [JURIST report] of some 40 patients who died at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center [hospital website] in the days following the storm. Among the obstacles for those trying to begin work again are mold-covered evidence that sat in flood water for days and only two usable courtrooms in the federal court building. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Ku Klux Klan founded

The US hate group known as the Ku Klux Klan was founded on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a reaction to reconstruction efforts following the Union victory in the American Civil War. The group would later become notorious for its attacks on Black Americans, being targeted by the Enforcement Act of 1871, which imposed civil and criminal liability for deprivation of constitutional rights. Read the Enforcement Act of 1871.  

Hamid Karzai born

On December 24, 1957, Hamid Karzai was born in Karz, Afghanistan. He would go on to become in 2004 his country's first elected president after the end of Taliban rule in 2001.