| August 23, 2007 | - In a motion filed by the Justice Department, the Bush Administration argued that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, even though the office is listed as one of six presidential entities subject to FOIA on the White House website.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 0, 2007 | - The U.S. Justice Department released documents showing that Dr. Ayad Allawi, Maliki's chief opponent and the man most likely to replace him as prime minister, is paying the G.O.P. firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers $300,000 to lobby on his behalf.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| July 25, 2007 | -
Bulgarian medics who allegedly infected 426 Libyan children with HIV were pardoned and released by their home government.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| February 26, 2007 | - Jurists in The Hague ruled that a genocide occurred when Bosnian Serbs massacred Bosnian Muslims at Srebrinca in 1995. Serbia, said the court, was responsible for not preventing the genocide—but not directly responsible for the genocide itself—and is thus absolved of any obligation to pay reparations.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 29, 2006 | - A federal judge ruled that American paper currency discriminates against blind people.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 24, 2006 | - The American Association of Trial Attorneys announced it would change its name to the American Association for Justice.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 11, 2006 | - The U.S. Department of Justice accused blacks of suppressing the white vote in Mississippi.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 2, 2006 | - A vigilante mob in North Carolina beat and killed the wrong man.
| Source:
AP via CNN
|
| August 29, 2006 | - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Iraq to encourage “the rule of law.”
| Source 1:
NPR
Source 2:
icasualties.org
Source 3:
Reuters
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
Reuters
Source 6:
Sapa-AP via Independent Online
Source 7:
Reuters
Source 8:
Reuters
Source 9:
AP via Houston Chronicle
|
| July 7, 2006 | - Three people were arrested for plotting to sell Coca-Cola secrets to PepsiCo.
| Source:
Voice of America
|
| July 7, 2006 | - An Italian judge ruled that former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi should stand trial for fraud.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 6, 2006 | -
Prosecutors declined to press charges against Rush Limbaugh for possession of Viagra.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 2, 2006 | - John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, was sentenced to 6 consecutive life sentences.
| Source:
Baltimore Sun
|
| May 30, 2006 | - The European Court of Justice ruled that E.U. airlines are not required to provide passenger data to the United States.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 19, 2006 | - While acknowledging that Khaled al-Masri "deserves a remedy" for allegedly being tortured by the CIA, a federal judge dismissed al-Masri's case because allowing it to proceed would expose government secrets.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
Iraqi
police
shot a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Khalil in the head for being a gay
prostitute.
| Source:
Gay.com
|
| April 25, 2006 | - The United States announced that it would free 141 of the 490 "enemy combatants" at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba because they do not threaten U.S. security after all.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| April 5, 2006 | - The case against Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, an Iraqi cameraman for CBS who was arrested in April 2005 after filming the wreckage of a car bomb, was finally dismissed for lack of evidence.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| March 2, 2006 | -
Saddam Hussein told a court that, after a 1982 attempt to assassinate him failed in Dujail, north of Baghdad, he ordered trials for 148 Iraqis and had the local orchards razed. Hussein insisted that his actions were lawful; all of those tried were later executed or tortured to death.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 30, 2006 | - A new judge took over the Saddam Hussein trial and had Hussein and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim removed from the courtroom after Hussein began shouting and Ibrahim called the court "a bastard."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 25, 2006 | - With support from the ACLU, a boy in New Jersey won the right to wear a skirt to school; the boy wears the skirt to protest the school's policy banning shorts.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| January 18, 2006 | - A two-year, $939,233 study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department found that inmates who claim to have been raped in prison are usually lying. In prison, the study explained, sexual pressure is not seen as coercion; rather, "sexual pressure ushers, guides, or shepherds the process of sexual awakening."
| Source:
Chron.com
|
| November 28, 2005 | -
Saddam Hussein, on trial with seven other defendants for killing civilians in 1982, complained to a judge about being denied a pen and paper.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 4, 2005 | - I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| November 3, 2005 | - The mayor of Las Vegas called for vandals who deface freeways to have their thumbs cut off on TV. “They would get a trial first,” he offered.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 24, 2005 | - In the United States 2.3 million people were in prison.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| October 20, 2005 | - An Oklahoma man, sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in an armed robbery, asked for three more years of prison time to match Larry Bird's jersey number, 33.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| August 14, 2005 | - In Kansas Dennis Rader, the B.T.K. serial killer, was sentenced to ten consecutive life sentences; he will be eligible for parole in 2180. Rader believed that his victims would serve as his slaves in the afterlife, performing roles like "sex toy and boy servant."
| Source:
The Wichita Eagle
|
| August 5, 2005 | - An Israeli soldier was lynched after he shot and killed four Israeli Arabs.
| Source:
AFP
|
| July 19, 2005 | - Heidi Fleiss was planning to open a brothel in Nevada. “I'm a perfect example of the fact that prison does work,” she said. “I have served my time, now will do my crime legally.”
| Source:
MSNBC Gossip
|
| June 25, 2005 | - At the U.S. Justice Department, the $8,000 modesty curtains used to cover the bareness of the statues of Majesty of Justice and Spirit of Justice were removed, once again exposing an aluminum nipple.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 27, 2005 | - In North Carolina a man was released from prison after serving thirty-five years of his life sentence for stealing a $140 TV set.
| Source:
WRAL.com
|
| April 30, 2005 | - The state court of Florida blocked a thirteen-year-old girl from having an abortion. “Why can't I make my own decision?” the girl asked a judge. “I don't know,” the judge answered.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Sun-Sentinel.com
|
| April 29, 2005 | - In South Africa, two men were convicted of feeding a coworker to lions.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 23, 2005 | - Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and his top three aides were cleared of all wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib case.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 8, 2005 | -
Republicans held a conference to discuss ways to reform the federal judiciary, which they say has “run amok.” Senator Tom Coburn's chief of staff said that “mass impeachment” of judges might be necessary, and Tom DeLay, who is under investigation for illegal fundraising, gave a pre-recorded speech entitled “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A federal judge refused to let the Bush Administration, which opposes torture, send prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to other prisons abroad without granting the prisoners access to the courts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 26, 2005 | - A North Carolina man was arrested for trying to have both Terri Schiavo's husband and the judge who denied the request to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube killed.
| Source:
Citizen-Times.com
|
| March 20, 2005 | - The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding tube that allows her to survive; the order, however, was defied by a Florida judge, and the feeding tube was removed. Schiavo then began to die of dehydration. The House and Senate held emergency sessions in order to pass a bill that would transfer the case from state court to federal court. The bill was then signed by President George W. Bush, who had flown in from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the occasion.
| Source:
Wikipedia
|
| March 15, 2005 | - Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy, and seven counts of filing false reports.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and several other chemical companies on behalf of 4 million Vietnamese who were poisoned by the 80 million liters of Agent Orange sprayed during the Vietnam War. The judge said that there was no clear link between Agent Orange and the illnesses of the Vietnamese plaintiffs, even though the U.S. government currently pays compensation to ten thousand U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War impaired by Agent Orange.
| Source:
VOA
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A falling tree crushed the legs of Edgar Killen, a Mississippi
Baptist minister and Ku Klux Klansman currently facing trial for the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 5, 2005 | -
Martha Stewart was released from prison. While incarcerated Stewart's wealth increased $700 million, and her cappuccino
machine broke.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| February 17, 2005 | - The House approved a measure to limit class-action lawsuits, redirecting large lawsuits from state to federal courts.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| February 2, 2005 | -
Malaysia's Home Ministry gave illegal immigrants one last chance to leave the country before being whipped.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 1, 2005 | - A U.S. judge ruled that foreigners held in Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detainment.
| Source:
The Scotsman
|
| February 1, 2005 | - The selection of a jury of Michael Jackson's peers began.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 15, 2005 | -
Rwanda said that it will attempt to try one-eighth of its population for genocide. Trials will be held in small village courts, called gacacas.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 12, 2005 | - E! Television and Britain's BSkyB announced plans to broadcast 30-minute dramatizations of Michael Jackson's child
molestation
trial, based on the testimony from the previous day, in order to get around a ban on cameras in the courtroom.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 7, 2005 | - The Vietnamese government executed 450 ducks.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 6, 2005 | - Then his computer crashed.
| Source:
VNUnet.com
|
| January 3, 2005 | - Senator Richard Lugar called the lifetime detention of untried terrorism suspects a "bad idea,"
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 29, 2004 | - Six Navy Seals and two of their wives sued the Associated Press for publishing photographs of the men posing and grinning amid hooded prisoners; a reporter found the photos after one of the wives posted them on smugmug.com, a website she had thought was secure.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 29, 2004 | - In Dubai, an Italian man was fined for hugging and kissing a woman in public.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| December 19, 2004 | - The Iraqi Special Tribune opened hearings into the crimes of prominent former Baath government officials, most notably Hassan Al-Majeed, aka "Chemical Ali." Evidence against him included a tape on which he boasted that if any Kurd defied him, he would "blow him away, cut him open like a cucumber," and bury him with a bulldozer.
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| December 17, 2004 | - The supreme court of Kansas declared that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional but then issued a stay of its own ruling.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 16, 2004 | - A Washington State man received a three-year prison sentence for attempting to circumcise his eight-year-old son,
| Source:
The Columbian
|
| December 13, 2004 | -
Augusto Pinochet was indicted and placed under house arrest by a Chilean court for the abduction of nine dissidents and the murder of one of them during his dictatorship.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2004 | - Congress approved a measure that will permit soldiers and their families to seek reimbursement for combat equipment, such as body armor, that they have purchased with their own money.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2004 | - The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the world's whales had no standing to sue President Bush over the Navy's use of sonar equipment that kills them.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 4, 2004 | - A federal judge ordered the government to notify Indian land owners before it sells their property; the ruling was part of a lawsuit in which Indians claim that the U.S. government has cheated them out of $137 billion in royalties from the use of their lands.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 23, 2004 | - Charges were also dropped against Ahmad al Halabi, a Syrian-American airman who was accused of spying at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 26, 2004 | - Military trials were underway at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 19, 2004 | - A court in southern Darfur sentenced ten Janjaweed fighters to have their left hands and right feet amputated; the Sudanese ambassador in London denied that his government was supporting the militias.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 13, 2004 | - A British man was jailed for shooting off his testicles.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 8, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced the creation of military review panels to allow prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions, though they will not be permitted to have lawyers present, nor will the hearings be public; critics said that the Pentagon's plan falls short of the standard set by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the prisoners have a right to an independent hearing.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 8, 2004 | - Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and CEO of Enron, was finally indicted.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 3, 2004 | - Four American soldiers were charged with fatally pushing an Iraqi off a bridge in January for breaking a curfew.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2004 | - Court proceedings began at "Camp Victory," the American base near Baghdad, against Saddam Hussein, who identified himself as the current president of Iraq, and eleven members of his administration. "You know that this is all a theater by Bush, to help him win his election," Hussein observed. He was read criminal charges covering thirty years, including the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja, which he recalled hearing about "on the radio." The U.S. said that Hussein had not provided any useful information while in custody, though he explained that he had his army invade Kuwait in 1990 to keep them busy.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 29, 2004 | - Observing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Supreme Court ruled that both foreign prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay and so-called enemy combatants held in the United States can use the American legal system to challenge their detention.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 1, 2004 | - A judge in California ruled that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act is unconstitutional.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 31, 2004 | - Armin Meiwes, the famous German cannibal, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 29, 2004 | - A Chilean court stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 18, 2004 | -
Iraqi torture victims were beginning to file lawsuits against the U.S. seeking damages.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 11, 2004 | - The British government proposed jailing people for merely associating with terror suspects.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| April 9, 2004 | - Florida police arrested a nine-year-old girl for stealing a black-and-white bunny rabbit named Oreo.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 8, 2004 | - A military lawyer for a Guantánamo Bay prisoner filed a civil lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the president's military tribunals.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 1, 2004 | - The International Court of Justice ruled that U.S. courts must review the death sentences of 51 Mexican citizens whose rights under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations were violated; although international treaties are "the supreme law of the land," according to the U.S. Constitution, Governor Rick Perry declared that "the International Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction in Texas."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 14, 2004 | - The British government was fighting in court for the right to charge people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes for the cost of keeping them in jail.
| Source:
Sunday Herald
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The United States released five British citizens from the camps in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Britain held the men for less than a day before releasing them.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 6, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart revealed that she was "distressed" to have been convicted for lying about an improper stock trade that saved her about $45,000. Stewart's television show was withdrawn by WCBS, and there was speculation that her company might not be able to survive its association with a convicted felon.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | - Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was seized in Chicago in June 2002 and declared an enemy combatant, met with his lawyers for the very first time.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
California's supreme court ruled that a Catholic charity must cover birth control in its employee health coverage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to death, eight years after his trial began.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 26, 2004 | -
Pentagon officials said that Guantánamo detainees who are found innocent might still be kept in detention indefinitely if they are deemed a security risk.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 25, 2004 | - Two Guantánamo prisoners were formally charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. Amnesty International and other human rights groups were told that they will not be permitted to attend the military tribunals, because there just aren't enough seats.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 21, 2004 | - A federal judge declined to ban homosexual marriages in San Francisco because opponents had failed to show that the weddings were causing "immediate harm."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 17, 2004 | -
Rwanda's prosecutor general said that thousands of genocide suspects would be released from prison if they simply confessed their crimes and begged forgiveness.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 16, 2004 | - Police chiefs from around the country were trying to defeat a Senate bill that would give gunmakers and dealers immunity from lawsuits.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 2, 2004 | -
Yasir Arafat expressed disbelief at Ariel Sharon's plan to remove 17 settlements from Gaza, right-wing politicians were outraged, and one political ally suggested that the prime minister was merely trying to distract attention from corruption scandals that could result in his indictment.
| Source:
Guardian, Ha'aretz
|
| January 29, 2004 | - A federal judge tried for the third time to impose punitive damages on the Exxon Mobil Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill fifteen years ago; Exxon Mobil said it would appeal the $4.5 billion judgment.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 27, 2004 | - A federal judge struck down as unconstitutionally vague the provision of the USA Patriot Act that bans giving "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 20, 2004 | - Thousands of people marched in Basra, Najaf, and Kerbala demanding that Saddam Hussein be turned over to the Iraqi people to stand trial.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 19, 2004 | - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is also the target of a corruption investigation, said that Israel might decide to change the route of the wall it is building around the West Bank but not because of any demands made by Palestinians, the United Nations, or the International Court of Justice.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 16, 2004 | - Five military lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in setting up military tribunals for their clients and the other detainees. "Under this monarchical regime," they wrote, "those who fall into the black hole may not contest the jurisdiction, competency or even the constitutionality of the military tribunals."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 16, 2004 | - One hundred seventy-five members of the British
parliament, including five former law lords, also filed a brief attacking the administration's detainment policy. "The exercise of executive power without the possibility of judicial review," they wrote, "jeopardizes the keystone of our existence as nations, namely the rule of law."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 14, 2004 | -
Italy's constitutional court struck down a law that gave Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution, a ruling that will revive the corruption charges the law was written to nullify.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 2, 2004 | - A French magistrate was thinking about indicting the vice president in a bribery case involving a gas liquefication factory built by Halliburton in Nigeria.
| Source:
Nation
|
| January 1, 2004 | - Six men were indicted for burning a cross in the yard of a Georgia woman who was dating a biracial man.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 30, 2003 | - Eight aides to President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea were indicted for illegal fund-raising.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Parmalat, the Italian dairy company, went bankrupt and its founder, Calisto Tanzi, was arrested on suspicion of fraud.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| December 28, 2003 | -
Michael Jackson said that when he was a boy he slept with grown men many times, and he complained that the police had locked him in a room that had "doo doo" all over the walls.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| December 24, 2003 | - Princess Anne's English bull terrier Dotty mauled Pharos, Queen Elizabeth's favorite corgi, which had to be put down as a result; the princess was convicted last year under the Dangerous Dogs Act after Dotty attacked two children in a park.
| Source:
BBC
|
| December 19, 2003 | - A federal appeals court ordered President Bush to release Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested last year in Chicago and has been held since then as an enemy combatant. The court ruled that "the president, acting alone, possesses no inherent constitutional authority to detain American citizens seized within the United States, away from the zone of combat, as enemy combatants."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 18, 2003 | - American officials said that the CIA might not be able to use its usual interrogation techniques on Saddam Hussein, because Hussein, unlike many Al Qaeda operatives, will probably stand trial for his crimes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 17, 2003 | - A federal district judge overturned the Bush Administration's decision to discard the Clinton Administration's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and said that the Bush decision was arbitrary and "politically driven."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | - A Colorado woman was jailed for falsely claiming that her son is a genius.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | - Three Rwandan journalists were convicted by an international court in Tanzania for inciting the 1994 genocide on the radio and in print.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 3, 2003 | - Eighteen Rwandan Hutus were given prison sentences for orchest
|
