Defense lawyers who had hoped that the public disclosure a year ago of the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program would yield information favorable to their clients are being rebuffed by the federal judiciary, which in a series of unusually consistent rulings has rejected efforts by terrorism suspects to access the records.

In at least 17 criminal cases, federal district judges nominated to the federal bench by presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush have ruled against requests to force the government to tell defendants, most accused of terrorism-related crimes, whether the NSA eavesdropped on them without a court warrant.

The rulings indicate that even as public support for the war in Iraq has eroded in polls and as the NSA program has come under criticism from congressional Democrats, and even some Republicans, federal judges may be a bulwark that the Bush administration can rely on to defer to at least some aspects of its wartime policies. (more…)

The US Department of Justice’s (USDOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) opened a review of the USDOJ’s role in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless wiretapping program on November 27, 2006, according to a letter from the OIG to US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) obtained by Atlanta Progressive News.

APN first reported on the apparent game of “hot potato” several federal agencies appeared to be playing after the call for an investigation by Congressional Democrats in January 2006.

US Reps. Lofgren, Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and 36 other lawmakers wrote a letter to the USDOJ’s Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in January requesting his office open an investigation into the NSA wiretapping program. Lofgren and others had requested other agencies investigate as well. (more…)

MELBOURNE, Australia — Thirteen men accused of belonging to a terrorist cell that was plotting a major attack in Australia pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday.

The men, all Muslims, were among 18 suspects arrested last year in coordinated pre-dawn raids in Melbourne and Sydney in a two-year operation police said prevented a catastrophic terror attack in Australia, possibly targeting a nuclear reactor in southern Sydney.

The 13 appeared in the Victorian state Supreme Court to plead not guilty to belonging to a terrorist organization and other terrorism-related offenses. The remaining five suspects were arrested in Sydney, where they are awaiting trial. (more…)

A federal judge upheld the Bush administration’s new terrorism law Wednesday, agreeing that Guantanamo Bay detainees do not have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson is the first to address the new Military Commissions Act and is a legal victory for the Bush administration at a time when it has been fending off criticism of the law from Democrats and libertarians.

Robertson rejected a legal challenge by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden whose case prompted the Supreme Court to strike down the Bush administration’s policy on detainees last year. (more…)

A federal judge Wednesday dismissed [ruling, PDF] a habeas corpus petition brought by Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan [Trial Watch profile], finding it was clearly barred under the controversial habeas-stripping language [JURIST report] of the new Military Commissions Act (MCA) [text, PDF] even though it was pending at the time the Act was passed. Agreeing with a position [JURIST report] on pending habeas petitions taken earlier this fall by the US Department of Justice, US District Judge James Robertson wrote in the first ruling to construe the MCA:

Hamdan’s lengthy detention beyond American borders but within the jurisdictional authority of the United States is historically unique. Nevertheless, as the government argues in its reply brief, his connection to the United States lacks the geographical and volitional predicates necessary to claim a constitutional right to habeas corpus. Petitioner has never entered the United States and accordingly does not enjoy the “implied protection” that accompanies presence on American soil. (more…)

The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate. Among the most unfortunate people are those who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned.

The United States has a large number of wrongfully convicted. There are many reasons for this. One is that the US has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned of all countries in the world, including China. One of every 32 US adults is behind bars, on probation or on parole. Given a wrongful conviction rate, the larger the percentage of citizens in jails, the greater the number of wrongfully convicted.

According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries. Either America is the land of criminals, or something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice (sic) system in “the land of the free.” (more…)

In a case that could shape firearms laws nationwide, attorneys for the District of Columbia argued Thursday that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals.

The city defended as constitutional its long-standing ban on handguns, a law that some gun opponents have advocated elsewhere. Civil liberties groups and pro-gun organizations say the ban in unconstitutional.

At issue in the case before a federal appeals court is whether the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” applies to all people or only to “a well regulated militia.” The Bush administration has endorsed individual gun-ownership rights but the Supreme Court has never settled the issue.

If the dispute makes it to the high court, it would be the first case in nearly 70 years to address the amendment’s scope. The court disappointed gun owner groups in 2003 when it refused to take up a challenge to California’s ban on assault weapons. (more…)

A U.S. judge expressed skepticism on Friday that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be held personally liable for the abuse of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners, including at Abu Ghraib.

U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan said that while torture is unacceptable, he was not sure whether the nine Iraqi and Afghan residents had a right to sue Rumsfeld in U.S. courts.

“What you’re asking for has never been decided by a court before,” Hogan said at a hearing in the high-profile case.

“How do you (limit) this right … so you don’t have a bin Laden or somebody bringing lawsuits here? How do you control that, and where does it stop, I guess is my problem,” he added. (more…)

The family of shot Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes are due at court to fight the decision not to prosecute police officers over his death.
The Brazilian was shot after police mistook him for a suicide bomber on a London Tube train on 22 July last year.

Fifteen officers were investigated, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was “insufficient evidence” to bring individual prosecutions. (more…)

In a press release issued today, the American Civil Liberties Union announces that a “landmark” case against Donald Rumsfeld will be heard in federal court this week.

The ACLU and another legal rights organization, Human Rights First, are to appear in court here on Friday “to argue that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is directly responsible for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody,” said the release.

“The hearing will be the first time a federal court will consider whether top U.S. officials can be held legally accountable for the torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the release continues, adding that the lawsuit was first filed in 2005 “on behalf of nine Iraqi and Afghan former detainees.” (more…)

When The Cafferty File starts off with Jack saying “the following story comes from the land of make believe or believe-it-or-not”, you know what follows is going to be ridiculous and todays 4 o’clock question was no exception. The Department of Justice has suddenly decided (surprise surprise) to investigate the legality of the controversial NSA domestic spying program. Jack surmises that it may have something to do with the incoming Democratic majority — led by Judiciary Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy — which is sure to ask the tough question the GOP has avoided. Gee, ya think?

You have to wonder where the DoJ’s priorities lie when they decide to investigate the leak that disclosed the program 11 months before they investigate the actuality legality of it.

Source: Crooks And Liars

A federal judge in Los Angeles, who previously struck down sections of the Patriot Act, has ruled that provisions of an anti-terrorism order issued by President George W. Bush after September 11 are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins found that part of the law, signed by Bush on September 23, 2001 and used to freeze the assets of terrorist organizations, violated the Constitution because it put no apparent limit on the president’s powers to place groups on that list.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought against the Treasury Department in 2005 by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Collins also threw out a portion of Bush’s order which applied the law to those who associate with the designated organizations.

“This law gave the president unfettered authority to create blacklists, an authority president Bush then used to empower the Secretary of the Treasury to impose guilt by association,” said David Cole of the Washington-based Center for Constitutional Rights. (more…)