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- The military judge in the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has ruled that all testimony or discussion of torture is classified.
- Meanwhile, the mother of Jose Padilla, who says he was tortured while detained as an enemy combatant, is turning to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for relief, now that the lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been rejected by U.S. courts.
- A New York court has ruled that a state terrorism law created after 9/11 could not be used to prosecute street gangs.
- An Arizona federal district judge has refused to dismiss the lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio alleging he systematically discriminated against Latinos. U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver rejected Arpaio’s claim that statistical evidence was needed to prove his discrimination.
- An Ohio man whose mugshot appeared on the Internet after he was arrested for failure to disperse from a party is suing several privately run mugshot sites, using the novel legal theory that the websites are using arrestees’ images for commercial gain without compensation.
- Text messages and other new technology are easing the delivery of legal services to those who can’t afford a lawyer.
- With President Obama’s first term coming to a close and federal courts still rife with vacancies, the New York Times editorial board is once again lamenting the judicial vacancy crisis, and the American Prospect documents how the faltering judicial nominations efforts have “kept the courts in conservative hands.”
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