Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration established the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba to hold the detainees it suspected of being connected in any way with the opponents of our wars in Afghanistan and later Iraq. From the outset, the prison ...

In this 157-page decision, District Judge Shira Scheindlin addressed one of the several variations of the “stop and frisk” program routinely carried out by the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”). (For some startling statistics on the ever-expanding scope of New York’s “stop and frisk” program, see "NYPD’s Stop and ...

It has long been clear that, if the Government threatens a defense witness with perjury, such intimidation is usually deemed to be a due process violation. (See, e.g., Webb v. Texas, 409 U.S. 95 (1972).) This case raises a corollary issue - namely, whether the government's substantial interference with the ...

Way back in 2002, an initial group of seven foreign nationals filed a class action, civil rights lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, former INS Commissioner James Ziglar, and employees of the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, NY. The suit alleged a series of ...

In this case the Supreme Court unanimously held that a defendant charged with criminal conspiracy must carry the burden to prove that he withdrew from the conspiracy. In so ruling, the Court resolved a question of Federal criminal conspiracy law that has long divided the Circuit Courts of Appeal - ...

In a pair of consolidated Federal habeas cases involving death row inmates from the states of Arizona and Ohio, a unanimous Supreme Court held that mentally ill state prisoners do not have a right to a suspension of their Federal habeas proceedings until they become sufficiently competent to assist their ...