Pete Williams
From NBC’s Pete Williams
In the world's first criminal trial of CIA officials over the practice known as "rendition," an Italian judge today found nearly two-dozen American citizens guilty of kidnapping. The U.S. has used renditions to take suspected terrorists from one foreign country to another for questioning or to the U.S. None of the U.S. defendants were ever in the courtroom: they were tried in absentia.
The case involved a radical Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, who was picked up on a street in Milan in February 2003 and taken to Egypt. When he was released four years later, he claimed he was brutally tortured by the Egyptian intelligence service. Italian authorities then prosecuted the Americans and members of Italy's military intelligence service.
Today, the judge sentenced 22 of the Americans to five years in prison. The other, a former CIA station chief in Milan, was sentenced to eight years. Three other Americans were originally charged, but the judge ruled today that they had diplomatic immunity. Because they were not in Italy during the trial, they remain free.
The trial has been a sore point in relations between the U.S. and Italy. Despite calls from international human rights groups, the Italians have not sought the extradition of the Americans. Prosecutors there say they will try again, but that will be up to Italy's justice ministry.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Pete Williams
The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to take up the case of James Ford Seale, a central figure in an infamous racially motivated crime in 1964. Today's action leaves his conviction standing. But two justices said the court should have taken the case, because the issue will come up again in other cold cases from the 1960s.
The FBI accused Seale and other Ku Klux Klansmen of kidnapping two black college students in 1964, beating them in a forest, and dumping them, still alive, into the Mississippi River. Seale and another man were arrested at the time, but local authorities declined to prosecute them for killing the students, Charles Moore and his friend, Henry Dee. Moore's brother, Thomas, helped get the case re-opened, and Seale was re-arrested in 2007, this time on federal charges, and later convicted.
When the crime was committed in 1964, a kidnapping that resulted in harm to the victim was punishable by death. And that is true today. But for more than two decades, violating that law was not a capital offense. There's no statute of limitations for crimes that carry the death penalty, but there is for others. Accordingly, Seale challenged his conviction, arguing that when the death penalty was taken off the books, only a five-year statute of limitations applied to the crime. Once that period elapsed, he could no longer be charged, even though the death penalty was later revived, he claimed.
A federal appeals court disagreed and upheld Seale's conviction, but it urged the Supreme Court to straighten out the law. Today, the justices declined to do so. But two justices -- the liberal John Paul Stevens and the conservative Antonin Scalia -- said the court should have taken the case. It's an important issue, they said, "that may well determine the outcome of a number of cases of ugly racial violence remaining from the 1960's."
From NBC's Pete Williams
A bill signed into law by President Obama today gives the federal government new authority to withhold photos of detainees who may have been subjected to abuse by their U.S. captors.
After first agreeing to release them, Obama reversed himself earlier this year and directed the Justice Department to seek court rulings that would allow the government to withhold them. They were sought in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The pictures, several dozen, were taken during investigations into prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Obama said releasing the pictures would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and would "put our troops in greater danger."
A Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, signed today, gives the Defense Department new grounds to exempt them from release under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Justice Department has been urging the Supreme Court to wait until Congress finished acting on the issue before deciding whether to take up the case. It now seems likely that today's action will put an end to the issue, making it unnecessary for the court to hear the case.
From NBC's Pete Williams
Cliff Hansen, the oldest living former U.S. senator, who died today at age 97, served his last of two terms in a suite of rooms in Washington's Dirksen Senate Office building. His desk was at one end, and his most junior staff member worked at the other.
Every evening when he was in town, Hansen would turn out his own light and walk through the string of offices, saying goodnight to members of his staff. When he got to the desk of that junior staffer, he'd ask, "May I borrow your phone?"
"Senator," the staffer would say, "this is your phone. Of course you can use it."
Hansen would pick up the receiver, dial a number and say, "Honey, I'm on my way home." And with that, he would be off to his apartment and his devoted wife, Martha.
I know these details, because I was that junior staffer.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Pete Williams
Despite a plea from the Obama administration to stay on the sidelines, the U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to jump squarely into the legal battle over bringing Guantanamo detainees into the United States.
It's the first time the court has agreed to review an Obama policy in the war on terror.
The court said it will hear a constitutional challenge brought by 13 Chinese Muslims now held at Guantanamo Bay but no longer considered enemy combatants. They've asked, and the U.S. has agreed, that they not be sent back to China out of fear that they'd be tortured. But, so far, no other country has agreed to take them. Given all that, a federal judge ruled a year ago that because the government had no basis on which to detain them, and with no other country willing to take them, they should be released into the United States.
CONTINUED >>
From NBC's Pete Williams
Formally announcing its new guidelines to prosecutors on medical marijuana, the Justice Department says "the focus of federal resources should not be on individuals whose actions are in compliance with existing state laws."
In a written statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana, but we will not tolerate drug traffickers who hide behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal."
The guidelines contain examples of conduct that would show when individuals are not in clear compliance with state law and may indicate illegal drug trafficking activity -- including unlawful use of firearms, violence, sales to minors, money laundering, amounts of marijuana inconsistent with purported compliance with state or local law, marketing or excessive financial gains similarly inconsistent with state or local law, illegal possession or sale of other controlled substances, and ties to criminal enterprises.
from NBC's Pete Williams
The Supreme Court says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was taken to the Washington Hospital Center at about 11:15 p.m. Wednesday evening after an apparent adverse reaction to a sleeping aid combined with cold medication she took immediately after boarding an overnight flight bound for London.
Before the plane took off, the court says, she "experienced extreme drowsiness causing her to fall from her seat. Paramedics were called and she was taken to the Washington Hospital Center as a precaution."
Justice Ginsburg was evaluated at the hospital and she was found to be in stable health. Doctors attributed her symptoms to a reaction caused by the combination of a prescription sleeping aid and an over-the-counter cold medication. She was admitted overnight for observation and was released this morning.
from NBC's Pete Williams
The US Supreme Court agreed today to take up the case of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who's appealing his conviction on charges of misleading investors about the shaky health of the company.
He claims his trial was tainted by extensively negative news coverage, and he says the government misused a fraud law against him. The court will hear the case early next year.
The other major Enron figure, company founder Ken Lay, died in 2006 -- after a jury convicted him but before he could be sentenced.
From NBC's Pete WilliamsSupreme Court Associate Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is out of the hospital and expected back on the job today.
From NBC’s Pete Williams
Another "birther" lawsuit, challenging President Obama's constitutional qualification to be president, has been rejected in federal court. And in tossing the case out, the judge said that Congress seems satisfied that Obama is qualified, based on the unanimous passage of a House resolution dealing with Hawaii.
On July 27th, the House approved, by a vote of 378-0, a resolution to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood. In extolling the state's history, the resolution says, "the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."
"Congress is apparently satisfied that the President is qualified to serve," says federal judge Clay Land, in dismissing the case. "Congress has not instituted impeachment proceedings, and in fact, the House of Representatives in a broad bipartisan manner has rejected the suggestion that the President is not eligible for office."
CONTINUED >>
