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Sanya Samtani - 4th September 2015
In the latest news on moral policing, earlier this month the Mumbai police conducted a round of raids across lodges, resorts and hotels in the holiday region of Madh Island and Aksa in northern Mumbai and apprehended close to 40 couples who were staying as guests. The reason: indecent exposure within the privacy of a […]
Daud Aziz Khokhar - 21st August 2015
In a recent verdict by the Supreme Court of Pakistan (“SCP”), the constitutionality of, inter alia, the 21st amendment—whereby the Federal Government can transfer the trial of certain terrorism-related offences to the Military Courts operating under the Pakistan Army Act, 1952 (“PAA”)—was upheld by a majority 11-6 of the 17 member SCP bench. From a […]
Andrew Britton - 14th August 2015
On 24 July 2015 in Taylor v Attorney General, a New Zealand High Court Judge effectively declared that New Zealand’s Parliament fell well short of its rights standards when it enacted the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act 2010 which, under the Electoral Act 1993, ensures a blanket ban on prisoner voting rights. In […]
Reema Omer - 10th August 2015
The week before last, the Pakistani Supreme Court admitted Asia bibi’s appeal against her conviction and death sentence for blasphemy under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code. Even if the Supreme Court now goes on to acquit Asia bibi, she has already spent six years in prison (four years on death row); political leaders […]
Amrutanshu Dash - 6th August 2015
India is a country of ironies. Barely a fortnight ago, we had a consultation on the death penalty organised by the Law Commission of India where participants advocated for the abolition of the irreversible punishment. By the end of July (30th), Yakub Abdul Razak Memon was hanged – convicted for planning and executing a series […]
Jon Yorke - 30th July 2015
Last month the United States Supreme Court ruled in Glossip v. Gross 135 S. Ct. 2726 (2015) that the use of midazolam in Oklahoma’s injection protocol was not unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. However, in his dissenting opinion, Justice Breyer (joined by Justice Ginsburg) stated that he would ask for a “full briefing” on the […]
Joe Middleton - 28th July 2015
Some people say the common law is all about narrative. A story gets told, then retold and retold and with each retelling it changes a little. Most of the work I do as a practising lawyer is more prosaic. But in one area of my practice, constitutional challenges to the mandatory death penalty (MDP), I’ve […]
Jon Yorke - 3rd July 2015
On 29 June 2015, in Glossip v. Gross 576 U. S. ____ (2015), Justice Alito gave the majority opinion (joined by Roberts C.J., and Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas, J.J.), which grasped onto the wavering tautology that because the death penalty has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to be constitutional, […]
Bharat Malkani - 24th June 2015
On 16th and 17th June, 2015, a group of experts met in Geneva to address the issue of foreign nationals, including migrant workers, facing the death penalty abroad. The meeting was organised by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Quaker UN Office. Discussions were conducted under the Chatham House […]
Ravi Nitesh - 22nd June 2015
It has become a trend in law enforcement that for every problem, there is a single solution: the use of force. This trend extends to Jammu and Kashmir (India), where state authorities are using force as a form of crowd control, arming themselves with lethal and non-lethal weapons and inflicting series injuries on demonstrators. Jammu […]
Andrew Konstant - 3rd June 2015
On the 5th May 2015, the Pretoria High Court delivered a judgment in Stransham-Ford v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services and Others that marks a significant step towards the legalization of euthanasia. The habit of the democratically elected institutions in South Africa, being Parliament and the Executive, has been to leave the politically controversial […]
Claire Overman - 29th May 2015
The UK Supreme Court has recently held that the indefinite retention of the DNA profiles of convicted adults does not violate article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”). The main judgment, although pointing to numerous justificatory arguments, still lacks the evidence-based approach of the dissenting judgment, an approach so crucially important when […]