America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776

BLN 

The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth

Obama to seek emergency order restarting immigration programs

BLN

The Obama administration will seek an emergency court order to move forward with President Obama’s executive action on immigration. Officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) plan to seek what is known as an emergency stay that would essentially undo a Texas-based federal judge’s injunction from earlier this week. If the stay is granted, the government could restart a pair of executive programs that will shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Black Primary School Students In Rhode Island Are 6x More Likely To Be Suspended Than White Peers

ThinkProgress

If you are a black elementary school student, you are six times more likely to be suspended than your white friends if you live in Rhode Island. That is just one of many findings recounted in a new ACLU report on the school-to-prison pipeline.

According to the organization, “significant and persistent racial disparities exist” in Rhode Island’s education system — and elementary school students are not exempt. Between 2004-2012, 17,000 suspensions were issued in the state’s elementary schools. Although black students only received 28 percent of those suspensions, they make up 9 percent of the kids in that age group. On the flip side, white students were suspended 0.7 times less frequently than would be expected for their population size.

Similar trends follow students into their high school years as well. There, black students are still two times more likely to be suspended.

These disciplinary patterns set the stage for a racially uneven justice system in the state. Black males in the state are 9.3 times more likely than their white counterparts to spend time in juvenile detention. When looking at Rhode Island’s black population, there were “331.8 black arrests per 1,000 residents compared to just 36.3 non-black arrests.” In 2010 alone, 30 percent of the state’s prison system was black, even though black people only constitute 6 percent of the general population.

Indeed, the impacts of harsh disciplinary actions in schools are well-known. Although the ACLU’s report did not explore student interactions with police, high suspension rates are still problematic. If a student is suspended, the likelihood that he or she drops out of school increases from 16 percent to 32 percent. Nationally, one-third of all black males in middle or high school is suspended, rising 12.5 percent between 1970-2010.

“It starts off as an arrest and things get out of control”: Why Broken Windows must be scaled back

Sentencing Project 

Earlier this week, a grand jury in New York City decided to indict an NYPD officer for recklessly wielding his authority and taking the life of a young African-American man named Akai Gurley. Finally, after a summer and fall characterized by racial strife and conflict between police officers and minority communities, the system was working, right? The answer is, yes and no — because unlike the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, the officer indicted in this instance, a 27-year-old named Peter Liang, was not white. And among the African-Americans in Brooklyn who knew the late Gurley, this fact did not go unnoticed. As is sadly always the case in today’s media environment, the #blacklivesmatter story has faded considerably since it dominated television broadcasts and newspapers all over the country. But the problem that the #blacklivesmatter movement is trying to address — the problem of a criminal justice system that is institutionally and endemically biased against African-Americans, and indeed all people of color — has not gone away. 

Holder voices support for moratorium on death penalty

[JURIST]

US Attorney General Eric Holder [official website] on Tuesday voiced his support [remarks] for a moratorium on the death penalty pending a decision by the Supreme Court on the Oklahoma death penalty case. Speaking in a personal capacity before the National Press Club [official website] in Washington, DC, Holder stated his own views that the death penalty is wrong and until the Supreme court speaks on the matter that all pending death penalties should be halted. He noted that the criminal justice system can make mistakes, ranging from wrongful convictions to botched injections. He further said that the problems with our justice system have improved over the past year and that for the first time in 32 years there has been a drop in the number of incarcerated individuals.

Mississippi House approves bill to make execution details secret

[JURIST]

The Mississippi House of Representatives approved a bill [HB 1305 materials] on Thursday that would make details involving executions secret and allow lawsuits against anyone who divulges the secrets. Moreover, the names of the executioner and anyone "assisting in the execution in capacity" would be exempt from public disclosure. The release of names of the witnesses would be barred without their consent, and the drug suppliers used for the executions would be concealed as well. Otherwise, those who release the names could be sued for punitive money damages. The legislation was requested by Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood, and the House passed the bill [AP report] by a vote of 82-34 despite an effort to outlaw the death penalty by Representative Willie Bailey. The bill now moves to the Senate.

Several other states have also passed similar legislation. In December the Ohio House of Representatives approved a bill [HB 663 text] that would grant anonymity to drug manufacturers charged with supplying the lethal drugs for 20 years. The individuals who make the drugs would be a permanent secret. In May the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled [JURIST report] that the source of execution drugs can remain a secret. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma ruled [JURIST report] in April that two inmates' constitutional rights were not violated by keeping the sources of lethal injection drugs secret.

Florida suspends execution pending Supreme Court decision

[JURIST]

The Florida Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday granted a petition [order, PDF] to stay an inmate's execution until after the US Supreme Court [official website] reviews the constitutionality of lethal injection protocols in Oklahoma. This is the stay of execution outside of Oklahoma following the Supreme Court's decision to grant a petition for certiorari in Glossip v. Gross [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] in late January. Florida uses virtually an identical combination of drugs [procedures, PDF] as Oklahoma, so the Florida supreme court is erring on the side of "extreme caution." Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in the Warner opinion [text, PDF], which preceded the Supreme Court's grant of certiorari for the Oklahoma case, that Florida's success with the three-drug combination used in lethal injections is subject to question because the paralytic drug may mask the ineffectiveness of the anesthetic. The dissenting opinion in the Florida order reasons that although Florida's execution methods are similar to Oklahoma's, the Supreme Court's review of Oklahoma procedures does not automatically bar Florida from continuing with its practices. The execution of Jerry William Correll was scheduled for February 26. Correll was convicted nearly three decades ago for stabbing his ex-wife, daughter and two others.

The US Supreme Court in January granted certiorari [order list, PDF] to determine whether Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol is unconstitutional [JURIST report] under the Eighth Amendment. The case originated when four death row inmates filed a complaint against the Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for the use of the midazolam drug in the state's lethal injection protocol as cruel and unusual punishment, alleging that the drug can cause a substantial risk of "severe pain, needless suffering, and a lingering death." The inmates also allege that a negligent administering of the drug can cause one to be conscious for the remainder of the lethal injection process, as evidenced by Oklahoma's botched execution [JURIST report] of former inmate Clayton Lockett. Last week Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the death penalty [JURIST report], which will remain in effect until he receives and reviews a report from the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment. The governor expressed concerns over serious flaws in the death penalty system in the state, which he said have made sentencing "error prone, expensive, and anything but infallible."

Federal judge dismisses Ohio death row inmates' lethal injection lawsuit

From [HERE] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio [official website] on Tuesday dismissed a claim [order, PDF] filed by four death row inmates challenging the constitutionality of an Ohio law that provides confidentiality for companies that supply lethal injection drugs. The inmates claimed [complaint, PDF] that House Bill 663 [text] violated First Amendment [text] rights on freedom of speech grounds, alleging that the law decreases government transparency and obstructs the public's right to know and engage in discourse about the controversial lethal injection policy. Judge Gregory Frost granted Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's [official website] motion to dismiss, after finding the law did not violate free speech and that the inmates lacked standing because they could not specify actual or imminent injuries to their First Amendment rights. House Bill 663 prohibits the release of identities of the pharmacies that provide and prepare the drugs used during lethal injection for at least 20 years. The law also forever keeps the identities of executioners and physicians confidential. The inmates plan to appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [MORE].

Racist Suspect Senator Charles Grassley is a Roadblock to Sentencing Reform

NY Times

For more than a year, members of Congress have been doing a lot of talking about the need to broadly reform harsh federal sentencing laws, which are a central factor in the explosion of the federal prison population. It’s an overdue conversation, and one of the few in which Democrats and Republicans find some agreement — but, so far, they have nothing to show for it.

In the last session, senators introduced three bipartisan bills. Two proposed “front end” reforms, like reducing or eliminating ridiculously long mandatory minimum sentences for some drug crimes. The other focused on “back end” fixes, like increasing opportunities for good-time credit to allow certain prisoners early release.

None of the bills got anywhere, but it was encouraging to see all three reintroduced in the new Republican-led Senate. At least it was until they ran into a roadblock in the shape of Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Mr. Grassley, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wields great power over any sentencing legislation.

His predecessor, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, is a co-sponsor of the most far-reaching bill, which would allow judges to ignore mandatory minimum sentences in certain circumstances.

But Mr. Grassley, for reasons that defy basic fairness and empirical data, has remained an opponent of almost any reduction of those sentences. In a speech from the Senate floor this month, he called the bills “lenient and, frankly, dangerous,” and he raised the specter of high-level drug traffickers spilling onto the streets.

Mr. Grassley is as mistaken as he is powerful. Mandatory minimums have, in fact, been used to punish many lower-level offenders who were not their intended targets. Meanwhile, the persistent fantasy that locking up more people leads to less crime continues to be debunked. States from California to New York to Texas have reduced prison populations and crime rates at the same time. A report released last week by the Brennan Center for Justice found that since 2000 putting more people behind bars has had essentially no effect on the national crime rate.

The bill that appears to have the best chance of passing anytime soon is known as the Corrections Act — that’s actually a sprawling acronym for Corrections Oversight, Recidivism Reduction, and Eliminating Costs for Taxpayers in Our National System. Co-sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, the bill’s name is more ambitious than its goals, which include giving a narrow group of inmates the chance to participate in educational and other programs in exchange for earlier release. (The bill authorizes no financing for these programs, relying instead on, among other things, the volunteer efforts of faith-based groups.)

Rehabilitation is a laudable aim, and it should be a part of any sentencing reform package. But the Cornyn-Whitehouse bill would exclude nearly half of all federal prisoners — in many cases without any evidence that they pose a greater risk to public safety.

The bill also relies on an inmate’s criminal history. This is a legitimate measure when it is used with the awareness that law enforcement disproportionately targets minorities. The danger is that white-collar prisoners, who are most often white, will receive the law’s benefits, while, say, drug offenders, who are disproportionately African-American, will be left out. Finally, the bill pushes the use of data-based risk-assessment tools, which sound smart but again — because they rely on factors like a person’s employment history, neighborhood and education level — often have racially disproportionate effects.

Obviously, any meaningful reform must include both significant reductions in sentences and back-end measures that do not unfairly exclude certain groups. For now, the six-term Mr. Grassley may obstruct progress toward that goal, but the newer generation of lawmakers, Republican and Democratic, are more creative and forward-looking, and have drawn many of their lessons from successes they have seen at the state level.

Sentencing reform is a big and complicated issue, and may take some time to get right. It would be a mistake to pass an incomplete bill and pretend that the hard work of reform is done.

Malcolm X’s challenge to mass incarceration

Aljazzera

Fifty years ago today, assassins killed black power activist Malcolm X during a speech to the Organization for Afro-American Unity at New York City’s Audubon Ballroom. Although they ended the life of one of the 20th century’s most dynamic leaders, they did not kill his impact. His insights into racism and freedom are as necessary today as when he first spoke them. A half-century after his murder, Malcolm X may still be one of our best guides for making sense of American racism, the evil that once again roils the country in unrest.

Malcolm X’s enduring influence owes in part to the truth of his metaphors, his way with words and the relentlessness of his criticism — in particular, his depiction of the United States as a prison. In making the comparison, he gave voice to the confinement he saw in a white supremacy still evident.

“Don’t be shocked when I say I was in prison,” he often told his audiences. “You’re still in prison. That’s what America means — prison.”

Before he was a political activist, Malcolm X spent several years incarcerated for a series of robberies. It was in prison, like hundreds of other black men in the 1950s and 1960s, that he joined the black nationalist religious group the Nation of Islam and launched his time as an activist.

To Malcolm X, prison was more than its bricks and mortar. It was a metaphor for racism. Prisons use armed force to deny the mobility, insult the integrity and restrict the civic and political participation of its captives. And for the black audiences who heard Malcolm X speak — men and women who went to underfunded schools, worked dangerous and low-paying jobs where they could find them, faced harassment in employment lines or welfare offices, were forced to live in only certain neighborhoods and in many parts of the country were barred from voting by police and vigilante organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan — the United States did mean prison.

Prison, then, was an exaggerated form of the daily indignities black women and men faced.  What made this metaphor ring so true is that black communities — years before the launch of the war on drugs — were already heavily policed and disproportionately incarcerated.

Rejecting the character assassination of criminalization, Malcolm X inverted concepts of guilt and innocence as they played out in the routine arrests of black people. “You can’t be a Negro in America and not have a criminal record,” he said. “Martin Luther King has been to jail. James Farmer has been to jail. Why, you can’t name a black man in this country who is sick and tired of the hell that he’s catching who hasn’t been to jail.” 

Black homeowners in Detroit face new wave of foreclosures

Aljazeera

Tens of thousands of Detroit homeowners are facing possible foreclosure in the next year as the county cracks down on back taxes owed, which activists say are often extremely inflated because the county assesses property taxes on the basis of their value before the city fell into financial crisis.

When Wayne County officials opened the Cobo Center convention hall in early February to property owners hoping to work out payment plans to save their homes from tax foreclosure, more than 6,000 people streamed through the doors.

There was Krystal Malone, who finished up coursework to become a teacher just as the recession hit and is now underemployed as a substitute teacher and $9,000 behind on her taxes, even though her house is worth only about $10,000. There was Gabriel McNeil, who bought his house for $1,500 in 2013 without realizing it had nearly 10 times that owed in back taxes and is now trying to work out a plan with the city to pay that off. There was Brenda Johnson, whose aunt recently died, leaving her a house full of furniture and several thousand in taxes owed to the county.

“I just don’t want to get padlocks on my door and I can’t get my personal property out,” Johnson said. “I’m just trying to buy some time.”

Even though Cobo’s largest room was packed every day last week with people waiting to meet with county officials, the residents there represented only a fraction of the tens of thousands of occupied properties facing foreclosure by the county this year.

Each individual sitting in Cobo has a story as complex as the crisis that brought Detroit into the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

In November, when the city emerged from that bankruptcy and control was handed back to the city government from state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr, things were looking up: the city’s debts were mostly settled, the population, after dropping precipitously for decades from a high of almost 2 million to fewer than 700,000, seemed to have leveled off — even increase a bit in the city’s core — and new businesses were moving downtown.

Holder Calls Texas Judge's Immigration Ruling an 'Interim Step' - Ferguson Probe will be announced before he leaves office

NatlJournal 

A Texas federal judge’s decision to block President Barack Obama’s immigration plans is only an “interim step,” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said on Tuesday in Washington.

“I have always expected that this is a matter that will ultimately be decided by a higher court—if not the Supreme Court, then a federal court of appeals,” Holder said in remarks at the National Press Club. The White House said in a statement that the U.S. Department of Justice planned to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The ruling issued late Monday by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas, bars the federal government from carrying out a program that would defer deportation for potentially millions of undocumented immigrants who are the parents of U.S. citizen children.

Holder said that “we have to look at this decision for what it is—it is the decision by one federal district court judge. … I think it has to be seen in that context.”

Holder fielded a broad array of questions during Tuesday’s event, touching on subjects such as the death penalty, civil rights, Edward Snowden and Loretta Lynch, the president's pick to succeed Holder as U.S. attorney general.

Death Penalty

Holder said the Justice Department’s review of death penalty practices nationwide was “still underway.” He doubted the probe would end by the time he left office.

Asked whether there should be a moratorium on prisoner executions by lethal injection while the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the practice, Holder said he thought that would be appropriate. He repeated his personal opposition to the death penalty, given “the possibility that mistakes will be made.”

Holder said he disagreed with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that there was no evidence that the U.S. criminal justice system had executed a person for a crime he did not commit. “I think it’s inevitable, it’s inevitable, that we will find an instance where in fact that has occurred,” Holder said.

Ferguson

Holder said he hoped the Justice Department would announce the results of investigations into the fatal shooting last year of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., before he left office. Prosecutors are deciding whether to bring criminal civil rights charges against the police officer who shot Brown and also whether to initiate a civil case against local officials as part of a broader civil rights probe.

Holder said he was “satisfied” with the department’s progress in the investigations so far. [MORE]

Federal judge orders California to stop isolation housing of disabled inmates

LATimes

A federal judge in Oakland has ordered California to stop the "regular" practice of putting disabled inmates into segregation units because it lacks room elsewhere in its prisons.

The order by Judge Claudia Wilken, who also is hearing a class-action lawsuit over the state's use of solitary confinement, comes following hearings last week. Wilken on Tuesday ruled that California was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as repeated court injunctions by confining disabled prisoners in cellblocks used to isolate those who violate rules.

Lawyers for prisoners and the state in 2012 had agreed on a plan to find more suitable housing within the state's crowded prison system. Even so, Wilken found, prison logs showed 211 disabled inmates had been put in the isolation cells in the past year, spending from one day to one month in the units. Most of those cases were at one prison -- R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.

Jeffrey Callison, a spokesman for the corrections department, said the agency was reviewing the court's order but otherwise did not comment. [MORE]

Watchdog: Uncivilized Michigan has too many crimes on the books [makes it easier to place more non-whites in greater confinement]

wzzm

At some point, we've all said, "there ought to be a law". Well, under a current trend, there probably already is a law and the penalties for violating them are becoming increasingly harsh. Things are being defined as crimes leading to jail instead of fines or other penalties. Because of the speed such new laws are being passed, there's no way to keep track of them. Some legal experts say, as a result, everyone in this country breaks the law at least once a day.

On a broader scale, the Heritage Foundationis concerned that we have become a culture that prefers to use criminal law rather than civil law to solve problems, punish mistakes and compel compliance with government regulations. It happens on the federal level and state level. According to a joint report by both the Manhattan Institute and Michigan's own Mackinac Center for Public Policy, our state stands heads and shoulders among other states for overcriminalization.

State lawmakers passed 116 new crimes in Michigan last year and 45 new crimes each of the last six years. But we're not talking about violent crimes or even those necessarily involving public safety. Many of the new laws criminalize violations of business, agricultural or environmental regulations. There are about 3,100 criminal laws on the books in Michigan but that number doesn't take into account all the regulatory crimes people can commit in the administrative code.

Cooley Law School's Devin Schindler says it's a terrible trend. He says we are criminalizing so many activities that the line between innocent and criminal activity is very blurred. We are a nation that incarcerates more people than any other, putting people there for increasingly questionable but legal reasons. Schindler says it can be for the most inadvertent things, it could be for things that you are actually trying to be helpful. One such case involved voluntary babysitting. [MORE]

Why Witnesses Remember So Many Things Wrong

New Yorker

Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s “Guantánamo Diary”

NACDL

On January 20, Little, Brown and Company released a new book about the detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But this book is like no other on the subject that has been published to date. This book, entitled Guantánamo Diary, is the actual, albeit redacted, diary of Mohamedou Ould Slahi who remains imprisoned there by the United States to this day. We caught up with two of Mr. Slahi’s attorneys, Nancy Hollander and Linda Moreno, in the midst of their international appearances in connection with the release of Guantánamo Diary. They share details of Mr. Slahi’s diary and their experiences as his pro bono, or volunteer, attorneys over the past several years. We also hear from NACDL’s Senior Privacy and National Security Counsel Jumana Musa who provides important insight into the post-September 11 history of this detention facility and those imprisoned there. Learn more about NACDL. Ivan J. Dominguez, host; Isaac Kramer, production assistant. Music West Bank (Lezet) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 and Walkabout (Digital Primitives) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Running time: 34m54s.

Few Privacy Limitations Exist on How Police Use Drones

Natl Journal 

As drones become cheaper and more capable, more police departments across the country are asking for and getting federal approval to use them for law enforcement.

But the Federal Aviation Administration only takes safety into consideration when it grants a law enforcement agency approval to use drones, leaving privacy protections to legislation—which, depending on the state in question, may or may not exist.

Agencies as large as the Michigan State Police and as small as the Grand Forks County [N.D.] Sheriff's Department have received FAA approval to use drones. Most departments use them for missions like search-and-rescue or for photographing a crime scene or an accident site.

But unless a law enforcement agency is within one of the 14 states that have passed privacy legislation limiting how police can use drones, there's little in theory keeping it from using a drone for a less innocuous end—such as surveillance without a warrant. "While the federal government retains responsibility for the airspace, under most circumstances a state/local government can impose restrictions on the agencies for which it's responsible," an FAA spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Members in the House and Senate introduced bills in the previous Congress that would have required police everywhere in the country to obtain a warrant before using drones for surveillance, but the bills died at the end of the year.

Racist Suspect Prosecutors shouldn't have immunity from their unethical – or unlawful – acts

Guardian

It’s a tough thing to keep prosecutors accountable to the public, but some people are trying very hard to do just that in the aftermath of Ferguson. One of the grand jurors who failed to indict former police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, for example, wants to make public what happened in the grand jury room. But grand jury proceedings are secret, under both federal and state law, including in Missouri. So last month that juror took legal action seeking to break his silence. Meanwhile, an advocacy group filed a bar complaint against St Louis prosecutor Bob McCulloch for alleged misconduct committed in that same process.

These attempts expose just how difficult it can be to hold prosecutors to any standard of conduct. Most misbehaving prosecutors are never brought to justice, thanks in large part to the law of prosecutorial immunity, which holds that prosecutors cannot be sued for violating citizens’ rights in the courtroom. Until we change that law, courts need to open grand jury records at the request of people like the Ferguson juror “John Doe”.

Prosecutors are totally in control, to an almost dictatorial degree, of key judicial processes – including, as we saw in Ferguson, the grand jury process. Your average citizen on a grand jury usually doesn’t understand the state’s criminal laws, so they rely heavily on the prosecutor to guide their decision, and jurors decide cases only by way of the facts that the prosecutor chooses to reveal. When indictments aren’t handed down – as in the grand jury proceedings of Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, one of the white cops who killed Eric Garner – it is the prosecutors who are responsible.

In 1976, the Supreme Court held in Imbler v Pachtman that prosecutors are absolutely immune for any activity considered to be “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.” That principle has since been challenged with some success in a couple federal suits, but the law for the most part remains in effect.

Federal judge blocks Arizona ban on driver's licenses for young immigrants

Jurist

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] on Thursday made permanent an injunction that requires the state to issue driver's licenses to immigrants who were brought illegally to the US as children. The young people, known as Dreamers [Huffington Post report], were granted a deferral of deportation by President Barack Obama's 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [materials] program. Under the Arizona law, the Dreamers were prohibited from acquiring driver's license

US government admits former Guantanamo detainee wrongfully convicted: lawyer

Jurist

A lawyer for former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks [JURIST news archive] says the US government admitted his conviction was incorrect and did not dispute Hicks' innocence. The US Court of Military Commission Review [official website] has not yet ruled on the appeal, but Hicks' lawyer, Stephen Kenny, believes they will overturn the conviction. Hicks was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty in 2007 to providing material support for terrorism and appealed in 2013, claiming he pleaded under duress. As part of the plea agreement Hicks agreed never to appeal the conviction, which the lawyer believes [ABC report] may be the reason a ruling has been delayed. Hicks is now back in his home country of Australia.

In recent months the US government has released several detainees, including some held at the facilities at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST backgrounder]. Last week a Qatari man arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks and labeled an "enemy combatant" was released [JURIST report] and returned to his home nation. Earlier this month the convening authority for the Office of Military Commissions overturned the terror conviction against Sudanese national Noor Uthman Muhammed and dismissed [JURIST report] the charges against him. The US Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] last week announced [JURIST report] the transfer of five Guantanamo detainees; four were released to Oman, while one went to Estonia. In December the DOD announced the transfer [JURIST report] of six detainees from Guantanamo to Uruguay. DOD officials also announced that five prisoners at Guantanamo Bay would be released to the Kazakhstan government, and four more [JURIST reports] to Afghanistan.