30 Mar 2011 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Two journalists, José Luis Cerda Meléndez and Luis Emanuel Ruíz Carrillo, have been murdered in the northern state of Nuevo León. Cerda was a television host on national channel Televisa, which has been subjected to several armed attacks. Ruíz was a reporter for a daily newspaper in Coahuila. Ruíz was visiting the area to interview Cerda. They were both forced into a car outside the Televisa station, along with Juan Roberto Gómez, Ruíz’s cousin . The bodies of Ruíz and Cerda were discovered the next day by the freeway, accompanied by a note which read: “Stop co-operating with Los Zetas. Signed DCG. Greetings architect No. 1”. Two criminals have now allegedly stolen Cerda’s body. The police have declined to intervene.
30 Mar 2011 | Uncategorized
Xavier Alvarez told some pretty big lies about his military service during a 2007 municipal water-board meeting in California — that he retired as a US Marine after 25 years, during which time he was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor. When it turned out Alvarez had never even been a Marine at all (let alone many of the other things he has claimed to be over the years – a Detroit Red Wings hockey player, an Iranian hostage crisis hero), the water board member was convicted under a 2006 federal law making it a crime to lie about receiving military honours.
Last week, an appeals court reaffirmed a lower-court ruling throwing out the conviction on logic that has been praised by free-speech advocates: The First Amendment, the court concluded, protects fibs told about military service, rendering the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional. Other courts have disagreed about the constitutionality of the law, and the final word come could eventually from the Supreme Court.
Several judges dissented, arguing that “the right to lie is not a fundamental right under the Constitution.” But Chief Judge Alex Kozinski countered that criminalizing lies about military service could lead to making even more mundane falsehoods illegal.
“If false factual statements are unprotected,” he wrote, “then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he’s Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won’t hurt a bit. Phrases such as ‘I’m working late tonight, hunny,’ ‘I got stuck in traffic’ and ‘I didn’t inhale’ could all be made into crimes.”
(JDate, which must surely be making its debut here in sweeping legal scholarship, is a popular online dating site for Jewish American singles.)
30 Mar 2011 | News and features
After a performance in the House of Commons in support of Belarus’s imprisoned opposition activists and journalists, Denis MacShane warns the leaders of Europe’s last dictatorship that justice plays a long game
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30 Mar 2011 | Uncategorized
This morning’s Guardian reports on what seems to be a piece of legal history.
A wealthy financier involved in a family dispute has made British legal history by winning anonymity in a libel case. This latest court attempt to censor internet material has led to claims that free speech is being further eroded in Britain.
The case is quite a murky one, apparently involving allegations of blackmail and sex offences. Nonethless, the precedent set must be cause for alarm.
Index Chief Executive John Kampfner commented: “This takes the epidemic of superinjunctions down a dangerous new path. Now they are being used not only to protect supposed privacy, but libel too.”
Gavin Millar QC adds: “Courts are increasingly granting anonymity to claimants where withholding details of evidence used to be regarded as sufficient. This case seems to be more of the same. Open justice is suffering.”
Read the full story here
