By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, D.C., – United States of America – On Thursday 5 February 2015, the United States Supreme Court put a hold on the execution by Texas of convicted murderer Lester Bower. The Court says that it will hear Bower’s full appeal including his assertion that the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment has been violated by his more than 30-year stay on death row. According to Bower’s court filings he has faced imminent execution on six different occasions.

Bower, 67, was sentenced to death for the murders of four men in 1983. The killings took place at an airplane hangar on a Grayson County ranch about 60 miles north of Dallas. During the trial the prosecution stated that Bower killed Bob Tate in order to steal an ultralight plane that Tate was attempting to sell, when three other men unexpectedly showed up at the hangar Bower killed them as well. The victims included a county sheriff’s deputy and a former police officer.

Bower, one of the longest-serving prisoners on death row in Texas, was schedules to be executed on 10 February. However, he asked for the Supreme Court to consider his appeal, which is currently pending. The next time the nine justices are scheduled to meet to discuss potential new cases is 20 February. The justices have no reason for their ruling, stating only that if they deny his appeal the reprieve will be lifted.

Bower’s case raises a different issue than the Supreme Court agreed to hear last month concerning an Oklahoma execution. That case involved whether Oklahoma State Correctional Department’s use of the drug Midazolam, as part of its lethal injection procedures, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. However, the 4^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has recently heard another claim involving the constitutionality of the death penalty. Texas death row inmate, Scott Panetti, who was scheduled to be executed, asked the court to review the constitutionality of whether a state can execute someone who is severely mentally ill. The Court of Appeals has stayed his execution, pending the appeal.

 

For more information, please see the following:

CNN – Court Orders Texas Killer’s Execution Postponed – 3 Dec. 2014.

HUFFINGTON POST – Supreme Court Halts Texas Execution of Convicted Killer Lester Bower – 5 Feb. 2015.

REUTERS – U.S. Supreme Court Halts Texas Execution of Convicted Killer – 5 Feb. 2015.

TOLEDO BLADE – Supreme Court Gives Reprieve To Texas Inmate Facing Execution Next Week For Killing 4 – 5 Feb. 2014.

By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

MEXICO CITY, Mexico – After his February arrest in the Pacific Coast tourist resort of Mazatian, notorious drug lord Jaoquin Guzman, best known as El Chapo, will be serving out his jail sentence in Mexico. Guzman headed the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most powerful drug smuggling enterprises in the world. Captured for the first time in 1993, Guzman was on the run as Mexico’s most wanted man after he escaped from prison in 2001. Jaoquin is currently being housed at a maximum-security prison near the capital.

Guzman is wanted in the United States on a number of criminal charges including drug smuggling, money laundering, running a criminal enterprise and murder. US Congressional leaders have called for Guzman’s extradition, but a formal request has yet to be made. Mexican Attorney General, Jesus Murillo, said that a request from Washington was imminent for the extradition of Guzman. Washington wants to prosecute Guzman on drug trafficking charges; however, the Mexican government has no plan to extradite Guzman in the imminent future. Mexican lawyer, Murillo told reporters that El Chapo will remain in Mexico to complete his sentence, and only after his sentence has been completed, which he states is “about 300 or 400 years” from now, will he be extradited to the United States.

Murillo has strongly argued that keeping Guzman in the Mexican prison system is the correct response to the situation. He has adamantly dismissed any concerns that Guzman may escape from prison a second time, stating that the risk “does not exist.” Guzman has stated that while sending the United States would save Mexico money, keeping him in the country is a mater of national sovereignty.

 

For more information, please see the following:

BUSINESS INSIDER – The World’s Most Notorious Drug Kingpin Won’t Be In the US Anytime Soon – 28 Jan. 2015.

DAILY PROGRESS – Mexico: Captured Drug Lord ‘Chapo’ Guzman To Stay Put – 29 Jan. 2015.

THE GUARDIAN – Mexico Rules Out ‘El Chapo’ Extradition – 28 Jan. 2015.

REUTERS – Mexico Not Planning to Extradite Drug Kingpin Guzman: Official – 28 Jan. 2015.

By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

OTTAWA, Canada- Canada is planning on introducing new legislation aimed at giving more power to its police in the wake of two attacks by Muslim converts last year. Last October, a gunman attacked Canada’s Parliament, fatally shooting a soldier at a nearby war memorial. The attack came two days after another Canadian convert ran down two soldiers in Quebec. Days after the attack Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised new laws giving police more power to detain and arrest suspected terrorists.

Immediately after the Parliament attack, Canada’s Conservative government introduced a bill to enhance the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency.“These measures are designed to help authorities stop planned attacks, get threats off our streets, criminalize the promotion of terrorism, and prevent terrorists from traveling and recruiting others,” Harper stated. The bill is expected to  remove safeguards on police powers to arrest, detain and restrain people without charge or the commission of an actual crime. The new laws would also give authorities more powers to track terror suspects abroad.

The bill will also make it easier for police to disrupt suspected terror plots by reducing the legal prerequisites required to obtain court-ordered peace bonds. Such orders can substantially affect the quality of living of national security targets. Failure to comply with the laws can result in a one-year jail sentence.

The Canadian Bar Association says the change in legislation would be a “big mistake.” Experts in constitutional law have noted that law enforcement agencies already have a very wide-range of powers.Those opposed to the new legislation have expressed concern that arresting and detaining people based on inchoate evidence is dangerous in regards to human rights. They argue that under the 2001 Anti-terrorism Act the government added safeguards to ensure these rights would not be violated.

Harper said the new legislation would not infringe on constitutionally protected rights such as free speech, association and religion. The nation’s leading independent organizations have not yet briefed or consulted on the government’s looming new anti-terror legislation.

 

For more information, please see the following:

BUSINESS TIMES – Canada To Unveil New Security Legislation After 2014 Attacks: PM – 25 Jan. 2015.

OTTAWA CITIZEN – Anti-Terror Bill: Can Government Balance Security and Civil Rights? – 25 Jan. 2015.

REUTERS – Canada To Unveil New Security Legislation After 2014 Attacks: PM – 25 Jan. 2015.

YAHOO – Canada Seeks To Beef Up Security After Attacks

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor 

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – At the end of 2014, construction began on the Grand Canal in Nicaragua, the Nicaraguan government has kept the details of the project secret since it was first proposed only 2.5 years ago. In return for a concession to the Chinese company HKND, the Nicaraguan government hopes the project will produce billions of dollars of investment and tens of thousands of jobs. The 278-km long canal system will take an estimated 5 years to complete. The canal project is the dream of the Nicaraguan government and Chinese business investors, the canal would transform the remove coastal regions of Nicaragua and would carry cargo too large for the Panama Canal, which celebrated its central last year. According to Pedro J. Alvarez, a editorialist for the peer-reviewed periodical Science, the Nicaraguan government failed to show sufficient evidence that it has appropriately accounted for the impact on the environment as well the potential effects of the project local residents who may lose their home or witness severe degradation of the environment they depend on to survive.

If construction is completed the Canal would be three times as deep as the Panama Canal, a feat that would require the removal of more than 4.5 billion cubic meters of earth which the Guardian reports would be “enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan up to the 21st floor of the Empire State Building.” The project would also be a shock to local economies and communities bringing sudden development on of Central America’s most sparsely populated regions. Senior officials compare the scale of change that will be brought to the region to the regions first contact with colonizers. “It’s like when the Spanish came here, they brought a new culture. The same is coming with the canal,” said Manuel Coronel Kautz, the garrulous head of the canal authority. “It is very difficult to see what will happen later – just as it was difficult for the indigenous people to imagine what would happen when they saw the first [European] boats.”

Protesters have called the project a form of Chinese imperialism and the Taiwanese government has called on China to respect the independence of Nicaragua. “If the Chinese government is behind this project, it has to be responsible for everything,” said an official from Taiwan’s embassy in Nicaragua. “If it fails, that’s a bad image. They have to maintain their distance.”

The Nicaraguan government hopes the canal can help the nation achieve the Sandinista dream of eradicating poverty. However, when the groundbreaking ceremony took place on 22 December of last year protest against the project were held. Demonstrators cited concerns over the effects the canal project may ultimately have on indigenous and other local community and voiced doubts that the destructive project could even be finished considering the amount of capital needed for construction. Concerns have not been limited to those of protesters, Nicaragua’s neighbors, including Costa Rica have expressed concern that they have not been given enough information about that potential impacts of the large scale project, which will likely bring widespread consequences for the region.

For more information please see:

Science – Rethink the Nicaragua Canal – 23 January 2015

The Guardian – Land Of Opportunity – And Fear – Along Route of Nicaragua’s Giant New Canal – 20 January 2014

The Tico Times – Costa Rican Officials: We Still Have Little Information about Nicaragua’s Grand Canal Plans – 21 January 2015

Reuters – Doubts Deepen Over Chinese-Backed Nicaragua Canal As Work Starts – 26 December 2014

By Lyndsey Kelly
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, D.C., United States of America – On Tuesday, 20 January 2015 the United States Supreme Court threw out an appeals court ruling that went against a Missouri death row inmate, effectively putting off the imminent threat of execution. The Supreme Court had previously made a ruling on this case, blocking the 28 October execution, allowing the inmate a chance to file new court papers. Now, inmate Mark Christeson will be given the chance to argue that his court-appointed attorneys were ineffective due to their failure to file an appeal in federal court back in 2005.

Christeson currently faces a death sentence for killing Susan Brouk, 36, and her children in 1998. Christenson and his cousin Jesse Carter, at the time 18 and 17 years old, broke into Brouk’s home in order to steal her vehicle as part of their plan to run away from the home they were living in. Both men were armed with shotguns, when they kidnapped Brouk and her children, subsequently killing them and throwing the bodies into a nearby pond.

A group of attorneys argues that Christenson’s court-appointed attorneys, Phil Horwitz and Eric Butts, should be replaced from the current appeal due to a conflict of interest because they have refused to admit their own ineffective assistance. Horwitz and Butts missed a 2005 deadline t file a federal appeals petition. The groups of new attorneys have argued that substituting lawyers would give Christenson a fair chance to win a federal review.

In an unsigned petition, the Supreme Court said that the lower courts should have acknowledged that Horwitz and Butts faced a conflict of interest. Thus, making it nearly impossible to make a legal argument that would threaten their professional reputation. However, the opinion of the court was not unanimous as Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, stating that they would not have reversed the appeals court’s decision without a full briefing from both parties.

Christenson would have been the 11^th man executed in Missouri last year, had the Supreme Court not put his execution on hold while it considered his appeal.

 

For more information, please see the following:

BOSTON HERALD- Supreme Court: Death Row Inmate Deserves Hearing – 20 Jan. 2015.

REUTERS- Supreme Court Gives Missouri Death Row Inmate Another Chance – 20 Jan. 2015.

STAR TRIBUNE- Supreme Court Says Missouri Death Row Inmate Deserves New Hearing – 20 Jan. 2015.

WALL STREET JOURNAL – Supreme Court Gives Second Chance To Condemned Missouri Inmate -20 Jan. 2015.