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People swept up in the Department of Justice’s January 6 dragnet have been getting extraordinarily harsh sentences. While daily headlines are filled with stories of repeat offenders walking away with slaps on the wrist following brutal crimes, the January 6 defendants, almost every one of whom had no previous criminal record (that I’m aware of), were being sent away for years simply for having stepped onto Capitol grounds. These were insane sentences compared to what happened to violent and destructive Antifa and BLM protestors. Now, though, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a unanimous decision, held that the prosecutors...

A D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel issued a ruling Friday that could impact scores of prison terms handed down to rioters convicted and sentenced for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The three-judge panel ruled that defendants convicted of obstructing the congressional certification had received improper enhancements of their sentences from district court judges who determined their actions amounted to "substantial interference with the 'administration of justice.'" The challenge to the enhancement was brought in the case of convicted rioter Larry Brock, who was sentenced in 2023 to two years in prison for his felony...

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen said the lengthy sentences handed down to Jan. 6 defendants “should be a warning” to former President Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election case. In an interview on CNN, Michael Cohen, who served as former President Trump’s fixer, warned that the 18 other defendants in the Georgia case are likely to face prison sentences that are “equally as painful” as that of former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

Stephen Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison Friday for his defiance of a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The onetime Trump White House strategist was subpoenaed by the panel in September of last year after he failed to provide either the required documents or testimony as he railed against the committee. Bannon claimed that he was unable to comply with the committee’s subpoena due to executive privilege. However, the panel sought to speak to Bannon about events that occurred well after his short stint in the White House....

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell broke with former President Trump on Tuesday, saying that he does not believe individuals who pleaded guilty to crimes related to last year’s violent Capitol Hill protest should have their sentences shortened. "One hundred and sixty-five people have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior," the Kentucky Republican said when asked about Trump’s recent suggestion that he would issue pardons for the Capitol Hill rioters if he were re-elected as president. "None of the trials have been finished yet, but 165 have pleaded guilty to criminal behavior. My view is, I would not be in favor of...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced the German-Kurdish singer Saide Inac, better known by her stage name Hozan Cane, to six years and three months in jail over charges of "being a member in a terrorist organization."Turkish police arrested Hozan Cane in Edirne Province in late June with accusations of membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based on her songs, activities, and pictures on social media.She was visiting Turkey to sing at rallies for the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the run-up to the Turkish general and presidential elections which saw Erdogan emerge victorious.Cane,...

A court in Turkey sentenced six journalists to life in prison Friday for their alleged involvement in a failed 2016 coup attempt. The decision came shortly after another reporter who had been controversially imprisoned was conditionally released from custody.Prominent journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazli Ilicak and three other media workers were convicted of crimes against the state, a charge that governments around the world are increasingly employing as a tactic to instill fear in and silence journalists who are critical of ruling authorities. [2017 was the most dangerous year ever for journalists. 2018 might be even worse.]

A Wall Street Journal reporter has been sentenced by a Turkish court to 25 months in prison for publishing an article deemed to be terrorist propaganda by the increasingly authoritarian Turkish government. The sentence against Ayla Albayrak, a Journal reporter previously based in Istanbul, was in response to an Aug. 19, 2015, article Albayrak wrote entitled, “Urban Warfare Escalates in Turkey’s Kurdish-Majority Southeast.”

Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order, which permitted inmates to have their sentences shortened by 30 days in exchange for the sterilizing procedure. Female inmates can also get the birth control implant Nexplanon, which prevents pregnancy for four years, for the same sentence reduction. ... “Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional," Hedy Weinberg, ACLU-TN executive director, said in a statement. ... Since the program began, 32 women have received the birth control implant and 38 men have agreed to have a vasectomy, News Channel 5 reported. It was not immediately clear...

WASHINGTON, Aug 30 - U.S. President Barack Obama shortened the prison sentences of 111 convicts serving time for drug-related offenses in his second round of clemency grants this month, the White House said on Tuesday. Obama has now granted a total of 673 commutations during his presidency, more than the number granted by the 10 previous presidents combined, as he seeks to reform the criminal justice system, it said. For some of the convicts, the commutations mean they will serve only half of their original prison sentences. For instance, Sly Stallone Aikens of South Carolina, serving a sentence of 36

“President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that he is shortening prison sentences for 214 federal prisoners,” dailycaller.com reports. “56 of whom have firearms related convictions on their records. The mass commutation is the largest ever issued in a single day U.S. history, the White House said in a press release.” Click here to read the doc, which describes the crimes committed.The commutations all take effect December 1. On that date, the prison system will release all 214 federal prisoners named. The commutations are almost all related to offenders serving time for drug offenses. Dealing, not using. And some manufacturing, too. Not to mention...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday cut short the sentences of 214 federal inmates, including 67 life sentences, in what the White House called the largest batch of commutations on a single day in more than a century. ADVERTISEMENT Almost all the prisoners were serving time for nonviolent drug crimes, reflecting Obama's long-stated view that the U.S. needs to remedy the consequences of decades of sentencing requirements that put tens of thousands of Americans behind bars for far too long. Obama has pushed for a broader fix to criminal justice laws and has used the aggressive pace of his commutations in...

President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 inmates Thursday as part of his ongoing initiative to release federal prisoners who have received severe mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses. With this latest round of commutations, Obama has granted clemency to a total 306 inmates, 110 of whom were serving life sentences. Obama has said he will continue granting commutations during his final months in office to inmates who meet certain criteria set out by the Justice Department. Since the Obama administration launched its high-profile clemency initiative two years ago, thousands of inmates have applied. More than 9,000 petitions are pending....

Perhaps law professors should confine themselves to explaining the law to their students and showing how it works based upon the best evidence available. "The American legal professoriate has tirelessly pursued an expose' of American sentencing policy as unjustly harsh," George Mason University Law School professor Craig Lerner wrote last year in an article which appeared in the Wisconsin Law Review. "If Exhibit A in this critique is the persistence of the death penalty on American soil, Exhibit B has become the prevalence of LWOP [life without parole] sentences—and not simply the prevalence, but the haphazard and irrational nature with...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A Chinese court has handed a six-year prison term to a Tibetan film-maker who made an internationally watched documentary in which ordinary people aired grievances, his family said Wednesday. Dhondup Wangchen, 35, had trekked across the Himalayan territory for five months asking about topics including Chinese rule, the exiled Dalai Lama and the Olympics which Beijing was preparing to hold in August 2008. The self-taught film-maker was arrested in March that year as major protests erupted in Tibet. He had just completed the film, "Leaving Fear Behind," which has since been screened in more than 30 countries....

LONDON – In a case that altered airport security worldwide, three British Muslims were imprisoned Monday for at least 30 years each for a plot to kill thousands by blowing up trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives hidden in soda bottles. The judge described the foiled suicide bombings — meant to rival the Sept. 11 attacks — as "a grave and wicked" conspiracy, likely the most serious terrorist case ever dealt with by a British court. The plot's disclosure prompted an immediate ban on taking some liquids onboard passenger jets, a measure that remains in place, inconveniencing passengers throughout the world....

CAIRO -- A 75-year-old widow in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in jail for mingling with two young men who are not close relatives, drawing new criticism for the kingdom's ultraconservative religious police and judiciary. The woman's lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that he would appeal the verdict against Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi. The attorney, Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, said the verdict issued March 3 also demands that Sawadi be deported after serving her sentence.

ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - A UN war crimes court increased a Roman Catholic priest's sentence to life imprisonment Wednesday after upholding his conviction for his part in the genocide of 800,000 fellow Rwandans. In April 1994, when pro-government Hutu militiamen were rounding up ethnic Tutsis for slaughter across Rwanda, some 1,500 of Father Athanase Seromba's parishioners took shelter in his church in the western town of Nyange. Rather than seeking to protect his flock, the ethnic Huti priest had the church levelled by bulldozers and ordered extremist gunmen to shoot any Tutsis who tried to flee the carnage, the court...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran on Tuesday said more than 50 followers of the minority Baha'i faith were convicted of distributing propaganda against the country's Islamic regime, state media reported. Ali Reza Jamshidi, Iran's judiciary spokesman, said three people, who were in custody in southern city of Shiraz, were sentenced to four years in prison. Another 51 Baha'i followers were given one-year suspended prison terms, Jamshidi said, according to the official IRNA news agency. Last year, Baha'i communities abroad had reported that a group of followers were detained in Shiraz, located about 550 miles south of Tehran, while helping poor communities...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi court on Monday raised the sentence against Saddam Hussein's vice president to death by hanging for the killings of Shiites in the town of Dujail. The decision had been expected after an appeals court ruled that Taha Yassin Ramadan's previous sentence of life in prison was too lenient. Ramadan is the fourth member of the ousted regime to face capital punishment for the killings of 148 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail, north of Baghdad. Saddam, his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and...