Law

Reuters reports that an Italian judge has delayed the resumption of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud trial until January, at least. Why? "Pressing state business" -- that is, presiding over a U.N. summit on hunger in Rome.

But Berlusconi has not managed to delay the other criminal case pending against him and is due in court later in November. The magnate/bon vivant/political leader allegedly paid a prominent British lawyer $600,000 to testify falsely on his behalf in a 1997 corruption case. (David Mills, who accepted the bribe, has already been convicted and is currently appealing his jail sentence.)

Today, Greg Craig, the White House's top legal advisor, stepped down from the post he once described as his dream job. The speculation over the much-respected lawyer's resignation has been swirling for months, reaching a fever pitch back in October, when the New York Times published a story on the controversy in the White House office of legal counsel.

Craig's resignation comes on the day the administration announced it will    try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- among the tougher Guantanamo cases from a prosecutorial stance, given that he was tortured and that the government hopes to seek the death penalty -- in federal court a few blocks from Ground Zero.

The most obvious reason (Craig gave none specifically in his resignation note) is that he was the person charged with closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay, determining how to relocate and try all of the detainees. When Obama came into office, he promised it would be done by Jan. 22, 2010. It will not, likely costing Craig his job. The October Times story explained:

When an administration stumbles, whispers begin and fingers point in search of someone to blame. At a certain point, assumptions can become self-fulfilling, and an official in the cross hairs finds it harder to do the job. In Mr. Craig’s case, friends said he was unfairly being made a scapegoat for decisions supported across the administration.

It is, of course, not a good thing that the administration has stumbled in its goal of closing Guantanamo. But it is worth considering that it isn't really Craig's fault at all.

Gitmo, ultimately, isn't closed because Craig did not take any of the easy ways out. He could have moved all of the prisoners to Bagram or another overseas military facility. He could have tried all of them in military commissions, the legal process jerry-rigged by the Bush administration. Because, in part, of Craig's insistence on taking each case separately and at least trying to conform to U.S. law, Guantanamo remains open.

It is a much lesser sin than what came before it. Craig is stepping down less due to his own failures than due to the extralegal maneuvering of the Bush administration. Lawyers like John Yoo and David Addington made a mockery of due process back then, and their sins are now being revisited upon members of the Obama administration. If anyone should have to answer for Greg Craig's job, it is John Yoo.

"Some people get the giggles after using cannabis -- you may laugh at the most random things" cautions "FRANK," the UK's anti-drug website. Despite declining drug use in the country, in January the British government changed marijuana's classification from a "Class C" to a "Class B" drug; possession now carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, while dealing can get you 14 years in jail.

Professor David Nutt, formerly a member of the UK's independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was fired for publicly disputing the decision; five other members of the 31-person Council have since resigned in protest of the politically-motivated firing. In a lecture (later published), Nutt argued that the use of illicit drugs like marijuana and ecstasy poses less severe health risks than the use of alcohol or tobacco. Nutt has also equated the dangers of ecstasy use and the risks of horseback riding.

Nutt's firing and the subsequent resignations have caused quite a political row, with politicians and scientists making pointed attacks on home secretary Alan Johnson, who gave Nutt the axe. "Your leader on drugs policy is long on righteous indignation but short on logic" wrote Johnson in a defensive letter published in The Guardian.

Nutt fired back in a column published in The Telegraph, writing, "Some politicians find it easier to ignore the evidence, and pander to public prejudice instead."

Photo: SCOTT BARBOUR/Getty Images

Italy's highest court may be able to strip Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Teflon coating.

In July 2008, Italian lawmakers "freed" Berlusconi with an immunity law that freezes criminal cases against the prime minister, president and heads of both chambers of parliament while they are in office. (See last week's edition of The List for more.) Now prosecutors are saying this law is unconstitutional, as it goes against the provision that all citizens are equal before the law.

The Constitutional Court could rule by the end of the week; however the Italian media says the decision could be delayed because the 15-judge court is unable to reach a consensus.

Berlusconi would most likely have three cases re-opened against him. The most devastating of these cases accuses Berlusconi of paying British lawyer David Mills $600,000 in 1997 to give false testimony in Berlusconi's corruption trials. Mills was sentenced to 4 1/2 years for taking the bribe in February, however he will likely never see jail because of Italy's appeals system.

Other cases that will likely be re-opened include a tax fraud and false accounting case and a case in which he allegedly tried to corrupt senators.

If his immunity gets taken away, Berlusconi's government will likely survive the fallout, however it will only add to growing dissatisfaction with him after a string of sex scandals.

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images 

The city council of Nairobi passed a series of by-laws yesterday outlining new illegal activities for the streets of Kenya's capital. Newly outlawed activities include blowing one's nose in public without using a hankercheif and spitting into trash cans. Another of the laws criminalizes loud noise.

This particular ordinance may have the biggest impact on the economy of Nairobi, in which street hawkers, cab drivers and store owners rely on verbally cajoling customers into their services. One resident argued the city is just trying to make money, either from imposed fines or bribes, and directly ignoring the needs of its citizens:

"We get our daily bread here,We are not making noise. The council must know that we are self-employed."

The city maintains that the purpose of the news laws is to make the city more habitable and reduce general nuisance. 

AFP/Stringer

Yesterday, award-winning director Roman Polanski was arrested in Zurich for a long-outstanding U.S. warrant. In 1977, Polanski was arrested for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty, and fled the county in 1978 to avoid going to jail. He eventually became a dual citizen of France (which does not extradite) and Poland.

Today, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stop the extradition. Kouchner called the arrest "a bit sinister." In these countries, Polanski is widely regarded as an exceptional filmmaker and a victim of the overzealous American justice system. (HBO made a documentary about this dichotomy, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.)

But Sikorski's defense of Polanski comes at an awkward time: Poland is in the process of implementing much-harsher punishments for people who commit sex crimes. Last week, all but three of the 460 members of Poland's lower chamber of parliament voted to punish certain sex offenders with chemical castration. People convicted of raping a person under 15 (the crime Polanski pled guilty to) or a close relative would be given drugs to diminish their libido, under the new law. On top of chemical castration, there are increased penalties for incest and pedophilia. Trying to justify pedophilia would also be criminalized. 

Regardless, it seems Polanski might end up serving his time in the United States, ending his 31 years on the lam. While abroad, Polanski has made a number of films -- including Tess, which was dedicated to his wife Sharon Tate (who was murdered by the Manson Family) and the Oscar-winning The Pianist, set during the Holocaust. After being forced into the Kraków Ghetto during World War II, Polanski escaped the concentration camps; his mother did not and was killed in Auschwitz. He also made arguably the creepiest movie of all time, The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp as a used book salesman who tries to track down the devil.

Roman Polanksi, the famed director of Chinatown and The Pianist, who has not set foot in the United States for more than three decades, is now facing extradition proceedings in Switzerland -- at the request of the Los Angeles district attorney's office.

Upon touching down at the Zurich airport on Saturday, after departing his native France, Polanksi was detained by authorities. Unlike France, Switzerland has an extradition agreement with the United States that applies to cases like that of Polanski, who is wanted in connection with a 32-year-old sex case.

In 1977, Mr Polanski admitted to having sex with a 13-year-old in Los Angeles. The woman has since identified herself and publicly offered her personal forgiveness. But that has not changed the course of legal proceedings.

As Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, told the New York Times:

"Any time word is received that Mr. Polanski is planning to be in a country that has an extradition treaty with the U.S., we go through diplomatic channels with the arrest warrant."

Polanski's case is perhaps not unique in the world of extradition law, but it is provocative. The notion of the Los Angeles DA's office for 32 years tracking the director's busy European travel schedule, waiting for an opportunity, whilst he chose to appear at various film festivals via video-conference rather than in person, is fascinating. But beyond the celebrity factor, it's hard to pin down exactly what seems so incongruous.

Is it simply that in a post-9/11 world we're now accustomed to thinking of "extradition" in connection with national security interests, and clear-and-present danger?

AFP/Getty Images

A new Islamic law in Indonesia's devoutly Muslim Aceh province takes a strict interpretation of Sharia law including a provision to stone adulters to death. The "Islamic Crime Bill," passed by the regional parliament on September 15, 2009, authorized the following punishments for adultery and homosexuality:

“Any person who deliberately commits adultery is threatened with 100 cane lashes for the unmarried and stoning to death for those who are married.”

“Any person deliberately performing homosexuality or lesbianism is threatened with up to 100 cane lashes and a maximum fine of 1,000 grams of fine gold, or imprisonment of up to 100 months.”

Additionally, the law outlines the punishment for rape is a minimum of 100 cane lashes and a maximum of 300 cane lashes or imprisonment of at least 100 months and up to 200 cane lashes or a maximum imprisonment of 200 months for pedophiles.

The regional parliament passed this law in order to target "behavior considered morally unacceptable."

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images