radiofree.asia

Category: US constitution and civil liberties

  • ‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’

    Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

    Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.

    Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time

    ‘Visible deterioration’ in US civil liberties began in at least 2019, says international thinktank

    The US has been added to an annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, the International IDEA thinktank has said, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019.

    Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or “hybrid” regimes, according to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • US citizens v FBI: Will the government face charges for illegal surveillance?

    Muslim citizens are suing the FBI for subjecting them to undercover surveillance after 9/11 in violation of rights

    On Monday, the US supreme court will hear arguments in a case which could determine whether the US government faces accountability for its mass surveillance of Muslim Americans after 9/11.

    The nine justices will be asked to decide on whether Muslim US citizens who were subjected to undercover surveillance by a paid informant at their southern California mosque can receive redress through the courts.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.