YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: LAW-CRIME-AND-LAW-ENFORCEMENT

Court Decisions In the United States during 1999, several noteworthy court decisions were handed down concerning, at least indirectly, the rights of consumers. In one case, an antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, District Court Judge Thomas P. Jackson released a 207-page findings of fact in which he determined that Microsoft Corp. was a monopoly. ( See Computers and Information Systems.) The importance of the case could be recognized by the fact that only two other antitrust cases in the 20th century, those concerning the Standard Oil Co. and AT&T, involved the monetary impact of the Microsoft decision. It is not illegal, in and of itself, to be a monopoly, but it becomes illegal if that status is used to stifle competition and thereby seriously injure consumers by depriving them of innovations that otherwise might have been developed by competitors. In an unusual move the court did not rule on the legal aspects of the case but left the case open to settlement. At the end of the year, in a startling development, it decided that the Justice Department and Microsoft should come to some mutual agreement and appointed Richard Posner, a federal appellate judge, to mediate the dispute. In his earlier writings as a law professor and subsequently his decisions as a judge, Posner had been somewhat skeptical of traditional antitrust remedies. In a lead editorial The Wall Street Journal opined that by these developments the trial judge had extended a golden invitation to Microsoft to settle. The newspaper had been critical of Microsoft's defense, which it regarded as relying too heavily on semantic diffusion. In its editorial it stated that Judge Posner would be serving in a purely private capacity. But it might not be too much to see him as a de facto court-appointed attorney for Microsoft, one whom Judge Jackson hopes will do a better job for the company than the company's own lawyers have done. In another important case, the U.S. Supreme Court sharply limited a corporation's power to settle massive class-action lawsuits. The case involved a $1.5 billion settlement for asbestos health-related damage claims asserted by 186,000 different people. A Texas court had approved the settlement, as did a federal appellate court, binding all the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court overturned these decisions, stating it might not result in fair compensation to all the victims. It stated that a settlement of massive claims on a mandatory basis can be confirmed only if strict standards are applied. For perhaps the first time, a federal judge interpreted the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It held that the amendment gives individuals and not just militia the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment provides that: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. The decision set off a furious debate, mainly among law professors, as to the meaning of the amendment. Fifty-two of them filed a brief supporting gun control, which they felt was at stake in the case. Others supported the decision. The case was viewed by many commentators as having substantial political significance for the 2000 presidential election. Another case of important political significance for the next election of members of the U.S. House of Representatives concerned the way the year 2000 decennial census was to be conducted. Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives is apportioned among the states according to the actual enumeration of the population that is to be made every 10 years. Democrats, by and large, have construed this language to authorize statistical sampling in calculating the real population, because in their view actual enumeration, advocated by most Republicans, results in the undercounting of minorities. The Supreme Court's decision prohibited the use of statistical sampling in calculating population for purposes of congressional apportionment and stated that an actual head count is required. In other cases in the U.S., Linda Tripp was tried on felony counts that she had illegally taped several conversations with Monica Lewinsky in late 1997 that later figured in the impeachment trial of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton, even after an attorney allegedly had told her it was illegal to do so; the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously issued a ruling that Boy Scouts cannot exclude, and therefore discriminate against, homosexuals; and the U.S. Supreme Court held that the doctrine of sovereign immunity shields the states from private lawsuits seeking to enforce federal laws regulating the workplace. Two cases decided by the Supreme Court of Israel attracted attention in the United States and other parts of the world. In the first case an American Jew, after allegedly having committed a murder in the U.S., fled to Israel and claimed citizenship there. The court held that he was an Israeli citizen and thus was immune from extradition to the U.S. Instead, he was tried in Israel, found guilty, and sentenced to 24 years in prison, with eligibility for parole after 14 years served. The leniency of this sentence, relative to what he would have received if found guilty of murder in the U.S., was widely criticized there. The result of the other case was better received by the American public. In it the Supreme Court of Israel banned the use of torture in the interrogation of prisoners. The court found it necessary to balance basic human rights, on the one hand, against the protection of citizens against terrorism, on the other. In other noteworthy cases, a French judge ruled that speed, alcohol, and drugs were the primary agents that resulted in the death of Diana, princess of Wales (along with her companion, Dodi al-Fayed, and their car's driver), dismissing all charges against others implicated in the 1997 accident, including nine photographers, another car, and members of the press. The Supreme Court of Belgium sentenced Willy Claes, a prominent socialist and former secretary-general of NATO, to three years' imprisonment and banned him from holding office for five years, for corruption involved in taking a bribe. The Russian Constitutional Court ruled that there was no uncertainty as to the meaning of relevant provisions of the constitution and therefore declined to decide whether a person who held the post of president could be a candidate for that position in the next presidential election. The International Court of Justice ruled that it had no jurisdiction to entertain an action brought by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia challenging the legality of the use of force against it by the United Kingdom in the Kosovo armed engagement; in a related case the court extended the time limit for Yugoslavia to file a rejoinder to an action brought against it largely by members of the NATO forces concerning the crime of genocide. The Italian Court of Cassation, in a highly controversial case that gained great notoriety in Italy, held that a woman wearing tight jeans could not be raped, since her cooperation would be necessary for the jeans to be pulled off; the court dismissed the contention that such cooperation could have been the result of fear. Canada, on the other hand, seemingly reached a contrary result, deciding that the doctrine of implied consent, while found to be important in other aspects of the law, had no place where rape or sexual assault was involved. William D. Hawkland Law The impact of international jurisdiction in human rights law was increasingly felt throughout 1999. The battle between global jurisdiction and state sovereignty complicated the matter, and state sovereignty was frequently cited by countries with bad human rights records as an argument against international intervention in internal affairs. Pressure was increased on rogue states to accept key international human rights legal documents, which carried reporting obligations as well as international monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. Diplomatic initiatives coupled with incentives promising better aid, trade, and investment were made to help achieve this goal. Some countries, particularly China, continued to resist the development of universal jurisdiction where serious human rights abuses were concerned. As China celebrated the 50th anniversary of communist rule and the world noted the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Beijing regime continued a campaign of harsh oppression against pro-independence dissidents, particularly the Uygur population in the Xinjiang autonomous region and Tibetan activists. Freedom of religion also came under attack as a new campaign was launched against Li Hongzhi (see Biographies) and followers of the Falun Gong, a populist spiritual movement. Widespread arrests and prosecution of group members followed a government ban in July. (See World Affairs: China.) Progress was made in establishing an International Criminal Court to try war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The Rome Statute, which was initialed in 1998 for the creation of such a court, was signed by 89 states and ratified by four as of October 1999. The statute required ratification by 60 states before the court could be established. This positive momentum was tempered by the efforts of some nations to weaken the eventual influence of the court, however. Most notable was the U.S., which manifested its resistance by approaching several states and asking them not to surrender to the International Criminal Court U.S. nationals charged with genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. Attempts to exclude the U.S. from the developing authority of international justice were criticized by human rights organizations, including the New York-based Human Rights Watch. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) took the long-awaited step of indicting Pres. Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia (see Biographies) along with four other Serb leaders. The move lent support to juridical developments seen in the case of former Chilean leader Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte; the main issue in his case concerned the immunity of heads of state accused of crimes against humanity. The ICTY, however, risked being the target of accusations that hinted of a double standardCroatian Pres. Franjo Tudjman (see Obituaries)and some senior Croatian military figures continued to evade any form of sanction, despite the existence of well-documented reports of atrocities committed by Croatian forces during the war in former Yugoslavia and in the 1995 Flash and Storm offensives, in which Serb residents were driven from Croatia. By year's end the ICTY had brought charges against a total of 63 persons. Other developments in the Balkans raised questions about the limits of the jurisdiction of international tribunals and pointed up the evolutionary state of international law in this area. Lawyers from several countries appealed to the ICTY to consider prosecuting NATO for war crimes committed during military attacks against Yugoslavia, begging an inclusive definition of the term war crimes. The violence in both Kosovo, a province of Serbia, and East Timor, a province of Indonesia, resulted in widespread and severe human rights abuses, which led to further calls for the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity in appropriate international forumsthe ICTY for Kosovo and a new tribunal to be established for East Timor. Discussion also continued at the United Nations regarding the establishment of a UN tribunal to deal with crimes committed during 197579 by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Human rights organizations called for any such tribunal to be purely international in character; they rejected a mixed panel comprising foreign and Cambodian judges, as proposed by the UN, and insisted that the tribunal be located outside of Cambodia. The seesaw of legal developments in the case of Pinochet reflected tension within national legal systems as they struggled to implement a more dynamic version of international human rights law. In 1998 the British courts ruled that Pinochet, the former president of Chile, could be extradited to Spain to face charges of crimes against Spanish citizens during his rule. The decision, supporting the principle that a former head of state should not be allowed immunity for crimes against humanity, was set aside after it was discovered that one of the judges had a connection with Amnesty International. In March 1999 a reconstituted court broadly reiterated support for the principle but watered down the earlier decision by ruling that Pinochet could be extradited only for acts of torture committed after December 1988, when the 1984 International Convention Against Torture was directly implemented in British law. At a later extradition hearing in September, a judge reconfirmed the wider ambit of the 1998 judgment, and Pinochet came a step closer to extradition to Spain. The final outcome of the case was pending at year's end. In a sign of increasing tolerance, the Supreme Court of Israel reversed its earlier decision to sanction moderate physical pressure during the interrogation of suspected Palestinian terrorists. The practice was considered torture in international law and had been widely condemned. Anne McMillan Prisons and Penology The number of untried and sentenced prisoners continued to rise in many countries in 1999, with the worldwide total exceeding eight million. More than half of these prisoners were in the United States (where the total was approaching two million), China, and Russia. Other countries with high prison population rates included Belarus (505 per 100,000 citizens), Kazakstan (495), Belize (490), and Singapore (465). Among European Union countries Portugal had the highest rate (145), with the United Kingdom second (125). In attempting to ease prison population pressures, several countries resorted to amnesties and other early-release mechanisms. In Rwanda plans for the release of 10,000 genocide suspects were announced. On the accession of King Muhammad VI in Morocco, almost 8,000 prisoners were released and 38,000 had their sentences commuted, which thereby eased crowding levels. In England and Wales the introduction of an electronic tagging scheme resulted in almost 2,000 offenders' being placed under home-detention curfews within six months, a total less than half that anticipated by the authorities. Throughout the world many deaths in prisons resulted from preventable or treatable diseases, with tuberculosis being the most serious health problem in prisons in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Overcrowding was also a serious problem. In the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia, the Pre-Trial Detention Centre was housing some 5,000 prisoners in a space designed for 1,200. According to Human Rights Watch, human rights abuses were committed daily in Brazil's penal institutions, and many thousands of people were affected. In South Korea some 70,000 prisoners were crammed into facilities with a capacity of only 56,000, and the Roman Catholic Church's Human Rights Commission alleged that prisoners suffered poor conditions, inadequate medical care, and systematic beatings. Many of the most severely crowded conditions were to be found in Africa, with, for example, more than 7,000 persons held in facilities designed for 5,500 in Malawi and 146,300 in space designed for 100,000 in South Africa. In Britain an official inspection found the largest young-offender institution, at Feltham, to be rotten to the core, with conditions described as unacceptable in a civilized society. Amnesty International reported a persistent and widespread pattern of human rights violations in the United States, where inmates were physically and sexually abused by other inmates and by guards in overcrowded and understaffed prisons. Attention was drawn to the indiscriminate use of restraints (including leg irons, restraint poles, and electroshock equipment), which resulted in unnecessary pain, injury, or even death. Crime Terrorism. During 1999 experts warned of a growing threat posed by a new breed of terrorists who were willing to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons to inflict massive casualties. In May the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, reported that the complex and murky world of modern terrorism was populated increasingly by loners or small cells of activists driven by fanatic beliefs or single issues. The new terrorists, loosely organized and disciplined, were more dangerous owing to their extreme beliefs, which made them less likely to exercise restraint in pursuit of their goals. Cited as an example was the informal terrorist network operated by Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. A U.S. State Department report revealed that there were no acts of international terrorism in the U.S. in 1998, and although worldwide there were 273 terrorist attacks, it was the lowest annual total since 1971. The number of persons killed (741) or wounded (5,952), however, was the highest on record; most of the casualties resulted from the embassy bombings in East Africa. The search for those responsible for the bombings continued, with the U.S. seeking the immediate apprehension and removal of bin Laden from sanctuary in Afghanistan.In November, following a unanimous vote in the Security Council, the UN imposed sanctions that would freeze the ruling Islamic Taliban's economic assets abroad and curtail international flights by the national airline if bin Laden and one of his chief aides were not handed over. In a daring raid in February, Turkish security forces snatched Abdullah Ocalan, the long-feared and durable leader of the Kurdish independence movement, from his hiding place in the Greek embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Ocalanaccused of being responsible for a violent separatist campaign that had claimed up to 30,000 lives in Turkey and involved killings, kidnappings, bombings, and crimes in other countrieswas flown drugged, bound, and blindfolded back to Turkey to stand trial. His capture prompted immediate and violent demonstrations by Kurdish groups in many parts of the world. In June a Turkish security court sentenced Ocalan to death for treason. The verdict was appealed but the sentence was upheld. In April Libya finally surrendered to UN officials in Tripoli two defendants accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scot., which killed 270 people and led to UN sanctions that isolated Libya from the West for seven years. The surrender of 'Abd al-Baset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah meant that the two alleged former Libyan intelligence agents could be tried in The Netherlands under Scottish law on charges of having planted the suitcase bomb that blew up the plane. In March a special antiterrorist court in Paris convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison six Libyan officials, including Abdullah Senoussi, the brother-in-law of Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, in the 1989 bombing of a French passenger jet over the Niger desert. All 170 passengers and crew aboard UTA Flight 772 were killed in the explosion. In Russia shockwaves of terror swept across Moscow in September as a series of powerful bombs demolished apartment buildings there. In five separate explosions over a period of less than two weeks, at least 293 people were killed and dozens more wounded. Meanwhile, as massive security operations fanned out to check the safety of more than 30,000 apartment blocks across the city, Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin said terrorists were trying to demoralize the state, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused separatists in the republic of Chechnya of bombing and supporting those terrorists. On December 24 five Urdu-speaking terrorists hijacked an Indian Airlines jet after takeoff from Kathmandu, Nepal, en route to New Delhi. The plane was flown across India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Oman, stopping several times. After refueling the plane at a military airfield in Dubayy, U.A.E., where a few passengers were released, the hijackers returned to Afghanistan and landed at Kandahar. Finally on December 31 negotiations involving India, the Taliban, and the hijackers won the freedom of the more than 150 hostages in exchange for the release from Indian jails of three militant Pakistani Muslims and a 10-hour head start for the terrorists to flee Afghanistan. Their identities and nationalities were not known at year's end. Drug Trafficking. The United Nations' Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board reported that during 1998 the rising purity levels of heroin available in North America had led to an increase in heroin smoking, especially among young people. In a report released in February 1999, the UN drug-control agency said that heroin originating in Latin America was continuing to displace heroin from Southeast Asia in the illicit marketplace. Efforts made by government and international groups in Latin America had resulted in a decrease in the areas under coca bush cultivation and the production of coca leaf, the main illicit crop in the region. New cultivation sites, however, rapidly compensated for these reductions. In Europe there were indications that the clandestine manufacture of synthetic drugs, such as ecstasy, was increasing and that the products were trafficked worldwide. The UN report also expressed concern over the proliferation of do-it-yourself guides on the Internet that enabled users to prepare and abuse controlled substances. In October the director of the U.S. White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, warned the European Union (EU) not to be complacent about the spread of the use of cocaine. He noted that while the U.S. had a serious drug problem that was getting better, the Europeans had a similar problem that was getting worse, partly because of increased tolerance in EU countries for drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. Data released by McCaffrey indicated that more cocaine was being seized by European police forces than had been confiscated along the entire southwestern border of the U.S. In Europe 57% of cocaine shipments from Latin America reportedly entered through Spain or Portugal, whereas heroin came almost entirely from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite McCaffrey's optimism about the situation in the U.S., critics of the nation's so-called war on drugs claimed that the initiative had been a costly failure. Surveys showed that the use of crack cocaine had not changed in 10 years, nor had the general level of illegal drug use.