Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted criminals are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives. Crimes that warrant life imprisonment are extremely serious and usually violent. Examples of these crimes are murder, torture, terrorism, child abuse resulting in death, rape, espionage, treason, illegal drug trade, human trafficking, severe fraud and financial crimes, aggravated property damage, arson, hate crime, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and genocide.
A pardon is a government decision to allow a person to be relieved of some or all of the legal consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. A pardon may be granted before or after conviction for the crime, depending on the laws of the jurisdiction.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when someone is killed in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime, the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.
Cesare Battisti is an Italian former member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run. PAC was a far-left militant group active in Italy in the late 1970s during the period known as the "Years of Lead". Battisti was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy for four homicides. He fled first to France in 1981, where he received protection under the Mitterrand doctrine.
The Special Criminal Court is a juryless criminal court in Ireland which tries terrorism and serious organised crime cases.
Capital murder refers to a category of murder in some parts of the US for which the perpetrator is eligible for the death penalty. In its original sense, capital murder was a statutory offence of aggravated murder in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, which was later adopted as a legal provision to define certain forms of aggravated murder in the United States. Some jurisdictions that provide for death as a possible punishment for murder, such as California, do not have a specific statute creating or defining a crime known as capital murder; instead, death is one of the possible sentences for certain kinds of murder. In these cases, "capital murder" is not a phrase used in the legal system but may still be used by others such as the media.
Suresh v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the areas of constitutional law and administrative law. The Court held that, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in most circumstances the government cannot deport someone to a country where they risk being tortured, but refugee claimants can be deported to their homelands if they are a serious security risk to Canadians.
Anti-terrorism legislation are laws with the purpose of fighting terrorism. They usually, if not always, follow specific bombings or assassinations. Anti-terrorism legislation usually includes specific amendments allowing the state to bypass its own legislation when fighting terrorism-related crimes, under alleged grounds of necessity.
Capital punishment in Armenia was a method of punishment that was implemented within Armenia's Criminal Code and Constitution until its eventual relinquishment in the 2003 modifications made to the Constitution. Capital punishment's origin in Armenia is unknown, yet it remained present in the Armenia Criminal Code of 1961, which was enforced and applied until 1999. Capital punishment was incorporated into Armenian legislation and effectuated for capital crimes, which were crimes that were classified to be punishable by death, including treason, espionage, first-degree murder, acts of terrorism and grave military crimes.
Capital punishment in the Republic of Ireland was abolished in statute law in 1990, having been abolished in 1964 for most offences including ordinary murder. The last person to be executed by the British state on the island of Ireland was Robert McGladdery, who was hanged on 20 December 1961 in Crumlin Road Gaol in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The last person to be executed by the state in the Republic of Ireland was Michael Manning, hanged for murder on 20 April 1954. All subsequent death sentences in the Republic of Ireland, the last handed down in 1985, were commuted by the President, on the advice of the Government, to terms of imprisonment of up to 40 years. The Twenty-first Amendment to the constitution, passed by referendum in 2001, prohibits the reintroduction of the death penalty, even during a state of emergency or war. Capital punishment is also forbidden by several human rights treaties to which the state is a party.
Soering v United Kingdom 161 Eur. Ct. H.R. (1989) is a landmark judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) which established that extradition of a German national to the United States to face charges of capital murder and the potential exposure of said citizen to the death row phenomenon violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) guaranteeing the right against inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition to the precedent established by the judgment, the judgment specifically resulted in the United States and the State of Virginia committing to not seeking the death penalty against the German national involved in the case, and he was eventually extradited to the United States.
In the case of Meadows v Minister for Justice, Equality, and Law Reform [2010] IESC 3; [2010] 2 IR 701; [2011] 2 ILRM 157, the Supreme Court of Ireland found that the proportionality test should be used when reviewing administrative actions that implicate fundamental rights protected by both the Irish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. While the case concerned an application for judicial review of an asylum decision, the decision was described as carrying “implications for the whole body of Irish administrative law”.
Sivsivadze v Minister for Justice[2015] IESC 53; [2015] 2 ILRM 73; [2016] 2 IR 403 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the constitutionality of section 3(1) of the Immigration Act 1999, under which the Minister for Justice order the deportation of a non-national for an indefinite period.
P., L., & B. v Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform [2001] IESC 107, [2002] 1 ILRM 16 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that refusal of an application for asylum may constitute a sufficient basis for the government to order the applicant's deportation.
The case of Dimbo v Minister for Justice[2008] IESC 26; [2008] 27 ILT 231; [2008] 5 JIC 0101 was a Supreme Court that held that when deciding to make a deportation order in relation to the parents of an Irish born citizen under s.3 of the Immigration Act 1999, the state must consider facts that are specific to the individual child, his or her age, current educational progress, development and opportunities and his/her attachment to the community.
N.H.V. v Minister for Justice & Equality [2017] IESC 35 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a challenge to the absolute prohibition on employment of asylum seekers contained in Section 9(4) of the Refugee Act 1996 and held it to be contrary to the constitutional right to seek employment.
CC v Minister for Justice [2016] 2 IR 680; [2016] IESC 48 is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court dismissed an appeal by the State to issue a deportation order against a Malawian family who were seeking asylum in Ireland. In this case, the Court had to reexamine a previously established test with respect to whether an order for deportation could be granted where an appeal was pending within the courts system. Ultimately, the Court decided that there was no need for refinements as the general principle identified in that test can be applied across a wide number of cases.
Okunade v Minister for Justice & Others[2012] IESC 49 was an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the disruption to family life was sufficient injustice to grant an interlocutory injunction to restrain deportation while the applicants challenged pending deportation orders. The case had become moot by the time that the appeal reached the Supreme Court but proceeded as a test case because the issue of interlocutory injunctions arises in a significant number of Supreme Court cases.
Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform v Murphy, [2010] IESC 17; [2010] 3 IR 77, is an Irish Supreme Court case in which the Court determined that inpatient treatment with a restriction order attached to it in a European Arrest Warrant came within the meaning of "detention order" in s.10(d) of the European Warrant Act 2003. This gave the definition of "detention order" a wide meaning. The case involved an appeal against extradition to the United Kingdom.
T.D v Minister for Justice Equality and Law Reform [2014] IESC 29; [2014] 4 IR 277 is a reported Irish Supreme Court case decision, where the court considered if Section 5(2) of the Illegal Immigrants (Trafficking) Act 2000 was similar to the principles of equivalence and effectiveness under EU law. Ultimately, the Supreme Court dismissed this argument.
