Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. USA) is being argued this week in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. This is the lawsuit that Mexico has brought against the US over its failure to advise 52 Mexican nationals on death rows in the U.S. of their Vienna Convention rights, specifically, their right to consular help after arrest.

The case is the result of a long-running dispute between the United States and its southern neighbor and underlines deep concern among some of Washington's closest allies over its capital punishment laws.

"We are asking the court to tell the United States to retry these nationals, but this time with the consular assistance they are entitled to," said Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo, chief legal representative for Mexico. "Consular help could have meant the difference between life and death," lawyer Sandra Babcock told the judges as the Mexican side made its opening arguments.

Mexico accuses U.S. authorities of breaching the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to tell the Mexicans -- subsequently sentenced to death in 10 U.S. states -- of their right to assistance from their national representatives.....Mexico went to The Hague-based International Court of Justice or World Court because all other legal and diplomatic efforts to solve the issue had been exhausted, an official said.

According to Amnesty International statistics, a total of 71 prisoners were executed in the United States last year, bringing to 820 the total number of prisoners put to death since the resumption of capital punishment there in 1977. The death penalty has not been applied in Mexico for at least four decades.

The court's history of the case is here. The oral arguments started today and will continue on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Transcripts can be accessed here.

Kobe Bryant filed his pre-trial motions today. He is seeking to introduce evidence of his accuser's two purported suicide attempts and of her being prescribed anti-psychotic medication (pdf format). He is also challenging the constitutionality of the rape shield law(pdf format)--on it's face--because the standard for admitting prior bad acts of the accuser is higher than that provided for admitting prior bad acts of the defendant. You can access and read the motions at the court's website here. Note that all pleadings are in Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format.

The defense motion characterizes her as an extreme attention seeker and says her suicide attempts were done to gain the attention of her former boyfriend.

"The purported suicide attempts are extreme attention-seeking behavior that illustrate the accuser's ulteriour motives, scheme and plan to engage in dramatic acts in order to draw attention to herself--even when these acts are extremely harmful to herself and others.

We think the issue of anti-psychotic medication is very relevant to the accuser's credibility. Was she on the medication at the time of the incident with Kobe? Had she abruptedly stopped taking it? Did it skew her perceptions? Did it cause her to distort reality? Did it render her in denial?

Kobe is facing life in prison over this charge. We think he has the right to bring out information that shows the accuser has a motive, history or propensity for lying or that her emotional instablility may have resulted in her fabricating the rape charge.

Update: The AP reports on the motions. Kobe's lawyers are moving to keep his t-shirt (which reportedly had some of the accuser's blood on it) out of evidence:

The defense said the T-shirt should not have been taken as evidence because Bryant was wearing it during the search, and the warrant authorized them to take only items from the room, not his person.

Aaron Patterson, a wrongfully convicted inmate released from death row and pardoned by former Illinois Governor George Ryan is running for Congress.

Patterson was one of four men pardoned in January as part of then-Gov. George Ryan's historic clearing of death row in his final days in office. Patterson, who was convicted of killing an elderly Chicago couple in 1986, spent 17 years on death row, despite his claims police tortured him into confessing to the crime.

"I feel like the very laws that put me on death row, I want to go down there and change them," Patterson said in a telephone interview. He received a $161,500 settlement from the state for his faulty conviction and has filed a $30 million federal lawsuit against police officers and others involved in his case.

Patterson's congressional platform includes,:

...abolishing the death penalty, cracking down on police misconduct and investigating the cases of other inmates who claim they were wrongfully convicted.

We recently wrote about Mr. Patterson here, following a long profile, Live from Death Row, that appeared last month in the Chicago Tribune.

Update: Patterson's candidacy has been cleared by the Ill. State Board of Elections.

Mark Geragos, attorney for Scott Peterson, accused of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and the couple's unborn child, filed a change of venue motion today. Geragos wants the trial moved to LA. His motion cites studies showing that 98% of the people in Modesto have heard of the case (no suprise there) and that 75% have formed an opinion. That's a problem, in our view. The trial clearly needs to be moved.

"The lynch-mob mentality that has been created in this case has become so poisonous that the nature of the news coverage has in many instances been reduced to nothing more than vilification," Geragos wrote. "The widespread, pervasive and negative nature of the police reports surrounding this case have made it impossible to seat a fair and unbiased jury in Stanislaus County."

The AP reports:

Saddam Hussein could be tried "in the next few weeks" and could be executed if convicted, an Iraqi Governing Council member said Monday. Other council members said the televised trial would likely begin later, perhaps by summer.

The trial will begin "very soon, in the next few weeks," Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite Muslim council member, told The Associated Press.

President Bush said Monday it was up to the Iraqis to determine Saddam's fate but said the United States will "work with the Iraqis to develop a way to try him that withstands international scrutiny."

Juan R. Cole, a Middle East expert and professor of history at the University of Michigan, who has an excellent weblog, says:

The commentators on cable news shows on Sunday seemed to think that Saddam's capture guarantees Bush's reelection in November of 2004. Well, incumbents have great advantages, and most often do get reelected. But Saddam won't do it for Bush. In a way, the capture came too early for those purposes. It will be a very dim memory in October, 2004.

The Sunni Arab insurgency will continue at least for a while (see below), and the possibility that the Shiites will make more and more trouble cannot be ruled out. The US military is stuck in the country for the foreseeable future at something approaching current troop levels. The move to give civil authority to a transitional Iraqi government may not go smoothly. The administration will have to ask Congress for another big appropriation for Iraq sometime before the '04 election, and that won't help Bush's popularity. The Iraqi economy is still a basket case, the oil pipelines are still being sabotaged or looted, and a whole host of everyday problems remain that having Saddam in custody will not resolve. If Iraq is still going this badly in October of 2004, it would be a real drag on the Bush campaign. Yes, I said "this badly." One arrest doesn't turn it around, except in the fantasy world of political theater in which pundits seem to live.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case in which Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to turn over documents pertaining to secret contacts with energy officials.

The court agreed to hear an appeal from the administration, which is fighting a lawsuit brought by watchdog and environmental groups over the energy task force Cheney assembled. The panel met for several months in 2001 and issued a report that favored opening more public lands to oil and gas drilling and proposed a range of other steps supported by industry.

The lawsuit seeks to force the administration to provide details about the panel's records and inner workings. The groups allege the industry representatives in effect functioned as members of the government panel, which included Cabinet secretaries and lower-level administration employees.

The watchdog group Judicial Watch and an environmental organization, the Sierra Club, had won permission from a lower court to gather records related to the energy task force.

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The Red Cross has asked to see Saddam Hussein and check on the conditions under which he is being held:

A Red Cross spokesman, Florian Westphal, would not comment directly on Rumsfeld's comments. But he said Saddam "was the commander in chief of the Iraqi army, which seems to indicate that he should at least be presumed a POW." "We expect any state bound by the Geneva Conventions to live up to its commitments," he told The Associated Press.

....Westphal said while the Geneva Conventions allow captors to interrogate POWs, the prisoners do not have to answer questions. They are only obliged to give the information familiar from movies - name, rank and serial number.

Westphal said nothing in the Geneva Conventions stops POWs from being tried for war crimes or regular offenses, although they cannot be charged simply for taking up arms against the enemy.

Westphal would not comment on whether the U.S. authorities had violated the Geneva Conventions in transmitting video images of an unshaven Saddam being examined by a doctor shortly after his capture.

Article 13 of the 1949 Conventions, which set basic standards in armed conflict, says that prisoners should be treated humanely and should "at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."

Some fairness from Rumsfeld: He announced Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein will have prisoner of war protections.

Saddam Hussein will have protections accorded to prisoners of war as U.S. officials try to press him for information on the insurgency against coalition forces, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says.

...."One need not worry that he'll be treated in a humane and professional way," governed by the Geneva Convention that spells out the treatment that prisoners must receive, the secretary said on CBS' "60 Minutes."

The convention prohibits violence, cruelty and torture of prisoners, while also barring humiliating and degrading treatment.

Rumsfeld said that could change if it were determined that Saddam was involved in attacks on coalition forces. Saddam will face interrogation:

The first task of interrogators is to learn whether Saddam has knowledge of any impending guerrilla attacks planned against U.S. troops or Iraqis, intelligence officials said. Officials also want to know where Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and other remaining senior regime officials and insurgent leaders are hiding.

Rumsfeld confirmed what the news has reported--Saddam so far is not cooperating or answering questions. He has been resigned and compliant, but not forthcoming with information.

We'd like to extend a big thanks to TChris for filling in for us this weekend. He broke the news here on Saddam's capture while we were still asleep, and kept us all up to date on other issues we need to know about. We'll invite him back as often as he feels like posting, and thanks to all the readers who welcomed and responded to him in the comments. TChris, we owe you one.

The LA Times reports on why finding Osama bin Laden will be more difficult than finding Saddam.

Let's keep our eye on the prize. It was Osama, not Saddam, who allegedly masterminded the 9/11 attacks. The war against Iraq is not the same war as the war against terrorism.

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We expect that Saddam isn't being turned over to anyone--either the Iraqis or a World Court--until the U.S. has finished interrogating him. We don't expect anything of value to come from the interrogation --either do these experts--but it appears to be the Bush modus operandi.

His information grows more outdated by the hour, and other leaders from Saddam's topped government can move or take other steps to avoid capture....Intelligence officials have previously said they believe Saddam was too concerned with survival and staying hidden to provide much more than symbolic leadership.

"Given the location and circumstances of his capture, it makes it clear that Saddam was not managing the insurgency, and that he had very little control or influence.

In the end, Saddam's account of his weapons program may primarily hold only propaganda value to the administration, once it is publicized, said Robert Baer, a former CIA operations officer involved in efforts to overthrow Saddam in the 1990s. "I can imagine at some point the man's going to be broken, psychologically," Baer said, suggesting interrogators will make Saddam dependent on them for news. "It's pretty clear now there were no WMD. So you get some statements about his intentions to build them - I think he always had the intention to go back and reconstitute this stuff."

They're going to use every interrogation method in the book, short of torture," said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "What are they going to get from him? He's not going to admit he has done all these horrible things. He's going to say he was firm and fair."