Guantanamo Detainee Update: At SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston provided this follow-up to his posts on the government's attempt to prevent U.S. entry of 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees. Earlier in the week, we posted on the federal court order of Judge Urbina to release 17 Chinese Muslims, the Uighurs, into the United States for a handover to local caretakers. On Tuesday, it was noted "the government could seek a stay of the order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit." Yesterday, Denniston reported on the arguments made by the detainees' lawyers against delaying the handover, and then updated his post to report that the D.C. Circuit Court had blocked entry of the Uighurs for about eight days. The Circuit Court's order can be found here. The delay was granted to give the court more time to consider the government's "not-yet-filed plea for delay of the entry until it can pursue a full appeal."

Federal Law Addressing Unsolved Civil Rights Murders: According to Dan Slater''s post at Wall Street Journal Blog, the recently signed Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act will "give new authority to the DOJ and FBI to reopen, investigate and prosecute unsolved Civil Rights era crimes." Emmett Till was the unfortunate victim of a racially-motivated murder in 1955. The 14 year-old was visiting his family in Mississippi when he "supposedly made the fatal mistake of whistling at a white woman." The new Act directs the attorney general to designate a deputy chief in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division to be responsible for investigating and prosecuting violations of criminal civil rights statutes in which the alleged violation occurred before January 1, 1970, and resulted in death, and to designate a supervisory special agent in the Civil Rights Unit of the FBI to investigate those alleged violations as well. The AG also now has the authority to annually award $2 million in grants to state and local law enforcement to investigate and prosecute these murders. As noted here, statute of limitations issues make federal prosecution of these cases problematic.