Miami Blog

Lawyers for the Cuban Five, Castro's group of convicted spies, today filed a petition with the Supreme Court asking the body to throw out their conviction and order a new trial.

All five men were convicted in 2001 in a Miami court, though the defense argues that a fair trial was not possible in Miami due to the vocal exile community. A three judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta agreed and overturned the verdict in 2005, but later that year the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal overturned that decision. The same body reaffirmed the judgment in 2008, but ruled that three of the men should be re-sentenced.

Basically this thing has been going on for well over 10 years, and this is pretty much their last shot. The Government controlled Cuban press has turned the men's plight into a cause celebré. Meanwhile groups like the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International, a group of eight international Nobel Prize, and others have all criticized the US justice system's handling of the case.