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Court again considers fate of seized gold coins worth $80M
Legal Watch |
2015/10/15 07:10
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A federal appeals court is again considering the fate of 10 rare gold coins possibly worth $80 million or more that the government says were illegally taken from a Philadelphia mint and wound up in a jeweler's hands.
A lawyer for jeweler Israel Switt's heirs told the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that authorities erred by seizing the coins without filing a required civil forfeiture action.
A jury found the seizure legal because the coins hadn't been circulated and must therefore have been stolen, but a three-judge appellate court reversed that decision in April. Federal prosecutors then asked for Wednesday's hearing before the full appeals court.
They say returning the rare $20 Double Eagles to Joan Langbord and her two sons would reward the family of a thief.
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Court reinstates lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims
Headline News |
2015/10/14 07:09
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A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslim groups following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Tuesday's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling reverses the decision of a New Jersey federal judge who dismissed the case last year.
The appellate panel found the Muslim plaintiffs had raised sufficient allegations of equal-protection violations to warrant the case going forward.
The judges compared the NYPD's alleged practices to blanket scrutiny of Japanese-Americans during World War II and blacks during the civil rights movement
The city blamed The Associated Press, whose reporting exposed the surveillance program, for any harm to the plaintiffs.
The lower court judge agreed with that argument, but the appeals panel said the city was the cause of any harm.
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Georgia man accused in hot car death to appear in court
Court Center |
2015/10/12 22:01
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A Georgia man accused of killing his toddler son by leaving him in a vehicle on a hot day is set to appear in court for a hearing.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley is set to hear arguments on pretrial motions Monday in the case of Justin Ross Harris.
Police have said Harris left 22-month-old Cooper in an SUV for about seven hours on a day when temperatures reached at least the high 80s in the Atlanta area. He faces multiple charges, including malice murder, felony murder and cruelty to children.
Harris has been in custody since June 18, 2014, the day his son died. He was indicted in September 2014 and has pleaded not guilty. His attorneys have said the child's death was a tragic accident.
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Arkansas court tosses conviction in woman's meth case
Legal News |
2015/10/10 22:01
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The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the conviction of a woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after giving birth to a baby with methamphetamine in his system.
Melissa McCann-Arms, 39, was convicted by a jury in Polk County after she and her son tested positive for meth when she gave birth at a Mena hospital in November 2012. She was convicted of a felony crime called introduction of controlled substance into body of another person.
In January, the Arkansas Court of Appeals upheld the conviction, ruling that even if the statute doesn't apply to unborn children, McCann-Arms still transferred the drug to her child in the moments between his birth and when hospital staff cut the umbilical cord.
But Arkansas' highest court reversed the conviction and dismissed the case, ruling there is no evidence McCann-Arms directly introduced methamphetamine into her baby's system by causing the child to ingest or inhale it. Likewise, there is no evidence of an ongoing transfer of methamphetamine in McCann-Arms' system after the child was born, the court ruled.
"The jury would thus have been forced to speculate that Arms was 'otherwise introducing' the drug into the child at that point," the ruling states. "When a jury reaches its conclusion by resorting to speculation or conjecture, the verdict is not supported by substantial evidence."
The court also ruled state law does not criminalize the passive bodily processes that result in a mother's use of a drug entering her unborn child's system.
"Our construction of criminal statutes is strict, and we resolve any doubts in favor of the defendant," the decision states. "The courts cannot, through construction of a statute, create a criminal offense that is not in express terms created by the Legislature."
Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney with the New York-based National Advocates for Pregnant Women, had urged the court to reverse McCann-Arms' conviction and said the decision sends a message to state prosecutors about expanding the law beyond what was intended by state lawmakers.
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Virginia executes serial killer who claimed to be disabled
Headline News |
2015/10/09 22:00
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A twice-condemned serial killer who claimed he was intellectually disabled was executed in Virginia on Thursday after a series of last-minute appeals failed.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The 49-year-old was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.
Prieto, wearing glasses, jeans and a light blue shirt, did not resist and showed no emotion as he was strapped to the gurney.
"I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, before mumbling, "Get this over with."
The El Salvador native was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a young couple more than two decades earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, both 22, were found shot to death in a wooded area a few days after being seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.
Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.
He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.
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Familiar, divisive social issues on Supreme Court agenda
Headline News |
2015/10/05 22:00
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The Supreme Court is starting a new term that promises a steady stream of divisive social issues, and also brighter prospects for conservatives who suffered more losses than usual in recent months.
The justices are meeting in public Monday for the first time since a number of high-profile decisions in June that displayed passionate, sometimes barbed disagreements and suggested some bruised feelings among the nine judges.
The first case before the court involves a California woman who lost her legs in a horrific accident after she fell while attempting to board a train in Innsbruck, Austria. The issue is whether she can sue the state-owned Austrian railway in U.S. courts.
Even before the justices took the bench Monday, they rejected hundreds of appeals that piled up over the summer, including San Jose, California's bid to lure the Athletics from Oakland over the objection of Major League Baseball.
Future cases will deal with abortion, religious objections to birth control, race in college admissions and the power of public-sector unions. Cases on immigration and state restrictions on voting also could make it to the court in the next nine months.
The term will play out against the backdrop of the presidential campaign, in which some candidates are talking pointedly about the justices and the prospect of replacing some of them in the next few years. Four justices are in their 80s or late 70s, led by 82-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Commentators on the left and right say the lineup of cases suggests that conservatives will win more often than they will lose over the next few months, in contrast to the liberal side's success last term in gay marriage, health care and housing discrimination, among others.
"This term, I'd expect a return to the norm, in which the right side of the court wins the majority, but by no means all of the cases," said Georgetown University law school's Irv Gornstein.
One reason for the confidence is that, as Supreme Court lawyer John Elwood said: "This is a term of sequels." Affirmative action and union fees have been at the court in recent terms and the justices' positions are more or less known.
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Supreme Court declines to review insider trading case
Legal Watch |
2015/10/03 22:00
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The Supreme Court said Monday it won't hear the Obama administration's appeal of a lower court ruling that made it tougher to prosecute people for trading on leaked inside information.
The justices let stand a decision by the federal appeals court in New York last year that threw out insider trading convictions of two high-profile hedge fund managers.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of Anthony Chiasson, of Manhattan, and Todd Newman, of Needham, Massachusetts, after finding they were too far removed from inside information to be prosecuted.
Prosecutors warned the ruling could hinder the government's campaign to curb insider trading on Wall Street, a crackdown that has resulted in more than 80 arrests and 70 convictions over several years.
Chiasson, who co-founded Level Global Investors based in Greenwich, Conn., and Newman, who had worked for Diamondback Capital Management based in Stamford, Conn., traded on tips from insiders on stock in technology companies Dell Inc. and Nvidia Corp. that generated $72 million in profits. The former portfolio managers were both convicted in December 2012.
The appeals court said prosecutors failed to present enough evidence the men willfully engaged in insider trading or conspired to break the law. It ruled that the government must show a person receiving a tip knew that an insider disclosed confidential information and that the tipster passed the information expecting a personal benefit.
In legal briefs filed with the court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said leaving the appeals court ruling in place would "hurt market participants, disadvantage scrupulous market analysts and impair the government's ability to protect the fairness and integrity of the securities markets."
Both men have denied insider trading. Their lawyers argued that they believed they were making trades based on legitimate research.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan told reporters on a conference call Monday that the Supreme Court's decision means "that there's a category of conduct that arguably will go unpunished going forward."
"If you have a CEO who has access to material, non-published information about earnings or anything else of a very sensitive nature and decides he wants to tip a relative or a buddy or a crony, knowing that person is going to trade on it to the tune and profit of millions of dollars, we would have to think long and hard, given Newman, whether to prosecute a person like that," Bharara said.
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