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Republicans block nominee to key appeals court
Top Legal News |
2013/11/22 18:14
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Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Barack Obama's nomination of Robert L. Wilkins to a key appellate court, continuing a nomination fight that has stoked partisan tensions in the Senate.
Wilkins, a District Court judge in Washington who in 2010 was confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote, was nominated to fill one of three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is the third straight nominee to the powerful court that Republicans have stopped from being seated.
The Senate voted 53-38 in favor of ending Republican-led delays, falling short of the 60 votes required to advance Wilkins' nomination. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to end debate.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is often referred to as the second most powerful court in the country, after the Supreme Court. Informally known as the D.C. circuit, the court's influence stems from its caseload — it rules on administration orders and regulations — and because some of its judges become Supreme Court justices. The D.C. circuit currently has eight active judges evenly divided between Democratic and Republican nominees.
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Court reinstates death penalty notice for Monfort
Headline News |
2013/11/19 00:41
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The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that King County prosecutors can seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a Seattle police officer.
In a unanimous decision, the high court overturned a February King County Superior Court ruling that had found that Prosecutor Dan Satterberg's decision to seek the death penalty against Christopher Monfort was invalid because he relied on a mitigation investigation by his office, rather than waiting for evidence from the defense. The Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty notice, and sent the case back to the trial court to proceed.
Monfort is accused of killing Officer Tim Brenton and wounding another officer as they sat in a patrol car Oct. 31, 2009, as well as setting fires to police cars earlier that month. Monfort was wounded by police during his arrest about a week later in Tukwila. He is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.
Nearly 10 months after Monfort was arraigned, Satterberg announced he would seek the death penalty. At the time, his office had conducted interviews with more than two dozen of Monfort's friends, acquaintances and family members to see if there was mitigating evidence. Satterberg had not considered any mitigating evidence presented by defense attorneys, because they hadn't given him any.
Under state law, mitigating circumstances that could merit leniency include mental disturbance or disease. |
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Man pleads guilty in hole-in-one prize case
Top Legal News |
2013/11/19 00:40
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Man pleads guilty in hole-in-one prize case
A businessman charged with failing to pay golfers for hole-in-one prizes insured by his company has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay a Montana man $10,000 of a promised $18,000 prize.
Kevin W. Kolenda of Norwalk, Conn., didn't attend Thursday's hearing before Justice of the Peace Karen Orzech in Missoula. His attorney, Brian Tipp, entered a guilty plea on Kolenda's behalf to acting as an insurer without a license. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed a felony insurance fraud charge. Kolenda was given a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Kolenda is the former president and CEO of hole-in-won.com, a company that collects premiums and agrees to pay cash prizes to winners of hole-in-one contests. He has been charged with failing to pay prizes in several states. Last month, he pleaded guilty in Seattle to two felony counts of selling insurance without a license and one count of first-degree theft. He has not been sentenced.
Complaints of Kolenda's company failing to pay prizes have been filed in several other states, and he has been sanctioned by regulators in Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina and Washington. Connecticut officials fined Kolenda $5.9 million in 2009 for illegally offering insurance without a license.
Kolenda was charged in Montana after Troy Peissig was denied an $18,000 prize after hitting a hole-in-one during a 2010 golf tournament in Missoula.
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N. Ind. court helps veterans get back on track
Headline News |
2013/11/11 22:10
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A northern Indiana judge is helping troubled veterans get their lives back in order.
Porter Superior Judge Julia Jent started the Veterans Treatment Court slightly more than two years ago. Case managers, mental health professionals, prosecutors and public defenders work to help veterans who have had a run-in with the law try to solve some of the problems they are facing.
On Friday, six military veterans who graduated from the program. Sixty-three-year-old Paul Hake of Porter says it completely change his life. Hake is a Marine veteran who served in Vietnam. He says he had a problem with alcohol, but now he has his life back.
The class was the third graduating class since the program began. |
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High court reverses pot conviction over evidence
Press Releases |
2013/11/11 22:10
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The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed the conviction of a Beaverhead County man for criminal distribution of dangerous drugs, saying he was convicted based on insufficient evidence.
The court ruled in a 4-1 decision that state prosecutors presented the testimony of just one witness, who said Anthony James Burwell provided her with marijuana in exchange for baby-sitting his two daughters while he went to work in summer 2011.
Jennifer Jones told authorities that the night before she was supposed to baby-sit, she and Burwell smoked a bowl of a substance she said was marijuana, describing it as "green with orange hairs," according to the opinion written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath.
Jones identified Burwell in a list of "people to narc on" that she wrote while in police custody, McGrath wrote. She gave a vague description of the man and said he lived next door to her friend, according to the opinion.
Officers concluded Jones was referring to Burwell, found that he had a medical marijuana card and charged him in October 2011. He was convicted in district court and sentenced to 10 years, with five years suspended.
"Officers never searched Burwell's residence, never attempted a controlled buy and never discovered any marijuana in his possession," McGrath wrote.
No expert analyzed Jones' description of the substance, no other witnesses backed her testimony and she did not describe the effects of the substance, McGrath wrote.
The evidence was insufficient to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the substance was a dangerous drug, the chief justice wrote.
Justice Jim Rice dissented, saying that the majority opinion ignores significant circumstantial evidence and that it was up to the jury that convicted Burwell to determine the facts.
Burwell acknowledged that he did not pay Jones cash for baby-sitting and that Burwell and his son were medical marijuana cardholders permitted to grow the drug at home, Rice wrote.
"The testimony here, of a lay witness identifying marijuana from prior experience with the drug, along with the confirming circumstantial evidence, is sufficient to establish the identity of the substance," Rice wrote.
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2 plead not guilty to killing students near USC
Firm News/California |
2013/11/08 23:04
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Two men have pleaded not guilty to killing two Chinese graduate students who were shot as they sat in a parked car near the University of Southern California last year.
The Los Angeles Times says 20-year-old Javier Bolden and 21-year-old Bryan James entered the pleas Thursday to murder charges.
Prosecutors say the men killed engineering students Ming Qu and Ying Wu a mile from campus in April of last year while stealing their cellphones. Authorities say GPS data was used to track Wu's phone, leading to the arrests.
At a preliminary hearing last month, prosecutors played a recording of a wiretapped phone call between Barnes and Bolden, in which they apparently discussed the attack on the students. |
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High court wrestles with prayer in government
Top Legal News |
2013/11/08 23:03
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The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with the appropriate role for religion in government in a case involving mainly Christian prayers at the start of a New York town's council meetings.
The justices began their day with the marshal's customary plea that "God save the United States and this honorable court." They then plunged into a lively give-and-take that highlighted the sensitive nature of offering religious invocations in public proceedings that don't appeal to everyone and governments' efforts to police the practice.
The court is weighing a federal appeals court ruling that said the Rochester suburb of Greece, N.Y., violated the Constitution because nearly every prayer in an 11-year span was overtly Christian.
The tenor of the argument indicated the justices would not agree with the appellate ruling. But it was not clear what decision they might come to instead.
Justice Elena Kagan summed up the difficult task before the court when she noted that "every time the court gets involved in things like this, it seems to make the problem worse rather than better."
The justices tried out several approaches to the issue, including one suggested by the two Greece residents who sued over the prayers to eliminate explicit references to any religion. |
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