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Mexican Supreme Court orders release of man in 1992 murders
Legal News |
2015/03/20 22:39
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Mexico's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of a Mexican-American jailed on a homicide conviction since 1992, ruling he had been tortured.
The court's ruling applied to the long-disputed conviction of Alfonso Martin del Campo Dodd in the murder of his sister and brother-in-law. It has been one of Mexico's longest and hardest-fought legal cases.
Lawyers for the dead couple's now-grown daughters criticized Wednesday's ruling, saying it was a blow to victims' rights.
"This is an offense to the victims," said Samuel Gonzalez, a former top anti-drug prosecutor who has helped defend victims' rights. "The victims did not get justice."
The court said police tortured Martin Del Campo Dodd into confessing to the killings, citing administrative proceedings filed against one officer two years after Campo Dodd was arrested. The court said he should be freed "in light of the proof that torture was used to obtain his confession in the two crimes, without there being any other incriminatory evidence."
The Mexican government fought for years to keep Martin Del Campo Dodd in prison despite pressure from abroad to release him. He holds U.S. and Mexican citizenship.
The couple were stabbed to death in their Mexico City home. Martin del Campo Dodd was at the home and said two masked assailants kidnapped him and stuffed him into the trunk of a car, which they later abandoned.
He signed a confession to the killings, but later claimed he did it under torture. He was sentenced to 50 years behind bars for the murder. |
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High court won't hear challenge to Vermont campaign law
Legal News |
2015/01/13 21:08
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The Supreme Court won't hear a challenge to part of Vermont's campaign finance laws that impose contribution limits on political action committees.
The justices on Monday declined to hear an appeal from the Vermont Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion group. The group argued that Vermont's campaign finance registration, reporting and disclosure requirements for PACs were too broad and unconstitutional.
The group argued that a subcommittee it created should not be subject to Vermont's $2,000 limit on contributions to PACs because the subcommittee does not give money directly to candidates and makes only independent expenditures.
But a federal judge rejected those arguments, finding that there was no clear accounting between the two committees. A federal appeals court agreed. |
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Court won't overturn ruling on Arizona no-bail law
Legal News |
2014/11/18 00:07
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Hundreds of immigrants who have been denied bail under a strict Arizona law will now have the opportunity to be released after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling Thursday in the closely watched case.
The high court kept intact a lower-court ruling from three weeks ago that struck down the law, which was passed in 2006 amid a series of immigration crackdowns in Arizona over the past decade. The law denies bail to immigrants who are in the country illegally and have been charged with a range of felonies that include shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and murder.
As a result, immigrants spend months in jail and often simply plead guilty and get turned over to federal immigration authorities for deportation.
The decision clears the way for a wave of bail hearings for immigrants across Arizona. |
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Texas abortion clinics reopen after court reprieve
Legal News |
2014/10/20 19:56
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Texas abortion clinics that closed under tough new restrictions began reopening Wednesday after winning a reprieve at the U.S. Supreme Court, but the facilities were scheduling women with uncertainty and skeleton staffs.
A five-sentence ruling late Tuesday blocked parts of a sweeping Texas abortion law that required clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards starting Oct. 3. That had left only eight abortion facilities in the nation's second-most populous state.
Celebration among some abortion providers, however, was muted by logistics and fears that the victory is only temporary. Women seeking abortions kept phone lines busy at the Routh Street Women's Clinic in Dallas, where a former staff of 17 people is down to to single digits after the procedure was halted by the law earlier this month.
The high court only suspended the restrictions for now pending appeals, and offered no explanation for the decision.
"Some of them will come back, and some of them probably aren't," said Ginny Braun, the Dallas clinic director, about former employees that took other jobs in the past two weeks. "As one person eloquently put it this morning, whiplash is no longer a sustainable life choice for her."
Along the Texas-Mexico border, the only abortion clinic in 300 miles will resume abortion services in McAllen starting Friday, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman's Health. But staffing and financial difficulties prevent any immediate reopening of clinics in Austin and Fort Worth, and the prospects of reopening another in Beaumont are even dimmer, she said.
Hagstrom Miller said she has laid off more than 50 employees since last year, and that the on-again, off-again status of her clinics have led to taking on $500,000 in debt over the last six months. |
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German court: chronically ill could grow marijuana
Legal News |
2014/07/22 20:54
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Some Germans may soon be able to grow their own marijuana to relieve chronic pain after a ruling from a court in Cologne.
The Cologne administrative court ruled Tuesday in favor of three plaintiffs who had sued for the right to grow marijuana for therapeutic purposes, sending the cases back to the government agency responsible for approving medical marijuana products.
The court says the three demonstrated they could not combat their pain any other way and could not afford to purchase medical marijuana, which is permitted in Germany but not usually covered by the country's health insurance system.
The court also stipulated that allowing marijuana cultivation should depend upon a "thorough and individual" examination of each case, and rejected two other claims. |
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High court will hear appeal over illegal threats
Legal News |
2014/06/17 18:02
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The Supreme Court will consider the free speech rights of people who use violent or threatening language on Facebook and other electronic media where the speaker's intent is not always clear.
The court on Monday agreed to take up the case of an eastern Pennsylvania man sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for posting online rants about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a school and slitting the throat of an FBI agent.
A federal appeals court rejected Anthony Elonis' claim that his comments were protected by the First Amendment. He says he never meant to carry out the threats. He claims he was depressed and made the online posts in the form of rap lyrics as a way of venting his frustration after his wife left him.
At his trial, the jury was instructed that Elonis could be found guilty if an objective person could consider his posts to be threatening. Attorneys for Elonis argue that the jury should have been told to apply a subjective standard and decide whether Elonis meant the messages to be understood as threats.
Elonis' lawyers say a subjective standard is appropriate given the impersonal nature of communication over the Internet, which can lead people to misinterpret messages. They argue that comments intended for a smaller audience can be viewed by others unfamiliar with the context and interpret the statements differently than was intended. |
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Coast Guard cadet won't be court-martialed
Legal News |
2014/06/13 19:33
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A U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadet accused of entering a classmate's room and touching her leg will not face a court martial, the academy said Thursday.
Its superintendent agreed with the recommendations of an investigating officer that reasonable grounds did not exist to support the charge of abusive sexual contact against cadet Alexander Stevens. The superintendent, Rear Adm. Sandra Stosz, also agreed with a recommendation to impose nonjudicial punishment on Stevens for unlawfully entering a cadet barracks room while drunk and touching another cadet on the leg, Coast Guard officials said.
The academy did not disclose details of the punishment, citing Stevens' privacy rights. Nonjudicial punishment may include a reprimand, arrest in quarters for up to 30 days, pay forfeiture or expulsion from the academy.
"The academy has remained committed to providing all needed support to the victim, ensuring a full and fair proceeding in compliance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and holding those who commit misconduct accountable for their actions," said Capt. James McCauley, the commandant of cadets.
In September, Stevens said, he went into the fellow cadet's room by mistake, believing it was his girlfriend's room, an investigator testified.
He was drunk at the time and made a mental mistake, Lt. John Cole, who represented Stevens, said during a pretrial investigation at the academy in April.
The classmate testified that a man entered her room in the middle of the night, touched her on her thigh and moved his hand up her leg before she screamed and kicked him. The cadet said she found it hard to sleep and concentrate after the encounter, and her grades suffered. |
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