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Federal court hears appeal of Minnesota sex offender ruling
Headline News |
2016/04/11 08:42
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The lengthy legal debate over a Minnesota program that keeps sex offenders confined indefinitely after they complete their prison sentences shifted south Tuesday as state officials urged a federal appeals court nearly 500 miles away to overturn a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional.
Solicitor General Alan Gilbert told a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that District Judge Donovan Frank "lost his neutrality" when he made critical comments before ruling last summer. Even before his ruling, the judge called the program "draconian" and said it is "clearly broken" and needs to be reformed.
"He has prejudged the program," said Gilbert, who asked the jurists to reverse the lower court ruling and appoint a new judge to consider the suit by 14 plaintiffs on behalf of the more than 700 civilly committed offenders. The panel did not immediately issue a decision after hearing 20-minute presentations by both sides.
Only a handful of offenders have been provisionally released to community-based settings in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program's 20-plus-year history, which is why the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit say it's tantamount to a life sentence.
While civilly committed offenders in California, Wisconsin, New Jersey and other states are allowed to re-enter society after completing treatment, no one has been fully discharged from Minnesota's program.
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Kansas Supreme Court to consider right to abortion
Legal Watch |
2016/04/06 08:41
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The Kansas Supreme Court has agreed to consider a groundbreaking ruling that determined the conservative state's constitution protects abortion rights independently from the U.S. Constitution.
The appeal came after the Kansas Court of Appeals refused to implement the state's first-in-the-nation ban on a common second-trimester abortion method. Critics fear that if the ruling is upheld, it could be used by abortion rights supporters to challenge other state laws restricting abortion.
Attorneys on both sides asked the high court to consider the case. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss granted the request on Monday. No hearing has been set.
The case centers on the constitutionality of a measure Kansas lawmakers passed last year that bars the use of certain techniques used in dilation and evacuation abortions. The case involves two abortion clinic owners from Overland Park who sued last year to stop the law from taking effect, arguing it put an unfair burden on their right to perform abortions.
In a ruling last summer, a Shawnee County District Court judge sided with the clinics but also said a section of the Kansas Constitution ensures the right to terminate a pregnancy. The Kansas Court of Appeals upheld the decision 7-7, because tie vote means the lower court ruling stands. The ruling was released in January, on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.
Kansans for Life said the state Supreme Court ruling could impact other states with similar restrictions. |
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Supreme Court rejects Blagojevich appeal in corruption case
Legal News |
2016/03/28 18:24
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appeal of his corruption convictions that included his attempt to sell the vacant Senate seat once occupied by President Barack Obama.
The justices let stand an appeals court ruling that found Blagojevich crossed the line when he sought money in exchange for naming someone to fill the seat. Blagojevich, 59, is serving a 14-year sentence at a federal prison in Colorado.
A federal appeals court last year threw out five of his 18 convictions and Blagojevich was hoping the Supreme Court would consider tossing the rest. His lawyers argued in an 83-page November filing that the line between the legal and illegal trading of political favors has become blurred, potentially leaving politicians everywhere subject to prosecution.
The appeal to the high court was a last slim hope for Blagojevich, who has proclaimed his innocence for years. Since his 2008 arrest and through his two trials, Blagojevich has argued he was participating in legal, run-of-the-mill politicking.
Blagojevich meanwhile is awaiting a resentencing ordered in July by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago when it ruled to toss the five convictions.
The Supreme Court hears only around 80 cases a year out of more than 10,000 requests and typically accepts cases that raise weighty and divisive legal issues. |
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Karadzic convicted of genocide, sentenced to 40 years
Headline News |
2016/03/24 16:39
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A U.N. court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges Thursday and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war that left 100,000 people dead.
As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but showed little emotion.
The U.N. court found Karadzic guilty of genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe's worst mass murder since the Holocaust.
Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic was the only person in the Bosnian Serb leadership with the power to halt the genocide.
In a carefully planned operation, Serb forces transported Muslim men to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Kwon said Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, intended "that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed."
Karadzic was also held criminally responsible for murder, attacking civilians and terror for overseeing the deadly 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the war and for taking hostage U.N. peacekeepers.
However, the court acquitted Karadzic in a second genocide charge, for a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces. |
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Court gives green light to death penalty fast-tracking
Legal Watch |
2016/03/23 16:39
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A federal appeals court Wednesday cleared the way for the Department of Justice to allow states to have their inmates' death penalty appeals expedited through federal court.
Legal organizations that challenged the DOJ's criteria for certifying states for the fast-track program lacked standing to bring the lawsuit, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The court also noted that the DOJ had not yet granted any certifications, and those certifications would be reviewed by a separate appeals court.
The decision threw out a lower court ruling that blocked the certification process.
The fast-track program would require inmates to file petitions in federal court within six months of a final ruling on their appeal in state court. They normally have a year. It would also require federal courts to act faster on the inmates' petitions.
At least one state, Arizona, has asked the DOJ to certify it for the fast-track program.
Opponents say it would force attorneys representing death penalty inmates to scramble to file appeals, possibly leading some cases to be neglected. Supporters say the program could take years off the death penalty appeals process, giving crime victims faster justice.
"This decision is important not only for the families of murder victims, but also for everyone in the United States who depends upon the rule of law and relies upon the courts to follow it," Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said in a statement. The Sacramento-based nonprofit organization advocates for swift punishment for guilty defendants and filed arguments in the case.
Marc Shapiro, an attorney for the legal organizations that sued — the San Francisco-based Habeas Corpus Resource Center and the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Arizona — said he will ask a larger 9th Circuit panel to review the ruling.
"We're living in a time where our system of capital punishment is being exposed for its critical flaws," he said. "There's a heightened need for assuring we're not sending innocent or otherwise undeserving people to the execution chamber."
To qualify for the fast-track program, a state has to require a court to appoint an attorney to represent an indigent capital inmate unless the inmate rejects the attorney or is not indigent, according to the 9th Circuit's ruling. Regulations finalized by the DOJ in 2013 set benchmarks for attorney competency.
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Supreme Court will hear Samsung-Apple patent dispute
Legal News |
2016/03/21 23:20
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The Supreme Court has agreed to referee a pricy patent dispute between Samsung and Apple.
The justices said Monday they will review a $399 million judgment against South Korea-based Samsung for illegally copying patented aspects of the look of Apple's iPhone.
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, and Samsung are the top two manufacturers of increasingly ubiquitous smartphones.
The two companies have been embroiled in patent fights for years.
The justices will decide whether a court can order Samsung to pay Apple every penny it made from the phones at issue, even though the disputed features are a tiny part of the product.
The federal appeals court in Washington that hears patent cases ruled for Apple.
None of the earlier-generation Galaxy and other Samsung phones involved in the lawsuit remains on the market, Samsung said.
The case involved common smartphone features for which Apple holds patents: the flat screen, the rectangular shape with rounded corners, a rim and a screen of icons.
The case, Samsung v. Apple, 15-777, will be argued in the court's new term that begins in October.
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Judge begins to deliver verdict in Ukrainian pilot trial
Headline News |
2016/03/21 23:20
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A Russian court has begun reading a verdict for Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who is charged with complicity to murder two Russian journalists in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
The judge began reading the verdict Monday morning. He quoted arguments by prosecutors who said Savchenko, who served in a volunteer Ukrainian battalion at the time, called in the coordinates for shelling that killed the two journalists and several civilians in July 2014. He also quoted them as saying she was driven by "political hatred" toward residents of Ukraine's Luhansk region.
The judge in the trial quoted the prosecution saying that Savchenko was part of a "criminal group" and aimed to kill an "unlimited number of people."
Prosecutors have asked for a 23-year prison sentence for Savchenko. Sentencing is expected on Tuesday.
This story has been corrected to show that Savchenko has not been found guilty. The judge, quoting prosecutors, said Savchenko was complicit in the killing, but stopped short of pronouncing her guilty. A verdict will come at the end of the verdict-reading process, which is expected to take two days.
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