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Texas Supreme Court halts execution of man in shaken baby case
Court Center |
2024/10/18 13:24
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The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.
In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson had been confined to a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.
“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution. “He praised God and he thanked his supporters. And that’s pretty much what he had to say.”
She said Roberson would be returned to the Polunsky Unit, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the east, where the state’s male death row is located.
Roberson, 57, was convicted of killing of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.
It is rare for the Texas Supreme Court — the state’s highest civil court — to get involved in a criminal matter.
But how the all-Republican court wound up stopping Roberson’s execution in the final hours underlined the extraordinary maneuvers used by a bipartisan coalition of state House lawmakers who have come to his defense.
Rejected by courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators on Wednesday tried a different route: issuing a subpoena for Roberson to testify before a House committee next week, which would be days after he was scheduled to die. The unusual plan to buy time, some of them conceded, had never been tried before.
They argued that executing Roberson before he could offer subpoenaed testimony would violate the Legislature’s constitutional authority. Less than two hours before Roberson’s execution, a judge in Austin sided with lawmakers and paused the execution, but that was then reversed by an appeals panel. The Texas Supreme Court then weighed in with its order, ending a night of uncertainty.
Roberson is scheduled to testify before the committee Monday.
“This is an innocent man. And there’s too much shadow of a doubt in this case,” said Democratic state Rep. John Bucy. “I agree this is a unique decision today. We know this is not a done deal. He has a unique experience to tell and we need to hear that testimony in committee on Monday.”
Gov. Greg Abbott had authority to delay Roberson’s punishment for 30 days. Abbott has halted only one imminent execution in nearly a decade as governor and has not spoken publicly about the case.
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Nebraska high court to decide if residents with felony records can vote
Legal Watch |
2024/10/15 20:25
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Thousands of Nebraska residents with felony records will learn Wednesday whether they’ll be able to vote in next month’s hotly contested elections after the state Supreme Court issues its ruling on a lawsuit seeking to restore their voting rights.
The state’s high court heard arguments in August on a lawsuit challenging a decision by the state’s top election officials to ignore a new state law restoring the voting rights of those who have been convicted of a felony.
The decision comes just days ahead of state deadlines to register to vote in the Nov. 5 general election.
Brad Christian-Sallis, a director at the nonprofit civic engagement organization Nebraska Table, said he has heard from those with felony criminal records who were looking forward to voting not just in the presidential race, but on state and local races that affect their neighborhoods and schools.
“It’s absolutely caused a lot of anxiety and frustration,” he said.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen ordered county election officials not to register those with felony convictions for the November election after the state’s attorney general, Mike Hilgers, said in July that the new law was unconstitutional. Evnen had sought that opinion from Hilgers.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of several Nebraska residents who would be denied the right to vote under Evnen’s directive. Because Evnen’s move came only weeks ahead of the November election, the ACLU asked to take the lawsuit directly to the Nebraska Supreme Court, and the high court agreed.
Evnen’s order could keep more than 7,000 Nebraska residents from voting in the upcoming election, the ACLU has said. Many of them reside in Nebraska’s Omaha-centered 2nd Congressional District, where both the race for president and Congress could be in play. In an otherwise reliably Republican state that, unlike most others, splits its electoral votes, the district has twice awarded an electoral vote to Democratic presidential candidates — once to Barack Obama in 2008 and again to Joe Biden in 2020.
Civic Nebraska, a voting rights advocacy group, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to force state officials to enact the new law.
“Whenever the decision comes, we have a plan to run registration drives and get the word out,” the group’s voting rights restoration coordinator, Noah Rhoades, said in an open letter to voters last week.
The law, passed by the Nebraska Legislature this year and often referred to by its bill number, LB20, immediately restores the voting rights of people who have successfully completed the terms of their felony sentences.
The attorney general’s opinion says the new law violates the state constitution’s separation of powers because he believes only the Nebraska Board of Pardons has the authority to restore a person’s voting rights through a pardon.
Pardons are hard to get in Nebraska, which requires those convicted of felonies to wait 10 years after their terms to even file an application for a pardon, and are rarely granted. The Pardons Board is made up three members: Evnen, Hilgers and Gov. Jim Pillen. All three are Republicans who have been vocal about their opposition to restoring the voting rights of those with felony records.
Hilgers’ opinion also found unconstitutional a 2005 state law that restored the voting rights of people with felony convictions two years after they complete the terms of their sentences. If that law is upheld as unconstitutional, it could disenfranchise tens of thousands of Nebraskans who have been eligible to vote for the last 19 years.
Evnen has said he has not taken steps to remove from the voter rolls those with felony convictions who had legally registered to vote under the 2005 law. But that has done little to assuage the concern of people who have been able to legally voted for years, Christian-Sallis said.
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Supreme Court grapples with governor’s 400-year veto, calling it ‘crazy’
Law Firm Business |
2024/10/12 18:48
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Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”
The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.
In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.
That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.
The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.
Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.
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US court to review civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism
Legal Watch |
2024/10/07 20:28
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A federal appellate court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is reviewing a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”
The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish.
The plaintiffs note that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.
The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.
The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.
In the Louisiana case, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2023 dismissed the lawsuit largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their complaint too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”
Barbier said the lawsuit hinged primarily on the parish’s 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites. The plaintiffs missed the legal window to sue the parish, the judge ruled.
Yet the parish’s land-use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing ongoing discrimination against Black residents in the parish, said Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. They are challenging Barbier’s ruling under the “continuing violations” doctrine on the grounds that discriminatory parish governance persists, allowing for industrial expansion in primarily Black areas.
The lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.
These community members “have tried at every turn to simply have their humanity and dignity be seen and acknowledged,” Spees said. “That’s just been completely disregarded by the local government and has been for generations.”
Another part of the complaint argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.
At its core, the complaint alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.
Lawyers for St. James Parish said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.
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Supreme Court leaves in place two Biden environmental regulations
Attorneys News |
2024/10/04 03:28
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The Supreme Court left in place Friday two Biden administration environmental regulations aimed at reducing industry emissions of planet-warming methane and toxic mercury.
The justices did not detail their reasoning in the orders, which came after a flurry of emergency applications to block the rules from industry groups and Republican-leaning states. There were no noted dissents.
The high court is still considering challenges to a third Environmental Protection Agency rule aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The regulations are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration aimed at curbing climate change that includes financial incentives to buy electric vehicles and upgrade infrastructure, and rules tightening tailpipe pollution standards for cars and trucks.
The industry groups and states had argued the EPA overstepped its authority and set unattainable standards with the new regulations. The EPA, though, said the rules are squarely within its legal responsibilities and would protect the public.
An EPA spokesperson said Friday the agency is pleased that the Supreme Court denied applications to stay the final methane and mercury rules. EPA believes the rule tightening methane emissions from oil and gas drilling will deliver major climate and health benefits for all Americans, while the mercury rule will limit hazardous pollution from coal-fired power plants, spokesperson Remmington Belford said.
The methane rule will build on innovative technologies and solutions that many oil- and gas-producing states and companies are already using or have committed to use, while the mercury and air toxics rule “will ensure that the nation’s coal-fired power plants meet up-to-date standards for hazardous air pollutants,” Belford said.
Both rules are firmly grounded in the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, he said. The Supreme Court has shot down other environmental regulations in recent years, including a landmark decision that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in 2022, and another that halted the agency’s air-pollution-fighting “good neighbor” rule.
The methane rule puts new requirements on the oil and gas industry, which is the largest emitter of the gas that’s a key contributor to climate change. A lower court previously refused to halt the regulation.
Methane is the main component in natural gas and is far more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Sharp cuts in methane emissions are a global priority — including the United States — to slow the rate of climate change.
The methane rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells. It also regulates smaller wells that will be required to find and plug methane leaks.
Studies have found that smaller wells produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half the methane emissions from well sites. The plan also calls for a phased-in requirement for energy companies to eliminate routine flaring, or burning of natural gas that is produced by new oil wells.
The states challenging the rule called the new standards “impossible to meet” and said they amounted to an “attack” on the industry.
The mercury rule, meanwhile, came after a reversal of a move by the Trump administration. It updated regulations that were more than a decade old for emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants that can affect the nervous system, kidneys and fetal development.
Industry groups and conservative-leaning states argued emissions were already low enough, and the new standards could force the shuttering coal-fired power plants.
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New rules regarding election certification in Georgia to get test in court
Headline News |
2024/09/30 16:26
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Two controversial new rules passed by Georgia’s State Election Board concerning the certification of vote tallies are set to face their first test in court this week.
The Republican majority on the State Election Board — made up of three members praised by former President Donald Trump praised by name at a recent rally — voted to approve the rules last month. Democrats filed a legal challenge and argue the rules could be used “to upend the statutorily required process for certifying election results in Georgia.”
A bench trial, meaning there is a judge but no jury, is set to begin Tuesday before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.
One of the rules provides a definition of certification that includes requiring county officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results, but it does not specify what that means. The other includes language allowing county election officials “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”
A series of recent appointments means Trump-endorsed Republicans have had a 3-2 majority on the State Election Board since May. That majority has passed several new rules over the past two months that have caused worry among Democrats and others who believe Trump and his allies may use them to cause confusion and cast doubt on the results if he loses this crucial swing state to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.
Another rule the board passed more recently requires that poll workers count the number of paper ballots — not votes — by hand on election night after voting ends. A separate lawsuit filed by a group headed by a former Republican lawmaker initially challenged the two certification rules but was amended last week to also challenge the ballot counting rule and some others that the board passed.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an association of county election officials had cautioned the state board against passing new rules so close to the election. They argued it could cause confusion among poll workers and voters and undermine public trust in the voting process.
The challenge to the certification rules filed by Democratic groups and others asks the judge to confirm that election superintendents — a multi-person election board in most counties — have a duty to certify an election by the deadline provided in the law and have no discretion to withhold or delay certification. They ask that it should be declared invalid if the judge believes either of the rules allows such discretion.
Lawyers for the State Election Board argue the Democrats are asking the judge to “declare what is already enshrined in Georgia law,” that county certification is mandatory and must occur by 5 p.m. the Monday after the election, or the next day if Monday is a holiday, as it is this year. They also argue the challenge is barred by the principle of sovereign immunity and seeks relief that isn’t appropriate under the law.
The challenge was filed by the state and national Democratic parties, as well as county election board members from counties in metro Atlanta, most chosen by the local Democratic Party, as well voters who support Democrats and two Democratic state lawmakers running for reelection. It was filed against the State Election Board, and the state and national Republican parties joined the fight on the board’s side.
The Democrats concede in their challenge that the two rules “could be read not to conflict with Georgia statutes” but they argue “that is not what the drafters of those rules intended.”
“According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or render it wholly optional,” they wrote in a court filing.
They also note that numerous county election officials around the state have already sought to block or delay certification in recent elections and “the new rules hand those officials new tools to do so again in November.”
State lawyers argue that since the argument against the rules is based on the alleged intent of the people who presented them or the way some officials could interpret them, rather than on the text of the rules themselves, the challenge should be thrown out. |
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Senior Hong Kong journalist is sentenced to prison in sedition case
Legal Watch |
2024/09/27 23:27
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A Hong Kong court sentenced a former editor of a shuttered news publication to 21 months in prison on Thursday in a sedition case that is widely seen as an indicator of media freedom in the city, once hailed as a beacon of press freedom in Asia. A second editor was freed after his sentence was reduced because of ill health and time already served in custody.
Former Stand News editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam are the first journalists convicted under a colonial-era sedition law since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Chung was sentenced to 21 months, while Lam was also sentenced but allowed to go free.
The news outlet was one of last in Hong Kong that dared to criticize authorities as Beijing imposed a crackdown on dissidents following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The closure came months after the demise of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai is battling collusion charges under a tough national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.
Last month, the court found Chung and Lam guilty of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious materials, along with Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd., Stand News’ holding company. They faced up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640).
Judge Kwok Wai-kin began the sentencing hearing two hours after the scheduled time. The journalists’ lawyer, Audrey Eu, requested a sentence mitigation, saying Lam had been diagnosed with a rare disease and she was concerned that he could not be treated by the hospital handling his case if he were sent to jail again.
She argued that they be sentenced to up to time served, saying their case was different because they were journalists whose duties were to report different people’s views. The pair were detained for nearly a year after their arrests before being released on bail in late 2022.
In his sentencing, Kwok said the defendants were not genuine journalists but had participated in the territory’s resistance movement.
Kwok wrote in his verdict in August that Stand News had become a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests. He ruled that 11 articles published under the defendants’ leadership carried seditious intent, including commentaries written by activist Nathan Law and veteran journalists Allan Au and Chan Pui-man. Chan, who is also Chung’s wife, earlier pleaded guilty in the Apple Daily case and is in custody awaiting her sentence.
Kwok said Lam and Chung were aware of and agreed with the seditious intent, and that they made Stand News available as a platform to incite hatred against the Beijing and Hong Kong governments and the judiciary.
Eu told the court that the articles in question represented only a small portion of what Stand News had published. The defendants also stressed their journalistic mission in their mitigation letters.
On Thursday morning, dozens of people waited in line to secure a seat in the courtroom. Former Stand News reader Andrew Wong said he wanted to attend the hearing to show his support, though he felt it was like “attending a funeral.” Wong, who works in a non-governmental organization, said he expected the convictions last month, but still felt “a sense that we’ve passed a point of no return” when he heard the verdict.
“Everything we had in the past is gone,” he said. Their trial, which began in October 2022, lasted some 50 days. The verdict was postponed several times for reasons including a wait for an appeal outcome in another landmark sedition case.
Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021, and 18 in 2002.
Self-censorship has also become more common during the political crackdown on dissent following the 2019 protests, with increased reports of harassment against journalists in recent months. In March, the city government enacted another new security law that raised concerns about further curtailment of press freedom.
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