The first defendant to be tried for a triple murder in a schoolyard that shocked New Jersey's largest city into action has been convicted on all counts.

A jury returned the verdict Monday in state Superior Court in Newark against Rodolfo Godinez (goh-DEE'-nez). He was among six men and boys charged with the August 2007 slayings. The jury deliberated for nearly four hours and found him guilty on all 17 counts.

The victims' family members, including several parents, wept quietly as the verdict was read.

The three victims each suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head. A fourth victim survived and testified against Godinez.

Godinez's attorney had argued his client was at the scene but didn't take part in the attacks. Godinez could face life in prison at sentencing.

Three appeals court judges said in an unanimous decision that because Afghanistan is a war zone and that the United States in effect has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay swing the balance against the detainees.

Unlike Guantanamo Bay, "it is undisputed that Bagram, indeed the entire nation of Afghanistan, remains a theater of war," the judges said in turning aside the requests of a Tunisian and two Yemeni prisoners.

In the case of Guantanamo Bay detainees, who do have the right to challenge their confinement in U.S. courts, the United States has maintained its total control of the Guantanamo Bay facility for over a century, even in the face of a hostile government, the court noted.

The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killed anyone.

By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release.

The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide.

"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the Eighth Amendment does not permit."

Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court's four liberal justices about Graham. But Roberts said he does not believe the ruling should extend to all young offenders who are locked up for crimes other than murder; he was a "no" vote on the ruling.

Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing, although roughly three dozen states allow for the possibility of such prison terms. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United States are serving those terms, according to data compiled by opponents of the sentences.

Those inmates are in Florida and seven other states — California, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina — according to a Florida State University study. More than 2,000 other juveniles are serving life without parole for killing someone. Their sentences are not affected by Monday's decision.

CDC, COUNTY AND ILLINOIS STATE HEALTH DEPARTMENT REPORTS ARE “INADMISSIBLE,” JUDGE RULES;

A state court judge is barring from evidence studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Illinois Department of Health, and the McHenry County Health Department in what is believed to be the largest brain cancer cluster cases in the U.S. courts. The first trial in the group of 31 cases is to begin here on June 7.

Court of Common Pleas Judge Allan Tereshko last week ruled against Rohm & Haas/Dow Chemical, the defendant, deciding that the public health epidemiological studies are “irrelevant” to the case and “can only serve as a source of confusion and misdirection.”

The brain cancer cluster victims from McCullom Lake, Illinois, are asserting that Philadelphia-based Rohm & Haas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow, poisoned the air and groundwater in the McCullom Lake community with vinyl chloride (among other toxic chemicals) discharged from its chemical-manufacturing plant into an unlined waste pit near their homes. The Plaintiffs allege that prolonged exposure caused them to contract rare malignant brain cancers and brain tumors; 10 of the victims have died.

The first three brain cancer victims – next-door neighbors who were each diagnosed with malignant brain cancer within the same year – filed suit in April 2006.  Less than a month later, the McHenry Health Department, using outdated cancer-rate data (based on zip codes) for the area that includes McCullom Lake, told local residents there was no epidemiological evidence of a brain cancer cluster.  McCullom Lake’s population is only about 1,000 people; the population of its zip-code region is roughly 50,000.   Later, the state Department of Health announced that more recent data showed that there was no epidemiological evidence of a brain cancer cluster in McHenry County – population more than 300,000.  Under public pressure, the county government then asked the CDC to review the analyses of the two health departments. 

The Court’s order comes after attorneys for Rohm and Haas/Dow have claimed in pre-trial proceedings and in the news media that no public agency has found a brain cancer cluster in McCullom Lake.  Their statements rely on the flawed studies that the judge has now ruled inadmissible, according to Aaron J. Freiwald, lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs.

“The studies cited by the defendant were about as valid in this case as if you did a study of brain cancer rates in the entire state of Illinois or in all of the Western Hemisphere,” Freiwald said.  “They, too, wouldn’t tell you anything about brain cancer rates in McCullom Lake. When you do the math, using reliable, objective data, there is no escaping the fact there was and is a cancer cluster in McCullom Lake Village.”

The trial Court, in granting Plaintiff’s Motion to Preclude evidence of the studies, noted that the studies supported by the defendants “do not attempt to discretely address the pattern of brain cancer represented in the significantly smaller subset which is the Village.”

The first brain cancer cluster case to go to trial will be on behalf of Joanne Branham, who lived with her husband Franklin Delano Branham in McCullom Lake for 30 years.  Mr. Branham was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a lethal form of brain cancer, in 2004, just a few years after he and Joanne relocated to Apache Junction, Arizona, near Phoenix. He died just one month after brain surgery. 

Jury selection is scheduled for June 3rd. 

Contacts:
Aaron J. Freiwald, Esq.
ajf@layserfreiwald.com
215.875.8000
Stephan Rosenfeld (for Layser & Freiwald)
215.514.4101
steph@idadvisors.com

A federal appeals court on Friday granted Dish Network Corp. a rare, full-court review of a ruling it had earlier lost to TiVo Inc., one that could have resulted in the satellite TV company disabling millions of digital video recorders.

Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington breathed new life into litigation that Dish has consistently lost to TiVo. Dish's decision to seek an "en banc" review was seen as CEO Charlie Ergen's last straw effort as damages mounted. Ergen had even believed that the appeals court was unlikely to grant it.

Shares of DVR pioneer TiVo fell by $6.52, or 37.5 percent, to $10.87 in midday trading. Dish rose by $1.22, or 5.6 percent, to $23.18.

But it's uncertain whether Dish will have eventual victory given that TiVo has prevailed in a series of other court rulings.

TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for patent infringement over a technology that stored and retrieved video on DVRs, which lets viewers pause, rewind and replay live TV. Dish lost the case on appeal, paid TiVo $104.6 million in damages and interest and was barred from using the technology.

Oprah Winfrey’s production company wants a federal judge to force a prominent Boston law firm to provide information about one of its former attorneys to bolster its case in a patent-infringement lawsuit against her book club.

The lawsuit poses serious threats to the entire publishing industry, according to Harpo Productions attorney Charles Babcock.

Winfrey’s Harpo filed a motion last week to compel Fish & Richardson to hand over documents and give a deposition regarding Scott Harris, a former patent prosecution attorney in its San Diego office.

Harpo is being sued by Illinois Computer Research, a Chicago holding company that bought Harris’ 2006 patent for Internet technology that allows readers to review digital excerpts from books prior to buying them. Harpo claims the patent is unenforceable. The case is set for a July trial in Illinois.

Harpo wants Fish to comply with a subpoena, because it was party to a similar patent lawsuit that ICR filed against Google, then a Fish client, in 2007.

ICR, which is tied to Harris, added Fish as a defendant in that lawsuit after Fish forced Harris’ resignation several days following its filing.

In court documents, Fish claimed Harris used Fish resources to build a portfolio of patents and cash in on them by selling them to parties that he knew would file infringement cases against companies that included his own law firm’s clients. The suit was settled in 2008.

Roman Polanski's request for access to sealed transcripts of testimony by a former prosecutor detailing alleged misconduct should be rejected because of the director's fugitive status, prosecutors argued Thursday in a court filing.

Polanski's attorneys have asked a judge to unseal testimony taken earlier this year by the original prosecutor handling the case, Roger Gunson. They have said it will help their efforts to fight Polanksi's extradition from Switzerland, where he remains under house arrest.

Deputy District Attorney David Walgren wrote in Thursday's filing that the request should be denied because Polanski has repeatedly refused to return to Los Angeles for sentencing.

He said allegations of misconduct in the case can and should be dealt with at Polanski's sentencing.

A hearing on Polanski's motion is scheduled for Monday afternoon.