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Connecticut court stands by decision eliminating execution
Top Legal News |
2015/10/01 21:59
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The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday stood by its decision to eliminate the state's death penalty, but the fate of capital punishment in the Constitution State technically remains unsettled.
The state's highest court rejected a request by prosecutors to reconsider its landmark August ruling, but prosecutors have filed a motion in another case to make the arguments they would have made if the court had granted the reconsideration motion.
Lawyers who have argued before the court say it would be highly unusual and surprising for the court to reverse itself on such an important issue in a short period of time, but they say it is possible because the makeup of the court is different. Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., who was in the 4-3 majority to abolish the death penalty, reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and was succeeded by Justice Richard Robinson.
In the August decision, the court ruled that a 2012 state law abolishing capital punishment for future crimes must be applied to the 11 men who still faced execution for killings committed before the law took effect. The decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who was facing the possibility of lethal injection for a 2000 murder-for-hire killing in West Hartford.
The 2012 ban had been passed prospectively because many lawmakers refused to vote for a bill that would spare the death penalty for Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a highly publicized 2007 home invasion in Cheshire.
The state's high court said the death penalty violated the state constitution, "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency," and didn't serve any "legitimate penological purpose." The majority included Norcott and Justices Richard Palmer, Dennis Eveleigh and Andrew McDonald, the same four justices that rejected the prosecution's reconsideration request Thursday.
Chief Justice Chase Rogers and Justices Peter Zarella and Carmen Espinosa bashed the majority in the Santiago case, accusing the other four justices of tailoring their ruling based on personal beliefs. The three dissenting justices also were in favor of the prosecution's motion to reconsider.
Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane had said the majority justices unfairly considered concerns that had not been raised during Santiago's appeal and denied prosecutors the chance to address those concerns. He said prosecutors have filed briefs in the still-pending death penalty appeal of Russell Peeler Jr., raising the same issues they did in the motion for reconsideration in the Santiago case.
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Religious clerks in Kentucky follow law, but see conflict
Top Legal News |
2015/09/19 00:34
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Clerk Mike Johnston prays twice a day, once each morning and once each night, and asks the Lord to understand the decision he made to license same-sex marriage.
“It’s still on my heart,” said Johnston, whose rural Carter County sits just to the east of Rowan County, where clerk Kim Davis sparked a national furor by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, a decision that landed her in jail.
Johnston is one of Kentucky’s 119 other clerks, many of them deeply religious, who watched the Kim Davis saga unfold on national television while trying to reconcile their own faith and their oath of office. Sixteen of them sent pleading letters to the governor noting their own religious objections. But when forced to make a decision, only two have taken a stand as dramatic as Davis and refused to issue licenses.
And others say they find the controversy now swirling around their job title humiliating.
“I wish (Davis) would just quit, because she’s embarrassing everybody,” said Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins, whose office serves the state’s second-largest city, Lexington.
After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered clerks across the state to issue licenses, launching them along markedly different paths. The clerk in Louisville, Bobbie Holsclaw, issued licenses that very day and the mayor greeted happy couples with bottles of champagne.
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Appeals court: Kansas abortion opponent must stand trial
Top Legal News |
2015/07/29 20:11
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A Kansas abortion opponent must stand trial over a letter she sent to a Wichita doctor saying someone might place an explosive under the doctor's car, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned late Tuesday a lower court's summary decision that anti-abortion activist Angel Dillard's letter was constitutionally protected speech. The ruling comes in a civil lawsuit brought against Dillard by the Justice Department under a federal law aimed at protecting access to abortion services. A split three-judge appeals panel said the decision about whether the letter constituted a "true threat" should be left for a jury to decide.
The appeals court also rejected Dillard's argument that the government violated her free speech rights by suing her.
Emails were sent late Tuesday night to Dillard's attorney and a Justice Department spokesman seeking comment.
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division sued Dillard in 2011 under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act after the Valley Center woman wrote a letter to Dr. Mila Means, who was training to offer abortion services at her Wichita clinic. At the time, no doctor was doing abortions in Wichita in the wake of Dr. George Tiller's 2009 murder by an abortion opponent as Tiller ushered at his church.
In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals panel said a jury could reasonably find that the letter conveyed a true threat of violence.
"The context in this case includes Wichita's past history of violence against abortion providers, the culmination of this violence in Dr. Tiller's murder less than two years before Defendant mailed her letter, Defendant's publicized friendship with Dr. Tiller's killer, and her reported admiration of his convictions," the appeals court wrote in its decision.
Dillard wrote in her 2011 letter that thousands of people from across the nation were scrutinizing Means' background and would know her "habits and routines."
"They know where you shop, who your friends are, what you drive, where you live," the letter said. "You will be checking under your car every day — because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it."
Means has testified that her fears upon getting that letter were heightened after reading a news story by The Associated Press that quoted Dillard saying in a July 2009 interview that she had developed a friendship with Scott Roeder while he was in jail awaiting trial for Tiller's murder.
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Appeals court upholds California's shark fin ban
Top Legal News |
2015/07/28 20:12
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A federal appeals court Monday dismissed a legal challenge to a California law banning the sale, distribution and possession of shark fins.
The legislation does not conflict with a 19th century law that gives federal officials authority to manage shark fishing off the California coast or significantly interfere with interstate commerce, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The 2-1 ruling upheld a lower court decision tossing the lawsuit brought by the Chinatown Neighborhood Association and Asian Americans for Political Advancement, a political action committee.
The groups had argued that the ban — passed in 2011 — unfairly targeted the Chinese community, which considers shark fin soup a delicacy. Shark finning is the practice of removing the fins from a living shark, leaving the animal to die.
Joseph Breall, an attorney for the groups, said they were reviewing their options and had not yet decided whether to appeal. He said he was heartened by the dissenting opinion by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who said the plaintiffs should have been allowed to amend their lawsuit.
The plaintiffs had argued on appeal that the shark fin law conflicted with the federal law intended to manage shark fishing off the California coast.
The majority in the 9th Circuit ruling, however, said the federal law has no requirement that a certain number of sharks be harvested, and even if it did, the California law still allowed sharks to be taken for purposes other than obtaining their fins.
The federal law, additionally, envisions a broad role for states in crafting fishery management plans, and, like California's ban, makes conservation paramount, the court said.
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Pakistan court grants bail to top model arrested with cash
Top Legal News |
2015/07/14 05:46
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A Pakistan court granted bail Tuesday to a top model Ayaan Ali, who has been held since March after being caught trying to fly to Dubai with half a million dollars in cash stashed in her luggage, her lawyer said.
In a televised comment, defense lawyer Latif Khosa said the Lahore High Court granted bail to Ali after hearing arguments from both sides.
He said they had started the paperwork for the release of Ali, who has been the focus of Pakistani media's attention since authorities nabbed her at the VIP lounge of Islamabad's airport. Under Pakistani laws, no one can carry over $10,000 on a flight, but authorities found $506,800 tucked into her luggage.
It was unclear when the model would be freed. Ali is being held at a prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Usually, lawyers take one to two days to complete paperwork to get their clients released. |
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Supreme Court upholds key tool for fighting housing bias
Top Legal News |
2015/06/25 16:14
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The Supreme Court handed a surprising victory to the Obama administration and civil rights groups on Thursday when it upheld a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination.
The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing laws prohibit seemingly neutral practices that harm minorities, even without proof of intentional discrimination.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined the court's four liberal members in upholding the use of so-called "disparate impact" cases.
The ruling is a win for housing advocates who argued that the housing law allows challenges to race-neutral policies that have a negative impact on minority groups. The Justice Department has used disparate impact lawsuits to win more than $500 million in legal settlements from companies accused of bias against black and Hispanic customers.
In upholding the tactic, the Supreme Court preserved a legal strategy that has been used for more than 40 years to attack discrimination in zoning laws, occupancy rules, mortgage lending practices and insurance underwriting. Every federal appeals court to consider it has upheld the practice, though the Supreme Court had never previously taken it up.
Writing for the majority, Kennedy said that language in the housing law banning discrimination "because of race" includes disparate impact cases. He said such lawsuits allow plaintiffs "to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification" under traditional legal theories.
"In this way disparate-impact liability may prevent segregated housing patterns that might otherwise result from covert and illicit stereotyping," Kennedy said.
Kennedy was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
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Illinois high court: Comcast must reveal anonymous commenter
Top Legal News |
2015/06/17 23:10
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The Illinois Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court opinion ordering Comcast Cable Communications to identify a subscriber who posted an anonymous message suggesting a political candidate molests children.
The court said Thursday that the internet service provider must identify the subscriber who commented on a 2011 article in the Freeport Journal Standard about Bill Hadley's candidacy for the Stephenson County board.
The commenter, who used the online name "Fuboy," wrote that "Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed" because he can see an elementary school from his home. The comment was an apparent reference to former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky who was convicted of child sex abuse in 2012.
Hadley filed a defamation lawsuit against the commenter and subpoenaed Comcast demanding that it identify the subscriber.
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