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Texas executes second foreign national since ICJ order
Top Legal News |
2008/08/08 14:15
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Convicted murderer Heliberto Chi on Thursday became the second foreign national to be put to death in Texas since the International Court of Justice ordered the US to stay such executions. The US Supreme Court refused to grant either a stay or certiorari just hours before the Honduran man was executed at 6 pm local time. Lawyers for the Honduran government have argued that Chi was improperly prevented from contacting his government in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Last month, lawyers for Mexico made a similar argument before the ICJ to block the execution of Mexican citizen Jose Ernesto Medellin, which took place on Tuesday.
The governor of Texas announced his refusal to comply with the ICJ order last month. In March, the US Supreme Court ruled in Medellin v. Texas that neither a 2005 memorandum from President Bush ordering Texas to rehear several cases against Mexican nationals nor the March 2004 ICJ decision were binding on Texas officials who had refused to rehear Medellin's case. Last year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Chi's lethal injection execution while the US Supreme Court considered Baze v. Rees, a case reviewing whether lethal injection is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. |
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Female Football Player Claims Discrimination
Top Legal News |
2008/08/06 16:07
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A female high-school football player claims she was discriminated against and suffered a severe injury, because her coach "wanted to show that girls were not tough enough to play football."
The Evansville Community School District and head coach Ron Grovesteen discriminated against Ivyanne Elborough by refusing to give her a permanent jersey, denying her access to a women's locker room to change and forcing her to cut her hair, Elborough and her mother claim in Federal Court.
Elborough had joined the Evansville High School football team as a freshman. She claims the coach posted the practice schedule only in the boys' locker room, where she could not see it. Similarly, she says snacks were served there, preventing Elborough from enjoying them with the rest of the team.
"This had the effect of locating certain aspects of team camaraderie in a place that was inaccessible to Plaintiff Elborough," the lawsuit claims.
Grovesteen, allegedly made Elborough cut her hair "very short" twice, even though boys on the team were permitted to have longer hair styles. She claims Grovesteen told her that "cutting her hair like a boy's was a commitment she needed to be willing to make to play football."
She says Grovesteen refused to unlock the women's locker room so that Elborough could get her safety gear and allowed the plaintiff to practice without it. As a result, Elborough was seriously injured during practice. He was "malicious and willful in failing to prevent injury to Plaintiff Elborough ... because he wanted to deter (her) and future female students from participating on the football team."
Elborough and her mom seek compensation for alleged injuries, medical costs, humiliation, mental and emotional distress, and other damages. They are represented by Jett Scott Olson. |
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Anheuser-Bush Invokes Cuban Embargo To Fight Buyout
Top Legal News |
2008/07/09 14:18
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Anheuser-Busch has fired back at InBev, claiming the Belgium-based beer company made false statements about its buyout plan to try to buy the American beer giant at a discount. Among other things, Anheuser-Busch claims that InBev's 570 workers in Cuba, where InBev owns 55 percent of the beer market, would run afoul of the U.S. trade embargo.
In its federal claim, Anheuser-Busch challenges InBev's declaration that it would base its North American headquarters in St. Louis. InBev's Cuban operations would prevent that because of the Trading with the Enemy Act and Cuban Assets Control Regulations, the complaint states.
The lawsuit also questions InBev's statement that it has fully committed financing to buy Anheuser-Busch.
"Given the current state of the credit markets, no group of lenders would unconditionally agree to loan InBev the $40 billion it will need," the complaint states. "Any commitments InBev has received are certainly rife with conditions leaving the proposed lenders free to walk away if, for example, market conditions deteriorate, InBev's or the Company's performance worsens, or they are unable to syndicate their loans. For InBev to tout its purportedly 'fully committed' financing without disclosing these conditions is materially misleading."
Anheuser-Busch seeks an injunction prohibiting InBev from soliciting shareholders until it has clarified the allegedly misleading statements. InBev sued in Delaware state court in June, seeking to oust Anheuser-Busch's Board of Directors after the board rejected InBev's $47 billion offer.
Anheuser-Busch is represented by James Bennett. |
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Refco CEO Bennett Gets 16 Years
Top Legal News |
2008/07/08 14:19
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Former Refco CEO Phillip Bennett was sentenced on July 3 to 16 years in prison and ordered to pay $2.4 billion for his role in the company's $2.4 billion fraud. Bennett pleaded guilty in February to all 20 charges against him, including conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.
Bennett oversaw massive book juggling to hide losses and inflate revenue. The frauds were discovered after Thomas H. Lee Partners bought Refco in August 2004. The company collapsed in October 2005.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald "held Bennett responsible for stealing approximately $2.4 billion from Refco's banks and investors," the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Bennett, 59, of Gladstone, N.J., was ordered to report to prison on Sept. 4. |
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DC police launch voluntary handgun search program
Top Legal News |
2008/07/03 14:30
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Washington DC police are launching a new voluntary program to reduce the number of guns in the city after the US Supreme Court ruled last month that a city ban on private handgun ownership violated the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Under the Safe Homes Initiative, police will ask residents for permission to search their homes for guns and residents will receive amnesty from prosecution for any weapons confiscated under the program. Critics allege that the program could amount to a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure if homeowners are intimidated into allowing the searches. The Washington DC chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has distributed flyers advising DC residents of their constitutional rights. Other cities are considering similar programs following the Supreme Court ruling. Gun ownership advocacy groups have filed lawsuits in Chicago and San Francisco seeking to overturn laws which ban handguns within those cities. In September 2007, Washington DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and DC Attorney General Linda Singer ormally appealed a March 2007 federal court ruling which invalidated the District of Columbia's handgun ban . The Supreme Court affirmed a March DC Circuit holding that the city's 30-year-old ban on private possession of handguns was unconstitutionally broad.
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Federal court issues stay in SC execution
Top Legal News |
2008/06/20 15:52
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| A man scheduled to be executed on Friday was issued a stay just minutes before he was to be electrocuted, triggering a flurry of legal moves as the state sought to carry out the sentence before a midnight deadline. James Earl Reed had been scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday. A federal judge in Columbia issued the stay at 5:40 p.m. after a defense attorney's last-minute request for the execution to be halted. Five hours later, the appeals court vacated the stay and defense lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution. The state was fighting that possibility. Under the state's execution order, the death sentence had to be carried out by midnight or it would have to be rescheduled. By 11 p.m., as the high court considered the defense's request, witnesses for the execution were being brought to the death chamber. Reed, 49, has been on death row since 1996, when he was convicted of murdering Joseph and Barbara Lafayette in their Charleston County home two years earlier. Prosecutors said he was looking for an ex-girlfriend. During his trial, Reed fired his attorney and represented himself, denying the killings despite a confession and arguing that no physical evidence placed him at the scene. Jurors found him guilty and decided he should die. In the request for the stay, the defense attorney cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision the day before regarding defendants' rights to represent themselves, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Henry Floyd. The high court on Thursday said a defendant can be judged competent to stand trial, yet incapable of acting as his own lawyer. Reed would be the first person executed by electric chair in the U.S. in nearly a year and South Carolina's first since 2004. In South Carolina, anyone sentenced to death may choose the electric chair or lethal injection. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, eight other states electrocute inmates. |
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FTC Appeals D.C. Circuit Order In Rambus Case
Top Legal News |
2008/06/09 16:11
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The Federal Trade Commission claims the D.C. Circuit misunderstood patent law in finding Rambus Corp. a "lawful monopolist," though the memory chip-maker abused its power as a member of a standards-setting organization to acquire that monopoly.
The FTC seeks a rehearing en banc of the court's April 22 order setting aside the FTC's final order that Rambus cease and desist.
"The proceeding involved an issue of exceptional importance, in that the panel's failure to recognize the competitive harm that anticompetitive deception causes in the context of industry standard-setting organizations constitutes a significant error that has grave implications for beneficial industry standard-setting," the FTC says.
It claims the federal court panel's decision "is inconsistent with the causation standard for monopolization articulated by this Court's en banc decision in United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3rd 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001)."
And the FTC claims, "The panel decision improperly extends the Supreme Court's holding in holding in NYNEX v. Discon, Inc., 525 U.S. 128 (1998), to protect a firm's use of deception to achieve monopoly power." |
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