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Familiar, divisive social issues on Supreme Court agenda
Court Watch |
2015/10/07 16:01
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The Supreme Court is starting a new term that promises a steady stream of divisive social issues, and also brighter prospects for conservatives who suffered more losses than usual in recent months.
The justices are meeting in public Monday for the first time since a number of high-profile decisions in June that displayed passionate, sometimes barbed disagreements and suggested some bruised feelings among the nine judges.
The first case before the court involves a California woman who lost her legs in a horrific accident after she fell while attempting to board a train in Innsbruck, Austria. The issue is whether she can sue the state-owned Austrian railway in U.S. courts.
Even before the justices took the bench Monday, they rejected hundreds of appeals that piled up over the summer, including San Jose, California's bid to lure the Athletics from Oakland over the objection of Major League Baseball.
Future cases will deal with abortion, religious objections to birth control, race in college admissions and the power of public-sector unions. Cases on immigration and state restrictions on voting also could make it to the court in the next nine months.
The term will play out against the backdrop of the presidential campaign, in which some candidates are talking pointedly about the justices and the prospect of replacing some of them in the next few years. Four justices are in their 80s or late 70s, led by 82-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Commentators on the left and right say the lineup of cases suggests that conservatives will win more often than they will lose over the next few months, in contrast to the liberal side's success last term in gay marriage, health care and housing discrimination, among others.
"This term, I'd expect a return to the norm, in which the right side of the court wins the majority, but by no means all of the cases," said Georgetown University law school's Irv Gornstein.
One reason for the confidence is that, as Supreme Court lawyer John Elwood said: "This is a term of sequels." Affirmative action and union fees have been at the court in recent terms and the justices' positions are more or less known.
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Supreme Court declines to review insider trading case
Areas of Focus |
2015/10/06 16:01
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The Supreme Court said Monday it won't hear the Obama administration's appeal of a lower court ruling that made it tougher to prosecute people for trading on leaked inside information.
The justices let stand a decision by the federal appeals court in New York last year that threw out insider trading convictions of two high-profile hedge fund managers.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of Anthony Chiasson, of Manhattan, and Todd Newman, of Needham, Massachusetts, after finding they were too far removed from inside information to be prosecuted.
Prosecutors warned the ruling could hinder the government's campaign to curb insider trading on Wall Street, a crackdown that has resulted in more than 80 arrests and 70 convictions over several years.
Chiasson, who co-founded Level Global Investors based in Greenwich, Conn., and Newman, who had worked for Diamondback Capital Management based in Stamford, Conn., traded on tips from insiders on stock in technology companies Dell Inc. and Nvidia Corp. that generated $72 million in profits. The former portfolio managers were both convicted in December 2012.
The appeals court said prosecutors failed to present enough evidence the men willfully engaged in insider trading or conspired to break the law. It ruled that the government must show a person receiving a tip knew that an insider disclosed confidential information and that the tipster passed the information expecting a personal benefit.
In legal briefs filed with the court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said leaving the appeals court ruling in place would "hurt market participants, disadvantage scrupulous market analysts and impair the government's ability to protect the fairness and integrity of the securities markets."
Both men have denied insider trading. Their lawyers argued that they believed they were making trades based on legitimate research.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan told reporters on a conference call Monday that the Supreme Court's decision means "that there's a category of conduct that arguably will go unpunished going forward."
"If you have a CEO who has access to material, non-published information about earnings or anything else of a very sensitive nature and decides he wants to tip a relative or a buddy or a crony, knowing that person is going to trade on it to the tune and profit of millions of dollars, we would have to think long and hard, given Newman, whether to prosecute a person like that," Bharara said.
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High court weighs 3 death sentences in Kansas cases
Court Watch |
2015/10/04 16:02
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed likely to rule against three Kansas men who challenged their death sentences in what one justice called "some of the most horrendous murders" he's ever seen from the bench.
The justices were critical of the Kansas Supreme Court, which overturned the sentences of the men, including two brothers convicted in a murderous crime spree known as the "Wichita massacre."
It was the first high court hearing on death penalty cases since a bitter clash over lethal injection procedures exposed deep divisions among the justices last term.
The debate this time was over the sentencing process for Jonathan and Reginald Carr and for Sidney Gleason, who was convicted in a separate case of killing a couple to stop them from implicating him in a robbery.
The Kansas Supreme Court overturned death sentences in both cases, saying the juries should have been told that evidence of the men's troubled childhoods and other factors weighing against a death sentence did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The state court also ruled that the Carr brothers should have had separate sentencing hearings instead of a joint one. It said Reginald Carr's sentence may have been unfairly tainted because Jonathan Carr blamed Reginald for being a bad influence during their childhoods.
While the attorneys on both sides focused on the legal technicalities, several of the justices couldn't help but dwell on the sordid facts of the Carr case during two hours of oral argument.
Justice Samuel Alito said it involves "some of the most horrendous murders that I have ever seen in my 10 years here. And we see practically every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country."
At one point, Justice Antonin Scalia recounted at length the brutal details. Authorities said the brothers broke into a Wichita, Kansas, home in December 2000, where they forced the three men and two women inside to have sex with each other while they watched, then repeatedly raped the women. The brothers then forced the victims to withdraw money from ATMs before taking them to a soccer field, forcing them to kneel, and shooting each one in the head.
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Connecticut court stands by decision eliminating execution
Headline Legal News |
2015/10/02 16:02
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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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Court strikes down possible payments to college athletes
Legal Topics |
2015/10/01 04:00
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A federal appeals court agreed Wednesday that the NCAA's use of college athletes' names, images and likenesses in video games and TV broadcasts violated antitrust laws but struck down a plan to allow schools to pay players up to $5,000.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the NCAA could not stop schools from providing full scholarships to student athletes but vacated a proposal for deferred cash payments.
"The difference between offering student-athletes education-related compensation and offering them cash sums untethered to educational expenses is not minor; it is a quantum leap," Judge Jay Bybee wrote. "Once that line is crossed, we see no basis for returning to a rule of amateurism and no defined stopping point."
A statement from NCAA President Mark Emmert said the organization agrees with the court that "allowing students to be paid cash compensation of up to $5,000 per year was erroneous."
"Since Aug. 1, the NCAA has allowed member schools to provide up to full cost of attendance; however, we disagree that it should be mandated by the courts," he said. |
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El Paso abortion clinic reopens amid Texas court battles
Legal Business |
2015/09/30 04:00
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An El Paso clinic shuttered by Texas' tough 2013 abortion law reopened Tuesday, the first in the state to do so since the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of some of the key restrictions three months ago.
The Reproductive Services clinic, so close to the Texas-Mexico border that its windows offer views of Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande, is now taking appointments and should begin performing abortions next week.
The reopening brings to 20 the number of abortion clinics in America's second most-populous state. But that's still down from 41 in 2012, and the facility could close again soon.
A June 29 Supreme Court order only created a temporary block that will hold until the high court decides whether to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling refusing to suspend the Texas restrictions. It's not clear when that decision will come, but the summer ruling is a strong indication that the Supreme Court eventually will hear the full appeal — which could be the biggest abortion case in decades.
"We're so excited about the reopening, but the discouraging part is we could be closed down at any time," said Marilyn Eldridge, president of Nova Health Systems, which operates Reproductive Services. She and her late husband, a Christian minister, first opened the clinic in 1977. |
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Int'l court prosecutor extends preliminary Ukraine probe
Attorney News |
2015/09/28 03:59
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The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor has broadened her preliminary probe in Ukraine to cover possible crimes committed in the country since early 2014 — a period that saw Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Tuesday's announcement by Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda came after Ukrainian authorities accepted the court's jurisdiction dating back to early last year.
While Ukraine is not a member of the court, it has twice voluntarily accepted its jurisdiction.
The first acceptance covered the period from November 2013 until February 2014 — weeks during which former President Viktor Yanukovych's regime staged a violent crackdown on demonstrators. Kiev's second acceptance of jurisdiction, lodged three weeks ago, starts in early 2014 and has no end date.
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