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What to know about arguments over Donald Trump's immunity claims
Attorney News |
2024/01/11 17:33
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Appeals court judges signaled Tuesday that they will likely reject Donald Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution in his election interference case. The outcome seemed clear during arguments that touched on a range of political and legal considerations.
The Republican presidential primary front-runner made his first trip in months to Washington’s federal courthouse, where his lawyers sought to convince an appeals court to dismiss the case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The defense’s argument was met with outright skepticism by the three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The judges did not say when they might rule, but the timing of their decision is crucial with a March 4 trial date looming. Trump’s lawyers, who are hoping to delay the case beyond the November presidential election, are certain to go to the U.S. Supreme Court if the D.C. court sides with special counsel Jack Smith.
Most issues in criminal cases can’t be appealed until after a trial verdict, though there are certain circumstances when a defendant can appeal immediately. Smith’s team has not challenged the appeals court’s ability to hear the immunity issue ahead of trial. But a watchdog group called American Oversight filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the appeals court should dismiss Trump’s challenge because Supreme Court precedent shows that it lacks jurisdiction to consider the issue now. If the appeals court agrees that it lacks jurisdiction, it would send the case back to the trial court before even deciding the immunity issue.
Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, told the judges that presidential immunity is clearly an issue meant to be resolved before trial. He argued that legal precedent supports the idea that the appeals court is right to consider the immunity claim at this time. |
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Peru court orders imprisoned ex-President Fujimori's 'immediate' release
Attorney News |
2023/12/06 16:40
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Peru’s constitutional court ordered an immediate humanitarian release Tuesday for imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, 85, who was serving a 25-year sentence in connection with the death squad slayings of 25 Peruvians in the 1990s.
The court ruled in favor of a 2017 pardon that had granted the former leader a release on humanitarian grounds but that later was annulled.
In a resolution seen by The Associated Press, the court told the state prisons agency to immediately release Fujimori “on the same day.”
Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison on charges of human rights abuses. He had been accused of being the mastermind behind the slayings of 25 Peruvians by a military death squad during his administration from 1990 to 2000, while the government fought the Shining Path communist rebels.
Fujimori’s 2017 pardon granted by then-President Pablo Kuczynski was annulled under pressure from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and its status was the subject of legal wrangling since then.
The constitutional court previously had ordered a lower court in the southern city of Ica to release Fujimori, but that court declined to do so, arguing in ruling last Friday that it lacked the authority. It returned the matter instead to the constitutional court.
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Six teens in court in connection with beheading of French teacher
Attorney News |
2023/11/25 23:52
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Six teenagers go on trial Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class, a killing that led authorities to reaffirm France’s cherished rights of expression and secularism.
Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who had become radicalized. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police.
Paty’s name was disclosed on social media after a class debate on free expression during which he showed caricatures published by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which triggered a newsroom massacre by extremists in January 2015.
All hearings at a Paris juvenile court are to be held behind closed doors in accordance with French law regarding minors. The defendants arrived Monday morning at the Paris court, their faces hidden behind masks and hoods, accompanied by their families. The media are not allowed to disclose their identity.
Among those going on trial, a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. She later told investigators she had lied. She was not in the classroom that day and Paty did not make such a request, the investigation has shown.
Five other students of Paty’s school, then 14 and 15, are facing charges of criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing aggravated violence to be committed.
They are accused of having waited for Paty for several hours until he left the school and of having identified him to the killer in exchange for promises of payments of 300-350 euros ($348-$406).
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Judge blocks 2 provisions in North Carolina’s new abortion law
Attorney News |
2023/10/04 03:38
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A federal judge on Saturday blocked two portions of North Carolina’s new abortion law from taking effect while a lawsuit continues. But nearly all of the restrictions approved by the legislature this year, including a near-ban after 12 weeks of pregnancy, aren’t being specifically challenged and remain intact.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles issued an order halting enforcement of a provision to require surgical abortions that occur after 12 weeks — those for cases of rape and incest, for example — be performed only in hospitals, not abortion clinics. That limitation would have otherwise taken effect on Sunday.
And in the same preliminary injunction, Eagles extended beyond her temporary decision in June an order preventing enforcement of a rule that doctors must document the existence of a pregnancy within the uterus before prescribing a medication abortion.
Short of successful appeals by Republican legislative leaders defending the laws, the order will remain in effect until a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a physician who performs abortions challenging the sections are resolved. The lawsuit also seeks to have clarified whether medications can be used during the second trimester to induce labor of a fetus that can’t survive outside the uterus.
The litigation doesn’t directly seek to topple the crux of the abortion law enacted in May after GOP legislators overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto. North Carolina had a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks before July 1, when the law scaled it back to 12 weeks.
The law, a response to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade, also added new exceptions for abortions through 20 weeks for cases of rape and incest and through 24 weeks for “life-limiting” fetal anomalies. A medical emergency exception also stayed in place.
On medication abortions, which bill sponsors say also are permitted through 12 weeks of pregnancy, the new law says a physician prescribing an abortion-inducing drug must first “document in the woman’s medical chart the ... intrauterine location of the pregnancy.”
Eagles wrote the plaintiffs were likely to be successful on their claim that the law is so vague as to subject abortion providers to claims that they broke the law if they can’t locate an embryo through an ultrasound because the pregnancy is so new.
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Biden backs new offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
Attorney News |
2023/10/01 10:38
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President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, but none in Alaska, as it tries to navigate between energy companies seeking greater oil and gas production and environmental activists who want Biden to shut down new offshore drilling in the fight against climate change.
The five-year plan includes proposed sales in the Gulf of Mexico — the nation’s primary offshore source of oil and gas — in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The three lease sales are the minimum number the Democratic administration could legally offer if it wants to continue expanding offshore wind development.
Under the terms of a 2022 climate law, the government must offer at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in any one-year period before it can offer offshore wind leases. The provision tying offshore wind to oil and gas production was added by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a top recipient of oil and gas donations and a key vote in favor of the climate law, which was approved with only Democratic votes in Congress. The landmark law, the Inflation Reduction Act, was signed by Biden as a key step to fight climate change but includes a number of provisions authored by Manchin, a centrist who represents an energy-producing state.
For instance, if the Biden administration wants to expand solar and wind power on public lands, it must offer new oil and gas leases first.
“The Biden-Harris administration is committed to building a clean energy future that ensures America’s energy independence,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. The proposed offshore leasing program “represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history” and “sets a course for (the Interior Department) to support the growing offshore wind industry,” she said.
The lease program will guard against environmental damage caused by oil and gas drilling and other adverse impacts to coastal communities, Haaland said.
If completed, the sales would increase climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 300-page environmental review by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. How much they will increase is uncertain because the review considered five or 10 new sales but not the three sales proposed.
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Texas is using disaster declarations to install buoys and razor wire
Attorney News |
2023/07/24 23:03
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Wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. Razor wire strung across private property without permission. Bulldozers changing the very terrain of America’s southern border.
For more than two years, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has escalated measures to keep migrants from entering the U.S., pushing legal boundaries with a go-it-alone bravado along the state’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico. Now blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas.
A state trooper’s account of officers denying migrants water in 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.7 Celsius) temperatures and razor wire leaving asylum-seekers bloodied has prompted renewed criticism. The Mexican government, some Texas residents along the border and the Biden administration are pushing back. On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department sued Abbott over the buoy barrier that it says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns, asking a federal court to require Texas to dismantle it.
bbott, who cruised to a third term in November while promising tougher border crackdowns, has used disaster declarations as the legal bedrock for some measures.
Critics call that a warped view. “There are so many ways that what Texas is doing right now is just flagrantly illegal,” said David Donatti, an attorney for the Texas American Civil Liberties Union.
Abbott did not respond to requests for comment. He has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden’s border policies, tweeting Friday that they “encourage migrants to risk their lives crossing illegally through the Rio Grande, instead of safely and legally over a bridge.”
The Biden administration has said illegal border crossings have declined significantly since new immigration rules took effect in May. |
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Convictions tossed in 2016 death of 16-year-old shot in minivan in Trenton
Attorney News |
2023/06/21 16:37
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An appeals court in New Jersey has tossed out the convictions of a man sentenced to 55 years in prison after being tried as a teenager in the 2016 death of a girl who was shot in a minivan as she and other juveniles were riding around Trenton.
The court found a number of problems with the prosecution of the then-17-year-old suspect, including the testimony of a detective and the process by which the prosecution was moved to adult court, NJ.com reported. As a result, the court ordered prosecutors to start at the beginning and seek a new adult court waiver from family court.
Although the Mercer County prosecutor’s office publicly named the suspect after indicting him in 2017, the appeals court used a pseudonym for the defendant, who is now 25 and has been serving a 46-year mandatory minimum term, according to court records.
Prosecutors say Ciony Kirkman and six other teens were in the minivan in April 2016 in Trenton when authorities said the suspect shot at the vehicle. Kirkman, 16, was struck in the head and died a few days later. A jury convicted the defendant of murder, attempted murder and assault with a firearm after an eight-day trial in 2018.
The appeals court said numerous errors in the testimony of the lead detective deprived the defendant of a fair trial. The judges also expressed concerns about initial recordings of two witnesses identifying the shooter, saying one recordin appears to indicate that another detective had spoken to them before the recording started.
The appeals court also said the defense at the waiver hearing didn’t submit evidence of disabilities that might have kept the case out of adult court.
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