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Federal appeals court overturns 1991 death sentence in Fresno double murder
Legal Business |
2023/06/02 17:04
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A federal appeals court in a rare move overturned the death sentence of a man who was convicted of robbing and killing two people in Fresno in 1988, saying prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from a key witness.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its Wednesday ruling upheld Colin Dickey’s robbery conviction and said prosecutors could decide whether to retry him for murder. Dickey remains in prison.
“This is an exceptional case in which the prosecutor deliberately elicited, and then failed to correct, false and misleading testimony from the State’s star witness,” the court said in a ruling overturning Dickey’s 1991 death sentence.
The Fresno County prosecutor elicited the testimony from key witness Gene Buchanan, who told the jury he had not met with prosecutors or accepted any benefits from them. In fact, the court said, they had met a dozen times during the investigation, and the district attorney’s office had dismissed drug charges against him and helped him collect a $5,000 reward for implicating Dickey, one of his roommates.
Dickey was convicted in the murders of two neighbors, Marie Caton, 76, and Louis Freiri, 67, who were beaten and stabbed to death in November 1988 at Caton’s home in Fresno, where Freiri was a boarder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Both Dickey and Buchanan lived with Caton’s grandson, Richard Cullumber, who according to witnesses was a drug user who frequently requested money from Caton. Five days after the attack, the court said, Cullumber fled police in a car, said he had “killed a woman,” was cornered after a high-speed chase and shot himself to death.
According to another roommate, Dickey said he had gone to Caton’s house with Cullumber to help him get the money but had nothing to do with the killings. But Buchanan testified that Dickey told him he was at the scene of the attacks, saw Freiri lying with his head slumped down, and decided that “if you kill one you might as well kill them both.”
Buchanan’s testimony “was the centerpiece of the state’s case” and without his dubious statements, “the state’s case against Dickey was weak” and lacked any direct evidence of intent to kill, Judge Morgan Christen said in the 3-0 ruling.
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Tunisian court releases prominent radio director from prison
Legal Business |
2023/05/23 23:25
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Tunisia’s most popular private radio station said an appeal court has allowed its director to be released on bail from prison, after more than three months of detention.
Mosaique FM announced Wednesday that its director, Noureddine Boutar, was freed after the appeal court ordered a bail of one million dinars (about $323,500) and a travel ban. The reasons behind the decision have not been made public.
Boutar was arrested in February on suspicion of money laundering and illicit enrichment, according to his lawyers who said the accusations were unfounded.
One of his lawyers, Ayoub Ghedamsi, said he was imprisoned because he was critical of the government.
The move comes amid a wave of arrests of opponents of the Tunisian president, Kais Saied. Rights groups have denounced a growing crackdown on dissent in the north African nation.
Last week, a Tunisian appeals court sentenced a journalist to five years in prison for revealing details of a counterterrorism operation and refusing to reveal his sources, according to his lawyer, prompting outcry from media rights advocates.
It was believed to be the worst sentence against a journalist in Tunisia since the 2011 Arab Spring revolution pushed out a long-serving autocrat and ushered in a new democratic system with more media freedom.
About 20 prominent opposition figures, including journalists, political party leaders, lawyers and female activist activist Chaima Issa are currently detained on a variety of charges.
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Supreme Court rejects challenge to California pork law
Legal Business |
2023/05/12 23:55
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The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to a California animal cruelty law that affects the pork industry, ruling that the case was properly dismissed by lower courts. Pork producers had said that the law could force industry-wide changes and raise the cost of bacon and other pork products nationwide.
California’s law requires more space for breeding pigs, and producers say it would force the $26 billion-a-year industry to change its practices even though pork is produced almost entirely outside California.
The justices upheld lower court rulings dismissing the pork producers’ case.
During arguments in the case in October, liberal and conservative justices underscored the potential reach of the case. Some worried whether greenlighting the animal cruelty law would give state legislators a license to pass laws targeting practices they disapprove of, such as a law that says a product cannot be sold in the state if workers who made it are not vaccinated or are not in the country legally. They also worried about the reverse: How many state laws would be called into question if California’s law were not permitted?
California’s law requires more space for breeding pigs, and producers say it would force the $26 billion-a-year industry to change its practices even though pork is produced almost entirely outside California.
The justices upheld lower court rulings dismissing the pork producers’ case.
During arguments in the case in October, liberal and conservative justices underscored the potential reach of the case. Some worried whether greenlighting the animal cruelty law would give state legislators a license to pass laws targeting practices they disapprove of, such as a law that says a product cannot be sold in the state if workers who made it are not vaccinated or are not in the country legally. They also worried about the reverse: How many state laws would be called into question if California’s law were not permitted?
The case before the court involved California’s Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2018. It said that pork sold in the state needs to come from pigs whose mothers were raised with at least 24 square feet of space, with the ability to lie down and turn around. That rules out confined “gestation crates,” metal enclosures that are common in the pork industry.
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Donald Trump seeks to move NY criminal case to federal court
Legal Business |
2023/05/04 23:59
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Donald Trump ’s lawyers have asked a federal court to take control of his New York City criminal case. They argued Thursday that the former president can’t be tried in the state court where his historic indictment was brought because the alleged conduct occurred while he was in office.
In court papers, Trump’s lawyers said the criminal case “involves important federal questions,” including alleged violations of federal election law. Federal officers, including former presidents, have the right to be tried in federal court for charges arising from “conduct performed while in office,” the lawyers argued.
Echoing Trump’s claims that his indictment is “politically motivated,” lawyer Susan Necheles urged the federal court to exert its “protective jurisdiction” and seize the case from the state courts where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg routinely practices.
Such requests are rarely granted in criminal cases, although Trump’s request is unprecedented because he’s the first former president ever charged with a crime.
"This effort is extremely unlikely to succeed,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School. “It’s not even clear that this would be a particularly effective delay tactic.”
Moving the case could give Trump some advantages, such as a broader, more politically diverse jury pool — but the fundamentals of the case would remain largely intact.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office would still prosecute him and state law would still apply, but with the oversight of a federal judge, said University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller.
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German woman risks tougher sentence over Yazidi girl’s death
Legal Business |
2023/03/10 10:24
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A German appeals court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for a German convert to Islam who was given 10 years in prison on charges that, as a member of the Islamic State group in Iraq, she allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun.
The 31-year-old defendant now risks a higher sentence.
The Federal Court of Justice threw out an appeal by the woman, who has been identified only as Jennifer W. in line with German privacy rules, but partly approved an appeal by prosecutors. It overturned the sentence, though not the rest of the verdict, and sent the case back to the Munich state court for a new decision.
The woman was convicted in October 2021 of, among other things, two counts of crimes against humanity through enslavement, in one case resulting in death, being an accessory to attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad.
The federal court found that Munich judges erred in sentencing the woman for a “less severe case” of crimes against humanity and overlooked aggravating circumstances. German law allows for a life sentence in cases where a defendant’s actions result in a person’s death. |
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EU legal advisor: Homegrown player quotas clash with EU law
Legal Business |
2023/03/06 10:24
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A senior legal adviser said Thursday that UEFA rules on homegrown players are partially incompatible with the European Union’s free movement laws, although quotas might be legitimate in order to develop and recruit youngsters.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said UEFA-backed quotas requiring teams to register a minimum number of players to be trained locally are “likely to create indirect discrimination” against players from other EU countries.
Advocate generals routinely provide legal guidance to the European Court of Justice. Their opinions aren’t binding on the Luxembourg-based court, but are followed in most cases.
“It is a fact of life that the younger a player is, the more likely it is that that player resides in his place of origin. It is therefore necessarily players from other member states who will be adversely affected by the contested rules,” the court said in a statement. “Though neutral in wording, the contested provisions place local players at an advantage over players from other member states.”
A judge in Belgium asked the European Union’s court in Luxembourg in 2021 to examine if the rules, designed to protect young local talents, comply with free movement of labor and competition law in the 27-nation bloc. |
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Panel scolds Wisconsin justice for remarks in Trump case
Legal Business |
2023/02/26 10:30
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A judicial oversight commission has dismissed a complaint against a liberal-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who accused an attorney for former President Donald Trump of making racist contentions and trying to protect his “king” in a case challenging the 2020 election results in the battleground state.
Judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law but Justice Jill Karofsky released documents to The Associated Press on Saturday that show a retired attorney in Maryland filed one against her with the Wisconsin Judicial Commission two years ago. The commission decided in November 2022 not to discipline her but warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench.
Karofsky’s attorney remained defiant, telling the commission in a letter Tuesday that Karofsky was trying to save the U.S. government and accusing the panel of allowing itself to become a political weapon.
“The Judicial Code (sic) requires judges to act with impartiality towards the parties, but it does not require a judge to turn a blind-eye to dangerous, bad-faith conduct by a lawyer or litigant,” Karofsky said in an email to the AP, quoting a passage from one of her attorney’s responses to the commission. “It is beyond reason to read the Code to require judges to be mouse-like quiet when parties are arguing in favor of a slow-motion coup.”
Trump filed suit in Wisconsin in December 2020 after a recount confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had won the state by about 21,000 votes. The filing was one of scores of lawsuits Trump filed across multiple states in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results and remain in office.
The Wisconsin lawsuit asked the state Supreme Court to toss out about 171,000 absentee ballots cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties. The conservative-leaning court ultimately rejected the lawsuit by a 4-3 vote, with swing Justice Brian Hagedorn casting the deciding vote to uphold Biden’s victory in the battleground state. |
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