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Those who lost North Carolina driver's licenses are restored
Headline Court News |
2017/01/06 13:36
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Court officials say North Carolinians who lost their driver's licenses because of problems at the Department of Motor Vehicles have gotten them back.
The Winston-Salem Journal reported that Forsyth County Clerk of Court Susan Frye said in May that thousands of North Carolina drivers had lost their licenses because DMV officials had not updated records.
Frye said the state agency did not update driver's records to show when people complied with requirements such as taking care of a ticket or getting a re-scheduled court date.
The exact number of people affect is unclear. Frye says the DMV has done a great job of fixing the problems. She says she's getting virtually no complaint calls now.
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Ohio Supreme Court delays serial killer's execution date
Headline Topics |
2017/01/05 13:38
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The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to delay the execution date for a Cleveland man convicted of killing 11 women and hiding the remains in and around his home.
The court on Thursday granted the request from attorneys for serial killer Anthony Sowell.
The execution had been set for Nov. 18, 2010. The court said the execution would be delayed until Sowell had exhausted all his appeals, most likely through the federal courts.
The court's action was similar to its approach to other death penalty cases. It regularly sets initial execution dates after upholding death sentences, then delays them on request.
Jurors found Sowell guilty of killing 11 women from June 2007 to July 2009.
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Circus operator agrees to plea deal in tent collapse
Legal Business |
2017/01/04 13:37
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Court records show a Florida-based circus operator has agreed to a plea deal following a tent collapse in New Hampshire in 2015 that killed two people and injured dozens.
The Caledonian-Record in Vermont reports details of the plea deal involving Sarasota-based Walker International Events weren't made available.
The company had previously pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of operating without a license and to misdemeanor counts alleging it hadn't complied with state standards. Corporations can face fines and sanctions on criminal convictions.
The company, now out of business, agreed to pay federal safety fines and settled some lawsuits.
Forty-one-year-old Robert Young and his 6-year-old daughter, Annabelle, of Concord, Vermont, died when a storm with 75 mph winds blew through the Lancaster Fairgrounds, toppling the tent.
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South Korean executives jailed for humidifier cleaner deaths
Blog Updates |
2017/01/03 13:37
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A South Korean court sentenced the former head of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser to seven years in prison Friday after the company's disinfectant for humidifiers killed scores of people and left hundreds with permanent lung damage.
The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Shin Hyun-woo, Oxy chief from 1991-2005, was guilty of accidental homicide and falsely advertising the deadly product as being safe even for children. Seven years is the maximum prison term the court could issue.
Choi Chang-young, chief judge of the case, said the disaster could have been prevented if Shin and others in the company, a subsidiary of British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, had tried to ensure the chemicals' safety.
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Man who escaped from Rhode Island prison to appear in court
Political View |
2017/01/01 13:37
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A man who escaped from a Rhode Island prison and was on the run for five days before being captured in Massachusetts is scheduled to make an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge.
James Morales escaped from the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls last Saturday and was captured Thursday in Somerville. Authorities believe he may have tried to rob two banks before he was caught.
Morales is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Providence on an escape charge.
Authorities say Morales escaped New Year's Eve by climbing a basketball hoop, cutting through a fence and climbing th brough razor wire. It took hours for correctional officers to notice.
The 35-year-old former Army reservist was being held on charges he stole 16 guns from a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Worcester.
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Dems to use hearings on Trump picks to court working class
Lawyer News |
2016/12/21 14:01
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Determined to hold around two dozen Senate seats in 2018, Democrats will use the coming series of confirmation hearings to try to distinguish themselves from President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire nominees and convince working-class voters who elected him that he's not on their side.
While Democrats have little leverage to stop the Republican's picks in the Senate, they still plan a fight. To highlight what they say is the hypocrisy of Trump's campaign promise to be a champion for the economically struggling little guy, they'll focus on the nominees' wealth, ties to Wall Street and willingness to privatize Medicare, among other issues. In some cases, they'll seek to drag out the process by demanding more information and ensuring a full airing of potential conflicts of interest.
"We're going to give each of them a thorough examination to determine whether they'll actually stand up for workers against the special interests or rig the system even more," said incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, echoing some of Trump's own campaign rhetoric.
Democrats gave up their ability to block Trump's nominees in 2013, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed Senate rules and reduced the number of votes needed to end filibusters. Now in the majority, Republicans can confirm the nominees along partisan lines.
The limits of the Democratic minority have already been tested, as California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who will be the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the new session, has repeatedly asked Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley for more time to review documents ahead of Jan. 10-11 hearings for Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's choice for attorney general. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has declined to delay the hearings.
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California Supreme Court halts death penalty measure
Lawyer News |
2016/12/21 14:00
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The California Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a voter-approved measure intended to speed up the appeals process for the state's Death Row inmates to give it time to consider a lawsuit challenging the measure.
In a one-page decision, the court stayed the "implementation of all provisions of Proposition 66" and set a timeline for filing briefs in the case.
Proposition 66 would change how appeals are handled, appointing more lawyers to take cases, putting certain types of appeals before trial court judges and setting a five-year deadline for appeals to be heard. Currently, it can take longer than that for an attorney to be assigned to a case and upward of 25 years to exhaust appeals.
The lawsuit by former Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, whose father wrote the ballot measure that expanded California's death penalty in 1978, said the reform measure would disrupt the courts, cost more money and limit the ability to mount proper appeals. They said the deadlines would set "an inordinately short timeline for the courts to review those complex cases" and result in attorneys cutting corners in their investigations.
Supporters of the measure have called the lawsuit a frivolous stall tactic.
California voters faced two death penalty measures on the November election. They rejected a measure that would have abolished the death penalty and narrowly approved Proposition 66. |
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