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'Grim Sleeper' arraignment set for Monday
Headline Court News |
2010/08/23 08:54
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pLonnie Franklin Jr., the suspect in the Grim Sleeper serial killings, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday morning in a Los Angeles, California, courtroom on 10 counts of murder./ppFranklin is accused of killing 10 women in the south Los Angeles area between 1985 and 2007./ppNicknamed for taking long breaks between attacks, the Grim Sleeper is believed responsible for at least 10 deaths between 1985 and 2007 in south Los Angeles. The killer targeted black women, some working as prostitutes, using the same small caliber weapon./ppLos Angeles police arrested Franklin on July 8 by comparing DNA found at some of the crime scenes with the DNA of the suspect's son, who was in a California lockup./ppFive days after his arrest, Franklin was attacked in jail. Inmate Antonio Rodriguez and Franklin were in an attorney waiting room when the assault happened, said Steve Whitmore, a sheriff's department spokesman./ppRodriguez was not in handcuffs at the time and apparently recognized Franklin. Without being provoked, Rodriguez hit Franklin in the head twice, and he suffered minor injuries, Whitmore said.
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Court says California mall's chat policy illegal
Headline Court News |
2010/08/16 09:20
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A Northern California appeals court has struck down a shopping mall's policy barring people from approaching strangers to chitchat.pThe 3rd District Court of Appeal this week said the rules at Roseville's Westfield Galleria violate the California Constitution's free speech guarantee./ppThe mall prohibited people in its common areas from approaching people they didn't know to talk unless the conversation was about business involving the mall or its tenants. The case arose after mall officials issued a citizen's arrest of a 27-year-old pastor who tried to talk about his faith./ppThe appeals court says the policy effectively bars shoppers from chatting about the weather or offering directions./ppA spokeswoman for Westfield says the mall is considering appealing to the California Supreme Court.
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Jury finds south Texas man guilty of beheadings
Headline Court News |
2010/07/27 09:06
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| A South Texas man accused of beheading his common-law wife's three children was found guilty of capital murder Monday at his second trial. A state appeals court had overturned John Allen Rubio's previous conviction and death sentence in 2007, saying the children's mother had wrongly been allowed to testify. A second jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting him again.pRubio, 29, of Brownsville, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his defense attorneys had argued that the sheer brutality of the crime showed he was not in his right mind. Defense attorney Nat Perez described it during his closing argument as overkill./ppEvidence showed Rubio made increasingly ferocious attempts to kill the children, strangling and stabbing them, then finally cutting off their heads. Rubio initially said he killed the children, all under age 4, because they were possessed./ppPolice discovered the bodies of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio on March 11, 2003, in a squalid Brownsville apartment./ppRubio was convicted on four counts of capital murder. Each death was covered by one count, and the fourth count included all of them./ppThe trial will now move to a punishment phase, in which prosecutors plan to again seek the death penalty./ppDuring closing arguments given before a packed courtroom earlier Monday, both sides showed enlarged photographs of the children from happier times. Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos got the last word and accentuated it by showing a photograph of a headless child and making a chopping motion on the floor with a cleaver./p |
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Court rules against inventors in patent case
Headline Court News |
2010/07/01 03:22
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pThe Supreme Court on Monday refused to weigh in on whether software, online-shopping techniques and medical diagnostic tests can be patented, saying only that inventors' request for protection of a method of hedging weather-related risk in energy prices cannot be granted./ppThe high court unanimously agreed with a lower court ruling that threw out Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw's patent, a decision many said could endanger patents in an increasingly high-tech world. But the high court said they did not need to make a broad sweeping decision about patents to dispose of Bilski and Warsaw's case./ppThe patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court. The court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable process./ppThe Supreme Court has already said that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature cannot be patented. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit added that a process cannot be patented unless it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus or if it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing.
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