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Appeals court takes on NSA surveillance case
Headline Topics |
2014/11/05 12:58
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A conservative gadfly lawyer who has made a career of skewering Democratic administrations is taking his battle against the National Security Agency's telephone surveillance program to a federal appeals court.
Activist attorney Larry Klayman won the first round in December, when U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a Republican appointee, ruled that the NSA's surveillance program likely runs afoul of the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches. The government appealed.
In court filings in preparation for Tuesday's argument, the Justice Department told three Republican-nominated appeals judges that collecting the phone data is of overriding and compelling importance to the nation's security.
Former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden revealed the phone data collection effort a year and a half ago, triggering a debate over privacy rights and surveillance.
In New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit recently heard arguments in an appeal of a judge's opinion that found the surveillance program legal.
The three appeals judges in the Washington case have generally come down on the government's side on national security issues. |
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Court in Va. examines death row isolation policy
Headline Topics |
2014/10/27 14:53
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Virginia's practice of automatically holding death row inmates in solitary confinement will be reviewed by a federal appeals court in a case that experts say could have repercussions beyond the state's borders.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria ruled last year that around-the-clock isolation of condemned inmates is so onerous that the Virginia Department of Corrections must assess its necessity on a case-by-case basis. Failure to do so, she said, violates the inmates' due process rights.
The state appealed, arguing that the courts should defer to the judgment of prison officials on safety issues. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by Alfredo Prieto, who was on California's death row for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl when a DNA sample connected him to the 1988 slayings of George Washington University students Rachel Raver and Warren Fulton III in Reston. He also was sentenced to death in Virginia, where he has spent most of the last six years alone in a 71-square-foot cell at the Sussex I State Prison.
Some capital punishment experts say a victory by Prieto could prompt similar lawsuits by death row inmates elsewhere.
"It gives them a road map," said northern Virginia defense attorney Jonathan Sheldon, who noted that the due process claim succeeded where allegations of cruel and unusual punishment have routinely failed. "It's not that common to challenge conditions of confinement on due process grounds." |
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Tennessee man pleads guilty to forgery
Headline Topics |
2014/08/11 10:59
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A Tennessee man has pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery of the signatures of a district court judge and an officer of the U.S. District Court.
U.S. District Judge Pamela L. Reeves set sentencing for 49-year-old Scott Thibault of Maryville for Dec. 1 in Knoxville. Thibault entered the plea Wednesday.
Prosecutors say Thibault has also agreed to plead guilty to one-count information of use of the mail to defraud.
Prosecutors say Thibault falsely represented himself as an attorney in an adoption case and forging the name of U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan on the documents.
Thibault told the court he obtained at least $400,000 from the victims to further his scheme to defraud and obtain money. |
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Court schedules night deer hunting arguments
Headline Topics |
2014/08/05 15:27
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Wisconsin's Chippewa tribes will get a chance next month to tell a federal appeals court why members should be allowed to hunt deer at night.State officials have long banned night hunts out of safety concerns.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled in the early 1990s that the ban applies to Chippewa hunters.The tribes asked Crabb in 2012 to reconsider her decision but she refused.
The Chippewa have since asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago to allow tribal night hunts, arguing night hunting has become more common and the state can't argue it's unsafe.
The court has set oral arguments for Sept. 16. The tribes and state attorneys will each get 20 minutes to speak. It's not clear when the court might rule. |
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Suspect in bodies-in-suitcases case due in court
Headline Topics |
2014/07/17 12:03
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A former police officer charged with dumping two bodies in suitcases along a rural Wisconsin road is due to enter a plea.
Fifty-two-year-old Steven Zelich is scheduled to attend a plea hearing in Walworth County Circuit Court Thursday on two counts of hiding a corpse.
Zelich's attorney, Travis Schwantes, says the charges might not stand up because prosecutors need to show the former West Allis officer tried to conceal a crime. Schwantes says Zelich claims he killed the two women in the suitcases accidentally during sexual encounters.
Authorities say homicide charges are expected to be filed in the counties where the women died. The bodies of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, and 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, Minnesota, were found in the suitcases by highway workers June 5. |
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Utah to appeal gay marriage ruling to high court
Headline Topics |
2014/07/11 10:04
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Utah has decided to go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue against gay marriage, meaning the nation's highest court will have at least one same-sex marriage case on its plate when it returns in October.
The office of the Utah attorney general announced Wednesday that it would bypass a full appeals court and take the gay marriage case to the Supreme Court instead.
If the U.S. Supreme court decides to take the case, it will be the first time the top court considers gay marriage since justices last year struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The high court is under no obligation to the take the case, and it could wait for rulings from one or more of the five other appellate courts with gay marriage cases pending, legal scholars say.
Utah's appeal is of a June 25 ruling from a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which found states cannot deprive people of the fundamental right to marry simply because they choose partners of the same sex. The panel immediately put the ruling on hold pending an appeal. |
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Court revives victim lawsuit in mistaken shooting
Headline Topics |
2014/05/05 14:15
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The Supreme Court has reinstated the lawsuit filed by a former major league baseball player's son who was shot on the porch of his family home by a Houston-area police officer.
The justices on Monday ordered a lower court to reconsider the case of Robert Tolan, son of former major leaguer Bobby Tolan. The son was shot in the chest after police mistakenly believed he was armed and had stolen a vehicle.
A Houston-area jury acquitted Bellaire police Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton of criminal charges in the shooting, which happened on New Year's Eve in 2008. A federal appeals court dismissed Tolan's civil lawsuit claiming that Cotton used excessive force.
The high court said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acted too hastily. |
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