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Thai court sentences migrants to death in murder of British backpackers
Law Center |
2015/12/24 17:09
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A Thai court on Thursday sentenced two Myanmar migrants to death for the murder of two British backpackers on a resort island last year, in a case that raised questions about police competence and the treatment of migrant workers in Thailand.
Human Rights Watch called the verdict "profoundly disturbing," citing the defendants' accusations of police torture that were never investigated and questionable DNA evidence linking them to the crime.
Win Zaw Htun and Zaw Lin, both 22, have denied killing David Miller, 24, and raping then murdering Hannah Witheridge, 23, last year on the island of Koh Tao. Their defense attorney said they planned to appeal.
Miller and Witheridge's battered bodies were found Sept. 15, 2014, on the rocky shores of Koh Tao, an island in the Gulf of Thailand known for its white sand beaches and scuba diving. Autopsies showed that the young backpackers, who met on the island while staying at the same hotel, suffered severe head wounds and that Witheridge had been raped.
The killings tarnished the image of Thailand's tourism industry, which was already struggling to recover after the army staged a coup just months earlier in May 2014 and then imposed martial law.
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ACLU to appeal court ruling in Missouri drug testing case
Law Center |
2015/12/21 17:09
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The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans to appeal a federal court ruling that upheld a technical college’s plan to force every incoming student to be tested for drugs.
Tony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU’s Missouri chapter, told the Jefferson City News Tribune that the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given the organization until Jan. 4 to file a petition seeking a rehearing by either the same three-judge panel that issued the ruling earlier this month, or by all of the active 8th Circuit judges.
“We intend to request both,” Rothert said. “While rehearing is difficult to obtain, we are fortunate in this case to have a majority decision that is poorly crafted and departs from 8th Circuit and Supreme Court precedent.”
The ACLU filed the federal lawsuit in 2011 challenging a mandatory drug-testing policy Linn State Technical College’s Board of Regents approved in June of that year. The school since has changed its name to State Technical College of Missouri.
The lawsuit argued the policy violated the students’ Fourth Amendment right “to be secure . against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
When it started the program, the school said the testing policy was intended “to provide a safe, healthy and productive environment for everyone who learns and works at Linn State Technical College by detecting, preventing and deterring drug use and abuse among students.”
Under the policy, students had to pay a $50 fee for the drug test and could be blocked from attending if they refused to be tested.
U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey issued a ruling in September 2013 that limited the drug testing to five Linn State programs. But in its 2-1 vote earlier this month, the federal appeals court panel overturned her ruling as too narrow.
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Ex-Costa Rica soccer chief pleads not guilty in FIFA probe
Court Watch |
2015/12/20 17:09
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The former head of the Costa Rican football federation has pleaded not guilty in the U.S. after being charged in a sprawling investigation of bribes and kickbacks involving FIFA, soccer's governing body.
Eduardo Li pleaded not guilty during an initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
Authorities say Li was extradited to the U.S. a week after withdrawing his appeal against being sent. He was brought to New York on Friday.
Li's attorney says his client voluntarily returned to the U.S. and intends to fight the allegations.
About 20 soccer officials have been indicted on charges stemming from the U.S. investigation of corruption in the sport.
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High court takes up challenges to drunken-driving test
Breaking Legal News |
2015/12/13 08:12
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The Supreme Court will decide whether states can criminalize a driver's refusal to take an alcohol test even if police have not obtained a search warrant.
The justices on Friday agreed to hear three cases challenging laws in Minnesota and North Dakota that make it a crime for people arrested for drunken driving to refuse to take a test that can detect alcohol in blood, breath or urine.
At least a dozen states make it a crime to refuse to consent to warrantless alcohol testing. State supreme courts in Minnesota and North Dakota have ruled the laws don't violate constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that police usually must try to obtain a search warrant before ordering blood tests for drunken-driving suspects. The high court said circumstances justifying an exception to the warrant requirement should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
In the case from Minnesota, police arrested William Bernard after his truck got stuck while trying to pull a boat out of a river in South Saint Paul. Police officers smelled alcohol on his breath and said his eyes were bloodshot. After Bernard refused to take a breath test, police took him into custody.
Bernard was charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and a first-degree count of refusal to take a breath test, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of three years in prison.
He argued that the refusal law violated his Fourth Amendment rights by criminalizing his refusal to submit to a search. A divided Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the law, finding that officers could have ordered a breath test without a warrant as a search incident to a valid arrest.
The North Dakota Supreme Court upheld similar challenges to its test refusal law, ruling that motorists are deemed to consent to alcohol testing. The court called the law a reasonable tool in discouraging drunk driving.
One of the two North Dakota cases the high court will hear involves Danny Birchfield, who was arrested after he drove his car into a ditch and failed a field sobriety test and a breath test. He declined to take to additional tests and was convicted under the state's refusal law, which counts as a misdemeanor for a first offense.
A second appeal from North Dakota comes from Steve Beylund, a driver who was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving and consented to a chemical alcohol test. Beylund later tried to suppress the evidence from that test, but lower courts declined.
In all three cases, the challengers argue that warrantless searches are justified only in "extraordinary circumstances." They say routine drunk driving investigations are among the most ordinary of law enforcement functions in which traditional privacy rights apply. |
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Mexico issues first permits for marijuana under court ruling
Court Watch |
2015/12/11 08:12
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The Mexican government on Friday granted the first permits allowing the cultivation and possession of marijuana for personal use.
The federal medical protection agency said the permits apply only to the four plaintiffs who won a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court last month. The court said growing and consuming marijuana is covered under the right of "free development of personality."
The permits issued Friday won't allow smoking marijuana in the presence of children or anyone who hasn't given consent. The permits also don't allow the sale or distribution of the drug. Ironically, the plaintiffs said that even with the permits in hand, they don't plan to smoke the marijuana permitted.
They said they filed the suit to make a point about prohibitionist policies being wrong, not to get their hands on legal weed. "The objective is to change the policy, not to promote consumption," said Juan Francisco Torres Landa, one of the four plaintiffs. "We are going to set the example; we are not going to consume it."
The court's ruling didn't mean a general legalization for Mexico. But if the court ruled the same way on five similar petitions, it would then establish the precedent to change the law and allow general recreational use.
The government medical protection agency, known as COFEPRIS, said it has received 155 applications to get such permits. But other applicants would have to go through the appeals process, something supporters say would probably take at least a year.
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Supreme Court torn over Texas affirmative action program
Law Center |
2015/12/10 08:16
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Torn as ever over race, the Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed whether it's time to end the use of race in college admissions nationwide or at least at the University of Texas.
With liberal and conservative justices starkly divided, the justice who almost certainly will dictate the outcome suggested that the court may need still more information to make a decision in a Texas case already on its second trip through the Supreme Court.
"We're just arguing the same case," Justice Anthony Kennedy said, recalling arguments first held in 2012 in the case of Abigail Fisher. "It's as if nothing has happened."
Kennedy said additional hearings may be needed to produce information that "we should know but we don't know" about how minority students are admitted and what classes they take to determine whether the use of race is necessary to increase diversity at the University of Texas.
Fisher has been out of college since 2012, but the justices' renewed interest in her case appeared to be a sign that the court's conservative majority is poised to cut back, or even end, affirmative action in higher education.
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Finland court jails Iraqi twins suspected of IS killing
Breaking Legal News |
2015/12/10 08:15
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A Finnish court on Friday jailed 23-year-old twin brothers from Iraq for four months pending trial on suspicions they were Islamic State militants who fatally shot 11 unarmed soldiers in Iraq in June 2014.
Friday's custody hearing was held behind closed doors at the Pirkanmaa District Court in Tampere.
The two were arrested Tuesday at a refugee center in the town of Forssa, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of capital of Helsinki. Finnish police say an IS video shows the men taking part in a massacre outside the Iraqi city of Tikrit.
The killing of the 11 Iraqi soldiers was part of atrocities committed by IS in the Camp Speicher military base outside Tikrit, where 1,700 Iraqi soldiers were captured and then killed by IS militants.
National Bureau of Investigation spokesman Jari Raty said the court case will start in April. If guilty, the brothers face up to life imprisonment, which in Finland means being released — although not automatically — after serving between 12 and 15 years.
It was not known what the men had pleaded because their defense lawyers were barred from commenting.
The men had arrived in Finland in September but it was unclear whether they were asylum-seekers — although Finnish media claimed they are. Some 17,000 Iraqis have sought asylum in Finland so far this year, by far the biggest national group to seek shelter in the country.
The tabloid Ilta-Sanomat quoted Omar Mohammed, an asylum-seeker from Baghdad at the Forssa refugee center, as saying the brothers had avoided talking to other refugees. |
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Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet. |
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