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Mich. lawyer fined for aiding marriage fraud
Law Center |
2009/01/28 05:42
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An attorney in Michigan has been sentenced to three years' probation and fined $10,000 for helping a woman fraudently marry a U.S. citizen so she could stay in the country.
Namir Daman of Southfield was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. He pleaded guilty last year to marriage fraud.
He faced up to five years in prison but the government requested leniency because of his cooperation with investigators. Daman's attorney says he helped prosecutors investigating Roy M. Bailey, a former federal immigration official in Detroit. Bailey pleaded guilty to corruption charges last September and will be sentenced March 9. Daman, who emigrated from Iraq in 1980, says he naively trusted the wrong people. |
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FBI: Long Island investment firm boss surrenders
Breaking Legal News |
2009/01/27 11:12
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The owner of a Long Island investment firm accused of cheating people out of more than $100 million is expected to appear in court Tuesday.
FBI spokesman Jim Margolin says Nicholas Cosmo surrendered at a U.S. Postal Inspection Service office in Hicksville on Monday night.
Cosmo runs Agape World Inc. in Hauppauge (HAW'-pawg). He's accused of taking in $300 million from investors and cheating them out of about $140 million. A letter hanging in Cosmo's office window denies there was any Ponzi scheme, the type of fraud Bernard Madoff (MAY'-dawf) is accused of committing. A Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme promises unusually high returns and pays early investors with money from later investors. Defense attorneys at the Herrick Feinstein law firm haven't returned telephone calls seeking comment. |
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Court to consider how long lawyer request lasts
Law Center |
2009/01/27 11:12
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The Supreme Court has agreed to clarify how long a suspected criminal's request for a lawyer during police interrogation should be valid.
The high court on Monday said it will consider allowing prosecutors in Maryland to use a confession from convicted child molester Michael Shatzer that he sexually abused his son.
Shatzer was imprisoned at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown for child sexual abuse in 2003 when police started investigating allegations concerning his son. Shatzer requested an attorney and the investigation was soon dropped. Three years later, the boy was old enough to offer details. According to court documents, when police questioned Shatzer again about the case, he was advised of his rights and signed a form waiving them before confessing. After Shatzer was charged, he filed a motion to suppress his statements, arguing that he had asked for an attorney in the case before. A lower court said the confession could be used, but the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with Shatzer and threw out the confession. |
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Court hears 9/11 conspirator's appeal in Va.
Breaking Legal News |
2009/01/27 11:11
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Zacarias Moussaoui's guilty plea in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was invalid because the government failed to turn over evidence that could have helped his defense, his attorney told a federal appeals court Monday.
Justin Antonipillai urged a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out the plea and order a new trial for Moussaoui, who once claimed to be part of the 2001 conspiracy but has since changed his story. Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison.
U.S. Justice Department attorney Kevin Gingras argued that Moussaoui, the only person to stand trial in a U.S. court in the 9/11 attacks, knew the trial judge was considering ways to get the favorable evidence to him but decided to plead guilty anyway. "It was his choice to pull the plug on the process," said Gingras. The prosecutor said U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema "bent over backward" to ensure that Moussaoui understood what he was doing and the consequences. The panel peppered both attorneys with questions for 90 minutes before closing the hearing for about an hour to consider matters involving classified information. The court usually takes several weeks, or even months, to issue a decision. In open court, Chief Judge Karen J. Williams sounded skeptical of Antonipillai's claim that Moussaoui's trial preparations were impaired by government secrecy that some of his constitutional rights were violated. Williams wondered aloud how the court could conclude that the government would have continued to conceal the evidence had the case gone to trial. She also noted Moussaoui testified that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House. Antonipillai said Moussaoui had "delusions of grandeur," and his confession was contradicted by alleged 9/11 ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who said Moussaoui was training for a different operation and had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. |
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WADA faces court challenge in Belgium
International |
2009/01/27 11:11
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A group of Belgian athletes is challenging the rule requiring athletes to notify drug testers of their whereabouts, contending it violates privacy.
If the case is successful in Belgium, it could undermine the work of the World Anti-Doping Agency and be used as a precedent to contest the ruling in other courts around the world.
Lawyer Kristof De Saedeleer represents a group of 65 soccer and volleyball players and cyclists. He has filed the case with Belgium's Council of State high court, which could take up to six months to rule. Athletes are obligated to give their whereabouts up to three months in advance. Out-of-competition tests are essential in catching cheats since many illegal substances can become untraceable by the time competition starts. To perform such tests, WADA needs to know at all times where and when athletes can be traced. Under the latest WADA code, athletes must specify one hour each day where they can be located for testing. "It gives WADA a pass to invade the privacy of athletes," De Saedeleer said by telephone Tuesday. Three missed tests or three warnings for failing to file such information within an 18-month period constitute a doping violation and can lead to a ban. The Belgian challenge cites privacy provisions within the Belgian constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe. Although the athletes stress they do not object to out-of-competition doping, they claim the system is far too invasive, forcing them even to pinpoint when they go to the movies. |
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Cheerleading is a contact sport, Wis. court rules
Court Watch |
2009/01/27 11:11
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High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a case being closely watched in the cheerleading world. The court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a teammate who failed to stop her fall while she was practicing a stunt. The court also said the injured cheerleader cannot sue her school district. The National Cheer Safety Foundation said the decision is the first of its kind in the nation. At issue in the case was whether cheerleaders qualify for immunity under a Wisconsin law that prevents participants in contact sports from suing each other for unintentional injuries. It does not spell out which sports are contact sports. The District 4 Court of Appeals ruled last year cheerleading doesn't qualify because there's no contact between opposing teams. But all seven members of the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to overturn that decision. In the opinion, Justice Annette Ziegler said cheerleading involves "a significant amount of physical contact between the cheerleaders." As an example, she cited stunts in which cheerleaders are tossed in the air. The lawsuit was brought by Brittany Noffke, who was a varsity cheerleader at Holmen High School in western Wisconsin. Practicing a stunt in 2004, Noffke fell backward off the shoulders of another cheerleader and suffered a serious head injury. |
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Gatehouse and New York Times Co. settle lawsuit
Court Watch |
2009/01/26 08:09
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An agreement has been reached in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by GateHouse Media against The New York Times Co.
GateHouse sued the Times, the parent company of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com Web Site, last month, claiming the Globe's new community Web sites use GateHouse's newspaper headlines and lead sentences without permission.
GateHouse claims Boston.com violates copyright and trademark laws by taking GateHouse material published on its "Wicked Local" Web sites. A clerk to U.S. District Judge William Young said the two sides reached an agreement over the weekend just before the case was set to go to trial Monday in U.S. District Court. No details have been announced. Lawyers for GateHouse declined comment Monday morning. |
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