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Appeals court sets aside conviction of bin Laden assistant
Court Watch |
2015/06/13 12:11
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A federal appeals court has set aside the military commission conviction of a Guantanamo Bay detainee who allegedly produced an al-Qaida recruiting video and served as Osama bin Laden's personal assistant and public relations secretary.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that the conspiracy case against the detainee was legally flawed because conspiracy is not a war crime. The detainee is Ali Hamza al-Bahlul.
The system of military commissions was created by the administration of President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Obama administration argued that Congress acted within its authority in making conspiracy a crime that could be tried by military commission.
Al-Bahlul's lawyers argued that military commissions can only try offenses under the law of war.
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Suge Knight returns to court to try to dismiss murder case
Court Watch |
2015/06/03 16:37
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Marion "Suge" Knight's lawyer argues that a murder case against the former rap music mogul should be dismissed because one of the men he allegedly ran over earlier this year didn't identify him in court.
Attorney Matt Fletcher contends in a motion filed before a hearing Friday that murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run charges filed against the Death Row Records co-founder should be thrown out based on the testimony of a man seriously injured in January. Knight has pleaded not guilty to running over Cle "Bone" Sloan and another man who died from his injuries.
Sloan refused to identify Knight while testifying during a preliminary hearing last month, but gave detectives a lucid account after being struck by Knight's pickup and said he started a fight in the parking lot of a Compton burger stand in late January.
A response filed by prosecutor Cynthia Barnes points to Sloan's statements to detectives and other evidence to support their case, including Knight's unique nickname, "Suge."
Fletcher contends that is not enough.
"There is nowhere in this transcript that Mr. Sloan ever identifies Marion Knight, the defendant, as a murderer," Fletcher wrote. "There is nowhere in the entire transcript that Mr. Sloan even identifies Marion Knight as a driver of the red truck in question; the red truck that hit the victims."
The 50-year-old Knight is charged with running over the two men outside a Compton burger stand. Fletcher has said his client was fleeing an ambush. A trial in the case has been scheduled for July 7.
Knight is also scheduled for a hearing in a separate robbery case that a judge delayed. The former rap mogul told deputies he was too sick to come to court, but Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen said he would order Knight forcibly brought to court on Friday if necessary. |
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Appeals court: Apple must submit to imposition of monitor
Court Watch |
2015/06/02 16:38
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A federal appeals panel has refused to disqualify a court-appointed monitor after a judge found Apple colluded with book publishers in 2010 to raise electronic book prices.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled against Apple Inc. Thursday. The three-judge panel concluded that a judge did not act improperly when she declined Apple's request to disqualify a monitor she had appointed to evaluate Apple's antitrust policies.
A lawyer for Apple, based in Cupertino, California, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2nd Circuit did not yet rule on a separate appeal in which Apple is challenging the judge's finding that it colluded with publishers.
After a 2013 civil trial, a judge ordered the technology giant to modify contracts with publishers to prevent price fixing. |
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Abortion ban based on heartbeat rejected by appeals court
Court Watch |
2015/06/02 16:38
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A federal appeals court struck down one of the nation's toughest abortion restrictions on Wednesday, ruling that women would be unconstitutionally burdened by an Arkansas law that bans abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy if a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with doctors who challenged the law, ruling that abortion restrictions must be based on a fetus' ability to live outside the womb, not the presence of a fetal heartbeat that can be detected weeks earlier. The court said that standard was established by previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
The ruling upholds a decision of a federal judge in Arkansas who struck down the 2013 law before it could take effect, shortly after legislators approved the change. But the federal judge left in place other parts of the law that required doctors to tell women if a fetal heartbeat was present; the appeals court also kept those elements in place.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's office was reviewing the decision "and will evaluate how to proceed," office spokesman Judd Deere said Wednesday afternoon.
The ruling wasn't a surprise to Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which represented the two doctors challenging the law. She said the case was a waste of taxpayer time, and that the decision leaves medical decisions to doctors and their patients, rather than politicians.
"We were kind of surprised it took as long as it did, frankly," Sklar said. "From our point of view it was a pretty simple case."
The law was among several abortion restrictions Republicans pushed through the Arkansas Legislature shortly after they took control of both the Senate and House for first time since Reconstruction.
A similar law restricting abortions to 20 weeks' gestation is still in effect in Arkansas, as are similar bans in 11 other states, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. |
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Supreme Court to hear Texas Senate districts case
Court Watch |
2015/06/01 16:38
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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear an important case about whether states must count only those who are eligible to vote, rather than the total population, when drawing electoral districts for their legislatures.
The case from Texas could be significant for states with large immigrant populations, including Latinos who are children or not citizens. The state bases its electoral districts on a count of the total population, including non-citizens and those who aren't old enough to vote.
But those challenging that system argue that it violates the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote. They claim that taking account of total population can lead to vast differences in the number of voters in particular districts, along with corresponding differences in the power of those voters.
A ruling for the challengers would shift more power to rural areas and away from urban districts in which there are large populations of immigrants who are not eligible to vote because they are children or not citizens. Latinos have been the fasting growing segment of Texas' population and Latino children, in particular, have outpaced those of other groups, according to census data.
"And because urban areas are more Democratic, the ruling could help Republicans," said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine law school.
The Project on Fair Representation is funding the lawsuit filed by two Texas residents. The group opposes racial and ethnic classifications and has been behind Supreme Court challenges to affirmative action and the federal Voting Rights Act. |
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Appeals court skeptical of fairness of trader's conviction
Court Watch |
2015/05/14 11:45
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An appeals court panel on Wednesday expressed doubts about the fairness of a prosecution that led to a prison sentence for a man convicted of defrauding a government bailout program.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had plenty of questions for a prosecutor as it conducted oral arguments in an appeal by Jesse Litvak, a bond trader on the Stamford, Connecticut, trading floor at Jefferies & Co. Inc.
Litvak, who's from New York, was sentenced last year to two years in prison after a jury convicted him of securities fraud, defrauding the Troubled Asset Relief Program and making false statements to the federal government. He has not had to serve his sentence pending appeal.
The conviction made Litvak, 40, the first person convicted of a crime related to the program, which used bailout funds in the financial meltdown to boost the economy.
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Lawyers for Menendez, donor due in court in corruption case
Court Watch |
2015/04/23 14:35
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Attorneys representing indicted U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez and a donor who's charged with bribing him in exchange for political favors are due in court in New Jersey.
The pretrial conference is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in Newark.
Menendez was indicted this month on charges he accepted nearly $1 million worth of gifts and travel from longtime friend and Florida-based ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen.
Menendez is accused of trying to get the State Department to intervene in a contract dispute involving a business Melgen owned in the Dominican Republic and advocating for Melgen in a Medicare billing dispute for several years.
Melgen has been charged separately with Medicare fraud.
The trial is scheduled for mid-July. |
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