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Police investigate Texas judge over video beating
Court Watch |
2011/11/03 09:15
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Police launched an investigation Wednesday into a Texas family law judge whose daughter posted a YouTube video of him savagely beating her with a belt during a tirade several years ago when she was a teenager.
The nearly 8-minute video, viewed more than 950,000 times as of late Wednesday, shows Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams lashing his then-16-year-old daughter in the legs more than a dozen times and growing increasingly irate while she screams and refuses to turn over on a bed to be beaten. The video was uploaded last week.
"Lay down or I'll spank you in your (expletive) face," Adams screams. His daughter, Hillary, wails and pleads for him to stop.
Tim Jayroe, the police chief in William Adams' hometown of Rockport, a Gulf Coast community about 200 miles south of Houston, said Wednesday that he's asked the Texas Rangers to assist in investigating whether the video shows anything criminal happened. He said his department began investigating after receiving phone calls from several concerned people who watched the secretly recorded 2004 video.
No one answered the door at William Adams' home in Rockport on Wednesday, and repeated calls to his office rang unanswered. However, the 51-year-old judge told Corpus Christi television station KZTV on Wednesday that the video "looks worse than it is," and that he doesn't expect to be disciplined or punished because of it. |
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Court reluctant on plea bargains after sentencing
Court Watch |
2011/11/02 10:12
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The Supreme Court seemed reluctant Monday to allow criminals to ask for a previously offered plea bargain after they've been sentenced, despite the inmates' claim of misconduct by their lawyers including neglecting to tell their clients that a deal had been offered.
Asking judges to go back and figure out on appeal whether a suspect would have taken a plea deal before a trial, whether a judge would have accepted it, whether a prosecutor would have withdrawn it or whether the negotiations would have fallen apart "is simply unworkable," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often a tiebreaker votes on divisive issues.
The high court heard appeals from two different sets of prosecutors who had their cases overturned by appeals courts that said criminals were denied their Sixth Amendment effective "assistance of counsel" because of mistakes during plea negotiations. The Supreme Court has amplified that by saying that "counsel's representation must not fall below an objective standard of reasonableness" and that there must not be "a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceedings would have been different."
In the first case, Anthony Cooper's conviction for shooting a woman in the thigh and buttocks after missing a shot to her head was overturned by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati because his lawyer gave him bad advice. His lawyer told him not to take a plea offer that could have had him out of prison in four years, thinking that there could not be a finding that Cooper intended to murder his victim. |
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Court upholds convictions of 5 in Fla. terror plot
Court Watch |
2011/11/02 08:47
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A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the convictions of five men accused of plotting to join forces with al-Qaida to destroy a landmark Chicago skyscraper and bomb FBI offices in several cities.
A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected numerous claims by ringleader Narseal Batiste and his followers, including questions about the sufficiency of the evidence, the FBI's use of an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative and the dismissal of a juror by a federal judge during deliberations.
Batiste, 37, and the other four were convicted in May 2009 of conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida and wage war against the U.S. stemming from a plot to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower — now known as the Willis Tower — and bomb FBI offices in five cities, including Miami. The eventual goal, testimony showed, was to overthrow the U.S. government.
It took federal prosecutors three trials to obtain convictions; the first two ended in mistrials and two of the original "Liberty City Seven" were acquitted. One of those found not guilty, Lyglenson Lemorin, was nonetheless deported to his native Haiti.
The case was built on recordings of FBI conversations and the group never came close to staging an attack, although the FBI informant posing as a terrorist led them in a videotaped oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden. They also videotaped the Miami FBI office and downtown courthouse buildings as potential targets. |
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Scandal-plagued former Bell official sues city
Court Watch |
2011/11/01 10:12
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Public outrage — and changed locks — forced Robert Rizzo out of a job last year, but the former city manager says he's still owed his $1.5 million salary and benefits.
In a lawsuit against the city of Bell filed Monday, Rizzo claims he's owed his wages — with interest — because he hasn't been convicted of a felony and hasn't resigned his post.
According to prosecutors, Rizzo orchestrated a scheme to bilk the Los Angeles suburb out of more than $6 million by paying himself and other Bell city officials' exorbitant salaries. They face charges of fraud and misappropriation of public funds.
Rizzo has pleaded not guilty.
In the lawsuit he filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Rizzo said he hasn't been paid since a public meeting in July 2010, when the small, blue-collar community of Bell learned of his outsized salary and benefits.
Protesters were outraged by compensation of $100,000 to City Council members that met once a month, but it was Rizzo's $787,637 salary, along with numerous perks that amounted to nearly $1.5 million a year, that made him the poster-child for corruption in government for furious Bell residents.
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Alabama immigration fight recalls civil rights era
Court Watch |
2011/10/31 04:43
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The epicenter of the fight over the patchwork of immigration laws in the United States is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.
No, the case that's likely to be the first sorted out by the U.S. Supreme Court comes from the Deep South state of Alabama, where the nation's strictest immigration law has resurrected ugly images from the state's days as the nation's battleground for civil rights a half-century ago.
And Alabama's jump to the forefront says as much about the country's evolving demographics as it does the nation's collective memory of the state's sometimes violent path to desegregation.
With the failure of Congress in recent years to pass comprehensive federal immigration legislation, Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and Indiana have passed their own. But supporters and opponents alike agree none contained provisions as strict as those passed in Alabama, among them one that required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants.
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High court avoids dispute over highway crosses
Court Watch |
2011/10/31 03:44
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of a ruling that 12-foot-high crosses along Utah highways in honor of dead state troopers violate the Constitution.
The justices voted 8-1 Monday to reject an appeal from Utah and a state troopers' group that wanted the court to throw out the ruling and take a more permissive view of religious symbols on public land.
Since 1998, the private Utah Highway Patrol Association has paid for and erected more than a dozen memorial crosses, most of them on state land. Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state in 2005.
The federal appeals court in Denver said the crosses were an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity by the Utah state government.
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a 19-page opinion dissenting from Monday's order. Thomas said the case offered the court the opportunity to clear up confusion over its approach to disputes over the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the prohibition against governmental endorsement of religion.
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Appeals court overturns key Cape Wind clearance
Court Watch |
2011/10/28 09:49
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A federal appeals court has rejected the Federal Aviation Administration's ruling that the Cape Wind project's turbines present "no hazard" to aviation, overturning a vital clearance for the nation's first offshore wind farm.
A decision Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the FAA didn't adequately determine whether the planned 130 turbines, each 440 feet tall, would pose a danger to pilots flying by visual flight rules.
The court ordered the "no hazard" determinations vacated and remanded back to the FAA.
It also ruled that if the FAA found the project posed aviation risks, the U.S. Interior Department would likely revoke or modify the lease granted Cape Wind — the first granted to a U.S. offshore wind project.
The decision signals further delays for the project, which has struggled to find financing.
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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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