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Federal appeals court overturns 1991 death sentence in Fresno double murder
Legal Business |
2023/06/02 17:04
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A federal appeals court in a rare move overturned the death sentence of a man who was convicted of robbing and killing two people in Fresno in 1988, saying prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from a key witness.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its Wednesday ruling upheld Colin Dickey’s robbery conviction and said prosecutors could decide whether to retry him for murder. Dickey remains in prison.
“This is an exceptional case in which the prosecutor deliberately elicited, and then failed to correct, false and misleading testimony from the State’s star witness,” the court said in a ruling overturning Dickey’s 1991 death sentence.
The Fresno County prosecutor elicited the testimony from key witness Gene Buchanan, who told the jury he had not met with prosecutors or accepted any benefits from them. In fact, the court said, they had met a dozen times during the investigation, and the district attorney’s office had dismissed drug charges against him and helped him collect a $5,000 reward for implicating Dickey, one of his roommates.
Dickey was convicted in the murders of two neighbors, Marie Caton, 76, and Louis Freiri, 67, who were beaten and stabbed to death in November 1988 at Caton’s home in Fresno, where Freiri was a boarder, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Both Dickey and Buchanan lived with Caton’s grandson, Richard Cullumber, who according to witnesses was a drug user who frequently requested money from Caton. Five days after the attack, the court said, Cullumber fled police in a car, said he had “killed a woman,” was cornered after a high-speed chase and shot himself to death.
According to another roommate, Dickey said he had gone to Caton’s house with Cullumber to help him get the money but had nothing to do with the killings. But Buchanan testified that Dickey told him he was at the scene of the attacks, saw Freiri lying with his head slumped down, and decided that “if you kill one you might as well kill them both.”
Buchanan’s testimony “was the centerpiece of the state’s case” and without his dubious statements, “the state’s case against Dickey was weak” and lacked any direct evidence of intent to kill, Judge Morgan Christen said in the 3-0 ruling.
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Tunisian court releases prominent radio director from prison
Attorney News |
2023/05/29 20:11
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Tunisia’s most popular private radio station said an appeal court has allowed its director to be released on bail from prison, after more than three months of detention.
Mosaique FM announced Wednesday that its director, Noureddine Boutar, was freed after the appeal court ordered a bail of one million dinars (about $323,500) and a travel ban. The reasons behind the decision have not been made public.
Boutar was arrested in February on suspicion of money laundering and illicit enrichment, according to his lawyers who said the accusations were unfounded.
One of his lawyers, Ayoub Ghedamsi, said he was imprisoned because he was critical of the government.
The move comes amid a wave of arrests of opponents of the Tunisian president, Kais Saied. Rights groups have denounced a growing crackdown on dissent in the north African nation.
Last week, a Tunisian appeals court sentenced a journalist to five years in prison for revealing details of a counterterrorism operation and refusing to reveal his sources, according to his lawyer, prompting outcry from media rights advocates.
It was believed to be the worst sentence against a journalist in Tunisia since the 2011 Arab Spring revolution pushed out a long-serving autocrat and ushered in a new democratic system with more media freedom.
About 20 prominent opposition figures, including journalists, political party leaders, lawyers and female activist activist Chaima Issa are currently detained on a variety of charges.
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Supreme Court limits regulation of some US wetlands
Attorney News |
2023/05/28 03:11
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The U.S. Supreme Court has stripped federal agencies of authority over millions of acres of wetlands, weakening a bedrock environmental law enacted a half-century ago to cleanse the country’s badly polluted waters.
A 5-4 majority significantly expanded the ability of farmers, homebuilders and other developers to dig up or fill wetlands near rivers, lakes and streams, finding the government had long overreached in limiting such activities.
The ruling Thursday may nullify key parts of a rule the Biden administration imposed in December, which two federal judges already had blocked from being enforced in 26 states. It’s the latest turn in a decades-old struggle by courts and regulators to determine which waters are subject to protection under the Clean Water Act.
Some experts say the battle over wetlands now may shift to states, with red and blue states writing laws that take dramatically different approaches.
The high court’s decision follows one in 2022 curtailing federal power to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and indicates a willingness by the court’s emboldened conservatives to limit environmental laws and agency powers.
“This is one of the saddest chapters in the 50-year history of the Clean Water Act,” said Jim Murphy, an attorney with the National Wildlife Federation.
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Adnan Syed’s lawyer appeals to Maryland Supreme Court
Court Watch |
2023/05/25 16:26
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decades ago — after he was freed last year in a legal case that gained international attention from the hit podcast “Serial.”
Syed’s lawyer also is asking the court to prevent her client from being incarcerated while the Supreme Court of Maryland’s review is pending
“He is grateful that the victim’s representative and Attorney General have consented to the stay,” a statement from the Maryland public defender’s office said while announcing the court filings. “Reincarcerating Adnan would be devastating for him and his family and would be an affront to justice.”
Syed’s counsel filed a petition that asks the state’s highest court to review several legal issues raised by the victim’s family, who contended they were not given enough notice to testify at a court hearing.
The legal issues include whether former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s decision to dismiss the charges against Syed last year made the family’s court challenge moot. The issues also include whether attendance on Zoom satisfied the right of the victim’s representative to attend the hearing and whether the notice of the hearing was sufficient.
Syed’s lawyer also is asking the court to consider whether the Appellate Court of Maryland’s reversal is appropriate without showing that the result of the hearing that decided his release would have been different.
“Adnan’s innocence is not at issue, but his rights as a defendant and freedom as an exoneree are directly impacted by the Appellate Court of Maryland’s decision,” said Erica Suter, Syed’s lawyer, in a statement.
Suter said the issues raised in the case “have broader implications for our entire legal system, most notably the authority of the State to dismiss a case, the role of victims’ representatives in proceedings to redress unjust convictions, and the restrictions placed on judges’ discretion to utilize remote communication services like Zoom.” |
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Tunisian court releases prominent radio director from prison
Legal Business |
2023/05/23 23:25
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Tunisia’s most popular private radio station said an appeal court has allowed its director to be released on bail from prison, after more than three months of detention.
Mosaique FM announced Wednesday that its director, Noureddine Boutar, was freed after the appeal court ordered a bail of one million dinars (about $323,500) and a travel ban. The reasons behind the decision have not been made public.
Boutar was arrested in February on suspicion of money laundering and illicit enrichment, according to his lawyers who said the accusations were unfounded.
One of his lawyers, Ayoub Ghedamsi, said he was imprisoned because he was critical of the government.
The move comes amid a wave of arrests of opponents of the Tunisian president, Kais Saied. Rights groups have denounced a growing crackdown on dissent in the north African nation.
Last week, a Tunisian appeals court sentenced a journalist to five years in prison for revealing details of a counterterrorism operation and refusing to reveal his sources, according to his lawyer, prompting outcry from media rights advocates.
It was believed to be the worst sentence against a journalist in Tunisia since the 2011 Arab Spring revolution pushed out a long-serving autocrat and ushered in a new democratic system with more media freedom.
About 20 prominent opposition figures, including journalists, political party leaders, lawyers and female activist activist Chaima Issa are currently detained on a variety of charges.
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Supreme Court won’t put Illinois gun law on hold
Legal Topics |
2023/05/19 15:52
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The Supreme Court said Wednesday that Illinois can, for now, keep in place a new law that bars the sale of certain semi-automatic guns and large-capacity magazines.
The high court denied an emergency request from people challenging the law, which bans so-called assault weapons. The law’s opponents had asked the court to put the law on hold while a court challenge continues. The court did not comment and no justice publicly dissented.
The high court’s action comes at a time when gun violence has been heavily in the news. Since the beginning of the year, 115 people have died in 22 mass killings — an average of one mass killing a week, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University. The database counts killings involving four or more fatalities, not including the perpetrator. Just recently, on May 6, a man armed with an AR-15 style rifle and other firearms fatally shot eight people, including three children, at a Dallas-area mall.
The case before the Supreme Court involves an Illinois state law enacted in January. The legislation bans the sale of a series of guns including the AR-15 and AK-47. The law also bars the sale of magazines that have more than 15 rounds of ammunition for handguns and more than 10 rounds of ammunition for a long gun.
People who legally owned the now-barred guns and magazines ahead of the law’s enactment can continue to keep them. The guns, however, must be registered with law enforcement.
Nine other states and the District of Columbia have gun bans similar to the one in Illinois, according to the gun control group Brady, which tracks the legislation. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York also require registration of guns purchased prior to the law while four other states – Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington -- do not.
The Illinois legislation was driven largely by the killing of seven people at a 4th of July parade last year in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. The shooter was armed with an AR-15 rifle and 30-round magazines.
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PA mail-in voting law gets beaten up on GOP campaign trail
Headline Legal News |
2023/05/15 16:56
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Election integrity and Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law are prominent subjects in the state’s Republican primary contest for an open state Supreme Court seat, as Donald Trump continues to baselessly claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
This year, two GOP primary rivals for the state Supreme Court seat in Tuesday’s primary election are signaling their disapproval of Pennsylvania’s expansive mail-in voting law.
In one appearance last month, Carolyn Carluccio, a Montgomery County judge, called the mail-in voting law “bad” for the state and for faith in elections. She suggested elections are too “secretive” and promised that if the law comes before the high court “I’m going to be happy to take a look at it.”
Meanwhile, Patricia McCullough, a judge on the statewide Commonwealth Court, repeatedly highlights her rulings in election-related cases, including voting to throw out the mail-in voting law.
“Election integrity, that seems to be like the most important issue to the people right now,” McCullough told an interviewer on public access television in Erie last month.
Both parties will pick a high court nominee to run in November’s general election. The state’s highest court currently has four justices elected as Democrats and two as Republicans. The seat is open following the death of Chief Justice Max Baer last fall.
Allegations about election fraud and opposition to Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law have persisted in Republican primaries in 2021 and 2022, demonstrating just how influential Trump’s extreme and baseless election claims are to the GOP campaign trail.
In last year’s governor’s race, for instance, every candidate in the GOP’s nine-person field vowed to repeal the 2019 law that established no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.
A third Republican-backed challenge to the mail-in voting law is pending in state courts, while Republicans have repeatedly gone to court to try to ensure that ballots cast by legal, eligible voters are thrown out for technical errors, like a missing envelope, signature or date. |
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