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Texas woman on death row gets new sentencing trial
Areas of Focus |
2011/11/03 16:13
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A Texas appeals court says one of 10 women on the state's death row should get a new punishment hearing after her attorneys said prosecutors withheld evidence at her 2005 trial.
Chelsea Richardson was convicted of masterminding the slayings of her boyfriend's parents so her boyfriend could inherit their $1.56 million estate. She was 19 at the time of the December 2003 killings.
The now 27-year-old's attorneys argued she deserves a new punishment hearing because prosecutors withheld a psychologist's notes suggesting another woman, who took a plea deal in the case, masterminded the murder plot.
Richardson's trial judge and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed. The appeals court returned her case to Tarrant County on Wednesday. |
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Appeals panel sides with CBS over Super Bowl fine
Headline Legal News |
2011/11/03 16:13
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In the latest court battle over the steamy 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that CBS should not be fined $550,000 for Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction."
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals held its ground even after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a review in light of the high court's ruling in a related Fox television case. In that case, it said the Federal Communications Commission could threaten fines over the use of even a single curse word uttered on live TV.
But Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell said the Fox case only "fortifies our opinion" that the FCC was wrong to fine CBS over the halftime show.
The three-judge panel reviewed three decades of FCC rulings and concluded the agency was changing its policy, without warning, by fining CBS for fleeting nudity.
"An agency may not apply a policy to penalize conduct that occurred before the policy was announced," Rendell wrote.
CBS argues that the FCC had previously applied the same decency standards to words and images — and excused fleeting instances of both.
Rendell said that long-standing policy appeared to change without notice in March 2004 — a month after the act at the Super Bowl, held in Houston. |
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Scandal-plagued former Bell official sues city
Headline Legal News |
2011/11/01 17:08
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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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High court avoids dispute over highway crosses
Areas of Focus |
2011/10/31 15:48
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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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Court sidesteps Connecticut student speech case
Legal Topics |
2011/10/31 15:47
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The Supreme Court is refusing to disturb a court ruling that Connecticut school officials acted reasonably in disciplining a student for an Internet posting she wrote outside of school.
The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Avery Doninger, who was a high school junior in Burlington, Conn., when she took to the Internet to criticize administrators for canceling a popular school activity.
Doninger sued school officials after they punished her by preventing her from serving as class secretary as a senior.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with the school officials. |
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Alabama immigration fight recalls civil rights era
Headline Legal News |
2011/10/31 15:47
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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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Navy ship commander to face general court-martial
Areas of Focus |
2011/10/28 16:47
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A Navy ship commander is facing a military court hearing in San Diego Friday on accusations of sexually assaulting two women on his crew.
Cmdr. Jay Wylie will undergo a general court-martial, the military court reserved for the most serious offenses, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Wylie is the former skipper of the Everett, Wash.-based destroyer USS Momsen.
Wylie's attorney, Jeremiah Sullivan, wouldn't say Thursday what kind of plea his client will enter but told the newspaper that Wylie will "take full responsibility for his actions."
According to the Navy, Wylie got drunk on two occasions and sexually assaulted the women.
The first incident alleges that on New Year's Eve, Wylie pinned a junior female officer, tried to kiss her and assaulted her with his hand up her skirt. |
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