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Court denies request to lift gag order in Idaho killings
Headline Legal News |
2023/04/25 16:51
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The Idaho Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request by 30 news organizations to lift a gag order in the criminal case of a man accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death.
The high court did not weigh in on whether the gag order, which prohibits attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and others involved in the case from talking to the news media, violates the First Amendment rights of a free press. Instead, the unanimous Idaho Supreme Court justices said the news organizations should have brought their request to the magistrate judge who issued the gag order.
“This Court has long respected the media’s role in our constitutional republic, and honored the promises in both the Idaho Constitution and First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Justice Gregory Moeller wrote in the decision, going on to quote a ruling from a federal case that said responsible press coverage, “guards against the miscarriage of justice” by subjecting the court system and those who are a part of it to public scrutiny.
Still, Moeller wrote, the balancing act between the First Amendment protections afforded to the press and the Sixth Amendment fair trial rights promised to defendants has become increasingly difficult with the advent of the internet and social media.
Though those are “well-guarded rights,” Moeller said, news organizations who wish to challenge gag orders should start at the lower courts and work their way up to the state’s highest judicial bench, rather than approaching the Supreme Court first.
Bryan Kohberger, 28, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in connection with the stabbing deaths in Moscow, Idaho. Prosecutors have yet to reveal if they intend to seek the death penalty.
The bodies of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found on Nov. 13, 2022, at a rental home across the street from the University of Idaho campus. The slayings shocked the rural Idaho community and neighboring Pullman, Washington, where Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University.
The case garnered widespread publicity, and in January Latah County Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall issued the sweeping gag order, barring attorneys, law enforcement agencies and others associated with the case from talking or writing about it. |
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Supreme Court asked to preserve abortion pill access rules
Headline Legal News |
2023/04/15 12:28
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The Biden administration and a drug manufacturer asked the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve access to an abortion drug free from restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, while a legal fight continues.
The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories both warned of “regulatory chaos” and harm to women if the high court doesn’t block an appeals court ruling in a case from Texas that had the effect of tightening Food and Drug Administration rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.
The new limits would take effect Saturday unless the court acts before then.
“This application concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote Friday, less than two days after the appellate ruling.
A lawyer for the anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations suing over mifepristone said the justices should reject the drugmaker’s and the administration’s pleas and allow the appeals court-ordered changes to take effect.
The fight over mifepristone lands at the Supreme Court less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
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Add value to your neglected assets - Life Insurance Policy Review
Headline Legal News |
2023/04/10 03:29
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During a life insurance policy review, you should look at your current coverage and beneficiaries and decide if any adjustments should be made. A Life Insurance Policy Review can be incorporated into initial planning or regular reviews when significant life changes have occurred.
Factors that can impact changes to your life insurance needs can include marriage, divorce, health status changes, buying or selling a house, having children, and paying off debt. It's important to review your life insurance policy annually or more frequently to ensure your policy is set up to adequately protect your loved ones after your death.
When conducting an insurance Policy Review and presenting options that include replacing an existing insurance contract, it is important to discuss the risks and benefits. You should conduct one after any major life events involving changes to your family, health, or finances. Significant life events that impact your family, health, or finances can change how much life insurance coverage you need and who you want as your beneficiaries.
The amount of life insurance coverage you need, and who you want as your beneficiaries, depends in part on the people who count on your income to cover their expenses. If you or a loved one experiences a significant improvement or decline in health, it could increase or decrease the amount of coverage you might need. You can review your life insurance by checking the hard copy of your policy, logging into your online account with the insurer, or talking directly with an agent. |
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Supreme Court skeptical of man who offered adult adoptions
Headline Legal News |
2023/03/28 05:10
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The Supreme Court seemed inclined Monday to rule against a man convicted of violating immigration law for offering adult adoptions he falsely claimed would lead to citizenship.
Attorneys for Helaman Hansen told the justices during approximately 90 minutes of arguments that the law he was convicted of violating was too broad. But the court’s conservative majority in particular seemed willing to side with the government and conclude that it is not.
Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that the law “has been on the books for 70 years” without some of the issues Hansen’s lawyers worried about. He also expressed no sympathy for Hansen himself, who he said was “taking advantage of very vulnerable people.”
“He had every intent in the world to keep these people here to take their money with no prospect they’d ever” actually get citizenship, Gorsuch said.
The case involves a section of federal immigration law that says a person such as Hansen who “encourages or induces” a non-citizen to come to or remain in the United States illegally can be punished by up to five years in prison. That’s increased to up to 10 years if the person doing the encouraging is doing so for their own financial gain.
The federal government says that from 2012 to 2016 Hansen — who lived in Elk Grove, California, near Sacramento — deceived hundreds of non-citizens into believing that he could guarantee them a path to citizenship through adult adoption.
Based on Hansen’s promises, officials say, people either came to or stayed in the United States in violation of the law, even though Hansen knew that the adult adoptions he was arranging would not lead to citizenship. The government says at least 471 people paid him between $550 and $10,000 and that in total he collected more than $1.8 million.
Hansen was ultimately convicted of encouragement charges as well as fraud charges. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the encouragement charges and another 20 years on the fraud charges. But a federal appeals court ruled that the law on encouragement is overbroad and violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment and overturned just those convictions.
The court’s three liberal justices seemed more concerned about the reach of the law. Justice Elena Kagan asked “what happens to all the cases” where a lawyer, doctor, neighbor, friend or teacher “says to a non-citizen: ‘I really think you should stay.’” Kagan wanted to know whether those people could or would be prosecuted under the law.
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Lawyers: Dispute over Van Gogh art in Detroit is settled
Headline Legal News |
2023/03/21 16:58
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A deal has been reached over control of an 1888 painting by Vincent van Gogh, lawyers said, weeks after the custody fight created public buzz and much tension near the end of a rare U.S. exhibition in Detroit.
Brokerarte Capital Partners LLC, which claims to own “The Novel Reader,” told a federal appeals court that it reached a confidential settlement with the unnamed entity who loaned the painting to the Detroit Institute of Arts for an exhibition of Van Gogh’s works that ended Jan. 22.
Because of the dispute, the museum has been under orders to hold the painting while the court determined who would next get the art.
Brokerarte Capital, an art brokerage, said it acquired the painting in 2017 for $3.7 million and gave temporary possession of it to a third party who absconded with it. The company filed a lawsuit on Jan. 10 seeking to seize the painting, and the museum subsequently posted a security guard next to it.
The museum was caught in the middle but wasn’t accused of wrongdoing. It has not publicly explained how it got the painting on loan, saying only that it came from a collection in Brazil.
Lawyers for Brokerarte Capital and its sole proprietor, Gustavo Soter of Brazil, said a deal had been reached with the other party.
“Consistent with the confidential settlement, Brokerarte no longer seeks injunctive relief, and therefore, this appeal is moot,” lawyers said in a March 13 filing with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The museum said it spent more than $100,000 defending itself in the litigation, which began in federal court in Detroit. It argued that a federal law governing the international sharing of art prevents courts from intervening. The U.S. Justice Department took a similar position.
The museum still is concerned about the significance of the appeals court issuing an injunction in February. It wants the court to consider declaring the injunction “null and void” so it can’t be cited as a precedent in any future international art disputes. |
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Supreme Court remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Headline Legal News |
2023/03/17 16:34
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion for women’s rights whose death ahead of the 2020 election allowed the Supreme Court to become more conservative, will be remembered during ceremonies Friday at the high court.
Ginsburg, who served as a justice for 27 years and was the Supreme Court’s second female member, will be remembered by some of the people who worked for her as law clerks, young lawyers who spend a year at the court working for a justice. The group includes Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s solicitor general, its top Supreme Court lawyer, as well as several judges and professors.
The ceremonies, technically a meeting of the Supreme Court Bar followed by a special session of the court, are a tradition at the high court following the death of a justice, a tradition dating back to 1822. The court will livestream the meeting on its website beginning at 1:45 p.m. EDT.
Ginsburg’s death just over six weeks before the 2020 election was immensely consequential. It allowed then-President Donald Trump to fill the liberal justice’s seat on the court with a conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the bench. Barrett was among the justices who voted last year to overturn Roe v. Wade and do away with constitutional protections for abortion, protections Ginsburg had backed as a justice.
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COVID could create crisis in Alex Murdaugh murder trial
Headline Legal News |
2023/02/13 23:36
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Two jurors in the double murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh have COVID, leaving the future of the proceedings in some doubt as they enter their 16th day Monday.
Judge Clifton Newman decided keep the trial going in the packed Colleton County courtroom after the remaining 10 jurors and five alternates tested negative. They will be tested again on Wednesday. The clerk of court also tested positive for the virus.
Newman said jurors agreed to wear masks. He rejected suggestions from both the defense and prosecutors to delay the trial until that second round of tests Wednesday, reduce the over 200 people allowed to attend the trial each day or order everyone in the courtroom to wear masks other than testifying witnesses and questioning attorneys.
“At the moment, we are going to encourage everyone here to mask up for your own protection as well as the protection of these proceedings and each other,” Newman said.
Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murdering his wife, 52-year-old Maggie, and their 22-year-old son Paul near dog kennels at the family’s Colleton County home on June 7, 2021.
Monday marked the fourth week of the trial and the 13th day of testimony with prosecutors still presenting their case. They called state agents who tested evidence for DNA. |
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