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Court rejects Duncan's death sentence appeal
Legal Business |
2015/03/31 19:54
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A federal appellate court has dismissed the appeal of a man who was sentenced to death for kidnapping, torturing and killing a young northern Idaho boy after killing several members of his family.
Joseph Edward Duncan III faces the death penalty for the 2005 murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene. He also faces several life sentences for the murder of three family members and the kidnapping of his then-8-year-old sister.
Duncan represented himself at his sentencing hearing and later waived his right to appeal. But he has since changed his mind and his defense attorneys say he wasn't mentally competent to waive his rights.
On Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that claim. The court said a lower court had correctly found Duncan competent. The justices said it was too late for Duncan to change his mind.
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High court won't hear challenge to Vermont campaign law
Legal Business |
2015/01/12 23:40
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The Supreme Court won't hear a challenge to part of Vermont's campaign finance laws that impose contribution limits on political action committees.
The justices on Monday declined to hear an appeal from the Vermont Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion group. The group argued that Vermont's campaign finance registration, reporting and disclosure requirements for PACs were too broad and unconstitutional.
The group argued that a subcommittee it created should not be subject to Vermont's $2,000 limit on contributions to PACs because the subcommittee does not give money directly to candidates and makes only independent expenditures.
But a federal judge rejected those arguments, finding that there was no clear accounting between the two committees. A federal appeals court agreed.
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New York International Criminal Law Attorney
Legal Business |
2014/11/08 16:26
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International Criminal Law generally includes law that comes from international courts such as the tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and most recently, the International Criminal Court. These Courts are generally concerned with war crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
International Criminal Law has a broader reach, however. For example, crimes can routinely cross the borders of different nations. These crimes can be seen as “trans-national crimes” and include drug trafficking, trans-national organized crime, terrorism, and foreign corrupt practices.
These trans-national crimes could include money laundering and computer crimes.
International Criminal Law is generally consensual in nature and is generally stated in the statute of the International Court of Justice and the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.
Jurisdictional issues have always been central to International Criminal Law and a classic case on jurisdiction is the case of S.S. Lotus (France v. Turkey) 1927 P.C.I.J. (ser.A)10.
A key aspect to resolving international disputes is “customary international law” as described in the Supreme Court case Paquete Habana 175 U.S. 677 (1900).
There are certain key terms in International Law including:
- Comity, meaning customary, or reciprocity.
- Complementarity
- Erga Omnes which refers to a states standing to enforce certain rights that belong to the international community.
- Extraterritoriality, or acts that occur outside the territory of the state.
- Jus Cogens is the “compelling law”, the highest of obligations under law placed upon countries.
- Ne Bis in idem which is the international version of the concept of double jeopardy.
This brief overview will serve to make clear the essential structural basis of international criminal law. If you need legal assistance for your international criminal law case, attorney Andrrew J. Schatkin has the necessary experience to help you. Call 516-932-8120 or fill out our contact form to arrange a consultation.
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Texas abortion clinic to reopen after court ruling
Legal Business |
2014/09/04 23:47
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Women in South Texas facing a 200-mile drive for access to legal abortions learned Wednesday that a local clinic shuttered by a sweeping anti-abortion law would reopen, marking the first tangible effect of a court ruling last week that blocked key parts of the state law.
Whole Woman's Health clinic in McAllen, a city near the Mexico border, closed in March after its doctors said they couldn't obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals as the state now requires. But a federal judge ruled Friday that the law created unconstitutional barriers to abortions in South Texas, and the clinic is now set to reopen later this week, chief executive Amy Hagstrom Miller said.
Questions are now also being raised about whether the ruling had other broader ramifications than first thought.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel made two key rulings in Friday's 21-page decision. He struck down a mandate that required all abortion clinics in Texas to adopt costly hospital-level operating standards and exempted clinics in McAllen and El Paso from an already upheld requirement that doctors who perform abortions obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
A four-day trial last month narrowly focused on the El Paso and McAllen areas because clinics there serve regions where access to abortions would otherwise be particularly difficult. But language Yeakel included in a separate final judgment has left some questioning whether his order — inadvertently or not — banned the admitting-privileges law at all Texas abortion clinics. |
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Apple wins EU court case on store design trademark
Legal Business |
2014/07/11 18:05
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The European Union's highest court says Apple's characteristic retail store layout may be registered as a trademark.
The Court of Justice on Thursday overturned a decision by German patent authorities which last year rejected an application to grant copyright protection to Apple's store design — parallel lines of big tables with electronic gadgets spread out on them under a high ceiling.
The Luxembourg-based EU Court said a design pattern like Apple's "may constitute a trademark provided that it is capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking" from others.
The case will go back for a final decision to Germany's highest patent court which had sought the EU judges' advice.
Apple Inc. successfully registered its store layout as a trademark in the United States in 2010. |
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SC Supreme Court hears appeal in fatal dog attack
Legal Business |
2014/04/15 21:31
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Prosecutors want South Carolina's highest court to reinstate the conviction of a Dillon County man whose dogs attacked and killed a 10-year-old boy in 2006.
The state Supreme Court on Tuesday hears an appeal in the case of Bentley Collins. In 2012, the state Court of Appeals overturned Collins' involuntary manslaughter conviction and prison sentence, ruling a judge shouldn't have allowed prosecutors to show pictures of the boy taken before his autopsy.
The photographs showed the extent of the boy's injuries, including how the dogs mauled him so badly his bones were exposed and his ears and nose were eaten.
The judges said the pathologist testified to the injuries, so the photographs did nothing more than rile the jury's emotions. |
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Court: Broad protection for whistleblowers
Legal Business |
2014/03/05 22:48
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The Supreme Court says whistleblower protections in a federal law passed in response to the Enron financial scandal apply broadly to employees of publicly traded companies and contractors hired by the companies.
The justices ruled 6-3 Tuesday in favor of two former employees of companies that administer the Fidelity family of mutual funds. The workers claimed they faced retaliation after they reported allegations of fraud affecting Fidelity funds.
The case involved the reach of a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, that protects whistleblower activity. The measure was intended to protect people who expose the kind of corporate misdeeds that arose at Enron. |
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Headline Legal News for You to Reach America's Best Legal Professionals. The latest legal news and information - Law Firm, Lawyer and Legal Professional news in the Media. |
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