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Court tosses Chicago inmate's $10M suit for escape
Legal Topics |
2015/09/26 03:59
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An inmate who escaped from a high-rise federal jail in Chicago has an unusual theory on who's to blame: He says the government was negligent in enabling the breakout, so he sued for $10 million for damages.
The 7th U.S. Court of Appeals said in a Friday ruling that Jose Banks "gets credit for chutzpah." But a three-judge panel at the Chicago-based court tossed his 2014 lawsuit.
"No one has a personal right to be better guarded or more securely restrained, so as to be unable to commit a crime," the ruling said.
In a 2012 jailbreak, Banks and a cellmate rappelled 17 stories down on a rope fashioned from bed sheets and dental floss, then hailed a cab. Banks, now 40, was caught within days and his cellmate within weeks.
Banks' suit says the damages he suffered from the escape included the trauma of dangling on the makeshift rope in fear of his life.
Authorities dropped the escape charges against him because he was going to prison for decades anyway on a bank robbery conviction.
But Banks, who represented himself in the civil case, alleged his cellmate forced him to participate in the escape, which took months to plan and execute. His suit says guards should have noticed the two were chiseling an escape hole in their cell and should have stopped them long before they fled.
Banks says he has had to endure tighter restrictions than fellow inmates at his current prison because of the escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center three years ago.
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Indiana's high court to consider State Fair stage collapse
Legal Topics |
2015/09/24 04:47
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The Indiana Supreme Court is set to consider whether the state is responsible for some of the legal damages faced by a company that supplied stage rigging that collapsed at a state fair event in 2011, killing seven people.
The justices are scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in the state's appeal of a March Court of Appeals ruling involving Mid-America Sound Corp.
That ruling found Indiana might be responsible for some legal damages faced by Mid-America, after high winds toppled the stage rigging onto fans awaiting the start of a concert by country duo Sugarland in August 2011.
Mid-America contends the state is financially responsible by contract for the cost of its defense and any judgments against it.
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Religious clerks in Kentucky follow law, but see conflict
Legal Topics |
2015/09/18 18:12
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Clerk Mike Johnston prays twice a day, once each morning and once each night, and asks the Lord to understand the decision he made to license same-sex marriage.
“It’s still on my heart,” said Johnston, whose rural Carter County sits just to the east of Rowan County, where clerk Kim Davis sparked a national furor by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, a decision that landed her in jail.
Johnston is one of Kentucky’s 119 other clerks, many of them deeply religious, who watched the Kim Davis saga unfold on national television while trying to reconcile their own faith and their oath of office. Sixteen of them sent pleading letters to the governor noting their own religious objections. But when forced to make a decision, only two have taken a stand as dramatic as Davis and refused to issue licenses.
And others say they find the controversy now swirling around their job title humiliating.
“I wish (Davis) would just quit, because she’s embarrassing everybody,” said Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins, whose office serves the state’s second-largest city, Lexington.
After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered clerks across the state to issue licenses, launching them along markedly different paths. The clerk in Louisville, Bobbie Holsclaw, issued licenses that very day and the mayor greeted happy couples with bottles of champagne.
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Idaho high court upholds law banning horse racing terminals
Legal Topics |
2015/09/10 18:07
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Idaho's highest court says the state must enforce legislation banning lucrative instant horse racing terminals after ruling that Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's veto of the bill was invalid.
The decision is a blow to Idaho's horse racing industry, where officials have pleaded that the machines are vital to keeping their businesses afloat.
In a unanimous decision issued Thursday, the court ruled that the ban must go into effect because Otter did not complete the veto within the required five-day time span. In Idaho, a bill automatically becomes law — even if the governor doesn't sign it — unless it is vetoed within the legal timeframe.
"This pivotal decision reaffirms that even Idaho's highest elected officials must follow the Constitution," said Coeur d'Alene Tribe Chief James Allan, chairman of the tribe that filed the lawsuit against the state, prompting the court's ruling. The tribe, which profits from its own video gaming on the reservation and faced competition from the new horse racing versions, said it was "extremely happy" with the ruling.
Secretary of State Lawerence Denney must now certify the law, which will make the machines illegal. He did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press on when he will certify it. There are currently about 250 machines installed in three locations across Idaho.
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Court: Transgender asylum seekers can't be equated with gays
Legal Topics |
2015/09/04 06:38
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Transgender people can be especially vulnerable to harassment and attacks and shouldn't be equated with gays and lesbians by U.S. immigration officials determining whether to grant asylum, a federal appeals court said Thursday.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling in the case of a transgender Mexican woman who sought shelter in the U.S. on the grounds that she would likely be tortured if returned to Mexico.
Edin Avendano-Hernandez said she had been sexually assaulted by uniformed Mexican police and a military official for being transgender.
The Board of Immigration Appeals wrongly relied on Mexican laws protecting gays and lesbians to reject Avendano-Hernandez's asylum request, the ruling states.
The 9th Circuit said transgender people face a unique level of danger and are specifically targeted in Mexico by police for extortion and sexual favors.
"While the relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation is complex, and sometimes overlapping, the two identities are distinct," Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote. "Significant evidence suggests that transgender persons are often especially visible, and vulnerable, to harassment and persecution due to their often public nonconformance with normative gender roles."
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Court fines Washington state over education funding
Legal Topics |
2015/08/15 19:15
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Washington officials are considering a special legislative session after the state Supreme Court issued daily fines a of $100,000 until lawmakers comply with a court order to improve the way the state pays for its basic education system.
Thursday's order, signed by all nine justices of the high court, ordered that the fine start immediately, and be put into a dedicated education account.
The court encouraged Gov. Jay Inslee to call a special session, saying that if the Legislature complies with the court's previous rulings for the state to deliver a plan to fully fund education, the penalties accrued during a special session would be refunded.
Inslee and legislative leaders are set to meet Monday in Seattle discuss what next steps the state should take.
"There is much that needs to be done before a special session can be called," Inslee said in a statement. "I will ask lawmakers to do that work as quickly as humanly possible so that they can step up to our constitutional and moral obligations to our children and lift the court sanctions."
The ruling was the latest development in a long-running impasse between lawmakers and justices, who in 2012 ruled that the state is failing to meet its constitutional duty to pay for the cost of basic education for its 1 million schoolchildren.
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Inmate challenge to death sentence goes back to trial court
Legal Topics |
2015/08/10 05:53
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A state death row inmate is going back to a north Mississippi courtroom to again fight for a new trial.
The Mississippi Supreme Court has ordered a Lowndes County judge to determine if the results of post-conviction DNA testing raise enough questions to justify a new trial for Eddie Lee Howard Jr. Howard, now 61, who was convicted and sentenced to death in the slaying of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp of Columbus. Evidence against him included bite marks on her body.
The Supreme Court, in the order signed Thursday by Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., makes no specific mention of Howard's challenge to the bite mark evidence that the inmate argues is now widely discredited in legal circles.
Waller's order directs the trial court to hold a hearing to determine if Howard's arguments of newly discovered evidence including the results of DNA testing could "probably produce a different result or induce a different verdict if a new trial is granted."
The court's order does not disclose what the DNA testing revealed. Howard's attorneys argue in briefs that DNA results do not connect Howard to the crime.
Howard was convicted of raping and fatally stabbing Kemp in 1992. He was sentenced to death.
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