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Jury begins deliberating in UK trial of men accused of felling Sycamore Gap tree
Lawyer News Press |
2025/05/09 12:57
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Jurors began deliberating Thursday in the case of two men charged with cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree that once stood along the ancient Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.
Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, have pleaded not guilty to two counts each of criminal damage. The former friends each testified that they were at their separate homes that night and not involved.
Justice Christina Lambert told jurors in Newcastle Crown Court to take as long as they need to reach unanimous verdicts in the trial that began April 28.
The tree was not Britain’s biggest or oldest, but it was prized for its picturesque setting along the ancient wall built by Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 122 to protect the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire.
The tree was long known to locals but achieved international fame in Kevin Costner’s 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves.” It sat symmetrically between two hills along the historic wall and was a draw for tourists, landscape photographers and those taking selfies for social media.
Prosecutors said the tree’s value exceeded 620,000 pounds ($830,000) and damage to the wall, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was assessed at 1,100 pounds. Andrew Gurney, a lawyer for Carruthers, said Graham’s story didn’t add up and he was projecting his guilt on his former friend.
“Is that a plausible chain of events or is that the desperate story of a man caught out?” Gurney said.
Wright mocked the duo’s defense, saying common sense and a trail of evidence should lead jurors to convict them for their “moronic mission.”
Prosecutors showed grainy video from Graham’s phone of the tree being cut down — a video sent shortly afterward to Carruthers’ phone. Metadata showed it was taken at the tree’s location in Northumberland National Park. Data showed Graham’s Range Rover had traveled there.
Wright said he couldn’t say who cut the tree and who held the phone, but the two were the only people in the world who had the video on their devices.
Text and voice messages exchanged the following day between Carruthers and Graham captured their excitement as the story went viral.
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Judge bars deportations of Venezuelans from Texas under the Alien Enemies Act
Lawyer News Press |
2025/05/04 10:48
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A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Donald Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.”
U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people who, the Republican administration claims, are gang members invading the United States. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t interfere with the government’s right to deport people in the country illegally through other means, but it could not rely on the 227-year-old law to do so.
“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”
In March, Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S. He said he had special powers to deport immigrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without the usual court proceedings.
“The Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez wrote.
In an interview on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the administration will be “aggressively appealing” the ruling and others that hem in the president’s deportation power.
“The judge doesn’t make that determination, whether the Alien Enemies Act can be deployed,” Vance said. “I think the president of the United States is the one who determines whether this country is being invaded.”
The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said in a statement the judge had made clear “what we all knew to be true: The Trump administration illegally used the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process.”
The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before in U.S. history, most recently during World War II, when it was cited to intern Japanese-Americans.
The proclamation triggered a flurry of litigation as the administration tried to ship migrants it claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.
Rodriguez agreed, noting that the provision has only been used during the two World Wars and the War of 1812. Trump claimed Tren de Aragua was acting at the behest of the Venezuelan government, but Rodriguez found that the activities the administration accused it of did not amount to an invasion or “predatory incursion,” as the statute requires.
“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” Rodriguez wrote. “Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA.”
If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations. In those cases, Democratic administrations had sought to make it easier for immigrants to remain in the U.S.
The administration, as it has in other cases challenging its expansive view of presidential power, could turn to appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, in the form of an emergency motion for a stay pending an appeal.
The Supreme Court already has weighed in once on the issue of deportations under the AEA. The justices held that migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to contest their removal from the country. The court has not specified the length of time.
It’s possible that the losing side in the 5th Circuit would file an emergency appeal with the justices that also would ask them to short-circuit lower court action in favor of a definitive ruling from the nation’s highest court. Such a decision likely would be months away, at least.
The Texas case is just one piece of a tangle of litigation sparked by Trump’s proclamation.
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Court seems reluctant to block state bans on medical treatments for minors
Lawyer News Press |
2024/12/04 12:02
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Hearing a high-profile culture-war clash, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed reluctant Wednesday to block Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
The justices’ decision, not expected for several months, could affect similar laws enacted by another 25 states and a range of other efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.
The case is coming before a conservative-dominated court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
In arguments that passed the two-hour mark Wednesday, five conservative justices voiced varying degrees of skepticism of arguments made by the Biden administration and lawyers for Tennessee families challenging the ban.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted in the majority in a 2020 case in favor of transgender rights, questioned whether judges, rather than lawmakers, should be weighing in on a question of regulating medical procedures, an area usually left to the states.
”The Constitution leaves that question to the people’s representatives, rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor,” Roberts said in an exchange with ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio.
The court’s three liberal justices seem firmly on the side of the challengers. But it’s not clear that any of the court’s six conservatives will go along. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion in 2020, has yet to say anything.
Four years ago, the court ruled in favor of Aimee Stephens, who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after she informed its owner that she was a transgender woman. The court held that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.
The Biden administration and the families and health care providers who challenged the Tennessee law are urging the justices to apply the same sort of analysis that the majority, made up of liberal and conservative justices, embraced in the case four years ago when it found that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.
The issue in the Tennessee case is whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.
Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but not “across the board,” lawyers for the families wrote in their Supreme Court brief. The lead lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first openly transgender person to argue in front of the justices. |
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Mexican cartel leader’s son convicted of violent role in drug trafficking plot
Lawyer News Press |
2024/09/21 06:41
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The son of a Mexican drug cartel leader was convicted Friday of charges that he used violence, including the deadly downing of a military helicopter, to help his father operate one of the country’s largest and most dangerous narcotics trafficking organizations.
Rubén Oseguera, known as “El Menchito,” is the son of fugitive Jalisco New Generation cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera and served as the “CJNG” cartel’s second-in-command before his extradition to the U.S. in February 2020.
A federal jury in Washington, D.C., deliberated for several hours over two days before finding the younger Oseguera guilty of both counts in his indictment: conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.
“El Menchito now joins the growing list of high-ranking Cartel leaders that the Justice Department has convicted in an American courtroom,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an emailed statement. “We are grateful to our Mexican law enforcement partners for their extensive cooperation and sacrifice in holding accountable leaders of the Jalisco Cartel.”
The younger Oseguera, who was born in California and holds dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 10 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison.
Oseguera didn’t have an obvious reaction to the jury’s verdict. One of his lawyers patted him on his shoulder before he was led out of the courtroom.
The U.S. government has offered a reward of up $10 million for information leading to the arrest of the elder Oseguera, whose alias, “El Mencho,” is a play on his first name.
Prosecutors showed jurors a rifle bearing Oseguera’s nicknames, “Menchito” and “JR,” along with the cartel’s acronym. The gun was in his possession when he was arrested.
“JR” also was etched on a belt found at the site where a Mexican military helicopter crashed after cartel members shot the aircraft down with a rocket-propelled grenade in 2015. Prosecutors said the younger Oseguera, now 34, ordered subordinates to shoot down the helicopter in Jalisco, Mexico, so that he and his father could avoid capture. At least nine people on board the helicopter were killed in the attack, according to prosecutors.
Oseguera ordered the killings of at least 100 people and frequently bragged about murders and kidnappings, according to prosecutors. They said he personally shot and killed at least two people, including a rival drug trafficker and a disobedient subordinate.
During the trial’s closing arguments Thursday, Justice Department prosecutor Kaitlin Sahni described Oseguera as “a prince, an heir to an empire.”
“But this wasn’t a fairytale,” she said. “This was the story of the defendant’s drugs, guns and murder, told to you by the people who saw it firsthand.”
Jurors heard testimony from six cooperating witnesses who tied Oseguera to drug trafficking.
Defense attorney Anthony Colombo tried to attack the witnesses’ credibility and motives, calling them “sociopaths” who told self-serving lies about his client. |
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Fraud trial of George Santos to begin next month with an anonymous jury
Lawyer News Press |
2024/08/17 14:00
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The fraud trial against former U.S. Rep. George Santos, slated to start in a matter of weeks, is coming into focus after a federal judge ruled Tuesday that jurors will have their identities kept secret from the public.
They won’t, however, be required to fill out a written questionnaire gauging their opinions of Santos when they arrive for jury selection Sept. 9, as his lawyers had requested.
Judge Joanna Seybert said during a brief hearing in federal court on Long Island that she agreed with the government’s assessment that a questionnaire would only bog the proceedings down.
She said questioning each potential juror in person would allow her and both sides to ask more varied and probing questions to elicit more truthful responses.
Prosecutors told the judge the trial could last three weeks because they expect to call at least three dozen witnesses, including some victims of Santos’ alleged crimes.
Santos has pleaded not guilty to a range of financial crimes, including lying to Congress about his wealth, collecting unemployment benefits while actually working, and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses such as designer clothing.
Seybert urged both sides to work together to “streamline” the proceedings where possible.
“Make me hopeful. Seriously,” she said. “Sit down and discuss what is absolutely necessary.”
Santos, who was dressed in a blue suit, declined to speak with reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing, the last expected before the trial.
But when asked whether he believed his client could receive a fair trial, Santos’ lawyer Robert Fantone said, “I think we’re going to be alright.”
In court, Santos’ lawyers pushed back at claims prosecutors made in prior legal filings that they’re not participating fully in the required pretrial document-sharing process known as discovery.
Prosecutors this month said they’ve turned over more than 1.3 million pages of records, while defense lawyers have produced just five pages. But when pressed by the judge, Santos’ lawyers maintained that they’ve turned over every document in their possession.
“We’re not stonewalling,” said Joe Murray, another Santos lawyer. “Trial by ambush is not how I operate.”
The New York Republican’s lawyers had argued in recent court filings that a questionnaire addressing potential jurors’ “knowledge, beliefs, and preconceptions” was needed because of the extensive negative media coverage surrounding Santos, who was expelled from Congress in December after an ethics investigation found “overwhelming evidence” he had broken the law and exploited his public position for his own profit. |
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