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Supreme Court troubled by DA's rejection of black jurors
Lawyer News Press |
2015/11/03 09:40
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The Supreme Court signaled support Monday for a black death row inmate in Georgia who claims prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury that convicted him of killing a white woman.
Justice Stephen Breyer likened the chief prosecutor to his excuse-filled grandson. Justice Elena Kagan said the case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see" of rules the Supreme Court laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
At least six of the nine justices indicated during arguments that black people were improperly singled out and kept off the jury that eventually sentenced defendant Timothy Tyrone Foster to death in 1987.
Foster could win a new trial if the Supreme Court rules his way. The discussion Monday also suggested that a technical issue might prevent the justices from deciding the substance of Foster's case.
Georgia Deputy Attorney General Beth Burton had little support on the court for the proposition that prosecutor Stephen Lanier advanced plausible "race-neutral" reasons that resulted in an all-white jury for Foster's trial. Foster was convicted of killing 79-year-old Queen Madge White in her home in Rome, Georgia.
Several justices noted that Lanier's reasons for excusing people from the jury changed over time, including the arrest of the cousin of one black juror. The record in the case indicates that Lanier learned of the arrest only after the jury had been seated. "That seems an out and out false statement," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.
Breyer drew an analogy with a grandson who was looking for any reason not to do his homework, none of them especially convincing.
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Chinese woman pleads guilty in college test-taking scheme
Lawyer News Press |
2015/11/01 09:39
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A Chinese woman pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to have two other women take college admissions examinations in her place to help her get accepted to Virginia Tech.
Yue Zou acknowledged having her boyfriend contact a China-based test-taking service.
After that happened, Zou, of Blacksburg, Virginia, supplied her passport information through an online network known as QQ Chat, which enabled people in China to create in her name phony passports that were shipped to her in the United States.
On the passports were the photos of two other Chinese women, who took tests in the Pittsburgh area while pretending to be her.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Kitchen told the judge that Zou forwarded results from the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, to Virginia Tech in November 2013 and results of a Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, taken by another Chinese impostor in March 2014.
Zou, from Hegang, a city in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, paid an unspecified sum for the TOEFL and $2,000 for the SAT, Kitchen told a judge in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.
Zou, 21, faces up to five years in prison when she's sentenced in February. She could also be deported, though that will be handled by federal immigration officials in a separate proceeding.
Federal authorities haven't explained how they learned of the scheme.
Zou's attorney, Lyle Dresbold, told the judge that Zou will remain confined to her Blacksburg apartment with an electronic monitoring bracelet until she's sentenced. He told the judge she's still enrolled at Virginia Tech.
University spokesman Mark Owczarski said he could not comment on her status. But he said students found to have submitted work that is not their own to gain admission would face a range of possible sanctions, including expulsion, under the university's honor code.
Zou's TOEFL test was taken by Yunlin Sun, 24, of Berlin, Somerset County. She pleaded guilty in August and faces sentencing in December. Prosecutors say Ning Wei, from Taiyuan, in the Chinese province of Shanxi, took Zou's SAT. She hasn't been arrested, and prosecutors say they believe she returned to China. |
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US appeals court upholds gun laws after Newtown massacre
Lawyer News Press |
2015/10/19 15:46
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A federal appeals court has upheld key provisions of New York and Connecticut laws banning possession of semi-automatic assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday, finding that the core parts of the laws do not violate the Second Amendment.
The laws were passed after the December 2012 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut killed 20 first-graders and six educators.
The three-judge panel did, however, agree with a lower court that a seven-round load limit in New York could not be imposed. And it found a Connecticut ban on a non-semi-automatic Remington 7615 unconstitutional.
The laws were opposed by groups supporting gun rights, pistol permit holders and gun sellers. Lawyers did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
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Familiar, divisive social issues on Supreme Court agenda
Lawyer News Press |
2015/10/09 14:33
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The Supreme Court is starting a new term that promises a steady stream of divisive social issues, and also brighter prospects for conservatives who suffered more losses than usual in recent months.
The justices are meeting in public Monday for the first time since a number of high-profile decisions in June that displayed passionate, sometimes barbed disagreements and suggested some bruised feelings among the nine judges.
The first case before the court involves a California woman who lost her legs in a horrific accident after she fell while attempting to board a train in Innsbruck, Austria. The issue is whether she can sue the state-owned Austrian railway in U.S. courts.
Even before the justices took the bench Monday, they rejected hundreds of appeals that piled up over the summer, including San Jose, California's bid to lure the Athletics from Oakland over the objection of Major League Baseball.
Future cases will deal with abortion, religious objections to birth control, race in college admissions and the power of public-sector unions. Cases on immigration and state restrictions on voting also could make it to the court in the next nine months.
The term will play out against the backdrop of the presidential campaign, in which some candidates are talking pointedly about the justices and the prospect of replacing some of them in the next few years. Four justices are in their 80s or late 70s, led by 82-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Commentators on the left and right say the lineup of cases suggests that conservatives will win more often than they will lose over the next few months, in contrast to the liberal side's success last term in gay marriage, health care and housing discrimination, among others.
"This term, I'd expect a return to the norm, in which the right side of the court wins the majority, but by no means all of the cases," said Georgetown University law school's Irv Gornstein.
One reason for the confidence is that, as Supreme Court lawyer John Elwood said: "This is a term of sequels." Affirmative action and union fees have been at the court in recent terms and the justices' positions are more or less known.
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High court weighs 3 death sentences in Kansas cases
Lawyer News Press |
2015/10/06 14:32
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed likely to rule against three Kansas men who challenged their death sentences in what one justice called "some of the most horrendous murders" he's ever seen from the bench.
The justices were critical of the Kansas Supreme Court, which overturned the sentences of the men, including two brothers convicted in a murderous crime spree known as the "Wichita massacre."
It was the first high court hearing on death penalty cases since a bitter clash over lethal injection procedures exposed deep divisions among the justices last term.
The debate this time was over the sentencing process for Jonathan and Reginald Carr and for Sidney Gleason, who was convicted in a separate case of killing a couple to stop them from implicating him in a robbery.
The Kansas Supreme Court overturned death sentences in both cases, saying the juries should have been told that evidence of the men's troubled childhoods and other factors weighing against a death sentence did not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The state court also ruled that the Carr brothers should have had separate sentencing hearings instead of a joint one. It said Reginald Carr's sentence may have been unfairly tainted because Jonathan Carr blamed Reginald for being a bad influence during their childhoods.
While the attorneys on both sides focused on the legal technicalities, several of the justices couldn't help but dwell on the sordid facts of the Carr case during two hours of oral argument.
Justice Samuel Alito said it involves "some of the most horrendous murders that I have ever seen in my 10 years here. And we see practically every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country."
At one point, Justice Antonin Scalia recounted at length the brutal details. Authorities said the brothers broke into a Wichita, Kansas, home in December 2000, where they forced the three men and two women inside to have sex with each other while they watched, then repeatedly raped the women. The brothers then forced the victims to withdraw money from ATMs before taking them to a soccer field, forcing them to kneel, and shooting each one in the head.
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