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Court: Silence can be used against suspects
Court Watch |
2014/08/18 14:16
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The California Supreme Court has ruled that the silence of suspects can be used against them.
Wading into a legally tangled vehicular manslaughter case, a sharply divided high court on Thursday effectively reinstated the felony conviction of a man accused in a 2007 San Francisco Bay Area crash that left an 8-year-old girl dead and her sister and mother injured.
Richard Tom was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter after authorities said he was speeding and slammed into another vehicle at a Redwood City intersection.
Prosecutors repeatedly told jurors during the trial that Tom's failure to ask about the victims immediately after the crash but before police read him his so-called Miranda rights showed his guilt.
Legal analysts said the ruling could affect future cases, allowing prosecutors to exploit a suspect's refusal to talk before invoking 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
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German court receives suit against EU bank union
Court Watch |
2014/07/28 13:33
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A group of German professors has filed a complaint to the country's highest court against the European Union's plans to create a so-called banking union, a central part of the effort to make the continent's financial system more resilient.
The Federal Constitutional Court said Monday it had received the complaint. It wasn't clear when the court might rule; verdicts on previous attempts to block measures meant to stem Europe's debt crisis took at least several months.
The group behind the complaint says the banking union "has no legal basis in the European treaties."
It objects to handing the European Central Bank direct supervision of the eurozone's biggest lenders with binding powers over national authorities, and opposes plans for a separate authority with the power to dissolve or restructure failing banks. |
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Utah to appeal gay marriage ruling to high court
Court Watch |
2014/07/11 10:20
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Utah has decided to go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue against gay marriage, meaning the nation's highest court will have at least one same-sex marriage case on its plate when it returns in October.
The office of the Utah attorney general announced Wednesday that it would bypass a full appeals court and take the gay marriage case to the Supreme Court instead.
If the U.S. Supreme court decides to take the case, it will be the first time the top court considers gay marriage since justices last year struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The high court is under no obligation to the take the case, and it could wait for rulings from one or more of the five other appellate courts with gay marriage cases pending, legal scholars say.
Utah's appeal is of a June 25 ruling from a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which found states cannot deprive people of the fundamental right to marry simply because they choose partners of the same sex. The panel immediately put the ruling on hold pending an appeal. |
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Oklahoma court agrees to 6-month stay of execution
Court Watch |
2014/05/09 11:16
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The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals agreed Thursday to a six-month stay of execution for a death row inmate while an investigation is conducted into last week's botched lethal injection.
The court reset the execution date of inmate Charles Warner to Nov. 13. Warner's attorneys requested the 180-day delay, and the state Attorney General Scott Pruitt said Thursday in a court filing he wouldn't object.
While the stay only applies to Warner, Pruitt and Gov. Mary Fallin have said the state will not carry out any executions until the investigation is complete, which is expected to take at least eight weeks.
"If the state is allowed to enforce the ultimate penalty of death, it is incumbent upon this court to allow the state the time necessary to ensure that the penalty is carried out in a constitutionally sound manner," Justice Charles Johnson wrote in a specially concurring opinion.
Warner was scheduled for execution on the same night last week as Clayton Lockett in what would have been the state's first double execution since 1937. But Lockett's vein collapsed during his lethal injection, prompting prison officials to halt the execution. He later died of a heart attack. |
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Court revives EPA rule on cross-state pollution
Court Watch |
2014/04/29 16:03
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The Supreme Court has given the Environmental Protection Agency an important victory in its effort to reduce power plant pollution that contributes to unhealthy air in neighboring states.
The court's 6-2 decision Tuesday means that a rule adopted by EPA in 2011 to limit emissions from plants in more than two-dozen Midwestern and Southern states can take effect. The pollution drifts into the air above states along the Atlantic Coast and the EPA has struggled to devise a way to control it.
Power companies and several states sued to block the rule from taking effect, and a federal appeals court in Washington agreed with them in 2012.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the court's majority opinion. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. |
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Court revives lawsuit vs. state Medicaid expansion
Court Watch |
2014/04/25 10:10
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The Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday revived a lawsuit challenging Gov. Jan Brewer's expansion of the state's Medicaid insurance plan for the poor, ruling that Republican lawmakers have the right to sue over their contention that a hospital assessment that funds the expansion is a tax requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
Republicans in the House and Senate sued last year, saying only a simple majority last June passed the expansion bill that included the assessment. A Maricopa County judge in February dismissed the case, saying lawmakers were suing over a lost political battle because the Legislature itself decides whether a supermajority vote is needed.
But the appeals court rejected that decision and sent the case back to Judge Katherine Cooper for more action. In an 11-page ruling, the unanimous three-judge panel said the 36 Republican lawmakers who sued could have defeated House Bill 2010 if the supermajority vote was required, so it was proper for Cooper to decide if the Arizona Constitution required that vote.
The ruling was a major loss for Brewer, who pushed the Medicaid bill through the Legislature by cobbling together a coalition of minority Democrats and 14 Republicans.
She is one of only a handful of Republican governors who embraced Medicaid expansion, a key part of President Barack Obama's health care law. In all, 25 states plus Washington, D.C., are moving ahead with the expansion, while 19 states have turned it down. An additional six states are weighing options. |
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