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A South Korean court sentences former President Yoon to 5 years in prison
Court Watch |
2026/01/16 08:41
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A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations.
Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster.
The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb. 19.
Yoon has maintained he didn’t intend to place the country under military rule for an extended period, saying his decree was only meant to inform the people about the danger of the liberal-controlled parliament obstructing his agenda. But investigators have viewed Yoon’s decree as an attempt to bolster and prolong his rule, charging him with rebellion, abuse of power and other criminal offenses.
In Friday’s case, the Seoul court sentenced Yoon for defying attempts to detain him and fabricating the martial law proclamation. He was also sentenced for sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting, which deprived some Cabinet members who were not convened of their rights to deliberate on his decree.
Judge Baek Dae-hyun said in the televised ruling that imposing “a heavy punishment” was necessary because Yoon hasn’t shown remorse and has only repeated “hard-to-comprehend excuses.” The judge also said restoring legal systems damaged by Yoon’s action was necessary.
Yoon’s defense team said they will appeal the ruling, which they believe was “politicized” and reflected “the unilateral arguments by the independent counsel.” Yoon’s defense team argued the ruling “oversimplified the boundary between the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and criminal liability.”
Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law, said there is little chance the court would decide Yoon should face the death penalty in the rebellion case. He said the court will likely issue a life sentence or a sentence of 30 years or more in prison.
South Korea has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1997 and courts rarely hand down death sentences. Park said the court would take into account that Yoon’s decree didn’t cause casualties and didn’t last long, although Yoon hasn’t shown genuine remorse for his action.
South Korea has a history of pardoning former presidents who were jailed over diverse crimes in the name of promoting national unity. Those pardoned include strongman Chun Doo-hwan, who received the death penalty at a district court over his 1979 coup, the bloody 1980 crackdowns of pro-democracy protests that killed about 200 people, and other crimes.
Even if Yoon is spared the death penalty or life imprisonment at the rebellion trial, he may still face other prison sentences in the multiple smaller trials he faces.
Some observers say Yoon is likely retaining a defiant attitude in the ongoing trials to maintain his support base in the belief that he cannot avoid a lengthy sentence but could be pardoned in the future.
On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised speech, saying he would eliminate “anti-state forces” and protect “the constitutional democratic order.” Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly, but many apparently didn’t aggressively cordon off the area, allowing enough lawmakers to get into an assembly hall to vote down Yoon’s decree.
No major violence occurred, but Yoon’s decree caused the biggest political crisis in South Korea in decades and rattled its diplomacy and financial markets. For many, his decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought back harrowing memories of past dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed leaders used martial law and emergency measures to deploy soldiers and tanks on the streets to suppress demonstrations.
After Yoon’s ouster, his liberal rival Lee Jae Myung became president via a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to look into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.
Yoon’s other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor. |
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Investigation is opened into managers of Swiss bar where fire killed 40
Legal Interview |
2026/01/12 08:41
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Swiss authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year’s party left 40 people dead, authorities said Saturday.
The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters. She said the investigation was opened on Friday night and that it would help “explore all the leads.” The announcement of the investigation did not name the managers.
More than 100 other people were injured in the blaze that broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday at Le Constellation bar in the Alpine resort town of Crans-Montana. Police have said many were in their teens to mid-20s.
The process of identifying the dead and injured continued on Saturday, leading to an agonizing wait for relatives.
Investigators said Friday they believe sparkling candles atop Champagne bottles ignited the fire when they came too close to the ceiling of the crowded bar.
Authorities planned to look into whether sound-dampening material on the ceiling conformed with regulations and whether the candles were permitted for use in the bar. Officials said they also would look at other safety measures on the premises, including fire extinguishers and escape routes.
The Valais region’s top security official, Stéphane Ganzer, told SRF public radio Saturday that “such a huge accident with a fire in Switzerland means that something didn’t work — maybe the material, maybe the organization on the spot.” He added: “Something didn’t work and someone made a mistake, I am sure of that.”
Nicolas Féraud, who heads the Crans-Montana municipality, told RTS radio he was “convinced” checks on the bar hadn’t been lax, the broadcaster reported.
Asked whether the tragedy could have been avoided, Swiss Justice Minister Beat Jans replied that officials could not yet answer and “we know that the world needs an answer on this question.”
The severity of burns has made it difficult to identify the dead and injured, requiring families to supply authorities with DNA samples. In some cases, wallets and any identification documents inside were turned to ash.
On Saturday, regional police said the bodies of four victims — a boy and a girl, both 16, an 18-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, all of them Swiss — had been identified and handed over to their families.
Several injured people still haven’t been identified.
Laetitia Brodard, whose 16-year-old son, Arthur, went to Le Constellation to celebrate the New Year, held out hope that he might be one of them.
“I’m looking everywhere. The body of my son is somewhere,” Brodard told reporters Friday evening. “I want to know where my child is and be by his side. Wherever that may be, be it in the intensive care unit or the morgue.”
On Saturday, she told French broadcaster BFM TV that “we, parents, are starting to get tired ... and anger is starting to rise.”
“It’s a wait that destroys people’s stability,” said Elvira Venturella, an Italian psychologist working with the families. “And the more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to accept the uncertainty, not having information.”
Swiss officials said Friday that 119 people were injured and 113 had been formally identified.
On Saturday, Italy’s ambassador to Switzerland, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, told reporters he had just been briefed by local authorities that the number of injured stood at 121, with five not yet identified. He said 14 Italians were being treated in hospitals.
Cornado acknowledged “a lot of stress,” but said it was right for authorities to share information only when it is “accurate and 100% sure.”
Ganzer, visiting the site along with Jans, called the families’ wait “unbearable,” and said officials’ top priority was providing them the “legitimate answers they are waiting for.”
Swiss police have said the injured included more than 70 Swiss nationals and over 10 each from France and Italy, along with citizens of Serbia, Bosnia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal and Poland.
Mourners and well-wishers bearing flowers flowed to makeshift memorials outside Le Constellation, some consoling one another with hugs as they shed tears. “RIP you are all our children” one handwritten note said.
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Maduro Pleads Not Guilty, Claims Capture in U.S. Drug Case
Headline Legal News |
2026/01/08 07:39
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A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.
“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”
Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.
The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.
Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle. He and Flores were led into court just before noon. Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.
As Maduro left the courtroom, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.
As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.
That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.
“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.
“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing,” the judge said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”
“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant responded.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”
Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”
Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.
Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.
A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.
Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.
Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military action from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.
Rojas said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”
Demands for Maduro’s return
Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily and reiterated Sunday night that “we’re in charge,” telling reporters “we’re going to run it, fix it.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to strike a more cautious tone, telling Sunday morning talk shows that the U.S. would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”
Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.
Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose 1.7% on Monday. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.
Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S. |
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Former school bus aide pleads guilty to assaulting 3 autistic students
Court Watch |
2026/01/04 07:39
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A former school bus aide pleaded guilty Monday to assaulting three nonverbal students with autism who were unable to report the abuse.
Kiarra Jones, 30, entered guilty pleas to 12 charges under a plea agreement as she was about to go on trial in suburban Denver for abuse that was revealed in 2024 by bus surveillance video, according to prosecutors and court documents.
Jones is represented by lawyers from the public defender’s office, which does not comment to the media on its cases.
The abuse was discovered after Jessica Vestal, the mother of one of the nonverbal students, asked school officials to review the surveillance video to try to explain a series of injuries her son, then 10, suffered after going to school early last year, including bruises all over his body and a black eye.
“We are committed to making sure that he understands how deeply he is loved,” they said in statement released by the law firm representing them and the two other families, Rathod Mohamedbhai.
Jones pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts of third-degree assault of an at-risk child and two misdemeanor counts of child abuse, the office of 18th Judicial District Attorney Amy Padden said. She faces up to 15 years in prison for the felony counts at sentencing set for March 18.
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Trump administration rolls out rural health funding, with strings attached
Headline Legal News |
2025/12/30 08:31
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States will share $10 billion for rural health care next year in a program that aims to offset the Trump administration’s massive budget cuts to rural hospitals, federal officials announced Monday.
But while every state applied for money from the Rural Health Transformation Program, it won’t be distributed equally. And critics worry that the funding might be pulled back if a state’s policies don’t match up with the administration’s.
Officials said the average award for 2026 is $200 million, and the fund puts a total of $50 billion into rural health programs over five years. States propose how to spend their awards, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assigns project officers to support each state, said agency administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
“This fund was crafted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed only six months ago now into law, in order to push states to be creative,” Oz said in a call with reporters Monday.
Under the program, half of the money is equally distributed to each state. The other half is allocated based on a formula developed by CMS that considered rural population size, the financial health of a state’s medical facilities and health outcomes for a state’s population.
The formula also ties $12 billion of the five-year funding to whether states are implementing health policies prioritized by the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. Examples include requiring nutrition education for health care providers, having schools participate in the Presidential Fitness Test or banning the use of SNAP benefits for so-called junk foods, Oz said.
Several Republican-led states — including Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — have already adopted rules banning the purchase of foods like candy and soda with SNAP benefits.
The money that the states get will be recalculated annually, Oz said, allowing the administration to “claw back” funds if, for example, state leaders don’t pass promised policies. Oz said the clawbacks are not punishments, but leverage governors can use to push policies by pointing to the potential loss of millions.
“I’ve already heard governors express that sentiment that this is not a threat, that this is actually an empowering element of the One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said.
Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer with the National Rural Health Association, said she’s heard from a number of Democratic-led states that refused to include such restrictions on SNAP benefits even though it could hurt their chance to get more money from the fund.
“It’s not where their state leadership is,” she said. Oz and other federal officials have touted the program as a 50% increase in Medicaid investments in rural health care. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has been critical of many of the administration’s policies but voted for the budget bill that slashed Medicaid, pointed to the fund when recently questioned about how the cuts would hurt rural hospitals.
“That’s why we added a $50 billion rural hospital fund, to help any hospital that’s struggling,” Bacon said. “This money is meant to keep hospitals afloat.”
But experts say it won’t nearly offset the losses that struggling rural hospitals will face from the federal spending law’s $1.2 trillion cut from the federal budget over the next decade, primarily from Medicaid. Millions of people are also expected to lose Medicaid benefits.
Estimates suggest rural hospitals could lose around $137 billion over the next decade because of the budget measure. As many as 300 rural hospitals were at risk for closure because of the GOP’s spending package, according to an analysis by The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“When you put that up against the $50 billion for the Rural Health Transformation Fund, you know — that math does not add up,” Cochran-McClain said.
She also said there’s no guarantee that the funding will go to rural hospitals in need. For example, she noted, one state’s application included a proposal for healthier, locally sourced school lunch options in rural areas.
And even though innovation is a goal of the program, Cochran-McClain said it’s tough for rural hospitals to innovate when they were struggling to break even before Congress’ Medicaid cuts.
“We talk to rural providers every day that say, ‘I would really love to do x, y, z, but I’m concerned about, you know, meeting payroll at the end of the month,’” she said. “So when you’re in that kind of crisis mode, it is, I would argue, almost impossible to do true innovation.” |
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