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Court rejects AG Kane's request to reinstate law license
Law Blogs |
2016/02/09 16:19
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Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane's law license will remain suspended after the state's highest court on Friday denied her request to have it reinstated while she fights criminal charges of leaking secret grand jury material and lying about it.
The court's unanimous rejection could pave the way to an unprecedented vote in the state Senate on whether to remove her from office.
A Kane spokesman said the first-term Democrat was disappointed, but not surprised.
A Senate vote could happen in the coming weeks after a special committee spent about three months exploring the question of whether Kane could run the 800-employee law enforcement office without a law license. Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said senators will discuss the matter when they reconvene in the Capitol next week.
"It's an important issue," Corman said. "It's really unprecedented, so I think it deserves to be addressed."
In seeking to have her license reinstated, Kane argued that Justice Michael Eakin should not have participated in the suspension vote because of his involvement in a salacious email scandal.
In its one-page order, the Democrat-controlled court said Kane did not seek the recusal of Eakin "at the earliest possible time." As a result, the justices said, Kane gave up her ability to object on that basis to the court's unanimous decision in September to suspend her license.
Kane has released hundreds of emails, including some that Eakin sent and received through a private email account in the name of John Smith. Eakin, a Republican, has been suspended with pay by his fellow justices while he awaits trial before an ethics court that could result in his being kicked off the bench.
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Plagued by delays, California high-speed rail heads back to court
Legal Interview |
2016/02/07 16:19
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California voters embraced the idea of building the nation's first real high-speed rail system, which promised to whisk travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours, a trip that can take six hours or more by car. Eight years after they approved funding for it, construction is years behind schedule and legal, financial and logistical delays plague the $68 billion project.
The bullet train's timeline, funding and speed estimates are back in the spotlight for a longstanding lawsuit filed by residents whose property lies in its path.
In the second phase of a court challenge filed in 2011, attorneys for a group of Central Valley farmers will argue in Sacramento County Superior Court on Thursday that the state can't keep the promises it made to voters in 2008 about the travel times and system cost. Voters authorized selling $9.9 billion in bonds for a project that was supposed to cost $40 billion.
In recent months, rail officials have touted construction of a viaduct in Madera County, the first visible sign of construction. Though officials have been working for years to acquire the thousands of parcels of land required for the project, they currently have just 63 percent of the parcels needed for the first 29 miles in the Central Valley. |
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NY court agrees to rehear Ex-Goldman board member's appeal
Court Watch |
2016/02/06 16:19
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A federal appeals court in New York has agreed to rehear the appeal of the insider-trading conviction of a former board member for Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday issued an order saying it will rehear the claims of Rajat Gupta. His lawyers say his 2012 conviction on conspiracy and securities fraud charges should be tossed because he was innocent and the jury was improperly instructed.
His attorney Gary Naftalis says he is pleased with the court's ruling and believes there are meritorious issues to present on appeal.
The 57-year-old Gupta is confined to his Westport, Connecticut, home. He won't be formally finished serving a two-year prison sentence until next month.
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Oldest death row inmate in Georgia, age 72, is executed
Law Firm News |
2016/02/03 16:20
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Georgia executed a 72-year-old man, its oldest death row inmate, early Wednesday for the killing of a convenience store manager during a robbery decades ago.
The state Department of Corrections says Brandon Astor Jones was pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m. Wednesday after a lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted in the shooting death of suburban Atlanta store manager Roger Tackett.
The punishment was delayed for several hours while the U.S. Supreme Court considered late appeals from Jones' attorneys. They asked the justices to block the execution for either of two reasons: because Jones was challenging Georgia's lethal injection secrecy law or because he said his death sentence was disproportionate to his crime.
Around 11 p.m. Tuesday, the court denied the requests for a stay.
According to evidence at his trial, Jones and another man, Van Roosevelt Solomon, were arrested at a Cobb County store by a policeman who had driven a stranded motorist there to use a pay phone about 1:45 a.m. on June 17, 1979. The officer knew the store usually closed at midnight and was suspicious when he saw a car out front with the driver's door open and lights still on in the store.
The officer saw Jones inside the store, prosecutors have said. He entered and drew his weapon after hearing four shots. He found Jones and Solomon just inside a storeroom door and took them into custody. Tackett's body was found inside the storeroom.
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High court rejects appeal over Homeland Security records
Headline Legal News |
2016/01/30 16:20
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a public interest group seeking to get internal records from the Department of Homeland Security about its protocol for shutting down wireless networks during emergencies.
The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the agency could refuse to release the documents under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act for disclosures that could endanger lives.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center argued that the appeals court construed the law too broadly so that the government could conceal any records by claiming they concern security measures.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the agency didn't need to specify exactly whose life would be endangered.
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