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Marine wants new charges in Iraq war crime tossed
Attorney News |
2014/10/30 10:28
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The Marine Corps should not be retrying a sergeant whose murder conviction in a major Iraq war crime case was overturned by the military's highest court after he served half of his 11-year sentence, his defense attorneys say.
Civilian defense attorney Chris Oprison said he has filed nine motions that he will present during a two-day hearing for Lawrence Hutchins III that starts Thursday at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, north of San Diego.
"We think all these charges should be dismissed," Oprison said. "What are they trying to get out of this Marine? He served seven years locked up, away from his wife and family. Why are they putting him through this again after he served that much time?"
The military prosecution declined to comment.
The Marine Corps ordered a retrial for Hutchins last year shortly after the ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces that found his rights were violated by interrogators in 2006 when he was detained in Iraq and held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for a week.
The new defense team is asking the judge to let them go to Iraq to interview witnesses in the village of Hamdania, where Hutchins led an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping an Iraqi man from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death. Hutchins has said he thought the man was an insurgent.
Before his release, the Marine, from Plymouth, Massachusetts, had served seven years in the brig for one of the biggest war crime cases against U.S. troops to emerge from the war. None of the other seven squad members served more than 18 months.
The military last summer re-charged Hutchins. Among the charges is conspiracy to commit murder, which Oprison said is double jeopardy. Hutchins was convicted of murder at his original trial and acquitted of murder with premeditation.
Hutchins' defense attorneys also say the military compromised his case when its investigators raided defense attorneys' offices at Camp Pendleton in May. Oprison said investigators rifled through privileged files that held "the crown jewels" of Hutchins' defense case. |
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Court in Va. examines death row isolation policy
Headline Legal News |
2014/10/28 14:10
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Virginia's practice of automatically holding death row inmates in solitary confinement will be reviewed by a federal appeals court in a case that experts say could have repercussions beyond the state's borders.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria ruled last year that around-the-clock isolation of condemned inmates is so onerous that the Virginia Department of Corrections must assess its necessity on a case-by-case basis. Failure to do so, she said, violates the inmates' due process rights.
The state appealed, arguing that the courts should defer to the judgment of prison officials on safety issues. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by Alfredo Prieto, who was on California's death row for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl when a DNA sample connected him to the 1988 slayings of George Washington University students Rachel Raver and Warren Fulton III in Reston. He also was sentenced to death in Virginia, where he has spent most of the last six years alone in a 71-square-foot cell at the Sussex I State Prison.
Some capital punishment experts say a victory by Prieto could prompt similar lawsuits by death row inmates elsewhere.
"It gives them a road map," said northern Virginia defense attorney Jonathan Sheldon, who noted that the due process claim succeeded where allegations of cruel and unusual punishment have routinely failed. "It's not that common to challenge conditions of confinement on due process grounds." |
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Texas Gov. Perry ordered to be in court Halloween
Attorney News |
2014/10/20 12:25
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Indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry will make his first court appearance on Halloween as his defense team tries to quash the two felony counts of abuse of power against him on both constitutional and technical grounds.
The Republican was on a state economic mission to Europe and was granted permission to skip a pretrial hearing Monday in Austin, where state District Judge Bert Richardson set the next court date.
"Because this affects the case, the judge has ruled that he, like other defendants, needs to appear in court," special prosecutor Michael McCrum said of Perry after the hearing. The governor, meanwhile, is set to address the Royal United Services Institute in London on Tuesday.
During the upcoming court appearance, Perry's attorneys will argue that McCrum was never properly sworn in, and also that he should produce transcripts of secret grand jury testimony for the judge to review. McCrum joked with reporters that the governor's legal team is throwing the kitchen sink at him. |
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Supreme Court rejects appeal over Justice memo
Topics in Legal News |
2014/10/20 12:24
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a civil liberties group that wants to make public an internal Justice Department memo that allows the FBI to informally obtain phone records.
The justices on Tuesday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the Justice Department could refuse to release the 2010 memo under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the public has a right to see how the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized the FBI to access phone call records from telephone companies for terrorism investigations.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the memo was part of the government's internal deliberations and therefore exempt from disclosure. |
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