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Lawyer: NJ student didn't mean to spy on roommate
Topics in Legal News |
2011/08/11 10:34
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A lawyer for a former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his roommate's intimate encounter with another man says in newly filed legal papers that prosecutors got it all wrong and that the case should be dropped.
Nineteen-year-old Dharun Ravi faces charges, including bias intimidation and invasion of privacy, in the case that's been linked to roommate Tyler Clementi's death last September when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
Clementi's suicide sparked a national discussion about bullying and gay youth that prompted celebrities, senators and President Barack Obama to speak out.
But defense lawyer Steven Altman said in a brief filed Wednesday that his client was not spying on Clementi. Altman said Ravi initially turned on his webcam from a friend's computer to see what was going on in the dorm room because he was concerned about whether the man Clementi had over might steal Ravi's iPad. He stopped watching "two seconds" after seeing the men kissing, Altman said.
Altman provided text messages that he said Ravi sent Clementi on Sept. 22 - about the time the 18-year-old violinist from Ridgewood was on the suspension bridge crossing the Hudson River.
"I turned on my camera and saw you in the corner of the screen and I immediately closed it. I felt uncomfortable and guilty of what happened," the message said. "Obviously I told people what occurred so they could give me advice. Then Tuesday when you requested the room again I wanted to make sure what happened Sunday wouldn't happen again ... I turned my camera away and put my computer to sleep so even if anyone tried it wouldn't work. I wanted to make amends for Sunday night. I'm sorry if you heard something distorted and disturbing but I assure you all my actions were good natured."
Another said, in part: "I've known you were gay and I have no problem with it."
Altman argued in the brief that prosecutors did not present evidence that Ravi would have broken the law by using a webcam to monitor what was happening in the dorm room he shared with Clementi, that he actually viewed any sexual images from his webcam, that he copied or distributed them, or that he deleted Twitter posts about what was on the webcam to hide evidence from investigators.
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Ariz. governor on deadline for immigration appeal
Court Watch |
2011/08/10 08:59
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Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer faces a Wednesday deadline for asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept her appeal of a ruling that put on hold key parts of the state's immigration enforcement law.
The Republican governor lost her first attempt to throw out a district court's decision that blocks, among other portions of the law, a provision requiring police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, when a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected her motion in April.
Brewer vowed three months ago to take her argument before the nation's highest court, which has discretion on whether to hear her case.
The 9th Circuit said the federal government is likely to be able to prove the law is unconstitutional and likely to succeed in its argument that Congress has given the federal government sole authority to enforce immigration laws.
Brewer's lawyers have argued that the federal government hasn't effectively enforced immigration law and that the state's intent in passing its own regulations was to assist federal authorities, as Congress has encouraged.
They also have argued the district court judge erred by accepting speculation by the federal government that the law might burden legal immigrants and by concluding the federal government would likely prevail.
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New hearings sought in Chicago police torture case
Legal Business |
2011/08/10 08:59
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Fifteen incarcerated men who claim they were sent to prison by confessions that were beaten, burned and tortured out of them by convicted Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers are getting some high-profile help — including from a former Illinois governor.
In a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed Wednesday with the Illinois Supreme Court, ex-Gov. Jim Thompson and more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers are asking for new evidentiary hearings for inmates who say their convictions were based on coerced confessions.
The brief marks the first effort on behalf of alleged Burge victims as a group and not separate individual cases, attorneys said.
Burge's name has become synonymous with police abuse in the nation's third-largest city, and more than 100 men — most of them African-American and Latino— have alleged Burge and his men tortured them from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Burge was convicted last year of lying about whether he ever witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects. He's serving a 4 1/2-year sentence at Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.
Burge never has faced criminal charges for abuse. He was fired from the police department in 1993 over the 1982 beating and burning of Andrew Wilson, a suspect later convicted of killing two police officers. |
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No class-action for suits over Calif. fish kill
Court Watch |
2011/08/09 09:26
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An appeals court has rejected class-action status for a lawsuit prompted by efforts to kill off an invasive fish in Northern California.
The Sacramento Bee says the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled last week that people suing the state had too little in common to comprise a single class and must sue individually.
In 2007, the state Fish and Game Department dumped thousands of gallons of poison into Lake Davis in Plumas County to kill the voracious northern pike. The lake was closed for several months.
The city of Portola and a number of businesses and property owners sued in 2009, arguing that the action caused a decline in tourism that hurt their income, property values and tax receipts.
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Bank of America starts overdraft rebate outreach
Court Watch |
2011/08/09 09:26
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If you had a Bank of America account with a debit card between January 2001 and May of this year, you may be due some cash.
The nation's largest bank has started contacting customers who may be entitled to a refund. It recently reached a class-action settlement over the way it charged overdraft fees. Most of the other suits are continuing to work their way through federal court in Florida.
Bank of America agreed to set up a $410 million fund to settle the lawsuit. The money will be used to pay back customers who were charged overdraft fees as a result of the company's policy of processing debit card transactions based on the size of the transaction, rather than when the purchases occurred.
The bank is one of about three dozen named in a series of class-action lawsuits over the practice of "reordering." A policy that became widespread in the 2000s, reordering involves deducting purchases from an account starting with the largest dollar amount first. That means a customer may end up paying additional overdraft fees.
For instance, someone with an account balance of $95 and who made three purchases in one day, the first for $5, the next for $25 and the last for $75, would be charged two overdraft fees, rather than one.
The suits claim that reordering was done to intentionally increase the number of overdraft fees collected. Banks took in about $39 billion in overdraft fees annually before the Federal Reserve put new rules in place last year. Now banks are required to obtain a customer's written permission before providing overdraft protection.
To inform customers that they may be eligible for a refund of some overdraft fees, Bank of America is sending postcards to customers with a brief explanation of the settlement and the address of a website where more information is available.
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