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Hearing set on proposed Conn. court rules
Headline Legal News |
2011/05/29 13:43
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State court officials will hear from the public on various proposed rule changes, including some that allow expanded media access in certain cases but limit it in others.
The public hearing is set for 10 a.m. Tuesday at the state Supreme Court in Hartford. The Rules Committee of the Superior Court will hear comments on revisions to the Practice Book and Code of Evidence.
The proposed changes include expanding a media coverage pilot program from Hartford to a permanent program statewide. The program allows television cameras and electronic media in courtrooms for certain proceedings.
The changes would also add sexual assault cases to the list of proceedings in which broadcasting, televising, recording and photographing would be prohibited. Cases where coverage is currently limited include family matters and juvenile proceedings.
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Judge: Texas foster care lawsuit can proceed
Court News |
2011/05/27 13:43
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A judge says she will allow a lawsuit challenging Texas' foster care system to proceed as a class action.
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said during a hearing Thursday that she will grant class certification for the suit initiated by the advocacy group Children's Rights.
The suit contends that the Texas system is unconstitutional and should be reformed. It was filed in March on behalf of nine children between the ages of nine and 16.
A spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the state will determine its next course of action when the judge issues a written order.
The suit is the 12th of its kind initiated by the New York-based advocacy group seeking to reform child welfare systems administered by state or municipal governments. |
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Appeals court upholds sentence in NC bus stop case
Headline Legal News |
2011/05/26 13:44
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A man who a federal judge ruled had sex with his adopted sister has lost an appeal of his 2½ year prison sentence.
The judge ordered Royce Mitchell to jail because he decided his sexual relationship with 15-year-old Tiffany Wright violated terms of his 2007 probation on a federal drug charge.
Wright, who was eight months pregnant, was shot to death as she waited for the school bus in September 2009. Police named Mitchell a person of interest, but later concluded he wasn't involved with the killing.
But Wright told a detective that she had sex with Mitchell before she died.
Mitchell continues to deny the allegations, and Wright's lawyer said a DNA test that found Mitchell was not the baby's father proves they didn't have sex. But The Charlotte Observer reports that the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that just because prosecutors couldn't independently verify Wright's allegations doesn't mean they aren't true.
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"Killing Time" An 18 Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom
Legal Marketing |
2011/05/22 13:43
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According to Harry Connick Sr, the former New Orleans District Attorney for 30 years, Angola's death row isn't such a bad place for an innocent man to spend 14 years, according to the New Orleans DA's office. Connick stated that John Thompson did not deserve the $14 million a jury awarded him, because nobody raped him and he got to play chess and watch TV. He wasn't denied medical treatment and made several pals in prison, prosecutors argued in an appeal brief. Our question to former DA Connick....How much would it have been worth it to you if you had spent the last 14 years of your life for a crime you were "FRAMED By" The New Orleans District Attorney's Office?
Thompson was railroaded in 1983, when Harry Connick was DA. In 2007, Thompson, who was wrongfully convicted of murder by Connick's DA office due to evidence withholding, was awarded a $14 million verdict by a federal court jury.
The jury found "that Thompson's 18 years behind bars (14 of which he spent in solitary confinement on death row) were caused by Connick's deliberate failure to train his prosecutors on their obligations to turn over exculpatory evidence"
"Killing Time-an 18 Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom" is a sobering look at our justice system, told with journalistic precision by our Guest John Hollway and his writing partner Ronald Gauthier. Told in careful timeline fashion, it details the story of John Thompson, an African American who was, in 1984, wrongfully convicted of the brutal murder of a New Orleans Hotelier, and sent, under a death sentence to Angola Prison to await execution. Thompson adamantly and unceasingly proclaimed his innocence. After Philadelphia lawyers Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney take on his case, they struggle to find areas of misconduct in his previous trials while grappling with their questions about Thompson's innocence. John Hollway and Ronald M. Gauthier have interviewed Thompson and the lawyers, and paint a realistic and compelling portrait of life on death row and the corruption in the Louisiana police and DA's office.
John Thompson, having been exonerated and freed thanks to the work of Attorneys Banks and Cooney is now deeply involved in the organization Resurrection After Exoneration or REA. He, once again, lives in Louisiana.
The Orleans Parish DA's office appealed and the case, Connick v. Thompson, was orally argued before the U.S. Supreme Court during the October 2010 term. By a 5-4 vote split along ideological lines,[6] the Supreme Court overturned the $14 million award in a decision issued on March 29, 2011.
The majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas construed the series of admitted violations to not amount to a pattern of similar violations of Brady v. Maryland (1963), and such a pattern was necessary to hold Connick liable for the incompetence of his employees.
The dissenting opinion, read from the bench by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted that Connick's office had in fact committed a pattern of violations, to wit:
• Failing to disclose exculpatory blood-type evidence,
• Failing to disclose audio tapes of witness testimony,
• Failing to disclose a deathbed confession of evidence destruction by the prosecuting attorney Gerry Deegan,
• And Failing to disclose eyewitness identification of the killer that didn't match Thompson.
There are other allegations of systemic misconduct by Connick and his prosecutors. "According to the Innocence Project, a national organization that represents incarcerated criminals claiming innocence, 36 men convicted in Orleans Parish during Connick's 30-year tenure as DA have made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and 19 have had their sentences overturned or reduced as a result."
For additional information on John Hollway's "KILLING TIME', please visit www.johnhollway.com
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"The Death and Life of American Journalism" by Robert Mc Chesney
Legal Marketing |
2011/05/22 13:42
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It is a frightening fact that, in a time of unprecedented advances in communication technology, the quality of that communication is in sharp decline.
Indeed in American Culture, quality journalism seems to be in crisis. Newspapers are closing, broadcast news rooms are being emptied of some of the brightest and most experienced reporters and public scrutiny of public business...particularly in the government...is absent at best and intentionally skewed at worst.
Robert McChesney brings his educated viewpoint to this crisis in the communications era. McChesney is the author of several books on media and politics, professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, host of the weekly talk show, Media Matters, on WILL-AM radio, and cofounder of the media reform organization Free Press. Free Press Co Founder and journalist John Nichols is his collaborator on this important new book
Not only does "The Death and Life of American Journalism" Take a close look at the forces...some economic, some accidental and some deliberate...that have put the craft of the journalist in a state of crisis...but the book also details how the same social and technological forces that have endangered the craft can revitalize it...and revitalize America in the Process.
For additional information on Robert McChesney "The Death and Life of American Journalism" please visit http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Death-and-Life-of-American-Journalism |
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