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Most virus-related restrictions lifted for Kentucky courts
Court News |
2021/05/18 12:08
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Kentucky’s Supreme Court has ended most coronavirus-related restrictions for the state’s court system effective immediately, Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said Tuesday.
The high court entered administrative orders eliminating most health and safety requirements related to COVID-19 and expanding in-person court operations, Minton said.
“After the most challenging year in the history of the modern court system, I am pleased to announce that the Supreme Court has lifted most of the COVID-19 restrictions for employees, elected officials and those entering court facilities across the commonwealth,” Minton said.
The court’s action “allows us to begin transitioning back to normal operations,” he added.
The changes include allowing in-person access to court facilities for anyone with court business, except for those who have symptoms, tested positive or have been exposed to COVID-19.
The mask mandate is eliminated for fully vaccinated people entering court facilities and for fully vaccinated court officials and employees, but those not fully vaccinated are strongly encouraged to continue using masks. Judges will be permitted to require people in their courtrooms to wear masks.
The court lifted most restrictions on jury trials but requires continuances, postponements and recusals for attorneys, parties and jurors who are ill or at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19.
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Judge: Pretrial release OK for accused in Capitol riot
Court News |
2021/05/14 14:05
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A judge has ruled that one of two Oregon brothers accused in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will be released from custody Friday to a third-party guardian, where he will be on home detention and GPS monitoring pending his trial.
U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss, of the District of Columbia, on Thursday granted Matthew Klein’s pretrial release to a Baker County couple after refusing to allow him to stay with his parents. Moss last week cited text messages that showed Klein’s mother and father warning Matthew’s younger brother and co-defendant Jonathanpeter Klein not to broadcast their roles, noting “braggers get caught,” according to court testimony and documents, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
Matthew Klein, 24, and Jonathanpeter Klein, 21, both have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, destruction of government property, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds.
The judge ordered Matthew Klein to be released to a woman who is retired from Baker County government and lives with her husband, a prison guard at the Powder River Corrections Facility, court documents said. He’ll be released on Friday once he is fitted with a location monitoring device.
Jonathanpeter Klein also has asked for pretrial release to a third-party guardian, under home detention and GPS monitoring. Federal prosecutors don’t object. His release hearing will be held in early June.
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Albanian officials want ex-minister tried over deadly blast
Court News |
2021/05/06 14:19
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Albanian prosecutors on Thursday asked Supreme Court judges to allow the trial of a former defense minister over a massive munitions disposal factory blast that killed 26 people in 2008, more than a decade after the case against him was dropped.
The Special Prosecution Against Corruption, or SPAK, formally asked the Supreme Court to revoke its 2009 dismissal of the criminal case against Fatmir Mediu. At the time, Mediu had been spared trial because he had been re-elected to parliament and then lawmakers had immunity.
He is still a member of parliament with an opposition party, but that form of immunity in criminal cases has since been abolished.
Mediu denied wrongdoing and said Thursday that the SPAK move was politically motivated.
The March 15, 2008 explosions at Gerdec, outside the capital, Tirana, killed 26 people, injured 264 and damaged about 5,500 houses. Mediu had been subsequently charged with abuse of power.
In 2012 a court convicted and jailed 19 people over the accident, but angry relatives of the victims complained that top government officials had evaded justice.
The request to resume the case against Mediu followed an appeal to SPAK by Zamira Durda and her husband Feruzan Durda, whose six-year-old son was killed while playing in the back yard of their home near the blast site.
“That is the motive of my life, gaining justice for my son,” said Zamira Durda. “Everything in the Gerdec case should resume from scratch, not only the former minister.”
SPAK was formed under a judicial reform in 2016, prepared with help from European Union and United States experts and intended to ensure political independence for judges and prosecutors and to root out bribery. |
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Mississippi marijuana program hinges on initiative arguments
Court News |
2021/04/13 19:02
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The Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that’s trying to block a voter-approved medical marijuana program by arguing that the the issue should not have been on the ballot.
Arguments were not about marijuana. Instead, they were about Mississippi’s initiative process.
Voters in November approved Initiative 65, which requires the state Health Department to establish a medical marijuana program by the middle of this year. The department is working to create a program, even as the legal fight continues.
To get Initiative 65 on the statewide ballot, organizers gathered signatures from the five congressional districts that Mississippi used during the 1990s. They did that based on legal advice issued years ago by the state attorney general’s office.
Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler filed a lawsuit days before the election, contending that the state’s initiative process is outdated.
The Mississippi Constitution says petitioners must gather an equal number of signatures from five congressional districts. The state dropped from five congressional districts to four after the 2000 Census, but the constitution’s language about initiatives was not updated. Butler’s lawsuit argues that this creates a mathematical impossibility with four districts because the constitution still specifies that no more than one-fifth of the signatures may come from any single district.
In papers filed Dec. 28 and in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, state attorneys argued that Mississippi has two sets of congressional districts ? one set used for congressional elections and one set used for other purposes.
Attorneys for Butler argued that the only purpose of a congressional district is to have geographical boundaries for electing U.S. House members.
Butler opposed Initiative 65 because it limits a city’s ability to regulate the location of medical marijuana businesses.
The Health Department, the Mississippi Municipal League and some others filed briefs supporting Butler’s lawsuit. The Health Department argued that Initiative 65 seeks to transform the department “into something it is not,” even as the department is stretched because of the coronavirus pandemic.
During the legislative session that recently ended, the Senate tried to create rules for a state medical marijuana program, but the House defeated the effort. Republican Sen. Kevin Blackwell of DeSoto County said the proposal was a backstop to have a program in place in case the Supreme Court agrees with Butler and invalidates Initiative 65. But supporters of Initiative 65 balked at the Senate’s proposal, saying they saw it as an attempt to usurp the will of the voters. |
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Court rules Norman violated FOIA when approving budget
Court News |
2021/04/13 13:59
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The city of Norman violated the state’s Open Meeting Act when it approved a budget that cut the police budget by $865,000, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The court upheld a circuit judge’s December ruling that a required notice for the June 16 meeting was worded deceptively. The notice said the council would consider adopting the city’s proposed operating and capital budgets, but it did not say an amendment to slash the police budget by 3.6% would be discussed.
“We find that the language used in the agenda was deceptively vague and likely to mislead regarding the meeting and therefore was a willful violation of the (Open Meetings) Act,” according to the opinion by Chief Justice Richard Darby.
The ruling also found that the city’s budget is invalid.
“We are reviewing it and will comply with the Supreme Court ruling,” city spokesperson Annahlyse Meyer said.
The cut came in the midst of calls to “defund the police” after the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The money was to be used for community outreach programs.
“These budget amendments reflect an intentional effort to tackle systemic racism in our community and to be proactive as opposed to reactive in meeting the social service needs of our residents,” Mayor Breea Clark said at the time.
The vote to cut the police budget also led to a failed petition effort to recall Clark and four members of the eight-person City Council. |
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