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Connecticut court stands by decision eliminating execution
Court News |
2015/10/11 16:22
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The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday stood by its decision to eliminate the state's death penalty, but the fate of capital punishment in the Constitution State technically remains unsettled.
The state's highest court rejected a request by prosecutors to reconsider its landmark August ruling, but prosecutors have filed a motion in another case to make the arguments they would have made if the court had granted the reconsideration motion.
Lawyers who have argued before the court say it would be highly unusual and surprising for the court to reverse itself on such an important issue in a short period of time, but they say it is possible because the makeup of the court is different. Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., who was in the 4-3 majority to abolish the death penalty, reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and was succeeded by Justice Richard Robinson.
In the August decision, the court ruled that a 2012 state law abolishing capital punishment for future crimes must be applied to the 11 men who still faced execution for killings committed before the law took effect. The decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who was facing the possibility of lethal injection for a 2000 murder-for-hire killing in West Hartford.
The 2012 ban had been passed prospectively because many lawmakers refused to vote for a bill that would spare the death penalty for Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a highly publicized 2007 home invasion in Cheshire.
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Virginia executes serial killer who claimed to be disabled
Court News |
2015/10/07 16:23
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A twice-condemned serial killer who claimed he was intellectually disabled was executed in Virginia on Thursday after a series of last-minute appeals failed.
Alfredo Prieto was pronounced dead at 9:17 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. The 49-year-old was injected with a lethal three-drug combination, including the sedative pentobarbital, which Virginia received from the Texas prison system.
Prieto, wearing glasses, jeans and a light blue shirt, did not resist and showed no emotion as he was strapped to the gurney.
"I would like to say thanks to all my lawyers, all my supporters and all my family members," he said, before mumbling, "Get this over with."
The El Salvador native was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2010 for the murder of a young couple more than two decades earlier. Rachael Raver and her boyfriend, Warren Fulton III, both 22, were found shot to death in a wooded area a few days after being seen at a Washington, D.C., nightspot.
Prieto was on death row in California at the time for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl and was linked to the Virginia slayings through DNA evidence. California officials agreed to send him to Virginia on the rationale that it was more likely to carry out the execution.
He has been connected to as many as six other killings in California and Virginia, authorities have said, but he was never prosecuted because he had already been sentenced to death.
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Appeals court won't reinstate 1990 arson-murder conviction
Court News |
2015/08/20 10:48
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An elderly man who spent 24 years in prison for his daughter's death in a fire will remain free after a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania on Wednesday refused to reinstate his murder conviction.
Han Tak Lee, 80, a native of South Korea who earned U.S. citizenship, was exonerated and freed last year after a judge concluded the case against him was based on since-discredited scientific theories about arson. Prosecutors appealed, saying that other evidence pointed to his guilt.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal, meaning Lee will stay out of prison.
Lee said Wednesday in a brief phone interview that he was happy about the ruling. His attorney, Peter Goldberger, called on prosecutors to drop the case.
"I hope, now, that they will finally see there is no basis for this conviction," Goldberger said. "They can say it's nobody's fault, that science changed, that this is over now, and the federal court has had the last word."
Monroe County District Attorney David Christine, who prosecuted Lee in 1990, said he will consider an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Although we are disappointed in the ruling, we know that the Court of Appeals gave very serious consideration to the arguments of all parties, and entered a decision only after careful and thoughtful scrutiny of all the relevant facts and legal issues," he said via email. "However, we remain convinced that in spite of the debunking of some of the (prosecution witnesses) on the cause and origin of fire accepted by the scientific community in the 1980s, the defendant's guilt was otherwise established by relevant and admissible evidence presented to the jury."
Lee's conviction was one of dozens to be called into question around the U.S. amid revolutionary changes in investigators' understanding of how an intentionally set fire can be distinguished from an accidental one.
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Court suspends ex-Chad dictator trial to ready new lawyers
Court News |
2015/07/20 21:56
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The trial of Chad's ex-dictator Hissene Habre was suspended on Tuesday until September to allow court-appointed lawyers to prepare his defense.
The Extraordinary African Chambers, established by Senegal and the African Union, is trying the former leader of Chad for crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture, in an unprecedented case of one African country prosecuting the former ruler of another.
Habre on Tuesday refused representation but Attorney General Mbacke Fall said Habre must accept lawyers appointed by the judge, since he refused to be represented by his own.
Three Senegalese lawyers were appointed by the court to represent Habre and they were given until Sept. 7 to prepare the defense.
"The appointed lawyers have a duty to defend Habre. Even if the accused refuses to collaborate with the appointed lawyers for him, the procedure will continue," said Judge Gberdao Gustave Kam.
Habre has said he does not recognize the special tribunal, dismissing it as politically motivated. On Monday, Habre was taken away from court by security guards after he and a supporter yelled out, causing chaos. He then refused to return, submitting a statement saying he had been illegally detained.
Habre's government was responsible for an estimated 40,000 deaths, according to a report published in May 1992 by a 10-member truth commission formed by Chad's current President Idriss Deby. The commission singled out Habre's political police force for using torture.
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US appeals court upholds EPA plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay
Court News |
2015/07/07 11:37
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A U.S. appeals court has upheld a federal plan limiting pollution in the Chesapeake Bay despite objections from farmers who accuse the Environmental Protection Agency of abusing its power.
The ruling Monday upholds restrictions on farm and construction runoff and wastewater treatment and is a clear win for environmentalists.
Six states have agreed to the pollution limits: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, along with Washington, D.C.,
The American Farm Bureau Federation and others fought the restrictions. They argued that the EPA was usurping state authority to regulate waterways.
The EPA says animal waste and fertilizer that moves from streams into the Chesapeake is the single largest source of bay pollution.
Third Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro says Chesapeake Bay pollution is a complex problem that affects more than 17 million people.
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