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High court to review Kansas sheriff's killing
Court News |
2013/02/27 23:12
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The Supreme Court has agreed to consider reinstating the conviction and death sentence of a man who said he was high on meth when he killed a Kansas sheriff.
The justices on Monday said they will review a state Supreme Court ruling that granted a new trial to Scott Cheever, who admitted to shooting Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels.
The Kansas court said Cheever's rights were violated during his trial because a psychiatrist was allowed to testify about Cheever's psychological records without his consent.
Samuels' death prompted changes in the Kansas criminal code to make it more difficult to purchase the ingredients used in making meth.
The case will be argued in the fall. |
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Jury: Oregon car-bomb suspect guilty of terrorism
Court News |
2013/02/01 14:56
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Three hours before they handed down a sentence that could put an Oregon man in prison for life, deliberating jurors sent a note to a trial judge with a question.
Did the man whose fate they were deciding need to have envisioned the specific crime for which he was accused? Or did he merely need to be inclined toward some kind of terroristic act?
Their question more broadly reflects the central debate at the heart of the trial of Mohamed Mohamud, a 21-year-old Somali-American found guilty on Thursday of attempting to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting in November 2010.
Prosecutors were met by a claim of entrapment by Mohamud's defense team, and needed to convince jurors that he was predisposed to terrorism by the time an FBI informant began discussing radical jihad with him over emails.
The judge, Garr King, told jurors Thursday that Mohamud only had to be likely to commit the offense or one like it, and he did not specifically have to be thinking about a bomb at the specific time and place at which he and two undercover FBI agents decided to plant one.
The bomb was a fake, supplied by the agents posing as jihadis.
Jurors were given starkly different portraits of the man who was 17 when the FBI began to focus on him. In the prosecution's description, Mohamud was a powder keg in search of a spark, an angry teenager with the right combination of anti-Western sentiment and a plausible cover story as an Oregon college student. |
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High court to hear appeal in case of jilted woman
Court News |
2013/01/18 11:25
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The Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a jilted woman who was convicted under an anti-terrorism law for spreading deadly chemicals around the home of her husband's mistress. The justices said in an order Friday that they will revisit the case of Carol Anne Bond, a Pennsylvania woman who was given a six-year prison term for violating a federal law involving the use of chemical weapons. In 2011, the court unanimously sided with Bond to allow her to challenge her conviction despite arguments from federal prosecutors and judges that she shouldn't even be allowed to appeal the verdict. Lower courts subsequently rejected the appeal. Bond, from Lansdale, Pa., near Philadelphia, says she is in prison over a domestic dispute that resulted in a thumb burn for a onetime friend who became her husband's lover. Bond was convicted in federal court of trying to poison the woman by spreading toxic chemicals around her house and car and on her mailbox. Her argument is that the case should have been dealt with by local authorities, as most crimes are. Instead, a federal grand jury indicted her on two counts of possessing and using a chemical weapon. The charges were based on a federal anti-terrorism law passed to fulfill the United States' international treaty obligations under the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. |
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Lohan lawyer in NYC courthouse in nightclub case
Court News |
2013/01/09 20:06
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Lindsay Lohan's attorney has gone to a New York City courthouse in connection with the actress's alleged fight at a Manhattan nightclub.
Lohan was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor assault in the Nov. 29 incident at the club Avenue.
Office of Court Administration spokesman David Bookstaver said Monday that a criminal complaint has not been drawn up at this time. He says paperwork will be signed but no hearing will be held.
The "Mean Girls" and "Liz and Dick" star allegedly struck a woman in the face during an argument.
At the time of her arrest, her attorney, Mark Heller, said Lohan was "a victim of someone trying to capture their 15 minutes of fame." |
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Court rules on suit against West Memphis officers
Court News |
2012/11/15 12:47
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A lawsuit brought against West Memphis, Ark., by relatives of two people who were fatally shot by the city's police officers during a two-state chase can continue, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with a lower court that five West Memphis officers involved in the July 2004 shootings of Donald Rickard and Kelly Allen are not immune from possible liability in the deaths.
Rickard fled a traffic stop for a broken taillight in West Memphis and was chased across a Mississippi River bridge to Memphis. After Rickard and a West Memphis officer crashed with each other on a Memphis street, officers managed to stop the car again and fatally shot both Rickard and Allen, his passenger.
Officer Vance Plumhoff fired three shots into the vehicle. Officer John Bryan Gardner fired 10 times at the vehicle as it was moving away from the officers. Officer John Tony Galtelli also fired two shots at the vehicle.
As the officers were shooting, Rickard lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a building.
Police have said they opened fire on the car after Rickard tried to run over them as he fled down the street after being cornered. Relatives of Rickard and Allen, both 44, have alleged excessive force. |
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