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Arizona prosecutors are considering a retrial in a 1991 murder case after the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on the matter. The Ninth Circuit has now issued two opinions granting Jonathan Doody a new trial, finding that Doody was “prejudiced by extensive interrogation and inadequate Miranda warnings,” reports Courthouse News Service. On the morning of August 10, 1991, members of the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist Temple discovered nine bodies inside the temple....

In what is surely an upset to many investors, but particularly to the potential class representatives who were seeking to hold Theranos liable for misrepresenting their technology, a federal judge in the Northern District of California has denied their motion for class certification. For Theranos, this may be the first break they’ve caught in a while (though it could be appealed or potentially refiled). In short, the court found that the plaintiffs’ claims were best resolved as individual claims due to the issue of reliance requiring individualized assessments....

The sentence of former Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent J. Fumo was before the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals this week. Fumo, who was given a sentence of 55 months in prison on corruption charges, faced a 45-minute hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals where the court reviewed his sentencing on 137 corruption and fraud charges. The review comes after prosecutors in the case appealed the sentence, saying that his crimes warranted a minimum sentence of 21 years, writes The Philadelphia Inquirer....

According to a recent ruling by the Sixth Circuit, it’s not a ‘search’ for the government to have a camera on a public utility pole pointed into your backyard – even when the camera records evidence nonstop for ten weeks. Soon afterward, the local police heard rumors that the brothers were illegally stashing an arsenal in their backyard and were engaging in open carry in their Tennessee farm (compound). This was illegal because one of the brothers had a felony record....

Bullying, it seems, is a reality of schoolyard politics. And despite the seeming injustice in a recent circuit court ruling, the Sixth Circuit determined that a defendant school district was not “deliberately indifferent” as to the sufferings of one bullied child. The court ruling is a reminder to both schools and parents that bullying is an unfortunate reality that sometimes cannot be cured by legal means. Memories of Bullying A mother and her minor child D....

Watson v. CEVA Logistics U.S., Inc., No. 09-3322, involved African-American plaintiffs’ action alleging racially hostile work environment claims under Title VII. The court reversed summary judgment for defendants on the grounds that, contrary to the ruling below: 1) the alleged harassment was objectively severe and pervasive enough to create a hostile work environment; and 2) plaintiffs came forth with sufficient evidence that defendant knew or should have known about the harassment and failed to take prompt and effective remedial measures....

Practicing law is exhausting. Motions, responses, and discovery really have a way of interfering with your REM cycle. Since most lawyers will not know eight hours of sleep in the intervening years between the start of law school and retirement, the power nap is the successful attorney’s modus operandi.Unfortunately for Joseph Muniz, his lawyer took one such power nap while the government cross-examined Muniz in his assault with intent to commit murder trial....

The weekly rundown of crime stories that blur the lines between idiot and genius, justified and not so much, freedom and incarceration… you be the judge. Not so smart to very stupid. So we’ve seen that assault rifles at protests where the President speaks are kosher. What about an assault rifle in the hands of a scantily clad waitress in the “Twin Peaks” restaurant parking lot, sprawled across the hood of a police cruiser for a photo-op?...

We’ve all missed a bill here or there. Normally, you’re just facing a little late fee, not an entire SWAT team kicking in your door and shooting your dog. But that’s exactly what happened to a Missouri grandmother in 2014. “They put me and my son on our knees to watch her die,” Angela Zorich told St. Louis’s KMOV. “The officer squatted over her while she was dying with the search warrant, and he said, ‘You know why we’re here?...

An otherwise ordinary tax dispute was made slightly less ordinary by the inclusion of a pop culture reference to the “$64,000 Question” a 1950s game show. As for the actual $64,000, it is a disputed overpayment refund for the Stockers. As many taxpayers do, they waited until the deadline (even with multiple extensions) to mail their documents. When their tax preparer mailed the envelopes, he left part of the certified mail receipt in the office, making the concept of certified mail absolutely useless....

A discovery denial could result in an overturned conviction. Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded a defendant’s child pornography conviction to a district court based on the trial court’s discovery errors. While executing a warrant for Budziak’s home, FBI agents seized a computer containing child pornography and an installed copy of the LimeWire file sharing program from Budziak’s home. Agents used an FBI computer program called EP2P to search for the child pornography files and to download them....

US v. Dokich, 08-2850, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of a 84-month sentence and an order of restitution in the amount of $55,971,122 in a conviction of defendant for mail fraud and illegal structuring transactions, arising from a fraudulent scheme to sell stock in a company that claimed to be developing diagnostic tests for HIV, mad-cow disease, and blood glucose levels. In affirming the conviction and the order of restitution, the court held that, while there were problems in the calculations of loss, defendant has not identified any error that resulted in the sort of miscarriage of justice that would require reversal....

Vernon Madison will not die by execution. Not for now. The U.S. Supreme Court spared him in Madison v. Alabama, sending his case back to state court to decide whether he understands why he is being executed. According to his lawyers, Madison’s dementia is so bad he can’t find the toilet in his own cell. It’s cruel and unusual punishment to execute people who are incompetent because they are insane, delusional, or psychotic....

Levin v. Commerce Energy, Inc., No. 09-223, involved an action against the Ohio Tax Commissioner (Commissioner) by independent natural gas marketers (IMs) who offered to sell natural gas to Ohio consumers, alleging discriminatory taxation of IMs and their patrons in violation of the Commerce and Equal Protection Clauses. The Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit’s reversal of the district court’s dismissal of the action, holding that, under the comity doctrine, a taxpayer’s complaint of allegedly discriminatory state taxation, even when framed as a request to increase a competitor’s tax burden, must proceed originally in state court....

In a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action alleging a student was unlawfully searched and seized, summary judgment for defendants is affirmed in part where: 1) the general law of search warrants applies to child abuse investigations; 2) however, precedent did not clearly establish that the in-school seizure of a student suspected of being the victim of child sexual abuse could be subject to traditional Fourth Amendment protections; and 3) applying the prior lower standard, defendants’ actions were not so clearly invalid as to strip them of qualified immunity....

One of this election season’s weirdest rallying cries/scare tactics is about how Democrats will quickly move to grant statehood to Puerto Rico in 2021. All the talking heads discuss Puerto Rican statehood as an either/or proposition. But that leaves out many things that likely need to happen first for statehood to occur. We’ll leave the turgid analysis of the merits of Puerto Rican statehood and which political party this benefits (by stereotyping Puerto Ricans into overly broad categories) to the pundits....

The last thing a criminal defendant needs is for a jury to perceive him as “a bad guy.” Unfortunately, a defendant charged on drug and firearm counts will likely fall within that cognitive category. Nonetheless, that risk of prejudice – by itself – is not enough to sever charges into separate trials. As part of this investigation, the FBI conducted surveillance and made video recordings of an automotive repair shop where the owner was dealing crack-cocaine....

Since 2012, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, dodging a now-dismissed sexual assault charge in Sweden and potential extradition to the United States. Ecuador reportedly withdrew Assange’s asylum protections last year, and he was arrested on a single charge of failing to surrender to the court and found guilty today. And for years, the Department of Justice has mulled charging Assange with a multitude of offenses – ranging from theft of government property to espionage – relating to the release of U....

Despite what Lindsay Lohan’s recent rehab plea bargain would indicate, a court can’t extend a defendant’s sentence for rehab. The Supreme Court is particularly clear on this issue. In Tapia v. U.S., the Court held that a sentencing court may not impose or lengthen a prison term in order to foster a defendant’s rehabilitation. A defendant may grab an appellate court’s attention by arguing that a sentencing court improperly calculated rehab into his sentence, but today’s Second Circuit ruling demonstrates why he won’t necessarily win....

New Mexico lost its court battle against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for releasing Mexican gray wolves into the wilderness of west-central New Mexico. Arguing that the federal government did not have its permission, the state had asked the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold an injunction against further releases of the endangered species. But the appeals court said, in New Mexico Department of Game and Fish v....