After serving more than 20 years of a life sentence, Adnan Syed, the subject of the true-crime podcast “Serial,“is set to be released from prison. A jury convicted Syed of kidnapping and murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 2000. Lee was 18 years old when she went missing in January 1999, and her body was found buried in a park a few weeks later. She had been strangled to death....
District court order denying petitioner’s motion to vacate his conviction on grounds that the government violated his rights under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations is affirmed where the court properly concluded that petitioner’s claim was procedurally barred as petitioner raised the argument for the first time and claims cannot be raised for the first time in a motion to vacate if they could have been raised at trial or on direct appeal, and petitioner also failed to show he suffered prejudiced by the denial....
Morrison v. Nat’l Australia Bank Ltd., No. 08-1191, involved a securities fraud action by Australian citizens claiming that defendant corporation and its officers manipulated financial models to make the company’s mortgage-servicing rights appear more valuable than they really were. The Court affirmed the Second Circuit’s affirmance of the dismissal of the action, holding that 1) the Second Circuit erred in considering Securities and Exchange Act section 10(b)’s extraterritorial reach to raise a question of subject-matter jurisdiction, thus allowing dismissal under Fed....
You can’t, absent a handsfree kit, talk on a phone while driving. You can’t text or email. But you can do anything and everything else with your smartphone while driving. Kinda. The Fifth District Court of Appeals, late last week, examined California’s hands-free statute and held that it only applies to “listening and talking,” not any use of a phone whatsoever. Does this mean navigation software, music, and pretty much any other app is fair game on the streets of the Golden State?...
Ah, another slow week on First Street. Not to worry, folks, there’s plenty of Supreme Court gossip to tide you over. No, the Hillary Clinton reference in the headline has nothing to do with a flying shoe (no word on the make and model of said shoe, but we do know that it was feminine and orange). Though that incident has snatched up the headlines, a different speech by the possible presidential candidate, discussing the court’s ruling in McCutcheon, is far more interesting....
Given his penchant for verse about weed, it should come as no surprise that Snoop Dogg is getting into the canna-biz again. Leafs by Snoop – spoofing Beats by Dre – launched in Colorado this week, reports The New York Daily News. But this is not the rapper’s first investment in the business of legal weed. Marijuana is a big money maker and is already a legal recreational drug in Colorado....
In what might be the most litigious election season in recent memory, the Supreme Court has stepped in and blocked three lower court rulings in the last week alone, some of which allowed controversial voting laws, and some of which blocked those laws. The seemingly conflicting rulings all have one thing in common: the Purcell rule. Meantime, a court in Texas has blocked that state’s voter ID law at the last second....
The Supreme Court refused to intervene in a conflict over Texas’s voter identification law today. That law, which imposes some of the most rigorous voter ID requirements in the country, has been used in Texas’s last three elections, even though the Fifth Circuit has found the law to have a discriminatory effect. And those voter ID requirements will continue to remain in place for Texas’s upcoming runoff elections in May, now that the Supreme Court has refused to halt the law’s enforcement....
As Baby Boomers age, they are constantly confronted by the pop culture luminaries of their salad days “selling out” and becoming “the man.” And now it’s come for the Doobie Brothers, a band that got their name simply because they all loved to toke up, and — say it ain’t so — Bill Murray, the apex symbol of living your best, authentic life (having the means to do that notwithstanding, of course)....
SCOTUS fans can now let out a collective sigh of relief. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also known as the Notorious RBG, is back to her full workout routine and is, in her own words, “almost repaired.” If you hadn’t heard, at the beginning of November of this year, Justice Ginsburg fell and broke a few ribs. But, after a short hospitalization, not only did she immediately start physical therapy, she also got right back to work, and didn’t miss a thing....
No sooner had a federal appeals court lifted an injunction blocking the ban on transgender servicemembers in the military, than Congress passed a resolution opposing it. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals was finalizing its ruling even as the U.S. House of Representatives counted votes against the ban. But the back-and-forth has been going on since President Trump announced the policy in July 2017. For thousands of transgender military members, it has been about continuing to serve their country....
Conviction and sentence for robbery and using a firearm in connection with those crimes is affirmed where: 1) the court did not abuse its discretion in denying defendant’s severance motion as defendant failed to establish that holding a single trial caused him actual prejudice; 2) the court did not abuse its discretion via the admission of an audiotape as the conversation on the audiotape was relevant and its probative value was not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice; 3) the evidence was sufficient to support the conviction; and 4) the court’s below-guidelines concurrent sentences on each of the robbery counts was not unreasonable, particularly considering the violent nature of the robberies and defendant’s pivotal role....
In a Clean Water Act civil enforcement action against a county brought by the United States and the Commonwealth of Kentucky for violations involving the county’s sanitary and storm sewer systems, district court’s refusal to approve a civil penalty is remanded where the district court’s finding that the proposed civil penalty of $425,000 could be better directed toward alleviating the conditions that violated the Clean Water Act cannot, by itself, support rejection of an otherwise proper settlement in light of the express provision for civil penalties in the Clean Water Act....
A defendant waives his claim of outrageous government conduct of which he is aware if he fails to assert it in a pretrial motion to dismiss. Defendant’s drug conspiracy conviction is affirmed where defendant failed to raise outrageous government conduct before the district court prior to trial, during trial, or even after trial, despite knowing the facts supposedly supporting his claim months before trial began. Read US v. Mausali, No. 08-50062...
In an action claiming that a school district violated plaintiff-teacher’s First Amendment rights by retaliating against him based on his filing of a formal grievance with his union, dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where plaintiff filed his grievance pursuant to his official duties because the grievance was in furtherance of one of his core duties as a public school teacher, maintaining class discipline, and had no relevant analogue to citizen speech....
A federal judge has approved a settlement in the cases stemming from last year’s salmonella contamination of peanuts and peanut butter. The Peanut Corporation of America was responsible for the peanut salmonella outbreak that killed nine and sickened at least 700 people in 2008 and 2009. The PCA filed for bankruptcy in 2009. U.S. District Judge Norman Moon has approved the $12 million settlement, according to the Associated Press. Some funds will be paid by PCA’s insurer, Hartford Casualty Insurance Co....
It was the scandal that ended the Philadelphia Traffic Court. Two sitting, three former, and one senior Traffic Court judges, along with a Traffic Court administrator and two businessmen, were indicted in 2013 for their alleged roles in a ticket-fixing ring. This week, two of those judges were sentenced: ex-Judges Thomasine Tynes and Robert Mulgrew each received prison sentences for offering perjured testimony about their roles in the conspiracy. According to Mulgrew’s attorney, the ticket fixing scheme was a decades-long practice that predated all of the defendants, but it is likely no more – the Traffic Court was disbanded in favor of a new program integrated with the Municipal Court....
Article III is famously short, but it really packs a punch. A punch that could knock the Defense of Marriage Act challenge right out of court. The Constitution limits judicial review to cases and controversies. According to an amicus brief submitted by Harvard Law Professor Vicki Jackson, the DOMA appeal — U.S. v. Windsor — no longer qualifies for the controversy distinction because the Obama administration and the lower courts agree that DOMA is unconstitutional....
There are some judges that the internet and general public just love. Here at FindLaw, it’s pretty clear that we have had two favorites for some time – the Notorious RBG and Judge Posner – and one of those two is retiring. Over the years, we’ve written 40 blogs where Judge Posner’s name appeared in the title, while RBG just barely beat him with 42 blogs with her name in the title (though that number jumps to 53 when you add in the number of times we’ve used the RGB moniker in a title)....
Commander Furniss Harkness is a Protestant Chaplain in the Unites States Navy Reserves. During his illustrious service in the Chaplain Corps, he has had a bit of a history of speaking his mind, including a prior lawsuit, filed, along with sixteen other non-liturgical Protestants in 2000, that claimed systemic denominational prejudice. Harkness didn’t immediately leap to litigation. Instead, he petitioned the Secretary to convene a “special selection board” to reconsider the promotion....
