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Pa. high court fast tracks juvenile lifer appeals
Court Line | 2012/08/08 19:06

Pennsylvania's highest court is moving quickly to determine how to respond to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles aren't constitutional.

The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, has said Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juvenile lifers.

The state Supreme Court scheduled oral argument for Sept. 13 in a pair of cases that will determine what to do about the hundreds of people serving such sentences, as well as how to handle the issue going forward.

The 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision issued June 25 still makes it possible for juveniles to get life, but it can't be automatic.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections says 373 lifers were under age 18 at the time they were sentenced.


New DC drunken driving law to take effect
Court Line | 2012/08/03 18:20

A new law that toughens penalties for drunken driving in the nation's capital takes effect Wednesday, but the city's police department still is not using breath tests on suspected drunken drivers more than a year after the tests were suspended.

The new law, which was approved by the D.C. Council and signed by Mayor Vincent Gray earlier this summer. It doubles mandatory minimum jail terms for people with blood-alcohol concentrations of .20 percent or higher and establishes a blood-alcohol limit of .04 percent for commercial drivers, including taxi drivers.

The law also establishes new oversight for the district's breath-testing program. But there's still no timetable to the resumption of breath tests, which D.C. police stopped using in February 2011 in the wake of revelations that their breath-testing devices had produced inaccurate results. Police have been using urine and blood tests instead.

A year earlier, District of Columbia officials had notified defense lawyers about nearly 400 drunken-driving convictions that relied, at least party, on inaccurately calibrated blood-alcohol tests.

More than two dozen people sued the district over convictions based on those flawed tests, and the district Attorney General's office said Tuesday that all the outstanding lawsuits had been settled. The district paid a total of $136,000 to 17 plaintiffs, with individuals receiving between $2,000 and $42,000, said Jeffrey Rhodes, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.


Japan whistleblower sidelined despite court ruling
Court Line | 2012/07/11 22:26

An employee at Japanese medical equipment maker Olympus said Wednesdaythat his humiliating treatment has not changed despite a Supreme Courtruling that his demotion for whistleblowing was illegal.Masaharu Hamada said he is still isolated in the office and after lastmonth's court judgment is not given any work. His was the firstwhistleblower case to reach Japan's highest court.His lawyer Koichi Kozen said Hamada may have to file another lawsuit,complaining of human rights violations. Japan remains behind Westerncountries in penalizing companies that fail to abide by court rulings,and some fines are so small companies would rather pay up than abide,Kozen said."We would hope the company would respond quickly, but there has beenno response," Kozen said. "We want Mr. Hamada to get a new assignment,where he can be happy."Hamada, 51, an Olympus salesman with experience in the United States,first sued in 2008, alleging punishment for relaying a supplier'scomplaint.He is considered a whistleblower in Japan because he raised questionsabout colleagues' professional behavior and was subjected to bizarreand humiliating punishment, such as taking rudimentary tests.


Court to hear appeal of Marine in Iraqi killing
Court Line | 2012/07/03 16:09

The military's highest court agreed Monday to hear the appeal of a U.S. Marine convicted of murder in one of the most significant criminal cases against U.S. troops from the Iraq war.

The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ordered a review requested by Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, who claimed in a petition that his constitutional rights were violated when he was held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for seven days during his interrogation, and that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus unlawfully influenced his case after his conviction.

Hutchins, 26, of Plymouth, Mass., led an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping retired Iraqi policeman Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death. The killing took place in Hamdania, a small village in Al Anbar province.

The six other Marines and a Navy corpsman in his squad served less than 18 months.

Hutchins has sought clemency and early release, saying he was deeply sorry for what happened and has suffered nightmares and anxiety because of the killing.

Those requests have been denied, Hutchins claimed in the appeal, because Mabus illegally interfered in the case and influenced officers under him to rule against release.


Guilty plea in NY 'mini-al Qaida' cell case
Court Line | 2012/06/19 16:31

A New Yorker accused of trying to start what prosecutors called "a mini al-Qaida cell" pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges of conspiracy and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

An indictment had alleged that Wesam El-Hanafi pledged loyalty to al-Qaida and sought to teach the terror group how to evade detection on the Internet after he went to Yemen in 2008.

The Brooklyn-born El-Hanafi admitted in federal court in Manhattan to having conversations in 2009 with a co-defendant about "seeking out additional contacts within al-Qaida." The co-defendant, Sabirhan Hasanoff, pleaded guilty to similar charges earlier this month.

Prosecutors had portrayed the two U.S. citizens as a new, more sophisticated breed of homegrown terrorist: Both had earned college degrees and landed well-paying jobs before trying to share their expertise with al-Qaida.


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