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South Dakota and Flandreau Santee Sioux tribe clash in court
Court Line |
2017/05/14 04:57
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One of Neil Gorsuch's sharpest dissents as an appeals court judge came just six months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court.
That's when he sided with a New Mexico seventh-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after his teacher said the student had disrupted gym class with fake burps.
Nearly a year later, Gorsuch sits on the nation's higher court and the boy's mother is asking the justices to take up her appeal. She's using Gorsuch's words to argue that she has a right to sue the officer who arrested her son.
The court could act as early as Monday, either to deny the case or take more time to decide.
Justices typically withdraw from cases they heard before joining the Supreme Court, which means Gorsuch probably would not have any role in considering this one. But that hasn't stopped lawyers for the mother from featuring his stinging dissent prominently in legal papers. Gorsuch said arresting a "class clown" for burping was going "a step too far."
"If a seventh-grader starts trading fake burps for laughs in gym class, what's a teacher to do?" Gorsuch wrote. "Order extra laps? Detention? A trip to the principal's office? Maybe. But then again, maybe that's too old school. Maybe today you call a police officer. And maybe today the officer decides that, instead of just escorting the now compliant thirteen-year-old to the principal's office, an arrest would be a better idea."
Whether the Supreme Court ultimately takes the case or not may have nothing to do with Gorsuch. The justices have repeatedly turned away disputes over school disciplinary policies. Or they may decide it's not important enough for the court to intervene.
The appeal comes as some school districts have been rolling back "zero tolerance" discipline policies that expanded in the 1990s. The shift is aimed at preventing students from getting caught up in the criminal justice system.
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Volunteers accompany US immigrants to court to allay fears
Court Line |
2017/05/11 06:03
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When Salvadoran immigrant Joselin Marroquin-Torres became flustered in front of a federal immigration judge in New York and forgot to give her asylum application, a woman she had just met stood up to provide it.
"Thank you," the judge said. "What is your relation to Joselin?"
"I am a friend," responded retired chemist Marisa Lohse, who has accompanied dozens of immigrants to such hearings.
Lohse is among hundreds of volunteers, including preachers, law students and retirees, who've stepped up to accompany people in the U.S. illegally to court hearings and meetings with immigration officials, guiding them through an often intimidating process.
Some of them say the accompaniment is more important than ever since Republican President Donald Trump expanded the definition of deportable offenses to include all immigrants living in the country illegally, giving rise to immigrants being apprehended during routine check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"We want to increase the accompaniment because the crisis is more severe. The pain, the fear, is bigger," said Guillermo Torres, from Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice in Los Angeles.
The group escorts mostly women and children to immigration court hearings, where judges decide who can stay in the U.S. and who must leave. Volunteers also accompany immigrants who are required to periodically check in with federal agents because they have pending cases or have been ordered deported.
ICE said it didn't have national statistics on how often immigrants have been arrested during those check-ins. Immigration lawyers and advocacy groups said they believe such arrests are increasing. Trump has said the arrests and deportations are necessary to keep the country safe.
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Indiana high court rejects appeal in malnourished teen case
Court Line |
2017/05/05 23:24
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The Indiana Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a central Indiana woman who pleaded guilty to neglecting her 15-year-old granddaughter, who was found covered in feces and weighing only 52 pounds.
The court ruled unanimously last week not to accept transfer of the 56-year-old woman's appeal of a state Court of Appeals decision that upheld her 24-year sentence for pleading guilty to neglect and battery charges.
The Herald Bulletin reports her attorney, Rick Walker, says she can still seek post-conviction relief.
Firefighters called to the woman's Anderson home in December 2014 found her granddaughter malnourished, covered in feces and suffering from a skull fracture.
Her husband and her adult daughter also were convicted of neglect and other charges in the case and are serving prison sentences.
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Top Kansas Court to Revisit Death Penalty in Wichita Murders
Court Line |
2017/05/03 13:24
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The Kansas Supreme Court is considering for a second time whether to spare two brothers from being executed for four murders in what became known as "the Wichita massacre" after earlier rulings in the men's favor sparked a political backlash.
The justices were hearing arguments from attorneys Thursday in the cases of Jonathan and Reginald Carr. The brothers were convicted of dozens of crimes against five people in December 2000 that ended with the victims being shot in a snow-covered Wichita field, with one woman surviving to testify against the brothers.
The crimes were among the most notorious in the state since the 1959 slayings of a western Kansas family that inspired the book "In Cold Blood." The state has 10 men on death row, including the Carrs, but it has not executed anyone since hangings in 1965.
The Kansas court overturned the Carr brothers' death sentences in July 2014, citing flaws in their joint trial and sentencing hearing. The decisions stunned the victims' families and friends, as well as legislators. Critics launched unsuccessful efforts to oust six of the seven justices in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the Kansas court's rulings in a sometimes scathing January 2016 opinion. The nation's highest court returned the men's cases to the Kansas court for further reviews.
The Carr brothers' attorneys are raising some of the same legal questions again, arguing that the Kansas Constitution requires the death sentences to be overturned even if the U.S. Constitution doesn't. The Kansas court has the last word on "state law" issues. There is one new justice since the court last ruled in 2014.
The Kansas court previously concluded that the two men should have had separate sentencing hearings. Jonathan Carr argued that he was not as responsible as his brother for the crimes and that Reginald Carr had been a bad influence on him during their troubled childhoods. |
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After 26 years, last 'cocaine cowboy' back in Miami court
Court Line |
2017/04/24 13:57
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The last of the "cocaine cowboys" who investigators say smuggled vast amounts of the drug into the U.S. is due back in a Miami courtroom 26 years after fleeing an indictment.
Court records show 55-year-old Gustavo Falcon will appear Tuesday afternoon. Falcon was arrested earlier this month near Orlando, where he had been living under an assumed name with his wife.
Falcon vanished in 1991 when he, his older brother Augusto "Willie" Falcon, Salvador "Sal" Magluta and others were charged in a major federal indictment. The gang purportedly smuggled at least 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and made some $2 billion during the hyperviolent "Miami Vice" era.
Gustavo Falcon faces a cocaine conspiracy charge that carries a potential life prison sentence. He has not yet entered a plea.
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