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Election judge pleads not guilty in absentee ballot case
Court Line |
2016/11/21 18:31
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An 88-year-old election judge from southern Illinois has pleaded not guilty after allegedly sending in an absentee ballot in her late husband's name.
The (Belleville) News-Democrat reports that Audrey Cook appeared Thursday in Madison County Circuit Court.
Cook, of Alton, told The Associated Press this month that she filled out the ballot for her husband after he died in September because she knew he would want Donald Trump to be president.
She was charged a few days before the Nov. 8 election with two felony counts of election fraud.
Madison County State's Attorney Tom Gibbons has said the ballot was never even opened because a clerk found it had been submitted in the name of a deceased person.
Gibbons also said Cook would be removed as an election judge.
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Nevada high court considering email public records question
Court Line |
2016/11/16 18:31
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Neighbors' efforts to block the reopening of a mine in a historic Nevada mining town have unearthed a legal question about whether emails kept by elected officials on their personal devices are public records.
The Comstock Residents Association wants the Nevada Supreme Court to order Lyon County to release communications between county commissioners and Comstock Mining Inc. ahead of a January 2014 decision to allow mining again at Silver City.
The question focuses on whether the public has a right to government information contained on personal electronic devices and in personal email accounts.
Senior Washoe County District Court Judge Steven Kosach rejected the request earlier this year, ruling records on personal devices and accounts are outside the public agency's control and aren't covered under the Nevada Public Records Act.
The judge also found the communications were not official actions. But he acknowledged his ruling "may cause public employees to skirt the provision of the (public records law) by conducting business on their personal devices," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Barry Smith, director of the Nevada Press Association, said the lower court ruling allows the "electronic version of the old backroom deal."
"Officials could avoid the open-records law by conducting public business through their private phones and email accounts," Smith said.
In a brief filed Nov. 7 with the state high court, association attorney Luke Busby said the court's decision would provide "critical guidance" to public officials about access to public records.
In court filings, Busby noted that then-Commissioner Vida Keller said at the January 2014 commission meeting that she had contacted her colleagues outside the public meeting regarding the land-use change.
"As it turned out, Commissioner Keller and other members of the Lyon County Commissioners used their personal devices or email accounts to conduct official business," Busby said. "An otherwise public record does not lose public status simply because it was created, received or stored on a personal device or personal account."
A three-member panel of justices heard oral arguments in the case Sept. 14. It could be several months before a ruling is made. |
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Supreme Court stays execution of Alabama inmate
Court Line |
2016/11/04 22:46
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night stayed the execution of an Alabama man convicted of the 1982 shooting death of a woman's husband in a murder-for-hire arrangement.
Five justices voted to stay the execution of Tommy Arthur as the high court considers whether to take up his challenge to Alabama's death penalty procedure. Arthur, 74, was scheduled to be executed Thursday by lethal injection at a south Alabama prison.
"We are greatly relieved by the Supreme Court's decision granting a stay and now hope for the opportunity to present the merits of Mr. Arthur's claims to the Court," Arthur's attorney Suhana Han said in a statement.
This is the seventh time that Arthur, who has waged a lengthy legal battle over his conviction and the constitutionality of the death penalty, has received a reprieve from an execution date, a track record that has frustrated the state attorney general's office and victims' advocacy groups.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote Thursday that he did not think the case merited a stay, but voted to grant it as a courtesy to the four justices who wanted to "more fully consider the suitability of this case for review." The execution stay will expire if the court does not take up Arthur's case.
The attorney general's office had unsuccessfully urged the court to let the execution go forward and expressed disappointment at the decision.
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Supreme Court won't hear challenge to FBI fitness test
Court Line |
2016/11/03 22:46
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The Supreme Court won't hear a dispute over whether a physical fitness test for FBI special agents is biased against men.
The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from an Illinois man who failed the test after completing 29 out of 30 untimed pushups.
Jay Bauer said it's unfair that female trainees have to do only 14 pushups as part of the fitness test that includes situps, a 300-meter sprint and 1.5-mile run.
A federal judge ruled that the test discriminates on the basis of sex. But a federal appeals court sided with the FBI, saying it used "gender-normed" standards that require the same level of fitness for all trainees. |
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Supreme Court gives new chance to 5 Arizona inmates
Court Line |
2016/11/01 22:47
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The Supreme Court is ordering Arizona judges to reconsider life sentences with no chance of parole for five inmates who were convicted of murder for crimes they committed before they turned 18.
The court on Monday said the state judges did not pay sufficient attention to high court rulings that held that life sentences for young killers should be imposed only rarely.
The state courts ruled in all five Arizona cases before the Supreme Court's most recent ruling on juvenile sentences in January.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from Monday's order.
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