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Arias seeks death penalty stay, court rejects
Legal Opinions |
2013/03/04 15:40
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Jodi Arias' effort to get the death penalty option in her murder case temporarily set aside was met Friday with a swift rejection from the Arizona Supreme Court in a one-sentence response denying the motion filed just hours earlier.
Arias is charged in the June 2008 stabbing and shooting death of her lover in his suburban Phoenix home. She claims self-defense, while authorities say she planned the attack in a jealous rage. Testimony has been ongoing since early January.
After failing to win a mistrial or stay of the death penalty option in the lower court earlier this year, her defense attorneys sought relief Friday from the state's highest court, which quickly rejected it. Her trial is set to continue Monday with the death penalty still on the table if prosecutors can secure a first-degree murder conviction.
Arias' attorneys argued in early January before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens, who is overseeing the trial, that the lead detective on the case perjured himself during a pretrial hearing aimed at determining whether the death penalty should be considered an option for jurors.
Mesa police Detective Esteban Flores testified at the hearing that based on his own review of the scene, and a discussion with the medical examiner, it was apparent that Alexander had been shot in the forehead first. Arias then repeatedly stabbed and slashed him 27 times and slit his throat, he said. |
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Top court orders Italian marines tried in India
Legal Opinions |
2013/01/15 11:17
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India's Supreme Court ruled Friday that two Italian marines accused of killing a pair of fishermen off the coast of India last year will be tried in a special court to be set up by the Indian government. Italy had argued that the shootings should be dealt with by an Italian court and said the killings took place in international waters, which India disputes. The trial is expected to further strain ties between Italy and India that have been frayed by the yearlong fight over the marines' fate. Top Italian officials have visited the marines, Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone, at a guesthouse in the southern state of Kerala to lend their support and the Indian government allowed them to go home for two weeks to celebrate Christmas with their families. The marines were part of a military security team aboard a cargo ship when they opened fire on a fishing boat last February they said they mistook for a pirate craft and killed two Indian fishermen. The court ruled Friday that the trial should take place in India in a special court to be set up by the central government in consultation with the chief justice, according to the Press Trust of India. The order removed the case from the jurisdiction of the southern state of Kerala, near where the shooting took place. |
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Court sides with NJ judges in pension dispute
Legal Opinions |
2012/07/25 15:51
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New Jersey's Supreme Court dealt a partial defeat to one of Gov. Chris Christie's signature legislative accomplishments Tuesday when it ruled that the state's judges don't have to contribute more to their pensions and health benefits. A leading state lawmaker immediately said the battle over the matter would continue.
The narrow 3-2 decision sided with a legal challenge filed last year by a state Superior Court judge in Hudson County who argued that the law imposing the pension and health care benefits changes violated a part of the state constitution that set judges' salaries and said they cannot be reduced.
The justices noted in their ruling that without a corresponding salary increase, the increased contributions would eventually cost judges at least $17,000 annually in take-home pay, amounting to a pay cut of more than 10 percent.
Christie, a Republican, had worked with the Democratic-controlled Legislature to pass the law last year. It affects hundreds of thousands of government workers around the state in addition to between 400 and 500 sitting judges and justices. |
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Feds: Man to plead guilty in 1983 Conn. robbery
Legal Opinions |
2012/06/15 11:23
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The U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut says a Puerto Rican nationalist who's one of the last people charged in a $7 million armored car depot robbery in 1983 has agreed to plead guilty.
Federal prosecutors didn't give details Thursday of the deal with Norberto Gonzalez Claudio. His attorney hasn't responded to requests for comment.
The U.S. attorney's office says a hearing is scheduled for Friday in U.S. District Court in Hartford.
Gonzalez is not accused of directly participating in the West Hartford heist. He has pleaded not guilty to charges including bank robbery, conspiracy and transportation of stolen money. He was captured in Puerto Rico last year.
The robbery was orchestrated by Los Macheteros, a group that claimed responsibility for robberies, murders and bombings in the 1970s and '80s in the name of Puerto Rican independence. |
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Disgraced ex-journalist fights for CA law license
Legal Opinions |
2011/12/26 16:34
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A former journalist who became the subject of a Hollywood movie after he was caught fabricating articles in the late 1990s is fighting to become a lawyer in California over the objections of a state bar committee.
Stephen Glass, whose ethical missteps at The New Republic and other magazines were recounted in the film Shattered Glass and an autobiographical novel, has challenged the bar committee's decision to deny him a license to practice law, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
Glass attended law school at Georgetown University and passed California's bar exam in 2007. His application for an attorney's license was turned down by the state's Committee of Bar Examiners, which judged him morally unfit for his new profession.
But an independent state bar court ruled in Glass's favor in July and the California Supreme Court has since agreed to hear the committee's appeal. No date for oral arguments has been set.
The bar association's lawyers said in written filings that even though Glass' transgressions occurred when he was in his 20s, his attempts at atonement were inadequate and in some cases coincided with the publication of his novel. They faulted him for never compensating anyone who was hurt by his falsehoods. |
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