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Irish trucker in court over deaths of 39 people in container
Headline Legal News |
2020/06/23 12:26
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An Irish truck driver appeared in an English court Wednesday, accused of the manslaughter of 39 people who were found dead in a container in southeastern England in an apparent people-smuggling tragedy.
Ronan Hughes, 40, appeared by at Southend Magistrates Court, east of London, by video link from a police station, after being extradited from Ireland.
The Vietnamese nationals were found Oct. 23 in an industrial park in the English town of Grays inside a refrigerated container that had arrived by ferry from Belgium.
The victims came from impoverished villages in Vietnam and are believed to have paid people smugglers to take them on risky journeys to better lives abroad.
The truck’s driver, Maurice Robinson, 25, admitted 39 counts of manslaughter in April. He had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
Hughes wasn't asked to enter a plea and was ordered detained until a plea hearing at London's Central Criminal Court on July 22. |
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What Supreme Court? Trump's HHS pushes LGBT health rollback
Court Line News |
2020/06/20 10:19
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The Trump administration Friday moved forward with a rule that rolls back health care protections for transgender people, even as the Supreme Court barred sex discrimination against LGBT individuals on the job.
The rule from the Department of Health and Human Services was published in the Federal Register, the official record of the executive branch, with an effective date of Aug. 18. That will set off a barrage of lawsuits from gay rights and women's groups. It also signals to religious and social conservatives in President Donald Trump's political base that the administration remains committed to their causes as the president pursues his reelection.
The Trump administration rule would overturn Obama-era sex discrimination protections for transgender people in health care.
Strikingly similar to the underlying issues in the job discrimination case before the Supreme Court, the Trump health care rule rests on the idea that sex is determined by biology. The Obama version relied on a broader understanding shaped by a person's inner sense of being male, female, neither, or a combination.
Writing for the majority in this week's 6-3 decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, "An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. |
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Court rejects Trump bid to end young immigrants’ protections
Court Line News |
2020/06/17 10:20
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The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender.
Immigrants who are part of the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program will retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States ? safe almost certainly at least through the November election, immigration experts said.
The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then.
The justices said the administration did not take the proper steps to end DACA, rejecting arguments that the program is illegal and that courts have no role to play in reviewing the decision to end it. The program covers people who have been in the United States since they were children and are in the country illegally. In some cases, they have no memory of any home other than the U.S. |
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Tennessee Supreme Court delays second execution due to pandemic
Lawyer Media News |
2020/06/14 09:45
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The Tennessee Supreme Court on Friday issued a stay of execution for a second death row inmate because of the coronavirus pandemic. Byron Black's execution was scheduled for Oct. 8, but the court moved it to April 8, 2021.
Attorneys for the 64-year-old Black had said the pandemic made it impossible to have a hearing on whether Black is competent to be executed. They also wrote that the health crisis is interfering with his ability to prepare for a clemency request.
The court also extended until January Black's deadline for a petition alleging incompetence. The previous deadline was next month. "The stay will help protect guards, witnesses, attorneys representing the prisoners, attorneys for the State, and everyone else involved in these cases," said Kelley Henry, supervisory assistant federal public defender.
Henry said Black has mental defects and medical issues. "For the court to evaluate Mr. Black's competency, it would need to hear from mental health experts who are out of state and can't travel to Tennessee to examine Mr. Black in the prison at this time," Henry said. "The stay in Mr. Black's case was absolutely necessary."
Tennessee's attorney general opposed Black's motion to delay his execution. Attorney General Herbert Slatery wrote in Supreme Court filings that attorneys for Black and another inmate who sought a stay, Harold Nichols, were speculating about future public health conditions in their delay requests.
Black was convicted by a Nashville court of murdering his girlfriend Angela Clay and her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakesha, 6, at their home in 1988. Prosecutors said he shot the three during a jealous rage. Black was on work release at the time for shooting and wounding Clay's estranged husband. |
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Wolf asks Pennsylvania Supreme Court to uphold shutdown
Headline Legal News |
2020/06/12 09:45
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Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday to intervene in his dispute with legislative Republicans who have voted to end pandemic restrictions he imposed in March to slow the spread of the new coronavirus.
Republican majorities in the House and Senate, with a few Democrats in support, voted this week to end the state’s emergency disaster declaration that Wolf has used to shut down “non-life-sustaining” businesses, ban large gatherings and order people to stay at home.
Wolf asked the state’s high court to uphold the shutdown. He said that his gradual reopening plan is working, pointing to a downward trend in the number of new virus infections in Pennsylvania even as cases rise in nearly half the states.
“Pennsylvania’s measured, phased process to reopen is successful because of its cautious approach that includes factors relying on science, the advice of health experts and that asks everyone to do something as simple as wearing a mask when inside or around others outside the home,” Wolf said in a news release. “We will continue to move forward cautiously.”
Wolf has been easing restrictions in vast swaths of the state, including on Friday when he announced that another eight counties would be moving to the least restrictive “green” phase of his reopening plan. But gyms, barber shops, theaters and similar businesses in the state’s highly populated southeast corner remain closed, and many types of businesses statewide must abide by occupancy limits.
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German far-right party wins court case against minister
Court Line News |
2020/06/09 09:22
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Germany's top security official violated the rights of a far-right party by posting remarks criticizing it on his ministry's website, the country's highest court ruled Tuesday.
The Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, whose anti-migration and anti-establishment stance helped it get into the German parliament in 2017, is currently the largest of several opposition parties.
Its case against Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stems from an interview that his ministry posted on its website in 2018, in which he decried a broadside by AfD against President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. AfD had accused Steinmeier of drumming up support for a “radical left-wing event” after he backed a left-wing punk group's anti-racism concert, and the party sought to debate his budget in parliament.
Seehofer described AfD's behavior as “undermining the state” and asserted that “they stand against this state. They can say 1,000 times that they are democrats ... this is highly dangerous for our state.”
The Federal Constitutional Court found that parties must be allowed to compete on an equal footing. Presiding Judge Andreas Vosskuhle said the legitimacy of the government's public relations work “ends where advertis ing for or exerting influence against individual parties or people in political competition begins.”
The court found that the government is entitled to defend itself publicly against criticism of its policies using official channels, but should avoid comments that have no substantial link to the criticism and are “distorting or disparaging.”
The verdict has no direct consequences for Seehofer. The interview was taken down from his ministry's website a little over two weeks after it was posted there.
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