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Man who escaped from Rhode Island prison to appear in court
Headline Legal News |
2017/01/03 16:42
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A man who escaped from a Rhode Island prison and was on the run for five days before being captured in Massachusetts is scheduled to make an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge.
James Morales escaped from the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls last Saturday and was captured Thursday in Somerville. Authorities believe he may have tried to rob two banks before he was caught.
Morales is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Providence on an escape charge.
Authorities say Morales escaped New Year's Eve by climbing a basketball hoop, cutting through a fence and climbing th brough razor wire. It took hours for correctional officers to notice.
The 35-year-old former Army reservist was being held on charges he stole 16 guns from a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Worcester. |
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Massachusetts teen due in court in texting suicide case
Headline Legal News |
2016/12/20 14:26
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A Massachusetts woman accused of sending her boyfriend text messages encouraging him to kill himself is due in court for a pretrial hearing.
Michelle Carter is charged with manslaughter in the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III. The 18-year-old Roy died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Prosecutors say the then-17-year-old Carter had sent him dozens of messages urging him to follow through on his suicide plan.
Earlier this month, Carter’s attorney asked a judge for funds to hire an expert to explain the effects of an antidepressant to a jury at Carter’s trial. The judge denied the request.
Carter’s lawyer said both teens were taking an antidepressant that has a warning that it may cause suicidal thoughts.
Carter’s lawyer said he may make additional arguments at a hearing scheduled for Monday.
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Court to unseal Clinton email search warrant
Headline Legal News |
2016/12/20 14:24
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A federal court in New York is scheduled to release redacted copies Tuesday of the search warrant that allowed the FBI to dig into a trove of Hillary Clinton emails days before the presidential election.
The emails were found on a computer belonging to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide.
A judge ruled Monday that the public had a right to see the warrant application, but said portions would be blacked out to conceal information about an ongoing investigation involving Weiner.
Federal agents have been probing his online contact with a teenage girl.
The discovery of the emails prompted FBI Director James Comey (KOH'-mee) to briefly reopen an investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state.
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Justices ask lower court to reconsider class action case
Headline Legal News |
2016/12/17 16:15
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The Supreme Court is asking a lower court to take another look at a class action lawsuit brought by nearly 300 cable technicians that alleges their company encouraged workers to underreport overtime hours.
The justices said Monday that a federal appeals court should reconsider its decision allowing the lawsuit to proceed against cable installation firm FTS USA and its parent company, UniTek USA.
The companies argue that the district court should not have calculated damages for hundreds of workers by averaging the experiences of only 17 workers who testified.
A federal judge awarded the technicians $3.8 million after a jury found the company at fault. A federal appeals court said that award was too high, but rejected arguments that a single class action lawsuit was improper.
The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from two former American International Group executives seeking to avoid civil fraud claims on charges they hid hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from investors.
The justices on Monday let stand a lower court ruling that said former chief executive officer Maurice Greenberg and former chief financial officer Howard Smith must stand trial.
New York state has accused the former executives of manipulating AIG's accounting records to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from investors.
The state seeks an order banning Greenberg from working in the securities industry or as an executive for any public company. It also is seeking $53 million, including bonuses Greenberg received during the period he is alleged to have manipulated the company's finances. |
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Court: Star Chinese investor pleads guilty in stock case
Headline Legal News |
2016/12/06 13:19
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A Chinese court says a star securities trader who was arrested following last year's stock market collapse has pleaded guilty to insider trading and manipulating share prices.
The court in the eastern city of Qingdao said in a statement Tuesday that Xu Xiang and two co-defendants pleaded guilty at the start of a trial but no verdict had been issued.
Xu was arrested in November after a rapid rise in Chinese share prices collapsed. Top executives of China's biggest state-owned securities firm also were arrested in a separate case.
The court statement said Xu and his co-defendants were accused of conspiring with executives of 13 companies from 2010 to 2015 to inflate their share price and then sell.
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Lawyers for Egypt's Islamists see high court as last refuge
Headline Legal News |
2016/12/01 13:20
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Twice this month, Egypt's highest appeals court has struck down harsh sentences against Mohammed Morsi, the elected Islamist president overthrown by the military in 2013, giving some hope to thousands of his supporters, who were jailed or sentenced to death by hasty verdicts following mass trials.
Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed as a terrorist group, and the court has upheld heavy sentences against its members. But its quashing of some of the faultiest rulings has led lawyers to see the appeals court as a last refuge for justice.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and other top officials have long insisted that Egypt's judiciary is independent of the government and does not engage in show trials.
But a series of swift, mass verdicts issued in the tumultuous months after Morsi's ouster, as security forces were cracking down on his supporters and violently dispersing protests, raised the possibility that Egypt might execute the Brotherhood's leadership.
Many judges on the lower courts openly expressed their disdain for the Islamists and their desire to impose order after the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. Defense lawyers say they often relied on faulty police reports citing anonymous security sources.
Among the most notorious rulings were those by a court in the southern city of Minya, which sentenced more than 1,000 alleged Morsi supporters to death in two mass trials that each lasted only a few days. Some of those death sentences were later rescinded by a religious authority, and many of the defendants appealed the rulings and were granted retrials. None were executed.
Scores of other cases were reversed by the Court of Cassation, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Judicial Council, a panel of the country's most experienced and well-respected judges.
Rights lawyers see it as a refuge for those who have been tried, convicted and condemned by the lower courts, as well as public opinion. |
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