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Feds Say Retiree Was Nazi SS Guard
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/17 07:21
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The Department of Justice wants to revoke the citizenship of an 86-year-old Seattle-area man, claiming he participated in a Nazi SS mobile death squad unit operating in Serbia during World War II. Prosecutors say Peter Egner was a guard in an Einsatzgruppe unit responsible for the deaths of more than 6,000 Jewish women and children at Semlin concentration camp near Belgrade.
Egner admitted serving as a guard at the camp during an interview with federal authorities in 2007. On his application for naturalization, filed in 1965, Egner claimed he was an infantry sergeant in the German army; he omitted his SS service, prosecutors say. They seek the immediate deportation of Egner, who is living in a retirement home in Bellevue |
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Dallas Schools Accused Of Racist Policy
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/15 07:15
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The Dallas Independent School District discriminates against black children and poor children in school spending, parents and students claim in Federal Court. They say one predominantly black school is so underfunded it has bathrooms with no doors inside classrooms.
Plaintiffs, including The Coalition to Maximize Education, cite a litany of alleged racist abuses involving a $1.3 billion bond approved in 2002 and a $1.35 billion bond in 2008.
They claim DISD bond manager John Williams was fired after complaining that the DISD was re-allocation bond money from black neighborhoods to other schools.
They claim a 2002 DISD facilities study found $2.3 billion worth of work was needed, primarily in black schools, but the DISD ignored that list in its 2008 study, though those needs had not been addressed.
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Maynard Jackson Junior High School has restrooms inside many of the classrooms, the complaint states. Many of them have no stall doors, creating an untenable privacy situation for the coeducational students.
The complaint states: DISD's neglect of Maynard Jackson, for example, resulted in the exposure to poisonous gases in the facility. Numerous reports were given to the administration about the situation. For years there have been sewer problems at this school and in some instances raw sewage was on the front lawn of the campus. The stench was so strong that students and personnel complained.
Plaintiffs claim the DISD is continuing its racist spending policies with the $1.35 billion bond that voters approved in May, by diverting resources away from communities that are in the most need.
It cites Roosevelt High School, South Oak Cliff High School, D.A. Hulsey Middle School and James Madison as more exampled of underfunded, dilapidated campuses.
Conditions in black school are so wretched that parents have their children bused to other schools, and the DISD uses the declining enrollment to justify cutting funding even more, parents say.
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Anti-Smoking Drug Induces Violent Psychosis, Patient Claims
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/11 07:14
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Pfizer's smoking-cessation drug Chantix induced manic, violent psychosis requiring hospitalization, a man claims in Federal Court. He claims Pfizer failed to warn about the side effects, which have caused serious injury and death.
Chantix is supposed to work by inhibiting nicotine receptors in the brain. Those receptors are controlled by dopamine, a neurotransmitter, the complaint states: Essentially, Chantix regulates/restricts dopamine and blocks pleasure sensors to depress the normal flux of emotions experiences by humans in daily life.
Brian Kline claims Pfizer concealed and misrepresented the risks of Chantix (varenicline), knew that it was unsafe and had caused serious injury and death, but failed to warn of it. He claims he took the drug, which caused the plaintiff to sustain injuries and damages including but not limited to manic behavior, aggressive and violent behavior and diagnosis of psychotic disorder for which the plaintiff was hospitalized in August 2007.
Kline claims Pfizer intentionally excluded from its clinical trials people with histories of depression or psychological disorders. He claims that Chantix is derived from cytosine, and that Pfizer knew or should have known that cytosine was linked as early as 1972 to suicides and attempted suicides.
Kline demands punitive damages. He is represented by Scott Levensten |
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Federal court orders hearing on mental retardation claim
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/10 07:24
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pThe US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday ordered a federal court to hold an evidentiary hearing to consider whether a man sentenced to death for murder might be mentally retarded. After Michael Wayne Hall was convicted of the 1998 killing of a 19-year-old woman, he claimed at state habeas proceedings that he was mentally retarded. While Hall's state habeas claim was pending in Texas, the Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, holding that the execution of mentally retarded individuals is unconstitutional and outlining heightened standards for determining a defendant's developmental status. The Fifth Circuit held Wednesday that Hall is entitled to an evidentiary hearing to prove his contentions because: /pblockquote[T]he facts before us are a core manifestation of a case where the state fails to provide a full and fair hearing and where such a hearing would bring out facts which, if proven true, support habeas relief...[T]he state court's erroneous factfinding and its refusal to accept more than paper submissions despite the development of a new constitutional standard and a lack of guidance from the state on that standard deprived Hall of a full and fair hearing at the state level...Given the material errors in credibility determinations and factfinding at the state level, we are persuaded that the determination of Hall's claim, caught in the immediate uncertainty following Atkins, was so freighted with a risk of error in factfinding that the failure of the district court below to conduct a meaningful hearing was an abuse of discretion in these unusual and unique circumstances.
Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Patrick Higginbotham asserted that the district court should enter an order that unless the state provides Hall with a constitutionally adequate evidentiary hearing within 120 days, Hall will no longer be eligible to receive a death sentence/blockquotepIn August 2007, the European Union urged Texas officials to halt all executions in the state and to consider introducing a moratorium on death sentences. EU officials specifically praised the ruling in Atkins and asked the state to expand it to those with severe mental illness. Texas has since maintained its death-penalty policy, and other states have followed suit. In 29 states, the defendant carries the burden of proving mental retardation in death-penalty cases to receive a lesser sentence./p |
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Ruling Limits Courts' Role In Environmental Review
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/07 07:17
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The 9th Circuit rebuffed environmentalists who challenged a logging project in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest, saying it is not the court's job to act as a panel of scientists and order the government to explain every possible scientific uncertainty.
The full appellate court overturned an injunction granted to the Lands Council and the Wild West Institute, clearing the way for selective logging of 3,829 acres of land as part of the Mission Brush Project.
Lands Council argued that the U.S. Forest Service violated federal environmental law by failing to explain its scientific analysis of the project's effect on wildlife, especially the flammulated owl, and by not maintaining at least 10 percent old growth throughout the forest.
The court said it took the case en banc to clarify some of our environmental jurisprudence with respect to our review of the actions of the United States Forest Service.
Judge Smith said Lands Council's arguments illustrate how, in recent years, our environmental jurisprudence has, at times, shifted away from the appropriate standard of review.
It is not the role of federal courts to tell the Forest Service how to validate its hypotheses on wildlife viability, choose which scientific studies should be used for determining compliance with federal law, and order the agency to explain each scientific uncertainty, Smith said.
The court, concluding that the government has complied with federal law, reversed the halt on selective logging.
The thinning project had been proposed, in part to restore the forests to their historic composition, and to decrease the risks of fires, insects and disease.
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DOJ seeks names of Swiss bank clients
Headline Legal News |
2008/07/01 07:23
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pThe US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed papers in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Monday asking the court to force a Swiss bank to hand over the names of American clients suspected of hiding funds from tax collectors. The DOJ is requesting permission for the Internal Revenue Service to issue John Doe summons against UBS to obtain information about unidentified American bank patrons accused of tax fraud. A former UBS banker pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the IRS last month, after he admitted that UBS employees assisted US citizens in hiding approximately $20 billion in taxable assets. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said:
Today's action sends a strong, unequivocal signal to anyone thinking of short-changing the nation and their fellow citizens by evading the tax laws./ppOffshore accounts harbor billions of dollars, and people should take notice that the secrecy surrounding these deals is rapidly fading. The information we would gather from this action would help us detect wealthy individuals who don't pay their taxes as well as provide details about how advisors facilitate this abuse./ppOwners of Swiss bank accounts have traditionally enjoyed great privacy, but Swiss banks have recently released information on certain clients. In 2006, the Swiss Justice Ministry granted US investigators access to information about bank accounts of terrorism suspects. Prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia requested the information in a four-year old investigation into money laundering to support terrorist activities. The same year, the Swiss Supreme Court denied a Russian request for the transfer of bank documents to Russia which were relevant to an ongoing investigation into Russian oil giant Yukos./p |
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