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High court won't stop Texas voting map
Legal Information |
2012/09/20 16:07
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The Supreme Court is allowing Texas to use congressional districts that were drawn by a lower federal court for the November election.
The court declined without comment Wednesday a request from a Latino rights group to block use of those districts. The groups said the districts discriminate against minorities.
The court-drawn map is intended for use only in this year's election.
The League of United Latin American Citizens said the map has the same flaws identified by federal judges in Washington who last month rejected political boundaries drawn by Texas lawmakers as discriminatory.
The interim congressional map was used in Texas' primaries in May and was devised to let the state hold elections while courts considered challenges to redistricting plans adopted by the Legislature following the 2010 census. |
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Pa. high court revisits juvenile life sentences
Legal Information |
2012/09/14 11:57
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Pennsylvania's highest court is weighing how to resentence prisoners who were given automatic life sentences as juveniles.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlaws mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles.
There are nearly 500 juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania, half from Philadelphia.
The state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday morning in a pair of representative cases.
The defendants are Ian Cunningham, serving life for a second-degree murder conviction in Philadelphia, and Qu'Eed Batts, convicted of first-degree murder in Northampton County.
Cunningham's case concerns lifers who have exhausted direct appeals but want to invoke the Supreme Court decision in new filings.
In the Batts case, lawyers will debate what term is appropriate for those sentenced to life without parole. |
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Case dropped against NY lawyer in alleged attack
Legal World News |
2012/09/12 11:57
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Charges have been dropped against a prominent New York lawyer who was accused of attacking a woman in a Connecticut restaurant.
The Advocate of Stamford reports that Albert J. Pirro's lawyer said the state indicated it would not prosecute. Charges were dropped in Stamford Superior Court on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the state's attorney's office did not immediately return a call Wednesday.
Police say Pirro grabbed and shook a woman in a Greenwich restaurant last June. He was charged with unlawful restraint and disorderly conduct.
Pirro, a Republican fundraiser, is the estranged husband of Jeanine Pirro, a former Westchester District Attorney who is now a legal analyst with Fox News.
Albert Pirro spent 17 months in prison after being convicted of fraud, tax evasion and other charges in 2000. |
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Lawyer: NM gov aide recorded on state email use
Law Firm Press Release |
2012/09/07 15:44
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An Albuquerque attorney said Tuesday he has a recording of the governor's top aide telling one of his clients that he never uses state email to conduct business because I don't want to go to court (or) jail.
But the aide said the small recorded clip released to reporters is out of context, and he vowed to file an ethics complaint because the full recording outs a young female relative of the aide as a witness in a sexual assault case.
Defense attorney Sam Bregman represents fired Department of Corrections worker Larry Flynn in a wrongful termination case in which the administration's use of private email accounts was first revealed. He released the recording to reporters and said it is of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's chief of staff, Keith Gardner.
Speaking at a news conference held in his office, Bregman, a Democrat and vocal critic of Martinez, said the secret recording is of a conversation between Gardner and a friend, Brian Powell of Roswell. Powell told Bregman he made the recording when he and Gardner were having a conversation about family issues. Powell, who works for the Roswell Fire Department, did not tell Gardner he was recording him, and it's unclear why he was recording him. |
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