supreme court - Global pulse News - Page 6
  • This Colorado Bill Would Abolish the Right to Armed Self-Defense in Many ‘Sensitive Places’

    This Colorado Bill Would Abolish the Right to Armed Self-Defense in Many ‘Sensitive Places’

    After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms in 2022, several states simultaneously made it easier to obtain carry permits and much harder to use them. Once they could no longer require a “special need” before allowing residents to carry guns in public for self-defense, politicians in those states worried that residents would start exercising that right. Deeming that outcome intolerable, legislators banned guns from long lists of “sensitive” locations, making it highly impractical for people to legally carry guns outside their homes even after obtaining the requisite license.

    In contrast with “may issue” states like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, California, and Hawaii, where licensing officials had wide discretion to deny carry permits prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Colorado already was a “shall issue” state, meaning residents could obtain permits as long as they met specific, objective criteria. Colorado legislators nevertheless are taking a page from New York et al. by proposing broad restrictions on where permit holders may carry guns.

    Senate Bill 24-131, introduced last month, would ban guns from “sensitive places” such as parks, playgrounds, recreation facilities, zoos, museums, libraries, “public gathering[s],” medical facilities, banks, stadiums, amusement parks, bars, pot shops, college campuses, and houses of worship (without “express permission”). Violating these restrictions would be a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum $250 fine, rising to $1,000 for subsequent offenses. While the bill is still in the early stages of consideration, Colorado Newsline notes that “Democrats hold a majority in both chambers” of the state legislature and “can easily pass their legislative priorities.”

    State Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis (D–Longmont), who introduced the bill in her chamber along with Sen. Chris Kolker (D–Centennial), says it is “just common sense,” because “we really need to have a designation of where it’s OK to have a firearm and where it’s not.” Kolker likewise invokes “common sense,” saying, “I am sponsoring this bill because my constituents are tired of thoughts and prayers in response to gun violence.”

    Since Democrats frequently criticize Republicans who oppose stricter gun control for offering nothing but “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings, the implication is that S.B. 24-131 would help prevent such crimes. But that expectation is highly implausible, since mass murderers are unlikely to be deterred by laws that notionally create gun-free zones. School shootings, for example, happen in settings where firearms already are prohibited under state and federal law.

    “Five out of six mass shooters choose ‘gun-free zones,’ and the bill creates many more of them,” David B. Kopel, a gun policy expert at Colorado’s Independence Institute, notes in written testimony against S.B. 24-131. That estimate is based on a 2018 Washington Post analysis of mass public shootings from 2009 through 2016, which found that 86 percent happened in gun-free zones. “The bill creates many safe zones where criminals can attack without risk of armed citizens being able to fight back,” Kopel says.

    What about “gun violence” more generally? “Even the leading anti-gun expert witness nationally states that the 2003 Concealed Carry Act [which created the state’s current licensing system] reduced violent crime in Colorado by 1.2%,” Kopel says. He is referring to a 2017 study in which Stanford law professor John J. Donohue and two co-authors reported that the “effect” of Colorado’s right-to-carry law on the “violent crime rate” 10 years after it was enacted was “−1.2%.”

    S.B. 24-131 specifically targets permit holders, since anyone who carries a concealed handgun in public is already breaking the law unless he is licensed to do so. Kopel notes that Coloradans with carry permits “are far more law-abiding than the general population.” He says they are “39 times less likely to be arrested than someone without a carry permit.” That calculation is based on the number of permits revoked because of arrests in 2020. Kopel adds that “data from other states are similar,” indicating that “persons with a license to carry are very highly law-abiding compared to persons without permits.”

    In contrast with the dubious public safety benefits of S.B. 24-131, its impact on the right to armed self-defense in public affirmed by Bruen would be substantial. Notably, the bill applies to “adjacent parking areas” as well as the “sensitive” locations themselves. It makes an exception for “firearms stored in locked containers in vehicles.” But on its face, that seems to mean a carry permit holder who visits, say, a bar, a museum, or a government office would already be violating the law when he pulls into the parking lot unless he had previously locked up his gun, which he would have to do in a location that is not deemed “sensitive.”

    Kopel describes the bill as “ridiculously overbroad.” For example, he says, “it bans licensed carry from the entire parking lot of a shopping mall” if the mall contains a single “tavern” or “one small branch bank.” He also notes that “a woman who goes jogging or walking in parks in early mornings would be prevented from defending herself.” More generally, he says, the bill “guarantees that violent attackers will be safe from the danger of being shot by armed citizens, as long as the attackers choose to attack in the locations specified in the bill.”

    A similar California law, currently on hold thanks to a preliminary injunction that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed to take effect in January, likewise classifies banks as a “sensitive” location. The plaintiffs in that case, Carralero v. Bonta, noted that the state “provided no evidence of a single bank robbery or other crime at a bank committed by a CCW permit holder.” According to the state’s reply brief, that is irrelevant, because “the Supreme Court has never suggested that sensitive places restrictions must be limited to those locations where there have been crimes committed by a concealed carry license holder.”

    Given that “there is no instance of a licensed handgun carrier committing a crime at a bank” in “the entire history of the United States,” Kopel wonders, “what is the logic” of “imposing a prohibition, over-riding the decisions of many banks? What is the logic of prohibiting self-defense in every inch of a shopping mall parking lot just because the mall includes one small branch bank?”

    Under Bruen, in any case, courts cannot uphold a gun control law by weighing its purported public safety benefits against its restrictions on Second Amendment rights. The government has the burden of showing that a law is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

    Courts applying that test to location-specific gun bans have reached varying conclusions. But federal judges in California, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York have deemed at least some of those restrictions unconstitutional under Bruen. And even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which in December upheld several of New York’s “sensitive location” restrictions, rejected the state’s default rule against guns in all businesses open to the public unless the owner posts “clear and conspicuous signage” allowing them or “has otherwise given express consent.”

    That provision “functionally creates a universal default presumption against carrying firearms in public places, seriously burdening lawful gun owners’ Second Amendment rights,” the unanimous 2nd Circuit panel said. “That burden is entirely out of step with that imposed by the proffered analogues, which appear to have created a presumption against carriage only on private property not open to the public.”

    The Colorado bill, unlike California’s law, does not include a sweeping rule like that. But the cumulative burden of its restrictions would pose a serious obstacle for permit holders who want to carry guns for self-defense in many quotidian contexts.

    Given Democratic control of the state Legislature, Colorado Newsline says, “the most effective opposition to any gun law reforms will likely come from groups that challenge the legislation in court” under Bruen. Jaquez Lewis is unfazed by that prospect.

    The senator notes that resolution of Carralero v. Bonta “could take another one or two years.” Although S.B. 24-131 claims its restrictions are “consistent with the second amendment,” its supporters think waiting to see whether the 9th Circuit agrees would be reckless. “We didn’t want to wait two years,” Jaquez Lewis says, “because we know how many incidents of gun violence occur in Colorado in one year—way too many.” Given the mismatch between that problem and her proposed solution, the logic is hard to follow.

    The post This Colorado Bill Would Abolish the Right to Armed Self-Defense in Many ‘Sensitive Places’ appeared first on Reason.com.

    Source link

  • The next Clarence Thomas? Abortion pill case spotlights rightwing judge and his wife’s shadowy connections

    The next Clarence Thomas? Abortion pill case spotlights rightwing judge and his wife’s shadowy connections

    When the former president Donald Trump appointed the Texas attorney James Ho to the fifth circuit court of appeals in 2017, lawyers at the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn – where Ho worked before his appointment – had a problem: how to replace the politically connected Ho. Turns out, they didn’t even need to change the home address for his replacement. Ho’s wife, Allyson, moved into her husband’s position and his old office.

    Meet the Hos.

    Related: What is the abortion case in front of the US supreme court right now?

    Few people outside of legal circles have heard of the Hos, yet the couple is tied to the case before the US supreme court that will determine women’s access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions. The court hears arguments in the case on Tuesday.

    Ho served on the three-judge panel last summer that ruled to restrict access to mifepristone. The legal group behind the mifepristone case, Alliance Defending Freedom, made at least six payments from 2018 through 2022 to his wife, Allyson, a powerhouse federal appellate lawyer who has argued in front of the supreme court and has deep connections to the conservative legal movement that has led the attack on the right to abortion in the US.

    The payments don’t violate the court’s code of conduct, according to Stephen Gillers, a New York University emeritus professor of law and author of Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics. But some court watchers argue that Ho’s failure to recuse himself from the case illustrates why public trust in the judiciary is eroding. One recent survey found that 63% of judges noted a dip in the public’s positive perception of them.

    “When Americans see a case like this – so clearly concocted and motivated by special interests, and with evident connections between those interests and the judges on the case, it does tremendous damage to the reputation of the courts, and to the public trust in their ability to give all litigants an even shake,” said Alex Aronson, the executive director of the nonpartisan group Court Accountability and a former chief counsel to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

    In an email to the Guardian, James Ho wrote that he “consulted our court’s ethics advisor prior to sitting in that case, and was advised that there was no basis for recusal. In any event, my wife’s practice is to donate honoraria to charity.”

    The Hos are just one of the increasing number of power couples in the conservative movement in which the wife of a prominent official works in the background, laying the groundwork for Republican policies that their spouses will rule upon or legislate. In the mifepristone case, the wife of the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, Erin, is the attorney of record for Alliance Defending Freedom and argued the case before Ho. The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas rankled the legal world when he refused to recuse himself from a case involving questions about the January 6 insurrection and the “Stop The Steal” campaign to which his wife, Ginni Thomas, was closely tied.

    For Aronson, these are examples of “serious concerns about what is becoming an apparent pattern of coordinated activity by some of these couples in this extremist movement, including the Thomases, Hawleys and Hos”.

    Ho’s rulings have included zealous language, referencing what he called in one decision “the moral tragedy of abortion”. He has suggested that protection orders in domestic violence cases “are too often misused as a tactical device in divorce proceedings – and issued without any actual threat of danger”. Orin Kerr, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor, tweeted that one of Ho’s opinions “reads like a politician’s op-ed, not a legal opinion; judges should stick to law”.

    Related: What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

    In the mifepristone case, in which Ho supported rolling back decisions made by the Food and Drug Administration to loosen restrictions on the drug, he wrote: “Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them. Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients – and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

    He has chafed legal traditionalists from the moment of his swearing-in, when he opted for the ceremony to be held in the private library of Harlan Crow – the conservative mega-donor who, ProPublica revealed, has lavished Clarence Thomas with trips on his yacht and paid the $6,000-per-month private school tuition for the justice’s great-nephew. Ho worked as a clerk for Thomas in 2005.

    Ho vowed to boycott hiring Yale Law School graduates as clerks after students interrupted conservative speakers on campus, noting “cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency” at the Ivy League school.

    His caustic writings have drawn the spotlight while his wife, Allyson, has been working more inconspicuously, helping lay the legal foundation for conservative policies in her own work.

    She appears frequently as a speaker for the Federalist Society, the group that has led the conservative effort to reshape the judiciary. She has also worked pro bono for the Christian right organization First Liberty Institute, a group that describes its mission “to defend and restore religious liberty in our schools, for our churches and houses of worship, inside the military, and throughout the public arena”.

    It’s unclear what Alliance Defending Freedom paid Allyson Ho to do, yet ending abortion is central among the organization’s goals. The group helped write the Mississippi law that led to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended the 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion.

    Her husband’s financial disclosures list descriptions of “Academy” or “Freedom Summit”, next to some of the payments. The ADF hosts various legal trainings as part of its ADF Legal Academy that “seamlessly combines outstanding legal training with an unwavering commitment to Christian principles” and a Young Lawyers Academy.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom did not respond to the Guardian’s queries and a request to speak with Allyson Ho sent to Gibson Dunn has not been answered.

    The Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans, appointed Allyson to the state’s committee responsible for recommending and vetting its recommendations to fill judicial vacancies. Neither Cruz nor Cornyn’s offices responded to the Guardian’s request for the names or dates of service for the judicial vetting committee nor did they respond to questions about what role, if any, Allyson had in her husband’s nomination to the bench.

    Related: ‘They hate God’: US anti-abortion activists aim to fight back on 51st Roe anniversary

    In 2023, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, hired Allyson and Gibson Dunn, at a rate of $1,313 per hour – with a $7m cap – to represent the state in a decade-long legal battle in which a federal judge determined Texas had failed to protect foster children. The state had previously been represented by attorneys on its own payroll. The move to hire Allyson and her firm signaled that Texas could be looking to fight back against court orders mandating Texas comply with federal monitors appointed to ensure the safety of vulnerable children in its care by appealing district court rulings to the fifth circuit court of appeals – the court on which James Ho serves.

    The mifepristone case might just be the beginning of the Hos’ influence, Gillers, the NYU professor, said.

    “If Trump wins the election, you’ll see Ho on the short list of nominees to the supreme court,” he said. “He is obviously behaving in a way that makes him a very prominent candidate in a Republican administration.”

    That appointment could once again leave an empty office – one that some might want Allyson to fill.



    Source link

  • Pipeline survey law, carbon as a public commodity argued at state Supreme Court

    Pipeline survey law, carbon as a public commodity argued at state Supreme Court

    Summit Carbons Solutions would move something of value from one place to another for a fee, and as such is entitled to survey private land and use eminent domain for its proposed pipeline.

    Either that, or Summit would merely move its own product to be buried underground, thereby making it ineligible to conduct surveys and use eminent domain.

    Questions that will define where the carbon dioxide pipeline company lands, legally speaking, between those two polarities are now in the hands of the South Dakota Supreme Court.

    The justices heard oral arguments on the controversial pipeline project Tuesday on the Aberdeen campus of Northern State University in Brown County, one of the counties through which the pipeline would pass.

    The $8 billion Summit pipeline would collect the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted from 57 ethanol plants in multiple states and transport it to North Dakota for underground storage. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes to climate change, and federal tax credits are available to encourage its sequestration.

    Not all landowners along the route are interested in taking Summit’s money in exchange for access to their property, though. They’ve argued in public forums, at the state Capitol and in courtrooms that Summit ought not be allowed to use eminent domain – the legal mechanism by which it would be allowed to use private property regardless of the owner’s feelings about it – to build its pipeline.

    Tuesday’s Supreme Court challenge from landowners folded several landowner lawsuits into one to decide three questions:

    • Is the state’s law allowing pre-project access for surveys constitutional?

    • Is carbon gas a commodity?

    • Does Summit qualify as a “common carrier” of a commodity?

    If the high court rules for landowners on the last two questions, Summit would be unable to use eminent domain to force the construction of its pipeline.

    If the court says “no” on the first, state law might need to be adjusted, though it’s unclear how. The law in question was already amended this legislative session through House Bill 1185, which was signed this month by Gov. Kristi Noem.

    It requires $500 and advance notice to landowners before a pipeline company is allowed to survey property, and affords the right to challenge survey access in court. That rewritten version of the law is set to take effect on July 1.

    Landowners: Carbon is waste, not a commodity

    Brian Jorde, the lawyer for the landowners, told the justices that South Dakota’s survey law is baldly unconstitutional in the face of a 2021 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court called Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.

    Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in that case that letting labor unions onto farmland in the interest of organizing constituted a “taking” of private property, inasmuch as it forced the farmland’s owner to let someone do something with their property it otherwise would not.

    Under the U.S. Constitution, property can’t be taken without “just compensation.”

    Brian Jorde, a lawyer for South Dakota landowners, argues before the South Dakota Supreme Court.

    Brian Jorde, a lawyer for South Dakota landowners, argues before the South Dakota Supreme Court.

    In that case, union organizers showed up a few times a week for specified periods of time, and the owners had to let them, per California law.

    In light of that set of facts, Jorde argued, the survey law adjusted through the passage of HB 1185 is an even broader swipe at property rights.

    Under the survey law’s current language – the language being challenged by the landowner lawsuit – a company that applies for a siting permit and issues a 30-day notice is allowed to send representatives to survey land, drill and collect soil samples and return to the property as often as they’d like.

    Justice Mark Salter challenged Jorde on that issue, noting that Cedar Point involved a state law and a specific set of facts wholly unrelated to eminent domain.

    On the eminent domain question, Jorde told the justices that only a “common carrier” of commodities is allowed to use the survey law. His clients do not believe Summit fits the bill.

    According to its agreements, Jorde said, the carbon becomes Summit’s property the moment it enters the pipeline, and therefore no longer comports with laws used for things like the construction of rail lines that transport corn or soybeans.

    Justice Janine Kern challenged that argument.

    “They’re saying, ‘We’re advertising to potential customers. We’re holding this open season, where we’re reserving future pipeline capacity, and we’re holding ourselves out to the general public,” Kern said. “Isn’t that sufficient?”

    Jorde disagreed. The carbon itself isn’t a commodity, he said, at least not in the way Summit plans to use it. He said no court in the nation has pondered whether pumping a “commodity” underground, rather than using it, changes its status as a commodity.

    Summit, he argues, is a “private, for-profit carrier,” that aims to transport something it owns to somewhere it will do nothing for the public.

    As such, he said, it ought not be protected by the survey access law in the first place.

    “The test isn’t ‘Can carbon dioxide somewhere on planet earth be used for pop?’” he said, referring to the potential use of carbon for fizzy beverages. “It’s ‘What are you transporting it for? You are claiming you’re a common carrier, you tell us how the CO2 that you’re moving is a commodity.’”

    Summit: Carbon market proves commodity status

    Summit lawyer Bret Dublinske told the justices there is a market for CO2, underground or otherwise.

    “This carbon has a value, whether it’s tradable as credits, or whether it’s the federal government’s willingness to pay for that to happen through tax credits,” Dublinske said. He conceded that no court has addressed the question of whether underground storage changes a commodity to something else for purposes of eminent domain.

    But the CO2 doesn’t disappear from the market because it’s buried underground, he said.

    “This is, in fact, moving in commerce,” Dublinske said.

    When it comes to Summit’s ownership of the CO2, Dublinske called that argument a “red herring,” meaning a distraction.

    “If I am extracting oil, or if I am growing wheat, and I’m providing the railcar the pipeline to move that, there is nobody other than me in that transaction,” he said. “That is not true here. (Summit) doesn’t create any carbon dioxide, it doesn’t have any carbon dioxide of its own. There is an agreement to ship the carbon dioxide created by the ethanol plants for the benefit of the ethanol plants.”

    Bret Dublinske, a lawyer for Summit Carbon Solutions, argues before the South Dakota Supreme Court.Bret Dublinske, a lawyer for Summit Carbon Solutions, argues before the South Dakota Supreme Court.

    Bret Dublinske, a lawyer for Summit Carbon Solutions, argues before the South Dakota Supreme Court.

    He also said ethanol plants pay a fee to connect to the pipeline – something Jorde would later call “new information” that wasn’t part of the court record. But Dublinske said the existence of such a fee clearly points to its project as a transporter of a commodity, regardless of which company has title to the CO2.

    As for the pipeline law dubbed unconstitutional by the landowners, Dublinske said that a constitutional challenge is a high bar. That pipeline surveys would be characterized as an invasive taking of land, he argued, is predicated on the notion that surveys are unconnected to the longer-term process of staking an eminent domain claim. Eminent domain would ultimately result in a landowner receiving their legally required compensation for the “taking” of their property.

    Without surveys, he said, no such claim can be staked.

    “This is for an underground pipeline,” Dublinske said. “It isn’t useful, necessarily, for its intended purpose, unless you can, in some cases, figure out what’s going on below the soil.”

    Justice Kern asked Dublinske if Summit is amenable to offering a copy of its agreements with ethanol companies to the high court for review. It did not object to a private review at the trial court level, he said, and would offer it to the justices, as well.

    Summit has objected to adding the agreements to public court files, or to allowing the landowners to review them. Dublinske said there are commercial secrets embedded in them.

    The justices gave Summit 10 days to offer those agreements under seal. Jorde requested that the agreements be reviewable by his team, as well.

    “Otherwise, there could be an opinion referencing evidence that was never part of the record,” Jorde said.

    Chief Justice Steven Jensen said the justices would consider the matter and decide later.

    “If we think we need further supplemental briefing or argument, we’ll let the parties know,” Jensen said.

    This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Summit carbon capture pipeline case argued at SD Supreme Court

    Source link

  • Parliament speaker halts approval of cabinet nominees

    Parliament speaker halts approval of cabinet nominees

    The speaker of Ghana’s parliament has blocked the approval of new ministers amid a row over the president’s delay in signing an anti-LGBTQ+ bill passed last month.

    The presidency has asked parliament not to send the bill for his assent until legal challenges against it are dealt with.

    The speaker has condemned the presidency’s move as “contemptuous”.

    The bill criminalises gay relationships and anyone who supports them.

    President Nana Akufo-Addo is under intense pressure from those Ghanaians who want him to sign it into law, and also from Western donors and human rights groups who are urging him not to approve it.

    A lawyer has challenged the bill at the Supreme Court, saying there was not a quorum – the required minimum number of MPs – in parliament when it was passed.

    In a letter to parliament on Monday, presidential secretary Nana Asante Bediatuo said that it was “improper” for the president to receive the bill until the court makes a decision on the matter.

    Then on Wednesday, Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin halted the approval of new ministers and their deputies, apparently to increase pressure on the president.

    “The president’s refusal to accept the transmission of the bill is, by all accounts, not supported by the constitutional and statutory provisions that guide our legislative process,” Mr Bagbin told MPs.

    He said parliament could not approve new ministers, saying that the “ongoing scenario poses a grave threat to our legislative authority”.

    President Akufo-Addo last month nominated 12 ministers and deputy ministers in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle that saw the finance minister sacked.

    Minority leader in parliament Cassiel Ato Forson supported Mr Bagbin’s move, saying the speaker’s concern was legitimate.

    However, parliamentary majority leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin said the speaker’s decision was “disappointing” and “strange”, and there should have been wider consultation first.

    The main opposition presidential candidate in December polls, John Mahama, has described the letter from the presidency as unconstitutional. He said the presidential secretary had no authority to write such a letter to parliament.

    The proposed tough new legislation – The Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values bill – was backed by both of Ghana’s main political parties.

    It imposes a jail term of up to three years for anyone identifying as LGBTQ+ and five years for promoting their activities.

    It has been backed by influential Christian and Muslim leaders.

    President Akufo-Addo had previously said that he would sign it if the majority of Ghanaians wanted him to do so.

    But he is now seeking to assure the international community that Ghana is committed to upholding human rights.

    Ghana’s finance ministry said the country could lose a total of $3.8bn (£3bn) in World Bank funding over the next five to six years because of the bill.

    The West African country is suffering a major economic crisis and last year had a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

    It is unlikely that the Supreme Court will rule on the case before presidential and parliamentary elections due in December.

    You may also be interested in:

    Source link

  • Georgia executes Willie Pye in its first execution since before the pandemic

    Georgia executes Willie Pye in its first execution since before the pandemic

    Georgia late Wednesday executed a man for the first time since January 2020, joining other states that have revived the practice as the death penalty in the U.S. entered a new frontier of punishment this year.

    Willie James Pye, 59, was convicted in the 1993 killing of an ex-girlfriend. He was executed at 11:03 p.m. at a state prison in Butts County, south of Atlanta, the state Department of Corrections said.

    “Pye did accept a final prayer and did not record a final statement,” the department said.

    His execution at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson occurred hours after its scheduled time of 7 p.m., after an appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to postpone it.

    His request for clemency from the State Board of Pardons and Paroles was rejected Tuesday. The board has “the sole constitutional authority to grant clemency in a death penalty case” in Georgia, it said.

    death row inmate convicted mugshot mug (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)
    death row inmate convicted mugshot mug (Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)

    Anti-death penalty groups had tried to halt the execution of Pye, who is Black, arguing that he was represented by a court-appointed attorney accused of using a racial slur in another Black man’s case and that his records show he has signs of an intellectual disability, potentially caused by fetal alcohol syndrome.

    “Had defense counsel not abdicated his role, the jurors would have learned that Mr. Pye is intellectually disabled and has an IQ of 68,” his lawyers argued in a request for clemency.

    state execution chamber location (Erik S. Lesser / AFP/Getty Images file)state execution chamber location (Erik S. Lesser / AFP/Getty Images file)

    state execution chamber location (Erik S. Lesser / AFP/Getty Images file)

    Pye had lost a previous appeal on the grounds that Georgia, at the time a death warrant was signed for him, had not fulfilled certain requirements to restart executions created as a result of the Covid pandemic. Those requirements included the return of normal visitations at state prisons.

    Pye’s lawyers argued that after the state decided he would be executed, they were having issues getting in contact with him: “This is not normal or consistent with access to and availability to counsel that was previously possible, and it is unacceptable.”

    Pye’s last meal request was two chicken sandwiches, two cheeseburgers, french fries, two bags of plain potato chips and two lemon-lime sodas, the Georgia Department of Corrections said.

    The last execution in Georgia was in January 2020. There were 36 men and one woman under death sentence in Georgia, including Pye.

    Other states have resumed executions in recent years, but efforts to use a primary method of lethal injection have grown increasingly harder as drugmakers have pulled back on access to the ingredients for executions.

    Idaho attempted its first execution in 12 years last month but had to abandon the procedure after prison staff members could not establish an IV line on the inmate’s legs or arms. His lawyers called it a “badly botched execution attempt.” No new date was immediately set.

    In January, Alabama, which has had difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs, carried out the first execution in the country using nitrogen gas. Other states, including Louisiana, are eyeing the use of the controversial method with their own protocols.

    But Georgia has said it has been able to procure the sedative pentobarbital to carry out death sentences by lethal injection.

    Pye was convicted in Spalding County in the death of ex-girlfriend Alicia Yarbrough. Prosecutors said Pye, another man and a teenager went to her home, stole jewelry and abducted her as she was watching her baby. They took her to a motel and raped her, and Pye later shot her multiple times, according to court filings.

    The teenager agreed to a plea deal, and the other defendant received five consecutive life prison sentences.

    During the sentencing phase of Pye’s trial, in which he was given the death penalty, prosecutors suggested in closing arguments that he might kill a prison guard to escape. Lawyers attempted to appeal the punishment, citing the speculative remarks, but the state Supreme Court upheld the sentence in 1998.

    This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

    Source link

  • Letitia James counters Trump claim he can’t raise $464 million bond as deadline looms

    Letitia James counters Trump claim he can’t raise $464 million bond as deadline looms

    Lawyers with New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office cast doubt on former President Donald Trump’s claim that he cannot find a company to lend him the $464 million bond he needs to appeal the judgment in his financial fraud trial. In Georgia, meanwhile, Trump and some of his co-defendants in the election interference and racketeering case are given the green light to appeal Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue her prosecution of them. The lawyers say they will now approach the Georgia Court of Appeals in an attempt to have Willis removed and the charges dismissed. Here are the latest legal developments facing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for 2024.

    New York financial fraud

    James’s office: Trump’s bond claims don’t add up

    Key players: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Judge Arthur Engoron

    • Lawyers on James’s team submitted a filing Wednesday to a New York appeals court in response to Trump’s request to significantly reduce or stay the $464 million bond required to be paid on Monday to appeal the judgment in his New York financial fraud trial, CNN reported.

    • Trump’s lawyers stated that their loan requests had been turned down by 30 insurance companies, but did not specify what collateral they had offered in return.

    • In the filing, James’s team wrote that Trump’s lawyers “supply no documentary evidence that demonstrates precisely what real property they offered to sureties, on what terms that property was offered, or precisely why the sureties were unwilling to accept the assets.”

    • On Monday, Trump’s lawyers told the appeals court that the former president faced “insurmountable difficulties” in raising the money for the bond, and Trump himself complained on social media that, thanks to Engoron’s ruling, he “would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices,” in order to do so.

    • James’s lawyers made sure to link Trump’s failure to secure a loan with the central issue of the fraud trial: that Trump had been found to have inflated the value of his assets.

    • “As far as the Court can infer, sureties may have refused to accept defendants’ specific holdings as collateral because using Mr. Trump’s real estate will generally need ‘a property appraisal’ … and his holdings are not nearly as valuable as defendants claim,” the filing stated.

    • James, who has already given Trump a 30-day grace period to come up with the bond amount, has stated that if Trump is unable to pay it, she would go after his real estate holdings and could freeze his bank accounts.

    Why it matters: Unless the appeals court intervenes on his behalf, or Trump is given a significant loan from a wealthy friend, Monday’s deadline for payment could mark a painful turning point for the former president.

    Georgia election interference

    Judge McAfee grants defense attorneys’ request to appeal decision on Willis

    Key Players: Judge Scott McAfee, Georgia Court of Appeals, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, former lead prosecutor Nathan Wade, Trump lawyer Steve Sadow

    • On Wednesday, McAfee granted a request by lawyers for Trump and some of his co-defendants that allows them to appeal his decision to let Willis remain on the sprawling election interference case, the Associated Press reported.

    • The attorneys for the defendants had sought to have Willis disqualified, alleging that her romantic relationship with Wade represented a conflict of interest because, they claimed, she benefited financially from hiring him.

    • In his ruling, McAfee rebuked Willis’s “tremendous” lapse in judgment, but allowed her to stay on the case on the condition that Wade step down.

    • Wade promptly tendered his resignation, but that was not enough to satisfy Sadow and the other defense lawyers, who will appeal McAfee’s decision to the Georgia Court of Appeals. “The defense is optimistic that appellate review will lead to the case being dismissed and the DA being disqualified,” Sadow said in an email to the Associated Press.

    • The appeals court will ultimately decide whether to accept the case.

    • Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted by Willis on multiple felony counts stemming from their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

    Why it matters: The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to AP that the defense attorney’s appeal of McAfee’s ruling would not delay the trial from moving forward. But if the Georgia Court of Appeals court does hear the appeal, it could decide to remove Willis from the case, or dismiss the charges outright.

    Recommended reading

    ___________________

    Tuesday, March 19

    ___________________

    Former President Donald Trump says he may be forced to sell off his “Great Assets” at “Fire Sale prices” in order to raise the $464 million bond required as he appeals the judgment in his New York financial fraud trial. In a motion filed Monday, Trump’s lawyers seek to postpone payment of the bond as they appeal Judge Arthur Engoron’s judgment in the case. In the Jan. 6 election interference case, Trump’s lawyers file a brief asking the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for acts committed while in office. Here are the latest legal developments involving the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for 2024.

    New York financial fraud

    With bond deadline approaching, Trump looks for alternatives

    Key players: Judge Arthur Engoron, New York Attorney General Letitia James

    • On Tuesday, Trump vented on social media about the March 25 deadline to post a $464 million bond while he appeals Engoron’s judgment in his civil financial fraud trial, The Hill reported.

    • “Judge Engoron actually wants me to put up Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for the Right to Appeal his ridiculous decision. In other words, he is trying to take my Appellate Rights away from me,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social. “Nobody has ever heard of anything like this before.”

    • “I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense?” Trump added.

    • New York law requires a defendant to pay 110% of a civil judgment into an escrow account while that person appeals the decision in a case.

    • Engoron ruled that Trump, his adult sons and his family business were guilty of carrying out years of financial fraud when they inflated the value of assets to obtain favorable bank and insurance rates.

    • Thanks to a loan from the underwriter Chubb, Trump has already posted a separate bond for nearly $92 million while he appeals the jury’s verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit. But Chubb and 29 other lenders refused to give Trump a loan to pay the larger bond amount.

    • Trump now has limited options to raise the $464 million, the New York Times reported.

    • He can hope his court appeals will lead to a stay, quickly sell off real estate assets, obtain a gift from a wealthy supporter, ask James to extend the 30-day grace period she has already given him or file for bankruptcy.

    • If none of those options are available to Trump and he fails to pay the full bond on Monday, James could begin to seize Trump’s assets and freeze his bank accounts.

    Why it matters: Even as a politician, Trump’s brand has been synonymous with wealth. His New York real estate holdings, some of which were at the center of the financial fraud trial, are reportedly some of his most prized possessions.

    Jan. 6 election interference

    Trump asks Supreme Court to rule that presidents have ‘absolute immunity’ from prosecution

    Key players: Judge Tanya Chutkan, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. Supreme Court, Trump lawyer John Sauer, special counsel Jack Smith

    • On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that a president enjoys “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts,” Reuters reported.

    • “The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” Sauer wrote in the filing.

    • Trump is charged with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

    • His attorneys claim Trump’s actions were part of his official duties as president and argued in their brief that allowing him to be prosecuted would forever alter the job.

    • “The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions, taking away the strength, authority and decisiveness of the presidency,” the filing states.

    • In fact, Trump is the first president in U.S. history charged with a crime after leaving office.

    • Smith has countered that Trump contested the election in an attempt to remain in power, and that no one is above the law.

    • Chutkan and the court of appeals both ruled in Smith’s favor, but Trump has appealed the matter to the Supreme Court.

    • An Ipsos/Politico poll released this week found that 70% of U.S. voters and 48% of Republicans reject Trump’s assertion that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed while in office.

    Why it matters: While Trump’s lawyers argue that presidential power would be upended if the Supreme Court ruled that a commander in chief could never be prosecuted for acts committed while in office, prosecutors have focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Left unsaid is what consequences might unfold if the Supreme Court enshrines protections for a president’s actions, whatever they may entail, while still residing at the White House.

    Recommended reading

    ___________________

    Monday, March 18

    ___________________

    Lawyers for former President Donald Trump file an emergency appeal challenging Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue to prosecute Trump and 18 others on election interference charges now that lead prosecutor Nathan Wade has stepped down. Trump’s lawyers tell a New York appeals court that he faces “insurmountable difficulties” in securing the $464 million bond from lenders that he is required to pay as he appeals the judgment in his financial fraud civil trial. Trump is also asking the court to lower the amount he must pay while he appeals the case. Here are the latest legal developments facing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for 2024.

    Georgia election interference

    Trump appeals judge’s decision allowing Fani Willis to remain on case

    Key players: Trump lawyer Steve Sadow, Judge Scott McAfee, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, former lead prosecutor Nathan Wade, the Georgia Court of Appeals

    • On Monday, Trump and eight of his co-defendants filed an emergency appeal of McAfee’s ruling that allowed Willis to remain on the case against Trump and 18 others so long as Wade stepped aside, USA Today reported.

    • “The motion notes that the Court found that Willis’ actions created an appearance of impropriety and an ‘odor of mendacity’ that lingers in this case, but it nonetheless refused to dismiss the case or disqualify her,” the filing with the Georgia Court of Appeals states.

    • Willis and Wade admitted to having a romantic relationship, but denied conflict-of-interest claims by the defendants that Willis had benefited financially by hiring Wade or had lied when called to testify about that relationship.

    • Willis indicted Trump and 18 others for their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. So far, four of the defendants have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the others charged in the case.

    • McAfee has yet to schedule a date for the trial for the remaining defendants.

    • It is unclear whether the appeals court will take the case.

    Why it matters: While McAfee allowed Willis to remain on the case, the appeals process could further delay the trial against Trump and the other defendants until after the November election.

    New York financial fraud

    Trump asks appeals court to allow him to delay payment of bond

    Key players: Judge Arthur Engoron, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump lawyers Alina Habba and Clifford Robert, Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten

    • Trump’s lawyers told a New York appeals court that the former president had approached 30 underwriters to try to secure the $464 million bond required for him to proceed with his appeal of Engoron’s judgment in the financial fraud trial, but none had agreed to lend him the money, CNN reported.

    • “The amount of the judgment, with interest, exceeds $464 million, and very few bonding companies will consider a bond of anything approaching that magnitude,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.

    • Trump is asking the appeals court to reduce the bond amount and to delay its payment until after his appeal is heard.

    • Last month, Engoron ordered Trump to pay the state $355 million plus interest for years of fraudulent business practices, including the inflation of his assets to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates.

    • Trump is appealing the decision, which obliges him to deposit 110% of the total amount owed into an escrow account as the appeals court hears the case.

    • In Monday’s filing, Garten also painted a dim outlook for Trump’s ability to raise the bond amount.

    • “Defendants have faced what have proven to be insurmountable difficulties in obtaining an appeal bond for the full $464 million,” he wrote, ABC News reported.

    • James has said that if Trump does not come up with the full bond amount, she would go after his real estate assets.

    • “Obtaining such cash through a ‘fire sale’ of real estate holdings would inevitably result in massive, irrecoverable losses — textbook irreparable injury,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their filing.

    • Habba and Robert also argued that the bond amount was “unconstitutionally excessive.”

    Why it matters: During his trial, Trump told the court that he had $400 million on hand that he could apply toward a bond. Since then, he lost two high-profile cases, pushing his liabilities over half a billion dollars. He has paid a nearly $92 billion bond amount as he appeals a jury’s verdict in the defamation lawsuits brought by columnist E. Jean Carroll.

    Recommended reading

    Source link

  • Confusion in Texas after appeals court blocks border arrest law

    Confusion in Texas after appeals court blocks border arrest law

    Texas was in a state of confusion early on Wednesday in the hours after another freeze on the controversial new state law that would allow local law enforcement to arrest migrants – the legal jurisdiction of the federal government – hours after the US supreme court had allowed it.

    There was puzzlement, after the law had been in force for a few hours and was then blocked by an appeals court around midnight, about whether and when state troopers or Texas national guard soldiers – who have the most interaction with migrants – would begin enforcement.

    Related: The unprecedented situation at the US-Mexico border – visualized

    A hearing was to take place on Wednesday before a panel of the fifth circuit court of appeals, which issued the most recent ruling in the twisting case of the law known as SB4 late on Tuesday.

    The Kinney county sheriff, Brad Coe, who has largely embraced the multibillion-dollar border enforcement effort of Texas’s hard-right governor, Greg Abbott, said he was “prepared to proceed with prosecutions” but officers would need “probable cause” to make arrests. His county covers a stretch of border near Del Rio that was recently the busiest corridor for illegal crossings but has quieted considerably.

    “It is unlikely that observers will see an overnight change,” Coe said.

    The El Paso county judge, Ricardo Samaniego, the top county executive, said immigration enforcement should remain a federal, not state, responsibility, echoing the Biden administration’s view.

    He said heightened law enforcement presence in the city of El Paso during a previous migrant surge brought high-speed chases and traffic stops based on assumptions that passengers were in the country illegally.

    “We had accidents, we had injuries, we got a little glimpse of what would happen if the state begins to control what happens in respect to immigration,” Samaniego said.

    The impact of the battle between state and federal powers over immigration law extends far beyond the Texas border. Republican legislators wrote the law so that it applies in all of the state’s 254 counties, although Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas department of public safety, has said he expects it will mostly be enforced near the border.

    The University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck predicted that the appeals court is likely to leave SB4 on hold until the US supreme court weighs in again, posting on X/Twitter that it would remain blocked “indefinitely”.

    After the latest in a series of contradictory court rulings, Lina Hidalgo, the judge of Harris county, centered on Houston, told CNN that “absolutely” there was confusion in the state and that “even legal experts are calling it whiplash”. She is opposed to the law.

    Abbott has claimed there is an “invasion” of Texas by unauthorized migrants, allowing him to take immigration power into the state’s hands as if it was on some sort of war footing.

    “It makes me nervous because the law is focused on whether you are suspected of being an immigrant, it’s so extreme, it allows law enforcement to say, ‘you look brown, you look Hispanic’ and you can be arrested and then possibly deported,” she told the cable news channel on Wednesday morning.

    Hidalgo said many members of law enforcement she dealt with were not prepared to enforce the law. She told CNN she could imagine a scenario where she herself went for a jog and was stopped by local police saying: “you look like you may be here on an undocumented basis” and said: “This is a terrible precedent.”

    An appeals judge just before midnight on Tuesday said that no matter how strongly Texas disagreed with the federal government’s application of immigration law at the US-Mexico border, it did not justify the state’s defiance of the US constitution.

    The new Texas law attempts to take the power from the federal government to say that crossing into Texas from a foreign country is a crime unless you are crossing via a legal port of entry, including if you cross the Rio Grande, the river that divides Texas from Mexico, with hopes of claiming asylum but without an appointment with the US authorities. Anyone apprehended could be arrested by local or state police and charged with a misdemeanor in state court or with a felony for a repeat alleged violation.

    Migrants could be ordered to return to Mexico – even though the Mexican government quickly said it would not accept non-Mexicans thus expelled.

    On Wednesday, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sharply criticized the Texas law saying it violates international law and is “draconian, dehumanizing and unfair”, and would prompt a diplomatic response from Mexico.

    Other Republican-led states far from the border are also already looking to follow Texas’s path. In Iowa, more than a thousand miles from the Mexico border, the state lower house on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would also give its state law enforcement agencies the power to arrest people who they deem to be in the US illegally and have previously been denied entry into the country.

    Skylor Hearn, executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, said sheriffs’ offices had been training since last year.

    “If a county chooses to take it on themselves, they are choosing for their taxpayers to take it on themselves as well,” Hearn said. “As long as the federal government is willing to do its part that it is supposed to be doing, it is ideal for them to take possession and custody of these people.”

    Daniel Morales, an associate professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, said the Texas law “will be a mess, very clearly, to enforce”.

    Arrests for unauthorized crossings fell by half in January from a record high of 250,000 in December, with sharp declines in Texas.

    Tucson, Arizona, has been the busiest corridor in recent months, followed by San Diego in January, but reasons for sudden shifts are often complicated and are dictated by smuggling organizations.

    The Associated Press contributed reporting



    Source link