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German court orders sentence enforced in Chile abuse case
Court Line |
2017/08/10 23:57
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A court in western Germany has ruled that a German man must serve the sentence of a Chilean court for his role in the sexual abuse of children at a secretive German colony in Chile.
The dpa news agency reported Monday that the court in the town of Krefeld said Hartmut Hopp must serve in Germany the five-year sentence given to him by a Chilean court in 2011 for 16 counts of aiding in the sexual abuse of children.
The crimes took place at the Colonia Dignidad enclave, where residents were physically and psychologically abused for three decades beginning in 1961 after moving there from Germany.
Hopp fled to Germany before the verdict took legal effect. The 73-year-old denies the charges and his attorney says he will appeal the ruling.
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Open records policy set for administrative court records
Court Line |
2017/08/10 23:57
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Kentucky's Supreme Court justices have approved an open records policy to guide how the public accesses administrative records in the state court system.
State officials say the first open records policy for the Administrative Office of the Courts takes effect Aug. 15. The AOC is the operations arm of the state's court system.
The new policy describes how to submit an open records request to AOC.
Kentucky Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. says the judicial branch has long complied with the "spirit" of the open records law, but says it's time to formalize its commitment in a written policy.
First Amendment expert and Louisville lawyer Jon Fleischaker says he's looked forward to the time when the public had definitive guidance on how to access the court system's administrative records. |
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Texas Executes TaiChin Preyor, Who Said Lawyer Used Wikipedia
Court Line |
2017/08/03 00:09
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The state of Texas executed TaiChin Preyor on Thursday night after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a last-minute appeal.
Preyor, 46, was put to death by lethal injection at a state corrections unit in Huntsville in the fatal stabbing of Jami Tackett during a drug-related robbery in 2004, The Associated Press reported. He claimed he acted in self-defense but was convicted of capital murder.
Preyor had argued that a previous attorney collaborated with a disbarred lawyer, relied on Wikipedia and double-billed his family and the court.
The attorney who handled Preyor's initial appeal was a real-estate specialist from Beverly Hills, Calif., who partnered with a man who had been disbarred for incompetence 15 years earlier — without informing the court, Preyor said in his latest motions.
"The federal habeas petition the duo filed in the District Court was so facially inadequate that it subsequently became its own ironic meme, circulated among habeas attorneys as an example of what not to do," Preyor's eleventh-hour appeal argued.
The California attorney had never appeared in a case in Texas state court, and a 2014 printout in her files showed that she did not do research about the death penalty in Texas until it was too late.
"It appears she relied on Wikpedia, of all things, to learn the complex ins and outs of Texas capital-punishment law," the motion reads.
"Her files included a copy of the Wikipedia page titled, 'Capital punishment in Texas,' with a post-it note stating 'Research' next to highlighted passages of 'habeas corpus appeals' and 'subsequent or successive writ applications.'"
Preyor's mother paid the duo $45,000 for their services, but the lawyer also billed the court for representing Preyor, the motion said.
"Preyor cannot be bound by the acts of two incompetent charlatans," the new lawyers wrote in their Supreme Court petition. The previous attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
In its response to Preyor's appeal, the state said the inmate failed to show that what his ex-lawyer did "amounts to fraud on the court." The state also said Preyor had waited too long to make his claim, which was filed two weeks before his execution.
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Top EU court moves to restore Hamas terror listing
Legal Focuses |
2017/08/01 00:09
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The European Union’s top court ruled Wednesday that Islamic militant group Hamas should stay on the EU terror list, saying a lower court should not have ordered the group removed from the EU’s terror list, and sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration.
The EU originally listed Hamas as a terror group in 2001, a move that froze assets of the organization in the European Union. However, the decision was annulled on procedural grounds by an EU court in 2014.
The EU appealed and Wednesday’s ruling by the European Union Court of Justice said that the 2014 annulment was wrong and must now be reconsidered, taking into account arguments not ruled upon in the original decision. However, it added that Hamas funds will continue to be frozen pending the outcome of the reconsideration.
Hamas said it would challenge the “unfair political decisions against our people and the movement” through legal recourse. Israel had no immediate response to the ruling.
In May, Hamas issued a new policy document in a bid to rebrand itself with softer positions. In the new document, Hamas said it accepts a Palestinian state alongside Israel, a departure from the founding charter which envisioned that state in place of a defeated Israel.
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Ohio’s high court strikes down traffic camera restrictions
Court Line |
2017/07/30 00:08
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The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld cities’ use of traffic camera enforcement for a third time, striking down as unconstitutional legislative restrictions that included requiring a police officer to be present.
The ruling was 5-2 in support of the city of Dayton’s challenge of provisions in a state law that took effect in 2015. The city said it improperly limited local control and undercut camera enforcement that makes cities safer by reducing red-light running and speeding. Dayton and other cities including Toledo and Springfield said the law’s restrictions made traffic cameras cost-prohibitive.
The court Wednesday ruled illegal requirements in the law that an officer be present when cameras were being used, that there must be a lengthy safety study and public information campaign before cameras are used, and that drivers could be only ticketed if they exceeded the posted limit by certain amounts, such as by 6 mph in a school zone. |
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