seasea: court

显示标签为“court”的博文。显示所有博文

2011年5月8日星期日

The Texas Tribune: 30-Year-Old Capital Case Returns to Court, With Defense Alleging Bias

The United States Supreme Court overturned Mr. Banks’s death sentence in 2004, finding that the Bowie County prosecutors who tried the case suppressed evidence and deliberately covered their mistakes for decades.

“It’s really a remarkable tale of misconduct — just about every kind of thing the prosecution could do that was improper,” said Robert C. Owen, co-director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas School of Law, who was one of Mr. Banks’s appellate lawyers.

Now, the same district attorney’s office — including one of the same prosecutors who was involved in the original trial — is again seeking the death penalty for Mr. Banks. Despite the Supreme Court’s rebuke, James Elliott, who has been a prosecutor on the case for more than 30 years, has maintained that he will pursue Mr. Banks until he “gets what he deserves.”

At a hearing Monday in a Bowie County state district court, Mr. Banks’s lawyers will ask Judge Nathan E. White to disqualify Mr. Elliott and the local district attorney’s office from the case and to assign different lawyers to represent the state.

“Mr. Elliott’s misbehavior proves that he cannot serve as a disinterested prosecutor and is laboring under a conflict of interest that will prevent Mr. Banks from receiving a fair trial,” lawyers wrote in court documents.

Mr. Banks, who is black and was 21 when the crime was committed, was convicted of killing Mr. Whitehead, who was white, so he could take off with his car. The police found Mr. Whitehead’s body in a park near Texarkana and soon discovered that Mr. Banks had been with him on the last night he was seen alive.

There were no witnesses to the killing and no physical evidence linking Mr. Banks to it. The prosecution’s case relied largely on the testimony of Robert Farr and Charles Cook, both admitted drug users; Mr. Cook also had convictions for robbery by assault and forgery.

Mr. Cook told the jury that he met Mr. Banks in Dallas the morning after the murder. He said Mr. Banks had blood on his pants and told him he decided to “kill the white boy for the hell of it and take his car and come to Dallas.”

Mr. Farr testified that he, Mr. Banks and another man drove to Dallas on the day that Mr. Banks was arrested so Mr. Banks could retrieve a gun to use in armed robberies. Mr. Farr said Mr. Banks told him he would “take care of it” if any trouble arose.

Mr. Banks had no criminal history, and people who were with him and Mr. Whitehead on the last night that Mr. Whitehead was alive testified there was no ill will between the two. Nonetheless, an all-white Bowie County jury convicted Mr. Banks, who was sentenced to death.

In 1999 — almost 20 years after the trial — a federal judge forced Bowie County to open its case records, and Mr. Banks’s lawyers discovered a transcript showing that Mr. Cook’s testimony had been extensively rehearsed and coached. They also learned that the police had paid Mr. Farr, an informant who had an unreliable record, $200 for his role in the investigation.

Mr. Farr, in an affidavit, said he was afraid that the police would arrest him on drug charges. In exchange for the money, and to avoid jail, he agreed to set up Mr. Banks, he said, persuading him to drive to Dallas to get a gun.

Prosecutors allowed Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr to lie in court and never told jurors that their information was false, the Supreme Court found. Mr. Cook denied on the stand that anyone had helped him with his testimony, and Mr. Farr said he had not been paid for his help in the case. During closing arguments, Mr. Elliott told jurors that they should believe Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr.

In arguments before the Supreme Court, state lawyers did not dispute that Mr. Cook had been coached and that Mr. Farr was paid for his help. But they said Mr. Banks’s lawyers were at fault for not uncovering the information sooner.

The Supreme Court ruled that without the testimony of Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr, Mr. Banks might not have been sentenced to death. “It has long been established that the prosecution’s ‘deliberate deception of a court and jurors by the presentation of known false evidence is incompatible with rudimentary demands of justice,’?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

Mr. Elliott declined to comment last week about the case. “We’re in litigation,” he said. “The newspaper is the wrong place to be trying cases — it just is. So I can’t give any comment.”

View the original article here

2011年5月6日星期五

Hague Court Seeks Warrants for Libyan Officials

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, appeared in a briefing before the United Nations Security Council, which had unanimously called for a criminal investigation of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s use of force against civilians. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said the evidence supporting charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity included the shooting of peaceful protesters, followed by weeks of systematic persecution, including murder, imprisonment and torture.

“War crimes are apparently committed as a matter of policy,” the prosecutor said. He went on: “The evidence shows that events in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia prompted Libyan security forces to begin preparations for the possibility of demonstrations in Libya. As early as January, mercenaries were being hired and brought into Libya.” Other violations, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said, included preventing the wounded from receiving medical care; arresting, torturing and raping perceived opponents of the Qaddafi government; and the use of cluster bombs, mortars and other heavy weapons in crowded urban areas.

The prosecutor said that “efforts to cover up the crimes” — removing bodies from hospitals and preventing doctors from documenting the dead and wounded — had made it difficult to establish the number of victims. But he said 500 to 700 died from shootings in February, before full-fledged fighting broke out between the government and hastily assembled rebel forces.

“Shooting at protesters was systematic,” he said.

Lawyers familiar with the investigation said that the first arrest warrants were likely to focus on the initial violent clampdown on protesters. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo would not comment on whether the indictments involved Colonel Qaddafi or any of his sons, at least three of whom hold military positions.

The prosecutor said the Libyans had raised the issue of the killing of civilians by NATO air strikes since NATO began bombing in March. But he said he was still waiting for more information, including the results of a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Council, before deciding whether to include NATO actions in the scope of his inquiry.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said his office was also looking into violence on the insurgent side, including the killing of prisoners. He cited violence by mobs in Benghazi and other rebel-held cities against sub-Saharan Africans, seen as pro-Qaddafi mercenaries, who had been “unlawfully arrested, mistreated and killed.” Some of them, he said, were said to have been arrested by “the new authorities in Benghazi,” and their fates were unclear.

Fearful of being attacked, many migrants from nations like Chad, Niger and Sudan made a panicked exodus toward the Egyptian border. Angry crowds attacked housing complexes where sub-Saharan Africans lived, though other Libyans stepped in to shield the migrants from abuse.

At the Security Council on Wednesday, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said Moscow was concerned by the mounting toll of civilians, which he described as the responsibility of all parties involved, including NATO. “Actions by NATO-led coalition forces also lead to civilian casualties,” he said. “It is clear that violence can only be halted through an immediate cease-fire and political settlement.”

Other ambassadors said prosecuting war crimes in Libya would send a message to the rest of the region, particularly Syria, that attacks on civilians were unacceptable. Western diplomats have said it could lead to defections of Qaddafi officials and military personnel.

In Misurata, Libya, the coastal city besieged by Qaddafi forces, an international aid ship risked attack by entering the port and evacuating migrant workers who had been trying to leave Libya. Colonel Qaddafi’s military has vowed to prevent ships from entering the port, and tried mining the harbor and shelling the port with artillery and ground-to-ground rocket barrages.

As the ship arrived, more rockets struck near the port, hitting migrant workers waiting to board. The barrage killed a man, a woman, a small boy and a girl.

Dr. Hassan Malitan, who worked at a clinic, vented his anger. The neighborhood has been struck repeatedly by rocket fire, and civilians have been killed. “This is the real Qaddafi,” he said.

The ship departed quickly, taking hundreds of frightened workers out of the city on the beginning of the passage to the rebel capital, Benghazi.

A chief opposition spokesman there, Abdul Hafidh Ghoga, said a large explosion on Wednesday night near the courthouse had been an accident, not a deliberate act, as previously suspected.?Mr. Ghoga said a car owner had left a gelatin explosive in the vehicle, which detonated.?

The explosive is widely used for fishing and, increasingly, for the city’s frequent parades and celebrations.?Ten people were wounded in the blast.?

Marlise Simons reported from Paris, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations. C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Misurata, Libya, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya.

2011年5月2日星期一

Court Lets U.S. Resume Paying for Embryo Study

The 2-to-1 ruling, by a panel of judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, blocks a lower-court decision last August holding that such research is illegal under a law that bans public spending on research in which human embryos are damaged or destroyed.

The stem cells are derived from donated human embryos left over from fertility treatments; the embryos are destroyed in the process, leading some opponents of abortion to liken the research to murder.

But the appellate court said Friday that because the law is written in the present tense, “it does not extend to past actions.”

Samuel B. Casey, a lawyer for two scientists who sued the government to stop paying for research into human embryonic stem cells, said that he was “a little disappointed” but also pleased that the appeals court kept his suit alive, and that he was considering an appeal.

Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said she was “extremely pleased with this decision.” But she promised to push for unambiguous legislation that would allow such research to continue.

The ruling sends the case back to Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court in Washington, who concluded in August that the Obama administration was so unlikely to win the case that he issued an immediate ban on any federal spending on human embryonic research.

That decision shocked government scientists, who said it would force the cancellation of dozens of experiments on an array of diseases, from diabetes to Parkinson’s. The government appealed, and the appeals court stopped the ban from going into effect while it heard arguments in the case. Friday’s ruling is the end of the first phase of the litigation.

“This is a momentous day not only for science but for the hopes of thousands of patients and their families who are relying on N.I.H.-funded scientists to pursue life-saving discoveries and therapies that could come from stem cell research,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.

David A. Prentice of the Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group, said he was disappointed. “Federal taxpayer funds should go towards helping patients first, not unethical experiments,” he said.

The research potential for embryonic stem cells, which were discovered in 1998, arises from their ability to morph into any cell in the body and possibly form new organs.

President George W. Bush was the first to allow federal financing of human embryonic stem cell research, but he limited the research to 21 cell lines already in existence to discourage further destruction of embryos.

President Obama promised in his campaign to expand the research and ordered the health institutes soon after his inauguration to do just that.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling was so sweeping that the Obama administration interpreted it as a ban on all stem cell research, including projects that passed muster under his predecessor.

Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplant program at Children’s Hospital Boston, said he was happy with the ruling. “But it’s tempered by the fact that there’s a court case that is still pending,” he added.

Dr. Daley’s laboratory is using embryonic stem cells to research cures into bone marrow failure, a rare genetic condition sometimes called “bubble boy disease” because it forces children to live in sterile environments.

His lab is also comparing the relative properties of embryonic stem cells and so-called pluripotent stem cells derived from adult tissue; some anti-abortion activists say the pluripotent cells, which have the potential to turn into the many kinds of specialized cells in the body, are an ethical alternative to the embryonic kind.

The plaintiffs in the case are two scientists, Theresa Deisher and Dr. James L. Sherley, who use only adult stem cells in their research. They argue that the administration’s policy puts their own research at a disadvantage in the competition for government financing.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, the dissenter in Friday’s appeals court ruling, wrote that her colleagues “perform linguistic jujitsu” to arrive at their conclusion.

The plain language of the law bars financing for all research that follows the destruction of embryos, she wrote, and it is meaningless to try to separate the process of destruction from the use of the stem cells that result from that destruction.

Mr. Casey, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Judge Henderson’s dissent might lead him to ask the full Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.

“But my mother told me to always sleep on these things, so that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

Court Lets U.S. Resume Paying for Embryo Study

But the appellate court said Friday that because the law is written in the present tense, “it does not extend to past actions.”

The research potential for embryonic stem cells, which were discovered in 1998, arises from their ability to morph into any cell in the body and possibly form new organs.

President Obama promised in his campaign to expand the research and ordered the health institutes soon after his inauguration to do just that.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling was so sweeping that the Obama administration interpreted it as a ban on all stem cell research, including projects that passed muster under his predecessor.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, the dissenter in Friday’s appeals court ruling, wrote that her colleagues “perform linguistic jujitsu” to arrive at their conclusion.

Mr. Casey, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Judge Henderson’s dissent might lead him to ask the full Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.

“But my mother told me to always sleep on these things, so that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

Court Lets U.S. Resume Paying for Embryo Study

But the appellate court said Friday that because the law is written in the present tense, “it does not extend to past actions.”

The research potential for embryonic stem cells, which were discovered in 1998, arises from their ability to morph into any cell in the body and possibly form new organs.

President Obama promised in his campaign to expand the research and ordered the health institutes soon after his inauguration to do just that.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling was so sweeping that the Obama administration interpreted it as a ban on all stem cell research, including projects that passed muster under his predecessor.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, the dissenter in Friday’s appeals court ruling, wrote that her colleagues “perform linguistic jujitsu” to arrive at their conclusion.

Mr. Casey, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Judge Henderson’s dissent might lead him to ask the full Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.

“But my mother told me to always sleep on these things, so that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

2011年4月30日星期六

Court Lets U.S. Resume Paying for Embryo Study

But the appellate court said Friday that because the law is written in the present tense, “it does not extend to past actions.”

The research potential for embryonic stem cells, which were discovered in 1998, arises from their ability to morph into any cell in the body and possibly form new organs.

President Obama promised in his campaign to expand the research and ordered the health institutes soon after his inauguration to do just that.

Judge Lamberth’s ruling was so sweeping that the Obama administration interpreted it as a ban on all stem cell research, including projects that passed muster under his predecessor.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, the dissenter in Friday’s appeals court ruling, wrote that her colleagues “perform linguistic jujitsu” to arrive at their conclusion.

Mr. Casey, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Judge Henderson’s dissent might lead him to ask the full Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.

“But my mother told me to always sleep on these things, so that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

2011年4月29日星期五

Discussions Outside Court Are Raised at Fire Trial

A limited view of this dynamic was revealed on Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom, where a construction worker testified about his sometimes uneasy relationship with a prosecutor in the trial of three men charged in the deaths of two firefighters battling a blaze at the former Deutsche Bank building.

And in an awkward moment, the prosecutor, Joel J. Seidemann, had to confront the worker, Diego Marin, just moments after Mr. Marin spoke about the tension.

At issue was whether Mr. Seidemann, a veteran assistant district attorney who can be feisty in legal battles, pressured Mr. Marin into saying certain things.

Under cross-examination, Edward J. M. Little, who represents one of the defendants, Jeffrey Melofchik, asked Mr. Marin if Mr. Seidemann had asked him repeatedly in a private, pretrial interview whether a pipe shown to him in a photograph was a “high-pressured pipe.”

“Yes, because what he was saying was that I had told him that it was a high-pressured pipe,” Mr. Marin said through an interpreter.

But what he actually told Mr. Seidemann, Mr. Marin testified, was that it seemed like a high-pressured pipe. He could not be sure, he said, because he was not a plumber.

The pipe in question is a standpipe in the building’s basement. Its identity is important because lawyers for the defendants — Mr. Melofchik, a site safety supervisor; and two abatement supervisors, Mitchel Alvo and Salvatore DePaola — say their clients did not have the expertise to know what the pipe was.

Prosecutors blame the defendants for severing the pipe less than a year before a blaze in the upper floors led to the deaths of two firefighters.

Mr. Little asked Mr. Marin if he had told investigators that “this prosecutor acted crazy and pushed you around a lot.”

“No,” Mr. Marin responded. “It was just that I was starting to feel uncomfortable.”

Mr. Marin also testified that an unidentified employee of the district attorney’s office slapped Mr. DePaola’s hand out of the way recently when the two were trying to shake hands.

When Mr. Seidemann got up to ask Mr. Marin more questions after Mr. Little was finished, there was a moment of silence.

“You’re smiling, I see,” Mr. Seidemann said.

“I’ve lost two days of work,” Mr. Marin responded.

“I’m sorry about that,” Mr. Seidemann said.

He showed Mr. Marin two photographs on which Mr. Marin had made notations during an interview at the district attorney’s office. The photographs were of pipes in the basement of the former Deutsche Bank building.

Mr. Marin said he had written on them that “it looks like the picture of a high-pressured pipe.”

While it is unusual for prosecutors to be testy with their own witnesses, Mr. Seidemann asked Mr. Marin if he was being honest in what he wrote.

“Yes, I’ve tried to tell the truth,” he said. “I’ve told the truth.”

Then, raising his voice, Mr. Seidemann asked Mr. Marin if he wrote anywhere on the photographs that he was unsure it was a high-pressured water pipe. The defense objected, and the judge told Mr. Marin not to answer the question.

2011年4月20日星期三

Court Hears Microsoft Patent Case

WASHINGTON — Microsoft’s challenge to a $290 million award against it in a patent infringement suit faced significant headwinds on Monday during arguments at the Supreme Court.

Some justices suggested that the court’s precedents were at odds with Microsoft’s position. The federal government supported the Canadian software company, i4i Limited Partnership, that had won in the lower courts.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was recused from the case, apparently because he owns Microsoft stock, meaning that Microsoft would have to capture five of only eight available votes to win.

In defending against the lawsuit, which contended that Microsoft Word had infringed i4i’s method for editing documents, Microsoft argued that the patent was invalid.

At the district court trial, the judge told a jury that it should find the patent invalid only if Microsoft could satisfy a heightened standard, that of presenting “clear and convincing evidence” of invalidity.

Thomas G. Hungar, a lawyer for Microsoft, said that was a mistake. The proper standard, he said, was proof by a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning that Microsoft should have had to prove only that the patent’s invalidity was more likely than not. That is the usual standard in civil suits. Using the heightened standard “makes no sense,” Mr. Hungar said, and “ensures the enforcement of invalid patents.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disagreed. “It would be hard to argue, Mr. Hungar, that it makes no sense, but it made sense to Cardozo.”

In a 1934 decision, Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote that the presumption that patents were valid was “not to be overthrown except by clear and cogent evidence.” Mr. Hungar responded that the decision should apply only in limited circumstances that were not present in Microsoft’s challenge.

Now it was Justice Elena Kagan’s turn to disagree. “If you read that opinion, no one would gather from that opinion the kinds of limits that you’re suggesting,” she said of the 1934 decision.

Mr. Hungar went on to say that the patent law at issue in the case was not enacted until 1952, and did not require the heightened standard even if the 1934 opinion had.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said he was open to considering the statute a blank slate. “I’ll assume that the language is open enough in the history so that we could make what would be a change,” he said.

But Justice Breyer said he was unsure whether and what change was warranted given the competing interests.

He suggested two other possible approaches. One would be to have the officials in charge of making patent determinations reconsider their decisions.

His second proposal was to ask juries to determine only “brute facts,” and leave to judges the ultimate determination of whether a patent is invalid.

Seth P. Waxman, representing the Canadian firm, said the 1952 law codified early decisions requiring clear and convincing proof. He added that Congress’s failure to modify the law after more recent decisions imposing that heightened standard was evidence that it had “actively acquiesced” in the interpretation.

Justice Antonin Scalia, who was acting as presiding justice, questioned that formulation. “It’s like passive activity, right?” he asked.

The justices let Mr. Waxman speak without interruption for extended stretches, generally a good sign for that lawyer’s side.

Mr. Waxman said the heightened standard was warranted because it should not be easy to attack a government decision that bestowed a property right like a patent.

Justice Breyer said he understood “how important patents are and what a disaster it is to the person once they’re invalidated.”

But he said there was another side to the question.

“In today’s world,” Justice Breyer said, “where nobody really understands this technology very well, a worse disaster for the country is to have protection given to things that don’t deserve it because they act as a block on trade, they act as monopolies and they will tie the country up in individual monopolies that will raise prices to consumers.”

Near the end of the argument in the case, Microsoft Corporation v. i4i Limited Partnership, No. 10-290, Justice Breyer still sounded frustrated.

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get a better tool, if possible, to separate the sheep from the goats,” he said. “And so what is that better tool?”