|
|
|
Evidence challenged: Miss. court blocks execution
Court News |
2013/05/13 23:51
|
The Mississippi Supreme Court has indefinitely delayed Tuesday's scheduled execution of Willie Jerome Manning amid questions involving evidence in the case, intervening hours before he was set to die for the slayings of two college students.
Manning, who had challenged errors involving evidence analysis, was originally set to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT at the state prison in Parchman. But with mere hours remaining, the high court blocked the execution until it rules further in the case.
Manning was convicted in 1994 in the shooting deaths of two Mississippi State University students, Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller. Their bodies were found in a rural area in December 1992.
The FBI has said in recent days that there were errors in agents' testimony about ballistics tests and hair analysis in the case.
Manning's lawyers had argued in recent filings before the Mississippi Supreme Court that the execution should be blocked based on the U.S. Justice Department's disclosures about testimony that it says exceeded the limits of science.
The court ruled 8-1 on Tuesday for a stay. The court had previously split 5-4 in decisions in the case.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Doctor to plead guilty in CA prescription case
Court News |
2013/04/12 15:40
|
A Southern California doctor has agreed to plead guilty to charges of illegally prescribing drugs to his patients at nightly meetings in Starbucks stores.
Court documents show 44-year-old Alvin Mingczech Yee entered into a plea agreement earlier this week. He is expected to plead guilty to seven counts at a April 17 hearing.
Prosecutors say Yee saw up to a dozen patients nightly at Starbucks coffee stores across suburban Orange County at meetings that cost up to $600. Prosecutors say Yee barely examined them but prescribed drugs including OxyContin and Vicodin.
Yee was arrested in October 2011 at his Irvine office and has been free on bond. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
High court poised to upend civil rights policies
Court News |
2013/04/02 12:56
|
Has the nation lived down its history of racism and should the law become colorblind?
Addressing two pivotal legal issues, one on affirmative action and a second on voting rights, a divided Supreme Court is poised to answer those questions.
In one case, the issue is whether race preferences in university admissions undermine equal opportunity more than they promote the benefits of racial diversity. Just this past week, justices signaled their interest in scrutinizing affirmative action very intensely, expanding their review as well to a Michigan law passed by voters that bars "preferential treatment" to students based on race. Separately in a second case, the court must decide whether race relations - in the South, particularly - have improved to the point that federal laws protecting minority voting rights are no longer warranted.
The questions are apt as the United States closes in on a demographic tipping point, when nonwhites will become a majority of the nation's population for the first time. That dramatic shift is expected to be reached within the next generation, and how the Supreme Court rules could go a long way in determining what civil rights and equality mean in an America long divided by race.
The court's five conservative justices seem ready to declare a new post-racial moment, pointing to increased levels of voter registration and turnout among blacks to show that the South has changed. Lower federal courts just in the past year had seen things differently, blunting voter ID laws and other election restrictions passed by GOP-controlled legislatures in South Carolina, Texas and Florida, which they saw as discriminatory. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
cused UK police killer changes plea to guilty
Court News |
2013/02/12 10:33
|
A 29-year-old man accused of murdering two unarmed British police officers in a gun and grenade attack dramatically changed his plea to guilty Tuesday, midway through his trial.
Dale Cregan had denied killing Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, but on Tuesday admitted the murders, replying "guilty" as a court clerk read out the charges.
The two officers were killed as they responded to a burglary call near Manchester, northwest England, in September.
Prosecutors said Cregan — who had made the false emergency call — waited for police to arrive, then opened fire with a Glock pistol.
He fired 24 shots at Bone, hitting her between five and eight times. Hughes was shot eight times, including three times in the head as she lay on the ground.
As he fled, Cregan lobbed a military fragmentation grenade into the yard of the house where the police officers lay, prosecutors said. |
|
|
|
|
|
Legal Marketing News RSS
