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Supreme Court considers if Pistorius guilty of murder
Court News |
2015/11/04 09:38
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South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal grilled Oscar Pistorius' attorney and a prosecutor on Tuesday as it weighed whether to convict him of murder for killing his girlfriend, uphold a lower court's manslaughter conviction or order a retrial.
Prosecutors say the North Gauteng High Court erred in convicting Pistorius of the lesser charge, and that the double-amputee Olympian should have known that someone could be killed when he fired four times into a locked toilet cubicle in his home. In the trial last year, prosecutors said Pistorius killed Reeva Steenkamp as she sought shelter in the toilet cubicle during an argument on Valentine's Day 2013. The defense said Pistorius opened fire because he thought an intruder was about to burst out of the toilet.
One of the five appeals court judges noted during the session on Tuesday, broadcast across the country and around the world on live TV, that Pistorius could still be convicted of murder even if he didn't think it was Steenkamp in the cubicle but knew someone was in there. Under the concept of dolus eventualis in South African law, a person can be convicted of murder if they foresaw the possibility of someone dying through their actions and went ahead anyway.
"If you look at the photographs, there's room behind there for a toilet bowl and a person and just about nothing else," Justice Lorimer Leach said to defense lawyer Barry Roux. "There's nowhere to hide. It would be a miracle if you didn't shoot someone." |
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Woman charged in slayings of Connecticut couple due in court
U.S. Court News |
2015/11/03 09:38
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A Connecticut woman accused of conspiring with her boyfriend to kill his parents when they were considering cutting him out of their will is scheduled to make her first court appearance.
Jennifer Valiante of Westport is expected to be arraigned Monday in Bridgeport Superior Court on charges including conspiracy to commit murder and hindering prosecution. It's not clear if she has a lawyer.
Her boyfriend, 27-year-old Kyle Navin of Bridgeport, is facing murder charges in the slayings of his parents, Jeanette and Jeffrey Navin of Easton. His arraignment hasn't been set. His lawyer declined to comment.
The Navins disappeared Aug. 4 and their bodies were found Thursday in Weston.
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German court: former SS Auschwitz guard fit for trial
Legal Line News |
2015/11/02 09:39
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A German court says a 93-year-old former SS sergeant charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as an Auschwitz death camp guard has been declared fit for trial.
The Detmold state court said Monday a doctor determined that Reinhold H., whose last name wasn't given for privacy reasons, is fit to stand trial so long as sessions are limited to two hours per day.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors now have two weeks to submit responses to the expert opinion. The court will then decide whether to open a trial.
H. is accused of being an accessory to murders at Auschwitz from January 1943 to June 1944. The suspect says he was assigned to a part of the camp not involved in the mass murders.
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High court rejects ex-stockbroker's appeal in fraud case
Legal Line News |
2015/11/02 09:39
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The Supreme Court turned away an appeal from a former Toronto stockbroker convicted in a multimillion-dollar securities fraud who says federal prosecutors should have turned over documents that might have helped his defense.
The justices Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said prosecutors didn't have to share information about the drug use of a key witness against George Georgiou. The lower court sided with prosecutors who said defense lawyers could have discovered the publicly available records on their own.
Georgiou's lawyers said prosecutors had a duty to disclose the information if they were aware of it. Several former Justice Department officials backed his claim and urged the court to take the case.
Georgiou was convicted on charges of manipulating markets of four stocks, causing $55 million in losses.
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