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Court: Walesa must apologize to Poland's ruling party head
Legal Opinions |
2019/07/17 10:30
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A Polish appeals court upheld a lower court's verdict in a slander case and ruled Monday that pro-democracy fighter and former president Lech Walesa must apologize to the leader of the country's right-wing ruling party.
Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's most powerful politician, sued Walesa for blaming him on social media for the 2010 plane crash in Smolensk, Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski, Kaczynski's twin brother, and 95 others.
The Gdansk Provincial Court in December ruled Walesa had made "heavy accusations" without evidence to back them up and ordered him to apologize to Kaczynski on the radio, in a personal letter and other formats. The provincial court rejected a demand for Walesa to pay 30,000 zlotys ($8,000) to a charity.
Both men appealed. Walesa said he also would appeal Monday's decision to Poland's Supreme Court and "if need be," to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
In one of the disputed posts written during 2015-2017, Walesa alleged that Kaczynski was "guided by bravado" and during a phone conversation with his traveling brother pushed for the plane to land at the poorly equipped Smolensk airport despite heavy fog.
Kaczynski blames the crash on Poland's government at the time, which was led by another foe, current European Council president Donald Tusk, alleging it neglected the president's security. |
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Trump asks Supreme Court to unfreeze border wall money
Court News |
2019/07/14 12:45
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The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to lift a freeze on Pentagon money it wants to use to build sections of a border wall with Mexico.
Two lower courts have ruled against the administration in a lawsuit over the funding. Last week, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco kept in place a lower court ruling preventing the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of wall in Arizona, California and New Mexico.
At stake in the case is billions of dollars that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term. Trump ended a 35-day government shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding, far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking. Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall.
The money includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department's asset forfeiture fund. The Treasury Department funds have so far survived legal challenges, and the transfer of the military construction funds has not yet been approved.
At issue in the case before the Supreme Court is just the $2.5 billion in Defense Department funds, which the administration says will be used to construct more than 100 miles of fencing. The lawsuit challenging the use of those funds was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. Late Friday, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan gave the groups until the afternoon of July 19 to respond in writing to the Trump administration's filing. |
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Public unions see only modest decline after court ruling
Court News |
2019/07/13 12:45
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Anticipating that the U.S. Supreme Court might end mandatory union fees for public employees, some labor-friendly states enacted laws last year to protect membership rolls while unions redoubled their recruitment efforts.
Those steps appear to have paid off, at least initially.
Union membership among public employees has fallen only slightly in the nation’s most unionized states since the Supreme Court ruled a year ago that government workers no longer could be required to pay union fees, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Associated Press.
The decline in union membership rates has been larger in states that had previously allowed mandatory fees to be deducted from the paychecks of public school teachers, police and other government workers than in states that had not. Yet the drop has been less than what some labor leaders had feared following the high court decision, which reversed a 41-year-old legal precedent.
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Italian court rules wrong Eritrean accused of trafficking
Legal News Feed |
2019/07/10 12:48
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A court in Palermo, Sicily, ruled on Friday that the wrong Eritrean man was arrested and tried as a migrant smuggling kingpin and ordered him released from jail, to the jubilation of international supporters who had championed for years the defendant's claim of mistaken identity.
Defense lawyer Michele Calantropo told The Associated Press that his client, Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre, "cried for joy" when he heard the court order him released from jail, three years after he had been extradited to Italy from Sudan on a charge of human trafficking.
But while the court exonerated him of the trafficking charge, it convicted him of a lesser charge - aiding illegal immigration - for helping two cousins reach Italy, based on investigations conducted after Behre was extradited to Italy, Calantropo said.
The court sentenced him on that charge to five years in prison. But since Behre already spent three years behind bars under a warrant for the wrong man, it was likely under Italy's justice system, that, as a first offender, he won't have to do any more time in jail.
Prosecutors had argued the defendant was Medhane Yehdego Mered, an alleged human trafficking kingpin who profited as thousands of migrants were smuggled to Italy on unseaworthy boats launched from Libyan shores. They had asked the court to convict him and give a 14-year prison term.
They didn't immediately react to the ruling.
Even as the suspect set foot in Italy in 2016, escorted by Italian police, a chorus of doubts rose up about whether prosecutors actually had the man they claimed.
One of the defendant's sisters, who lives in Norway, said her brother was living a "normal" life in Sudan and had nothing to do with human smuggling. She said she recognized her brother in the images of the man being extradited to Italy. |
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