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Manhattan DA drops part of Weinstein case
Legal News |
2018/10/10 10:57
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Manhattan’s district attorney dropped part of the criminal sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein on Thursday after evidence emerged that cast doubt on the account one of his three accusers provided to the grand jury.
The development was announced in court Thursday with Weinstein looking on.
The tossed charge involves allegations made by one of the three accusers in the case, Lucia Evans, who was among the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein of sexual assault.
In an expose published in The New Yorker one year ago Wednesday, Evans accused Weinstein of forcing her to perform oral sex when they met alone in his office in 2004 to discuss her fledgling acting career. At the time, Evans was a 21-year-old college student.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told the judge that prosecutors wouldn’t oppose dismissal of the count in the case involving Evans. She insisted the rest of the case, involving two other accusers, was strong.
“In short, your honor, we are moving full steam ahead,” she said.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told the judge he believed Evans had lied both to the grand jury and to The New Yorker about her encounter with Weinstein. He also said he believed a police detective had corruptly attempted to influence the case by keeping a witness from testifying about her misstatements. |
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Disbarred lawyer, 74, suspected of gunning down South Carolina cop: police
Court News |
2018/10/09 11:09
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Police investigating the shooting that killed a law enforcement officer and wounded several others in South Carolina have identified the suspected gunman as 74-year-old Frederick Hopkins -- a disbarred lawyer who, according to reports, boasted on social media about being a competitive marksman.
Tributes to the fallen officer, Terrence Carraway, continued to pour in Thursday as the Florence County Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect and told Fox Carolina they initially were drawn to the home in Florence to serve a warrant for a 27-year-old accused of sexually assaulting a minor.
Hopkins, meanwhile, is currently hospitalized with a head injury and police have not yet been able to speak to him, according to WIS News 10. The minor, police say, was a foster child inside the home.
A court order showed that in 1984, the state Supreme Court allowed Hopkins to pay back the debt over time and surrender his license rather than complete a six-month jail term. But then the court said Hopkins was ordered to jail and spent more than two weeks there after failing to return the money -- before it allowed his wife, fellow attorney Cheryl Turner Hopkins, to be held jointly liable for paying it back.
Hopkins also is a military veteran who had been receiving payments after being wounded in the Vietnam War, the Associated Press reported, citing court records in a divorce case involving him and his former wife. |
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Court expert says federal opioid lawsuit should move forward
Law Firm News |
2018/10/08 11:09
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A court-appointed expert in a case with national implications for addressing the opioid epidemic is recommending that a pivotal lawsuit move forward.
Drug makers, distributors and pharmacies had argued that a lawsuit filed by Summit County, Ohio, should be dismissed. The case is among more than 1,000 cases filed by local and state governments against the industry in federal courts.
They have been consolidated under U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland. He is pushing the companies and governments to reach a settlement, but also has scheduled trials for the case from Summit County and some other places for next year.
They would serve as test cases for rulings in other lawsuits. Polster has given the parties two weeks to object to a special master's report issued Friday. |
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Court: Doctor in Spain abducted newborn 49 years ago
Legal News Feed |
2018/10/08 11:08
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A Spanish court ruled Monday that a doctor stole a newborn child nearly five decades ago, one of the many abducted during Spain's 20th-century dictatorship, but cleared him because the statute of limitations had expired.
The Madrid court said 85-year-old gynecologist Eduardo Vela could not be punished because one of those who were stolen, plaintiff Ines Madrigal, did not make her complaint until 2012, more than a decade after the gravest crime had taken place.
The court did find, however, that Vela was responsible for abducting Madrigal in 1969, faking her birth by her adoptive parents and forging official documents.
Monday's verdict is Spain's first in relation to the wide-scale child trafficking that took place from the onset of the country's Civil War in 1936 to the death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco in 1975.
The right-wing regime waged a campaign to take away the children of poor families, prisoners or political enemies, sometimes stripping women of their newborns by lying and saying they had died during labor. The children were then given to pro-Franco families or the church, who educated the children on the regime's ideology and on Roman Catholicism.
Vela, the director of a Madrid clinic considered to be at the epicenter of the scandal, denied the accusations during this year's trial.
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