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Court cuts prison sentence for Memphis 'sovereign citizen'
Law Firm Press |
2015/09/01 15:16
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An appeals court has reduced the prison sentence for a self-described sovereign citizen who was convicted of assaulting two police officers during a traffic stop.
Tabitha Gentry was convicted in April 2014 of two counts of aggravated assault and one count of evading arrest in an automobile.
The judge sentenced Gentry to consecutive prison sentences of six years on each assault charge and two years on the evading arrest charge, totaling 14 years.
Tennessee's Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Monday that the judge should have ordered that the sentences run at the same time, reducing her sentence in that case to six years.
Gentry also is serving a 20-year sentence for illegally taking over a Memphis mansion. The appeals court ruling cuts her total prison time from 34 years to 26 years.
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Alaska Supreme Court won't block Medicaid expansion
Legal News Feed |
2015/09/01 15:16
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Thousands of lower-income Alaskans will become eligible for Medicaid after the Alaska Supreme Court on Monday refused to temporarily block the state from expanding the health care program.
The win capped a big day for Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, who earlier flew with President Barack Obama from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage.
"The Alaska Supreme Court's ruling today brings final assurance that thousands of working Alaskans will have access to health care tomorrow," Walker said in a statement issued Monday evening.
Walker earlier this summer announced plans to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid coverage after state legislators tabled his expansion legislation for further review.
The Legislative Council, acting on behalf of lawmakers, sued to stop expansion.
Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, or plan to do so, to include all adults with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
The federal government agreed to pay all costs for the new enrollees through 2016, but it will begin lowering its share in 2017. States will pay 10 percent of the costs by 2020.
Some Alaska legislators have expressed concern with adding more people to a system they consider broken. Administration officials have acknowledged the current Medicaid program isn't sustainable, but they see expansion as a way to get federal dollars to help finance reform efforts.
On Friday, Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner denied the request from lawmakers to halt expansion while a lawsuit moves forward. The Alaska Supreme Court on Monday agreed, saying lawyers for the lawmakers failed to show Pfiffner erred when denying the motion for a preliminary injunction.
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Court rules against St. Louis police in ticket scandal
U.S. Court News |
2015/08/20 10:49
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The St. Louis police department will have to turn over records from its probe into a scandal over 2006 World Series tickets now that the Missouri Supreme Court has thrown out a final appeal that sought to block the documents' release.
The state high court's ruling on Tuesday upholds decisions by a St. Louis judge and a state appellate court who ordered the release of records from the department's investigation of officers who gave tickets that had been confiscated from scalpers to friends and family.
"This ends it," Neil Bruntrager, a lawyer for the officers, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story Thursday. "We certainly are disappointed. There are privacy issues at play."
Eight officers and six supervisors were disciplined for giving away the tickets to the three games played in St. Louis during the series, in which the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers in five games. But the police department refused to turn over the records of its internal probe, leading the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri to sue, saying the records should be released under Missouri's Sunshine Law.
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Appeals court won't reinstate 1990 arson-murder conviction
Legal News Feed |
2015/08/19 10:49
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An elderly man who spent 24 years in prison for his daughter's death in a fire will remain free after a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania on Wednesday refused to reinstate his murder conviction.
Han Tak Lee, 80, a native of South Korea who earned U.S. citizenship, was exonerated and freed last year after a judge concluded the case against him was based on since-discredited scientific theories about arson. Prosecutors appealed, saying that other evidence pointed to his guilt.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal, meaning Lee will stay out of prison.
Lee said Wednesday in a brief phone interview that he was happy about the ruling. His attorney, Peter Goldberger, called on prosecutors to drop the case.
"I hope, now, that they will finally see there is no basis for this conviction," Goldberger said. "They can say it's nobody's fault, that science changed, that this is over now, and the federal court has had the last word."
Monroe County District Attorney David Christine, who prosecuted Lee in 1990, said he will consider an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Although we are disappointed in the ruling, we know that the Court of Appeals gave very serious consideration to the arguments of all parties, and entered a decision only after careful and thoughtful scrutiny of all the relevant facts and legal issues," he said via email. "However, we remain convinced that in spite of the debunking of some of the (prosecution witnesses) on the cause and origin of fire accepted by the scientific community in the 1980s, the defendant's guilt was otherwise established by relevant and admissible evidence presented to the jury."
Lee's conviction was one of dozens to be called into question around the U.S. amid revolutionary changes in investigators' understanding of how an intentionally set fire can be distinguished from an accidental one.
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