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Amanda Knox appeals slander case to European court
Legal News Feed |
2013/11/29 10:23
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Lawyers for Amanda Knox filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy with the European Court of Human Rights, as her third murder trial was underway in Florence.
The slander conviction was based on statements Knox made to police in November 2007 when she was being questioned about the slaying of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in the house they shared in Perugia.
Knox says she was coerced into making false statements blaming the slaying on bar owner Patrick Lumumba.
"The interrogation took place in a language I barely spoke, without a lawyer present, and without the police informing me that I was a suspect in Meredith's murder, which was a violation of my human rights," Knox said in a statement released Monday as the appeal was filed.
Knox was convicted of slander at her first trial in December 2009. That conviction was upheld during the appeal that resulted in her 2011 murder acquittal.
Knox has returned to Seattle, where she is a student at the University of Washington. She is not attending the third trial being held in an appeals court in Florence.
The European Court for Human Rights is an international court in Strasbourg, France, that oversees the European Convention on Human Rights. |
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Supreme Court Will Take up New Health Law Dispute
Law Firm Press |
2013/11/29 10:22
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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.
The justices said they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.
The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.
The other case is an appeal from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets. Lower courts rejected the company's claims.
The court said the cases will be combined for arguments, probably in late March. A decision should come by late June.
The cases center on a provision of the health care law that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide a range of preventive health benefits, including contraception.
In both instances, the Christian families that own the companies say that insuring some forms of contraception violates their religious beliefs.
The key issue is whether profit-making corporations can assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment provision guaranteeing Americans the right to believe and worship as they choose. Nearly four years ago, the justices expanded the concept of corporate "personhood," saying in the Citizens United case that corporations have the right to participate in the political process the same way that individuals do.
"The government has no business forcing citizens to choose between making a living and living free," said David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian public interest law firm that is representing Conestoga Wood at the Supreme Court.
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Wash. court says gun limits OK before conviction
Law Firm Press |
2013/11/25 15:04
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Washington's high court upheld a state law Thursday that prohibits some suspects in serious criminal cases from possessing a firearm before they have been found guilty of a crime.
The state Supreme Court said in a 5-4 ruling that the law did not violate the Second Amendment rights of a man who was eventually convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm.
Justices in the majority opinion wrote the law is limited in scope and duration.
"The State has an important interest in restricting potentially dangerous persons from using firearms," Justice Steven Gonzalez wrote in the majority opinion.
The law prohibits people from having a firearm if they have been released on bond after a judge found probable cause to believe the person has committed a serious offense.
The case was brought to the Supreme Court by Roy Steven Jorgenson, who authorities said was found with two guns in his car while he was free on bond after a judge had found probable cause to believe Jorgenson had shot someone.
In one of the dissenting opinions, Justice Charles Wiggins wrote that the Legislature may reasonably regulate the right to bear arms. But he said those regulations must comport with due process. |
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Spanish court sentences 'Robin Hood' mayor
Legal News Feed |
2013/11/25 15:04
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A Spanish court has sentenced a town mayor and four others to seven months in prison for occupying unused military land they wanted to be loaned to farmers hard hit by the economic crisis.
The regional court of southern Andalusia on Thursday convicted Marinaleda town mayor Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo and the others of serious disobedience for ignoring warnings to leave the "Las Turquillas" ranch land they occupied during the summer of 2012.
Sanchez Gordillo has staged several activities to highlight the plight of Spain's near 6 million unemployed, including "Robin Hood"-style supermarket lootings in 2012 to aid the poor.
His town boasts full employment thanks to its farm cooperatives.
Defendants given sentences of less than two years in Spain are generally not imprisoned unless they have previous convictions.
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