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NY motorist pleads not guilty in fatal Amish crash
Court Watch |
2011/10/14 09:26
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A motorist arrested after a wreck that killed six Amish farmers in rural upstate New York pleaded not guilty Friday to aggravated vehicular homicide and manslaughter charges.
Steven Eldridge entered his plea in Penn Yan, his hometown in the Finger Lakes region. The former garbage collector didn't speak during his arraignment in Yates County Court.
The 42-year-old Eldridge also was arraigned on a charge of driving while impaired by drugs, a misdemeanor.
No relatives of the victims or the seven Amish injured in the crash appeared during Eldridge's 15-minute court appearance.
Authorities said his car sideswiped a van carrying 13 Amish farmers from neighboring Steuben County on a Finger Lakes tour on July 19. The Amish van careened into a slow-moving tractor traveling a country road in Benton, 45 miles southeast of Rochester.
Five farmers were killed, and a sixth later died of her injuries.
Police say Eldridge was driving in the town of Benton when he passed the tractor on a curve and ran into a van carrying 15 people, 13 of them Amish who were visiting local farms. Rescuers struggled for hours to free victims from the wreckage lodged under the tractor. |
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No class-action status in Countrywide case
Court Watch |
2011/10/14 09:26
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A federal judge in Kentucky has rejected class-action status in a lawsuit accusing Countrywide Bank of charging African-American and Hispanic borrowers more for home loans than Caucasian borrowers.
U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II on Thursday ruled that Countrywide's policy put a great deal of discretion in the hands of individual loan officers, leaving too many variables at play to conclude that even unconscious discriminatory motive or thought similarly animated thousands of mortgage rate decisions.
However, the idea that thousands of loan officers in hundreds of separate locations around the country would exercise their discretion in a similarly discriminatory fashion as to each purported class member defies belief, Heyburn wrote. Whether an individual loan officer or a single office did so, might be a different question.
A dozen people sued Countrywide, which is now owned by Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, in 2008, claiming they and others were treated differently from other customers looking for a home loan between 2005 and 2007. |
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High court to decide double jeopardy question
Court Watch |
2011/10/11 09:31
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The Supreme Court will decide whether a jury forewoman's offhand comment that the jury was unable to make a decision on a murder charge means the suspect can't be retried on that charge.
The high court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from Alex Blueford, whose murder trial in Arkansas ended in a hung jury.
The jury forewoman told the judge before he declared a mistrial that the jury had voted unanimously against capital murder and first-degree murder. The jury had deadlocked on a lesser charge, manslaughter, which caused the judge to declare a mistrial.
Blueford argued the forewoman's statement, said in open court, meant that he has been acquitted of capital murder and first-degree murder.
Prosecutors decided to retry Blueford on all three charges. He contended he could not be retried on capital murder and first-degree murder because of Fifth Amendment double jeopardy protections.
Arkansas courts have disagreed. The high court will now review that decision.
Blueford was on trial for killing his girlfriend's 20-month-old son. |
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Utah bank sued over overdraft fees, policies
Court Watch |
2011/10/11 02:30
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Zions Bank's overdraft policies and practices are being challenged in a Utah federal class action lawsuit.
Filed this week in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court, the lawsuit contends the bank makes it difficult - if not impossible - for customers to avoid fees, even if they closely monitor accounts.
The Deseret News of Salt Lake City reports the lawsuit was filed by three law firms on behalf of a Sandy woman and other Zions customers charged overdraft fees between 2005 and 2010.
In court papers, attorneys say Zions manipulated and altered the order in which debit transactions were posted in order to maximize the number of overdrafts.
Based in Salt Lake City, Zions has branches in 10 states. A spokeswoman says the company doesn't comment on pending lawsuits. |
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Mass. man charged in terror plot pleads not guilty
Court Watch |
2011/10/03 11:04
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| pA man accused of plotting to fly explosives-packed remote-controlled model planes into the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol pleaded not guilty Monday./ppThe bail hearing that had been scheduled for Rezwan Ferdaus, of Ashland, was delayed for several weeks because his lawyer, Catherine Byrne, asked for more time to prepare./ppAuthorities said Ferdaus, a 26-year-old Muslim American with a physics degree from Northeastern University, was arrested in Framingham last week after federal agents posing as al-Qaida members delivered what he believed was 24 pounds of C-4 explosive. They said the public was never in danger from the plot./ppByrne said the case was orchestrated and facilitated by the government./ppWe have asked for a continuance for additional time in order to prepare and to further investigate so that we can present a more complete picture of what happened, she told reporters as she left the federal courthouse Monday./ppThe arrest was the latest in a string of terror arrests to emerge from similar sting operations. A federal affidavit says Ferdaus began planning jihad, or holy war, against the U.S. in early 2010 after becoming convinced through jihadi websites and videos that America was evil./p |
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Appeals court hears challenge to health care law
Court Watch |
2011/09/26 09:34
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A conservative-leaning panel of federal appellate judges raised concerns about President Barack Obama's health care overhaul Friday, but suggested the challenge to it may be premature.
The arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington over a lawsuit against Obama's signature domestic legislative achievement focused on whether Congress overstepped its authority in requiring people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty on their taxes, beginning in 2014.
But Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former top aide to President George W. Bush who appointed him to the bench, said that he has a major concern that courts might not be able to rule on the law's constitutionality until 2015. That's because a federal law bars most challenges to tax-related legislation before the tax or penalty is paid.
A federal appeals court in Richmond cited that law in throwing out another challenge to the overhaul. Two other appeals courts have reached differing conclusions — one declaring the law unconstitutional and the other upholding it. The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in and could possibly even decide to review the law before the Washington circuit issues an opinion. |
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