|
|
|
1st female LGBT federal appeals court nominee to get hearing
Law Firm News |
2021/09/14 10:51
|
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is considering President Joe Biden’s nomination of a Vermont judge who played a role in the state’s passage of the first-in-the-nation civil unions law, a forerunner of same-sex marriage, to become the first openly LGBT woman to serve on any federal circuit court.
At the start of the Tuesday hearing, Democratic U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, called the nomination of Beth Robinson, an associate justice on the Vermont Supreme Court, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit “truly historic.” The court’s territory includes Connecticut, New York and Vermont.
“She’s been hailed as a tireless champion for equal rights and equal justice in the mode of the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Leahy said as he introduced Robinson. “It’s no exaggeration to say that Beth helped Vermont and America more fully realizing the meaning of equality under the law.”
Robinson helped argue the case that led to Vermont’s 2000 civil unions law. She has served on the Vermont Supreme Court since 2011.
She “has built a reputation for her impartiality, and fair application of the law,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, in his introduction. “She treats people with respect and compassion and she understands the duty of the court to provide equitable justice.”
Robinson told the committee that she would be honored to continue her work promoting the rule of law as a judge on the 2nd circuit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Australia’s High Court intervenes in police shooting trial
Law Firm News |
2021/09/12 15:57
|
Australia’s highest court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a police officer using his law enforcement job as a defense against a charge of murdering an Indigenous man.
Constable Zachary Rolfe could become the first police officer to be convicted in Australia of unlawfully killing an Indigenous person.
Rolfe shot Kumanjayi Walker three times in a bedroom of his family home in the central Australian Indigenous township of Yuendumu during an attempted arrest on Nov. 9, 2019.
Walker had stabbed Rolfe with a pair of scissors during a struggle. The murder charge relates to the second and third shots that killed the 19-year-old and that prosecutors allege were unnecessary.
Three High Court judges on Friday agreed to hear a challenge by prosecutors to the Northern Territory Supreme Court’s interpretation of defenses available to Rolfe.
Five Supreme Court judges found that Rolfe could claim immunity from criminal liability under a law that protects police officers acting “in good faith in the performance or purported performance” of law enforcement duties.
The judges ruled that a jury should decide whether Rolfe’s actions fitted the criteria of the immunity clause.
But prosecutors had argued that that defense should not be available to Rolfe.
Body-cam footage allegedly recorded Rolfe explain that he fired the fatal shots to prevent his partner Constable Adam Eberl from being stabbed.
Prosecutors argued that because Rolfe was protecting Eberl, he was no longer trying to arrest Walker and was therefore not indemnified by the Northern Territory Police Administration Act.
Prosecutor Philip Strickland told the three High Court judges on Friday that if their court did not decide the indemnity question, Rolfe could be acquitted on an incorrect interpretation of the law.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Court rules Catholic school wrongfully fired gay substitute
Law Firm News |
2021/09/06 14:38
|
A gay substitute teacher was wrongfully fired by a Roman Catholic school in North Carolina after he announced in 2014 on social media that he was going to marry his longtime partner, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn ruled Friday that Charlotte Catholic High School and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Charlotte violated Lonnie Billard’s federal protections against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Cogburn granted summary judgment to Billard and said a trial must still be held to determine appropriate relief for him.
“After all this time, I have a sense of relief and a sense of vindication. I wish I could have remained to teach all this time,” Billard said in a statement released Friday by the ACLU, which represented him in court. “Today’s decision validates that I did nothing wrong by being a gay man.”
Billard taught English and drama full-time at the school for more than a decade, earning its Teacher of the Year award in 2012. He then transitioned to a role as a regular substitute teacher, typically working more than a dozen weeks per year, according to his 2017 lawsuit.
He posted about his upcoming wedding in October 2014 and was informed by an assistant principal several weeks later that he no longer had a job with the school, according to the ruling.
The defendants said that they fired Billard not because he was gay, but rather because “he engaged in ‘advocacy’ that went against the Catholic Church’s beliefs” when he publicly announced he was marrying another man, the ruling said.
But Cogburn ruled that the school’s action didn’t fit into exemptions to labor law that give religious institutions leeway to require certain employees to adhere to religious teachings, nor was the school’s action protected by constitutional rights to religious freedom.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Maryland’s highest court reviewing teen sniper’s life term
Law Firm News |
2021/08/29 11:04
|
Maryland’s highest court has agreed to take up the case of Lee Boyd Malvo, who is serving life in prison for his role in the 2002 sniper spree that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region.
Malvo’s lawyers argue that his punishment goes against a 2012 Supreme Court ruling barring mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders and Malvo should benefit from Maryland’s new law enabling prisoners convicted as juveniles to seek release once they’ve served at least 20 years.
The state Court of Appeals granted a “bypass” review in Malvo’s case and that of two others serving life sentences for crimes committed as youths, news outlets report. The order issued Wednesday scheduled oral arguments to begin in January.
Malvo was 17 when he and John Allen Muhammad embarked on a killing spree that left 10 people dead and three wounded in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Others were killed as the pair made their way to the D.C. region from Washington state. Muhammad was executed in 2009.
Malvo has claimed that the six life-without-parole terms he received in Maryland are illegal in light of U.S. Supreme Court decisions saying mandatory life-without-parole sentences are unconstitutional for juveniles except in rare cases.
His case may have new standing after Maryland’s General Assembly abolished life without parole for youths, overriding a veto by Gov. Larry Hogan. Virginia passed similar legislation last year. That change prompted Malvo to drop a legal appeal that had gone to the Supreme Court to determine if his life sentence should be rescinded.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bankruptcy proceedings can have long-term benefits
Law Firm News |
2021/07/22 11:18
|
Chicago Bankruptcy Law Firm Covers Bankruptcy in the Wake of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has damaged the economy, leaving many families and business owners worried about how they will pay for even the most basic expenses. In the midst of this crisis, you might be considering filing for bankruptcy or wondering how COVID-19 will affect an existing bankruptcy filing.
No matter your situation, the Chicago Bankruptcy Law Firm of Daniel J. Winter is here to help give you the answers and assistance that you need. We are more than happy to explain to anyone in financial distress exactly what their options are.
What Is Bankruptcy?
Bankruptcy is a Federal system of laws, rules, and procedures designed to help legal residents of the U.S. deal with their debts, which, for whatever reason, individuals or businesses cannot pay as they are due. The most common types of Bankruptcy are for people (called Consumer Bankruptcies).
Two major types of Consumer Bankruptcy are Chapter 7 (liquidation or debt elimination), Chapter 13 (wage-earner reorganization for individuals or people running unincorporated businesses).
Chapter 11 is a type of Corporate Bankruptcy (reorganization for businesses and certain individuals with extremely large amounts of debt). Chapter number refers to the section of the Bankruptcy law, called the Bankruptcy Code (which is in Title 11 of the U.S. Code).
Bankruptcy cases almost exclusively fall under federal law, though states may pass laws governing issues that federal law doesn’t address. Special bankruptcy courts nationwide handle only debtor-creditor cases. Generally, any bankruptcy-related claim must be filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
US government executes man convicted of killing Texas teen
Law Firm News |
2020/11/20 00:46
|
Orlando Hall got stiffed on a drug deal and went to a Texas apartment looking for the two brothers who took his money. They weren’t home, but their 16-year-old sister was.
Late Thursday, Hall was put to death for abducting and killing the teenager, Lisa Rene. His was the eighth federal execution this year since the Trump administration revived a process that had been used just three times in the past 56 years. A judge’s stay over concerns about the execution drug gave Hall a reprieve, but for less than six hours. After the Supreme Court overturned the stay, he was put to death just before midnight.
Hall, a changed man in prison according to his lawyers and a church volunteer who had grown close to him, was consoling his family and supporters at the end. “I’m OK,” he said in a final statement, then adding, “Take care of yourselves. Tell my kids I love them.”
As the drug was administered, Hall, 49, lifted his head, appeared to wince briefly and twitched his feet. He appeared to mumble to himself and twice he opened his mouth wide, as if he was yawning. Each time that was followed by short, seemingly labored, breaths. He then stopped breathing. Soon after, an official with a stethoscope came into the execution chamber to check for a heartbeat before Hall was officially declared dead.
Hall’s attorneys also had sought to halt the execution over concerns that Hall, who was Black, was sentenced on the recommendation of an all-white jury. The Congressional Black Caucus asked Attorney General William Barr to stop it because the coronavirus “will make any scheduled execution a tinderbox for further outbreaks and exacerbate concerns over the possibility of miscarriage of justice,” according to a letter to Barr.
Meanwhile, another judge ruled Thursday that the U.S. government must delay until next year the first execution of a female federal inmate in almost six decades after her attorneys contracted the coronavirus visiting her in prison. Lisa Montgomery had been scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 8.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Legal News RSS Feed
