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Fed appeals panel upholds bar of videotape
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/09/06 16:16
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A federal appeals court says a Mississippi court did not err in barring jurors from seeing a videotape made by a former butcher who had claimed it might have prevented him getting a death sentence.
Gary Carl Simmons Jr. was convicted of capital murder in 1997 in Jackson County and sentenced to death for chopping up the body of a Texas drug dealer and raping the victim's girlfriend.
According to court documents, Simmons made the videotape shortly before his arrest. Simmons claimed in his motion for a new trial that he expressed remorse for his actions. Such a display could have resulted in a different sentence, Simmons contended. |
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Texas voting district maps argued in court
Court Feed News |
2011/09/06 16:16
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Attorneys for minority groups in Texas are criticizing the makeup of four new congressional seats.
The state is getting the new seats because of mostly Hispanic population growth. But in opening statements Tuesday, attorneys argued that the new map illegally dilutes minority voting strength and that the new districts do not fairly reflect the demographics of the new population.
The GOP-drawn congressional and legislative maps are the subject of a trial before a three-judge panel in San Antonio.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office serves as the state's attorney, contends the map maintains or increases the ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice in each district. |
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Ex-Va attorney convicted in law firm embezzlement
Legal Career News |
2011/09/06 10:17
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A former attorney has been convicted of embezzling at least $450,000 from the law firm where she worked.
Henrico County Circuit Judge L.A. Harris Jr. on Friday found Kyle C. Leftwich guilty of eight counts of embezzlement in a scheme to divert funds from Marks & Harrison's accounts between 2004 and 2008. She could face up to 160 years in prison when she's sentenced in November.
Evidence showed that Leftwich endorsed Social Security checks made out to her for representing disabled clients. But she deposited the money elsewhere than into the firm's account and rigged firm ledgers to cover her actions.
Leftwich was fired in June 2010 and lost her law license a short time later. She repaid $450,000 to Marks & Harrison as part of a civil settlement. |
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Court convicts Serb general for Balkan atrocities
Court Feed News |
2011/09/05 16:04
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The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal sentenced the former chief of the Yugoslav army to 27 years imprisonment Tuesday for providing crucial military aid to Bosnian Serb forces responsible for the Srebrenica massacre and for a deadly four-year campaign of shelling and sniping in Sarajevo.
The case against Gen. Momcilo Perisic was the first time the U.N. court convicted a civilian or military officer from Yugoslavia of war crimes in Bosnia, and underscored the Yugoslav army's far-reaching support for Serb rebels in both Bosnia and Croatia who committed the worst atrocities of the Balkan conflicts in the early 1990s.
The link between the disintegrating Yugoslav federation and Serb forces in the breakaway republics has been a matter of dispute and was the keystone of the trial in The Hague of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But that trial ended without a conclusion when Milosevic died in his cell in 2006 of a heart attack.
The former Yugoslavia is now divided up into independent states that include Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia. |
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Ex-Pa. House speaker pleads guilty to corruption
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/09/04 16:21
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The onetime speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives pleaded guilty Wednesday to eight criminal charges stemming from a public corruption investigation, making him the highest-ranking state politician to be convicted in the four-and-a-half-year inquiry. Ex-Rep. John M. Perzel entered the plea to two counts of conflict of interest, two counts of theft and four counts of conspiracy. He left the courthouse without commenting, but apologized in an e-mailed statement and said he bore responsibility for improprieties in spending public funds he controlled. "It was up to me to see that taxpayer funds were spent only for the betterment of the people of Pennsylvania, and not for my political benefit (or) that of my party," Perzel said in the news release. Prosecutors have described Perzel, 61, as being at the center of a scheme to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on computer technology for the benefit of GOP political campaigns. Also Wednesday, his nephew and co-defendant Eric S. Ruth, 36, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and conflict of interest. Ruth once worked in the House Republican technology office. |
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Firm gets Iowa sports rights to 2026
Legal Career News |
2011/09/02 18:02
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The University of Iowa athletics department has quietly given the company managing its sports marketing efforts a contract extension through 2026 and the right to sell the name of its basketball court in exchange for guaranteed payments totaling $114 million, contract documents show.
Missouri-based Learfield Communications Inc. beat out several other firms in a competitive bidding process in 2006 for a 10-year contract to exclusively broadcast Iowa athletic events on the radio, negotiate corporate sponsorship agreements and generate other advertising and marketing income. Iowa was guaranteed $55.1 million under that deal.
But in a move that escaped public scrutiny, Iowa agreed in November 2009 to extend the contract by 10 years while giving Learfield the ability to sell the naming rights to the court of Carver-Hawkeye Arena and the Outdoor Club at Kinnick Stadium, according to records released to The Associated Press. Mediacom, the cable television and Internet provider, earlier this year secured the naming rights to both spaces for terms that have not been released.
Long-term agreements and contract extensions are common in college sports marketing, but the length of Iowa’s deal seems unusual even by those standards. Indiana, for instance, and Learfield announced this year they reached a 10-year extension through 2021. Wisconsin won approval in 2007 from its governing board for a deal with Learfield through 2019.
Sports marketing has also come under fresh scrutiny in Iowa.
Iowa and Iowa State were heavily criticized over the new Cy-Hawk football rivalry trophy that depicted a farm family gathered around a basket of corn. It was designed under a sponsorship agreement with the Iowa Corn Growers Association, and then scrapped after a backlash from fans.
Iowa last week renewed a partnership with the Iowa Lottery for a football-themed promotion involving a $2 scratch ticket despite criticism from some faculty members and NCAA guidelines discouraging gambling ads. And the Iowa Farm Bureau last month reached a wide-ranging, five-year marketing and licensing agreement with Iowa to promote the “America Needs Farmers” brand at a time when its president also leads Iowa’s governing board.
Iowa has refused to release the terms of those agreements as well as the naming rights deal with Mediacom, arguing they are not subject to public records law because they are between sponsors and Learfield even though the school sets the guidelines for sponsorships. |
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