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State seeks long prison term for accused NYC subway gunman
Criminal Law Updates |
2023/01/03 19:07
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Prosecutors plan to seek a decades-long prison sentence for a man who is expected to plead guilty this week to opening fire in a subway car and wounding 10 riders in an attack that shocked New York City.
Frank James, 63, is scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court, admitting that he was responsible for the April 12 attack. It set off a massive 30-hour manhunt that ended when he called the police on himself.
Prosecutors told Judge William F. Kuntz II in a letter late last week that they plan to ask him to go beyond the roughly 32-year to 39-year sentence that federal sentencing guidelines would recommend. James planned the attack for years and endangered the lives of dozens of people, prosecutors said in the letter.
Defense attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, when courts were closed to observe the New Year’s holiday.
James had been scheduled to stand trial in late February.
His lawyers informed the judge on Dec. 21 that James wanted to plead guilty. Prosecutors say he plans to plead guilty to 11 charges without a plea agreement.
Ten of those charges — each one corresponding to a specific victim — accuse him of committing a terrorist attack against a mass transportation system carrying passengers and employees.
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Military police enforce driving ban in snow-stricken Buffalo
Business Law Info |
2022/12/27 17:43
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State and military police were sent Tuesday to keep people off Buffalo’s snow-choked roads, and officials kept counting fatalities three days after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations.
Amid some signs of progress — suburban roads reopened and emergency response service was restored — County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned that police would be stationed at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections to enforce a ban on driving within New York’s second-most populous city.
“Too many people are ignoring the ban,” Poloncarz, a Democrat, said at a news conference.
The National Weather Service predicted that as much as 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) more snow could fall Tuesday in Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its 275,000 residents. County Emergency Services Commissioner Dan Neaverth Jr. said officials also were somewhat concerned about the potential for flooding later in the week, when the weather is projected to warm and start melting the snow.
The rest of the United States also was reeling from the ferocious winter storm, with at least an additional two dozen deaths reported in other parts of the country, and power outages in communities from Maine to Washington state.
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North Dakota woman who brought raccoon to bar gets probation
Business Law Info |
2022/12/23 12:43
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A woman who brought a wild raccoon into a bar earlier this year will spend a year on probation.
On Tuesday, Erin Christensen of Maddock, 38, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of providing false information to law enforcement, tampering with evidence and unlawful possession of a live furbearer, reported the Bismarck Tribune.
Northeast District Judge Donovan Foughty gave her a suspended six-month jail sentence and a year on probation. He also ordered her to pay $1,100 in fines and fees.
She faced a maximum sentence of about two years in jail and $7,500 in fines.
According to court documents, Christensen said her family found the raccoon, nicknamed Rocky, on the side of a road and was nursing it back to health when she brought it into the bar on Sept. 6. A bartender said Rocky didn’t got loose nor did he bite anyone but state health officials still issued a warning about potential rabies exposure.
Authorities arrested Christensen on Sept. 14 after serving several search warrants in and around Maddock to find her and the raccoon. According to court documents, she wouldn’t disclose Rocky’s location.
Keeping a wild raccoon as a pet is illegal under state law — as is keeping a bat or skunk because they are known carriers of rabies, according to North Dakota’s Game and Fish website. Authorities ultimately euthanized the racoon, who tested negative for rabies.
Christensen has said Rocky’s fate has left her family traumatized.
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Canada condo killer faced possible eviction before shooting
Criminal Law Updates |
2022/12/21 19:56
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A suburban Toronto man who was killed by police after authorities say he fatally shot five people in his condominium building, including three members of the condo board, had a court hearing scheduled for the next day to determine if the building’s management could evict him.
Francesco Villi, 73, attacked neighbors on three floors of his building on Sunday night, killing three men and two women and wounding a sixth person, a 66-year-old woman who is expected to survive, according to police. One of the officers who responded to a call about an active shooter inside the building in the suburb of Vaughan shot and killed Villi, authorities said.
The attack happened the day before a scheduled online court hearing in which lawyers for the condominium corporation were set to argue that it should be allowed to evict Villi because he had spent years harassing building employees, board members and other neighbors. In court documents, the building’s lawyers said Villi ignored court orders to end the harassment and stop posting online about a longstanding dispute he had with the condo’s management.
Villi long claimed in videos posted on social media and in court documents that vibrations, noises and emissions from the building’s electrical room under his unit were making him sick, and that board members and the building’s developer were to blame.
According to court documents, at least two condominium managers quit because of him, and security guards quit or changed shifts to avoid him. Residents also said Villi would swear at them and film them.
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US trustee, media challenging secrecy in FTX bankruptcy
Employment Law |
2022/12/16 20:49
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Attorneys for the U.S. bankruptcy trustee in Delaware and several major media outlets are challenging an effort by cryptocurrency exchange FTX to withhold names of the company’s customers and creditors from the public.
At a brief hearing Friday, the judge presiding over the FTX bankruptcy granted a motion by media outlets to intervene for the purpose of objecting to the sealing of creditor information.
A separate objection by the U.S. trustee, the government watchdog that oversees Chapter 11 reorganizations, also was on the agenda for Friday’s hearing but was postponed by Judge John Dorsey until Jan. 11, when he likely will also hear arguments from the media.
In a court filing earlier this week, an attorney for Delaware’s acting U.S. trustee noted that “disclosure is a basic premise of bankruptcy law.”
“The debtors simply cannot seek bankruptcy protection and then do business behind a shield of secrecy” Juliet Sarkessian wrote. Sarkessian warned that allowing FTX to shield creditor lists and financial schedules would be a “slippery slope” and create an unfavorable precedent for bankruptcies in which creditors are also customers.
Last month, Dorsey temporarily granted a request by FTX to redact the names and addresses of clients and creditors from court filings, even though such information is typically public. The judge did direct FTX to file an unredacted creditor matrix under seal with the court, but the company has yet to do so.
Lawyers for FTX have argued that its customer list is both a valuable asset and confidential commercial information. They contend that secrecy is needed to protect FTX accounts from potential theft and to ensure that potential competitors do not “poach” FTX customers.
FTX also has sought to withhold the names and addresses of non-customer individual creditors who are citizens of the United Kingdom or European Union nations, citing a consumer protection program known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
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US woman who killed UK teen in crash gets suspended sentence
U.S. Legal News |
2022/12/11 06:16
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An American woman who left the U.K. after killing a teenager in a road accident was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday, though she declined to come to Britain for the court hearing.
Anne Sacoolas, 45, was sentenced over an August 2019 accident in which 19-year-old Harry Dunn was killed when his motorcycle collided with a car outside RAF Croughton, an air base in eastern England that is used by U.S. forces. Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the road at the time.
Sacoolas and her husband, an American intelligence officer, returned to the U.S. days after the accident. The U.S. government invoked diplomatic immunity on her behalf, prompting an outcry in Britain and causing tensions between the governments in London and Washington.
Sacoolas admitted causing death by careless driving, which carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said Sacoolas’ actions were “not far short of deliberately dangerous driving,” but she reduced the penalty because of Sacoolas’ guilty plea and previous good character.
The suspended sentence means that Sacoolas faces jail if she commits another offense within a year — though the judge acknowledged the sentence could not be enforced if she remains in the U.S.
The sentencing follows a three-year campaign by Dunn’s family, who met with politicians on both sides of the Atlantic in a campaign to get Sacoolas to face British justice. American authorities refused to extradite her.
Sacoolas entered a guilty plea in October, but the U.S. administration advised her not to come to Britain for sentencing. She attended the hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court by video link.
Lawyer Ben Cooper said Sacoolas had not asked for the diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf by the U.S. government. He read a statement from Sacoolas in which she said she was “deeply sorry for the pain I have caused.”
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Harry,” the statement said.
The judge said the “calm and dignified persistence” of Dunn’s parents had led Sacoolas to acknowledge guilt and appear before the court.
Dunn’s mother Charlotte Charles said in a victim impact statement that her son’s death “haunts me every minute of every day and I’m not sure how I’m ever going to get over it.”
“As a family we are determined that his death will not have been in vain and we are involved in a number of projects to try to find some silver lining in this tragedy and to help others,” she said. “That will be Harry’s legacy.”
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