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Supreme Court takes up special education case
Court Feed News |
2009/04/28 14:47
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The Supreme Court is again trying to decide when taxpayers must foot the bill for private schooling for special education students.
The court will hear arguments Tuesday in an Oregon case in which a local school district contends that students should at least give public special education programs a try before seeking reimbursement for private school tuition.
A federal appeals court sided with a high-school student identified in court papers only as T.A. The student enrolled in a $5,200-a-month private program and sought reimbursement from the Forest Grove School District. The Supreme Court heard a similar case from New York in 2007, but split 4-4 on the outcome. The case is Forest Grove School District v. T.A., 08-305. |
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Court refuses appeal from reputed drug kingpin
Court Feed News |
2009/04/27 15:36
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A reputed cocaine kingpin has lost his fight to reduce his 195-year prison term.
The Supreme Court, acting Monday, rejected an appeal from Salvador Magluta, who was convicted of laundering at least $730,000 in drug money and bribing a juror at an earlier trial. The federal appeals court in Atlanta threw out the bribery count, but otherwise upheld the lengthy sentence.
Magluta asked the high court to take his case to consider whether the government should have been barred from trying him again after a jury acquitted him in 1996 of charges based on the same conduct. He also disputed the sentence's length since the judge acknowledged he took into account money laundering charges on which the jury found Magluta not guilty. |
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LA judge rules fraud in suits against Dole
Court Feed News |
2009/04/24 16:44
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A California judge on Thursday dismissed two lawsuits by purported Nicaraguan banana plantation workers against U.S. food giant Dole and other companies on grounds of fraud and attempted extortion.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney ruled after hearing three days of testimony that detailed a scheme to recruit men who would claim they were rendered sterile by exposure to a pesticide in the 1970s.
Witnesses and investigators told of being in fear for their lives for exposing the fraud. The judge denounced the lawyers who hatched the scheme and said there was a group of corrupt Nicaraguan judges "devouring bribes" to make judgments and aid the scheme. The lawsuits ended up in the California court seeking enforcement of extravagant damages determined by Nicaraguan judges. |
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2 men sue priest who pleaded guilty to raping them
Court Feed News |
2009/04/22 15:37
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Two upstate New York men have filed a $10 million lawsuit against a Catholic priest who pleaded guilty to raping them.
The men say in court papers filed Monday in New York City that the Rev. Frank Genevive abused them between 1978 and 1987, when they were teens.
The Associated Press doesn't normally name rape victims. But Mark Lyman of Stillwater and David Landfear of Cohoes asked to be identified. They say the abuse included oral sex and sodomy. The 53-year-old Genevive and his Franciscan supervisors are named as defendants. Genevive and Franciscan Superior Robert Campagna didn't reply Tuesday to messages seeking comment. In July 2008, Genevive pleaded guilty in Boston to raping Lyman, Landfear and others. He received a suspended sentence. |
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Supermarket mogul guilty of bribery, racketeering, soliciting murder
Court Feed News |
2009/04/21 15:48
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George Torres, a feisty entrepreneur who built a multimillion-dollar grocery store chain by catering to some of Los Angeles' poorest communities, was convicted of racketeering, solicitation of murder, bribery and other crimes Monday by a federal court jury.
Torres, who faces potential life imprisonment as a result of the verdict, showed no emotion when it was read. Friends and family, however, burst into tears and embraced one another outside the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson.
The verdict represents a major victory for federal authorities who charged Torres last year with running a criminal enterprise, or so-called shadow organization, to ensure the success of his Numero Uno market chain.
Prosecutors' portrayal of Torres differed starkly from the 52-year-old's public persona as a successful businessman and influential political donor.
According to prosecutors, Torres hired undocumented workers at his stores, bribed a Los Angeles city planning commissioner and sought to have people killed.
In one such instance, jurors concluded that Torres arranged for the murder of a local gang member who tried to shake him down for protection money. Jose "Shorty" Maldonado was fatally shot and his pregnant girlfriend was wounded as they walked across the street from Torres' main market on Jefferson Boulevard in 1994.
A former associate of Torres' testified that he was present when Torres solicited the killing, and another witness admitted driving the car from which the shots were fired.
The jury acquitted Torres of arranging the killing of his onetime confidant Ignacio "Nacho" Meza, who mysteriously disappeared in 1998 after supposedly stealing half a million dollars from Torres. Another slaying charge Torres faced was dropped by the judge during the trial.
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Court turns down challenge to jury's use of Bible
Court Feed News |
2009/04/21 10:48
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The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge from a death row inmate in Texas who claimed his constitutional rights were violated by jurors who consulted a Bible during deliberations.
Jurors reviewed a biblical passage relating that a murderer who used an iron object to kill "shall surely be put to death." They were deciding whether to impose a death sentence on Khristian Oliver for fatally shooting and bludgeoning his victim with the barrel of a gun.
The court previously has said that jurors should base their verdicts only on evidence presented in the courtroom. But state and federal courts upheld Oliver's sentence, despite testimony that some jurors consulted the passage that described a killing similar to the one Oliver committed. |
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