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Public defenders file new motion in Demjanjuk case
Court Feed News |
2011/07/22 16:41
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Attorneys for John Demjanjuk want an American court in Cleveland to set aside the ruling that led to his deportation to Germany and his conviction on Nazi war crimes charges. The request for a new hearing on the retired autoworker's denaturalization could bring the decades-old case back to the United States. Demjanjuk's attorneys charge that the government failed to disclose important evidence, namely a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by The Associated Press that indicates the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing Demjanjuk served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake. "The government has kept these materials hidden from view," according to the motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland. Demjanjuk, 91, was convicted in a German court on May 12 of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, finding that he served as a guard at the Nazi's Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in 1942. The Munich court found he agreed to serve the Nazis as a guard at Sobibor. Demjanjuk denies serving as a guard at any camp and is currently free pending his appeal. He's been in poor health for years and has been in and out of a hospital since his conviction. He currently cannot leave Germany because he has no passport, but he could get a U.S. passport if the denaturalization ruling is overturned. |
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Ex-CEO convicted in scam at auto-chemical company
Court Feed News |
2011/07/20 16:16
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A former corporate executive officer of a New York-based automotive-chemical company was convicted Tuesday in a multimillion-dollar investor fraud scheme that enabled him to buy expensive jewelry and take private jets.
A jury in Manhattan state Supreme Court found Cleveland lawyer James Margulies guilty of charges including grand larceny and scheme to defraud. He faces up to 25 years on the top two counts, which could run consecutively. Bail was set at $1.5 million.
Ira London, an attorney for Margulies, said he planned to file "a very vigorous appeal."
"The jury has spoken. I believe they have convicted an innocent man," he said.
While serving as the company's finance chief — and briefly as CEO — of Industrial Enterprises of America, Inc., from 2004 to 2008, Margulies illegally issued millions of shares of stock to friends and relatives, inflating the share price by making the company look more profitable than it was, prosecutors said.
A teachers' pension fund in Ohio and a church were among the victims of the scheme, prosecutors said.
Margulies personally reaped more than $7 million, spending it on lavish luxuries such as a $350,000 diamond ring for his wife from jeweler Harry Winston, prosecutors said.
He also paid more than a million dollars on the mortgage of his first home, bought a second home and spent $500,000 on a vacation club membership, prosecutors said.
Margulies was charged in the scheme in 2010 along with John D. Mazzuto, who pleaded guilty Jan. 14 to his role in issuing fraudulent shares of stock. |
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Wife of NY pharmacy suspect pleads not guilty
Court Feed News |
2011/07/19 12:54
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A woman accused of driving the getaway car after her husband allegedly massacred four people in a holdup for prescription painkillers pleaded not guilty to an upgraded robbery charge on Tuesday.
Melinda Brady now faces a first-degree robbery charge, which carries up to 25 years in prison if she's convicted. She had previously been charged with third-degree robbery.
The judge ordered her held without bail. She had been jailed on $750,000 bail since she and her husband were arrested last month.
Police said Brady told investigators that she and her husband, David Laffer, plotted the Father's Day robbery in Medford, N.Y., but that she did not know the plan involved killing.
About 20 relatives of the victims watched from the gallery of the crowded courtroom.
Brady, 29, was arrested on robbery and obstruction charges. She blamed her husband when she was led from police headquarters to a nearby precinct holding cell following her arrest last month. |
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Women guilty of having 80 cats in car
Court Feed News |
2011/07/14 13:39
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Two New York women have pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges after 80 cats were found in two cars in Vermont.
They were arrested last October. At the time police said they were driving from shelter to shelter trying to put some of the cats up for adoption.
Sixty-two-year-old Bertha Ryan and 55-year-old Regina Millard, who are sisters from Troy, N.Y., each pleaded guilty Tuesday in court in Bennington to 13 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to an animal.
The Bennington Banner reports that the two women received 18-month deferred sentences. As part of their sentences, they must undergo mental health treatment and they are forbidden from having animals.
Officials have found homes for most of the cats. Some were euthanized. |
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Domino's sued after Texas deliveryman's death
Court Feed News |
2011/07/14 11:40
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Domino's is being sued by the widow of a Texas employee who died a year after being robbed and beaten with a baseball bat by teens who lured the deliveryman to a vacant house.
The lawsuit alleges the company was negligent in failing to follow safety procedures and seeks "all damages" available under state law to Fred Rein's widow, Jackie, plus exemplary and punitive damages. The suit filed Monday in Tarrant County names as defendants the local franchise and national corporation, including Mark of Excellence Pizza Co., Domino's Pizza and Domino's Pizza Franchising, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
"The purpose of this lawsuit is to ensure that nothing this tragic ever happens to anybody else," said attorney Geno Borchardt, who represents Jackie Rein.
Borchardt said the teens used a prepaid cell phone to place a phony order, and that Domino's had never before delivered pizza to the vacant Fort Worth house. When Rein arrived with the pizzas that night in 2009, he was attacked and suffered brain damage. His death 14 months later was ruled a homicide.
Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre said the company does not comment on lawsuits but is saddened by the loss and sorry for Rein's family.
The three teens were charged as juveniles, but the cases went to court before Rein died. |
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Lawyer defends Nevada truck firm in Amtrak crash
Court Feed News |
2011/07/11 08:47
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A lawyer for the Nevada trucking company whose tractor-trailer slammed into an Amtrak train, killing six people, defended the company’s safety record Thursday and said it was not at fault in two previous accidents cited in state safety records.
John Davis Trucking Co. has been cooperating with local, state and federal investigators and is as anxious as anyone to learn why the driver who died in the June 24 crash ignored flashing lights and crossing gates before skidding the length of a football field into the side of the train, Steven Jaffe of Las Vegas said.
But he said four negligence lawsuits filed against the Battle Mountain company — combined with the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board — has kept the brothers who own the family-run business from sharing information that would help shed more light on the tragedy.
“There’s a lot more than meets the eye,” Jaffe told The Associated Press. “I think when it all comes down to it, the public is going to see a very different John Davis Trucking than was originally put out there.
“I believe the evidence will show their conduct was defensible in all of this,” he said. “I have a great deal of trust in the legal system, and if some day we go in front of a jury, I’m confident it will give us the chance to say that we did everything right.”
Federal records reviewed by the AP show the state Department of Public Safety cited the company for 16 vehicle maintenance violations over the past two years and noted it had been involved in two crashes during that period, including one in February 2010 that injured a person in Washoe County. |
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