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Court weighs warrantless blood tests in DUI cases
Headline News |
2013/01/10 03:46
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The Supreme Court is considering whether police must get a warrant before ordering a blood test on an unwilling drunken-driving suspect.
The justices heard arguments Wednesday in a case involving a disputed blood test from Missouri. Police stopped a speeding, swerving car and the driver, who had two previous drunken-driving convictions, refused to submit to a breath test to measure the alcohol level in his body.
The justices appeared to struggle with whether the dissipation of alcohol in the blood over time is reason enough for police to call for a blood test without first getting a warrant.
In siding with defendant Tyler McNeely, the Missouri Supreme Court said police need a warrant to take a suspect's blood except when a delay could threaten a life or destroy potential evidence. |
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Ohio schools officer to plead guilty to sex charge
Headline News |
2012/12/27 09:17
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A former Ohio school resource police officer is pleading guilty to a charge that he coerced sexual behavior from minors.
A federal judge had called Todd Smith's alleged actions "violence of the worst sort" earlier this year after listening to a prosecutor and FBI agent read sexually graphic text messages Smith exchanged with two 15-year-old girls at a Columbus high school.
Smith's attorney Sam Shamansky said Wednesday that Smith will plead guilty to one count of using a cell phone to entice two underage minors to engage in sexual activity.
Columbus federal judge Algenon Marbley has not set a court date for Smith's plea hearing. |
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Minn. gay couple in '71 marriage case still united
Headline News |
2012/12/10 23:04
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When Jack Baker proposed to Michael McConnell that they join their lives together as a couple, in March 1967, McConnell accepted with a condition that was utterly radical for its time: that someday they would legally marry.
Just a few years later, the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door on the men's Minnesota lawsuit to be the first same-sex couple to legally marry in the U.S. It took another 40 years for the nation's highest court to revisit gay marriage rights, and Baker and McConnell — still together, still living in Minneapolis — are alive to see it.
On Friday, the justices decided to take a potentially historic look at gay marriage by agreeing to hear two cases that challenge official discrimination against gay Americans either by forbidding them from marrying or denying those who can marry legally the right to obtain federal benefits that are available to heterosexual married couples.
"The outcome was never in doubt because the conclusion was intuitively obvious to a first-year law student," Baker wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The couple, who have kept a low profile in the years since they made national headlines with their marriage pursuit, declined an interview request but responded to a few questions via email.
While Baker saw the court's action as an obvious step, marriage between two men was nearly unthinkable to most Americans decades earlier when the couple walked into the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis on May 18, 1970, and tried to get a license. |
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Supreme Court says government can be liable for floods
Headline News |
2012/12/04 17:21
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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the federal government is not automatically exempt from paying for damage caused by temporary flooding from government-owned dams. The court sided with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in its appeal of a lower court ruling that said the federal government did not have to pay for damage to thousands of trees after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released more water than usual from its dam on the Black River. The release of additional water benefitted farmers, but the commission said its hardwood forest suffered significant damage. The commission said the damage amounted to the government taking its property, for which compensation would be owed under the Constitution. The Court of Federal Claims agreed and ordered the government to pay $5.6 million for destroyed and damaged trees. But the U.S Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington said damage resulting from temporary, as opposed to permanent or inevitable, flooding cannot be compensated under the Constitution's Takings Clause. |
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Lawyers: Colo shooting suspect can't go to hearing
Headline News |
2012/11/15 21:22
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A court hearing for the man charged with the Colorado movie theater killings has been postponed after his attorneys said Wednesday that he had been taken to a hospital for unspecified reasons.
Court documents filed Wednesday gave no details of James E. Holmes' condition, other than that it "renders him unable to be present in court for hearing." The hearing had been scheduled to discuss pretrial motions and media requests for information under state open records laws.
At a hearing Wednesday on defense attorneys' request to delay the court date, defense attorney Tamara Brady said Holmes was taken to a hospital Tuesday. She didn't say where or offer details on why, saying attorneys don't want to disclose privileged medical or psychiatric information.
"It's not as simple as a migraine, and it's not something that will resolve by tomorrow morning," she said.
Arapahoe County District Judge William B. Sylvester said that was sufficient information for him and postponed the Thursday hearing until Dec. 10.
Prosecutor Rich Orman had objected, saying the defense should be required to give information on Holmes' condition first. |
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Pa. high court fast tracks juvenile lifer appeals
Headline News |
2012/08/10 19:54
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Pennsylvania's highest court is moving quickly to determine how to respond to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles aren't constitutional.
The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, has said Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of juvenile lifers.
The state Supreme Court scheduled oral argument for Sept. 13 in a pair of cases that will determine what to do about the hundreds of people serving such sentences, as well as how to handle the issue going forward.
The 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision issued June 25 still makes it possible for juveniles to get life, but it can't be automatic.
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections says 373 lifers were under age 18 at the time they were sentenced. |
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