|
|
|
2 enter guilty pleas in GOP corruption case
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/17 17:24
|
Two people who worked for former House Speaker John Perzel have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a public corruption investigation of the House Republican Caucus.
Samuel Stokes, a former House employee and brother-in-law to Perzel, pleaded guilty to one count of conflict of interest and one count of criminal conspiracy.
Don McClintock, a former campaign aide to Perzel, entered a guilty plea for one count of criminal conspiracy.
Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.
Stokes and McClintock were facing at least a dozen counts charging them with conflict of interest, theft and conspiracy, but agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants as part of an agreement with the state attorney general's office.
Paul Towhey, Perzel's former chief of staff, was expected to enter a guilty plea on Friday.
Perzel, Rep. Brett Feese, and five other current and former aides were charged in November 2009 after a grand jury found they used taxpayers' funds, employees and resources for political campaign purposes. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Serbia seeks to block execution of citizen in Nev.
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/15 11:05
|
The Serbian government is asking a Nevada court to block the execution of one of its citizens, saying its consulate was not informed of his 1994 arrest as required by international law.
Serbia, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed last week in Washoe County District Court in Reno, maintains the notification would have provided Avram Nika with assistance that could have spared him the death penalty.
Nika, 41, is on death row at Ely State Prison for the 1994 killing of a good Samaritan who stopped to help him along Interstate 80 near Reno. He has yet to exhaust his state and federal appeals.
"(Nika was) particularly vulnerable to the denial of consular assistance due to his inability to speak English and his lack of familiarity with the U.S. legal system and culture," Serbia's brief says.
The failure to notify the consulate caused no mitigating evidence to be presented at his sentencing hearing — such as that he was a hard-working family man who came from poverty and was discriminated against because he was a member of a nomadic ethnic group known as Roma, also called Gypsies, according to the document.
District Attorney Dick Gammick says there was no consulate to contact because the former Yugoslavia where Nika was from was undergoing drastic change at the time. Serbia did not exist as a country then, he said, and other countries in the region came and went. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Appeals court turns down Tymoshenko appeal
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/12 16:13
|
A court in Ukraine on Friday refused to consider an appeal to release former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail, where she has been kept for a week while her abuse-of-office trial proceeds.
Tymoshenko was jailed on Aug. 5 for violating court procedures at her trial, including refusing to rise when requested by the judge. She says her resistance is a protest of a trial she contends is politically motivated.
On Friday, the Kiev Appeal Court refused to hear an appeal, saying the country's criminal code does not allow appealing a preventive measure.
Tymoshenko attorney Yuriy Sukhov said that ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Tymoshenko is charged in connection with a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009 that prosecutors claim was disadvantageous to Ukraine.
The United States and the European Union have condemned court cases against Tymoshenko and several of her top allies as selective prosecution of political opponents. Tymoshenko was a key figure in the 2004 Orange Revolution protests that forced annulment of a presidential election purportedly won by Viktor Yanukovych. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Once-exonerated Conn. man ordered back to prison
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/09 12:05
|
A month after the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated murder convictions against two men who had been exonerated, a judge on Monday ordered one of them back to prison but allowed the other to remain free while fighting cancer.
George Gould was sent back to prison while Ronald Taylor, whose lawyer says he has terminal colon cancer, was allowed to remain out on bail. Both men await a new appeal trial connected to their murder convictions in the 1993 fatal shooting of New Haven grocery shop owner Eugenio Deleon Vega.
Gould and Taylor were both sentenced to 80 years in prison for the killing. They filed habeas corpus appeals, challenges to imprisonment that typically come after other appeals fail.
They were freed in April 2010 after 16 years behind bars when Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger ruled they were victims of "manifest injustice" and declared them "actually innocent." Fuger's ruling came after a key prosecution witness recanted her trial testimony. He ordered both men released.
Prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous decision last month saying that Fuger was wrong to overturn the convictions because Gould and Taylor hadn't proven their innocence. The high court ordered a new habeas corpus trial for the two men. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conn. judge dispensing cash to Haiti abuse victims
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/08 15:32
|
Nearly $49,000 seized from a former Connecticut and Colorado resident is being sent to 16 young men he sexually abused at a school for street children he founded in Haiti.
The Connecticut Post reports that U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven has begun dispensing the money seized from the bank and retirement accounts of Douglas Perlitz, who was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison in December for the assaults.
Perlitz, a former resident of Eagle, Colo., and Fairfield County, Conn., admitted he engaged in illicit sexual conduct with boys who attended the Project Pierre Toussaint School in Cap-Haitien.
Federal officials have opened bank accounts with $1,000 for the 16 victims and will be adding $2,000 more to those accounts over the next 14 months. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lawyer pleads guilty to illegal Edwards donations
Lawyer Blog News |
2011/08/05 16:03
|
A prominent Los Angeles attorney could face six months in federal prison for making illegal contributions to the 2004 presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards.
The U.S. attorney's office says Pierce O'Donnell pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of making illegal campaign contributions and agreed to a six-month sentence and a $20,000 fine. O'Donnell is set to be sentenced in November.
In a statement, O'Donnell's attorney Brian J. O'Neill says he and O'Donnell are pleased with the resolution.
O'Donnell acknowledged he provided some $20,000 to Edwards' campaign for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination by reimbursing straw donors.
In 2006, O'Donnell was ordered to pay more than $155,000 after pleading no contest to using a false name while making political contributions to former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn's campaign. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Recent Lawyer News Updates |
|
|
Lawyer News RSS
