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Texas, feds wait turns in polygamist leader cases
Legal Career News |
2010/07/29 15:42
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A Utah Supreme Court decision that overturns polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs' 2007 criminal conviction won't automatically make him a free man. Even if Utah doesn't retry him, Texas and federal prosecutors are waiting to move forward with their own cases. Justices on Tuesday unanimously said Jeffs should get a new trial because state attorneys overreached in their argument that performing the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin amounted to facilitating a rape. Utah officials now have two weeks to seek a rehearing before the state's high court and then a month to decide if they'll retry the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on charges of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice. A judge Wednesday set an Aug. 18 date for a hearing on a motion from Jeffs' defense attorneys seeking a "speedy trial before a jury of his peers." Meanwhile, authorities in Texas are trying to get Jeffs sent there to face charges in connection with his own alleged marriages to underage girls in 2005. A federal indictment stemming from Jeffs' stint as a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list is also pending.
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Federal court reverses TVA emissions ruling
Legal Career News |
2010/07/27 09:49
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A federal appeals court in Virginia has reversed a judge's ruling requiring the nation's largest public utility to promptly install upgraded emission controls at four coal-fired power plants. Three of the Tennessee Valley Authority plants are in Tennessee, and the other is in Alabama. U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg had ordered the accelerated cleanup at the TVA plants, ruling that emissions affecting air quality in North Carolina's scenic western mountains were a "public nuisance." A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned that ruling Monday. Appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote that allowing the ruling to stand would undermine the nation's carefully created regulatory scheme.
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Alaska pair pleads guilty to lying about hit list
Legal Career News |
2010/07/23 09:43
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A National Weather Service employee and his British-born wife pleaded guilty Wednesday to domestic terrorism charges of lying to the FBI about a hit list of possible targets who the couple suspected were enemies of Islam. Paul Rockwood Jr. and his wife, Nadia Rockwood, of King Salmon, Alaska, were charged with lying about the list and making false statements about domestic terrorism during interviews with FBI agents in May. The FBI alleged that the list had about 15 targets. Its contents were not made public, but officials said none of those targeted lived in Alaska. Under a plea deal, Paul Rockwood, 35, who worked as a meteorological technician for the weather service, will get eight years in prison, the maximum allowed. His 36-year-old wife, who is five months pregnant, will be allowed to return to the United Kingdom and serve five years of probation there.
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Madoff trustee seeks $3.6 billion from funds
Legal Career News |
2010/07/22 11:37
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The court-appointed trustee hunting for money to pay investors who lost billions of dollars in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme has sued more than two dozen entities related to a New York-based hedge fund. Trustee Irving Picard filed papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan late Tuesday to recover $3.6 billion that he said can be traced to the Fairfield Greenwich Group, two dozen affiliates and its founding partners. The filing added numerous defendants to a lawsuit that earlier named three Fairfield Greenwich funds. Fairfield Greenwich in a statement said Picard's filing was filled with "false, misleading and rehashed accusations."
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Guilty plea in Arizona photo radar shooting case
Legal Career News |
2010/07/21 13:00
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A Phoenix man accused of fatally shooting the operator of a photo speed-enforcement van has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Maricopa County Superior Court spokeswoman Karen Arra says 69-year-old Thomas Patrick Destories entered the plea Tuesday, stipulating 22 years in prison. Sentencing is Aug. 20. Destories was charged with first-degree murder in the April 19, 2009, shooting of Doug Georgianni, who was operating a speed-enforcement van on a Phoenix freeway. Destories' trial was slated to begin in January, but his attorney requested a psychiatric evaluation, saying Destories has a history of mental illness going back to 1970. Two psychologists examined Destories and found him competent to stand trial.
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Wis. justices uphold ex-Jesuit priest's conviction
Legal Career News |
2010/07/20 12:26
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has upheld a sexual abuse conviction of a former Jesuit priest who claimed he was falsely accused. In a 7-0 ruling on Tuesday, justices ruled that Donald McGuire's prosecution 36 years after he allegedly abused two teenage boys in the 1960s was fair. McGuire, a former spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa and her religious order of nuns, argued the delay hurt his ability to defend himself. Justices disagreed. The men came forward in 2003 to report they were abused by McGuire during trips to a cottage in Fontana, Wis. in 1967 and 1968. At the time, McGuire taught the boys at the Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Ill. McGuire was convicted on five counts of indecent behavior with a child. He is serving a 25-year prison term on separate, federal charges.
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