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Supreme Court limits warrantless vehicle searches
Legal Blog News |
2009/04/22 09:33
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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police need a warrant to search the vehicle of someone they have arrested if the person is locked up in a patrol cruiser and poses no safety threat to officers.
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The court's 5-4 decision puts new limits on the ability of police to search a vehicle immediately after the arrest of a suspect./ppJustice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion that warrantless searches still may be conducted if a car's passenger compartment is within reach of a suspect who has been removed from the vehicle or there is reason to believe evidence of a crime will be found./ppWhen these justifications are absent, a search of an arrestee's vehicle will be unreasonable unless police obtain a warrant, Stevens said./ppJustice Samuel Alito, in dissent, complained that the decision upsets police practice that has developed since the court first authorized warrantless searches immediately following an arrest./ppThere are cases in which it is unclear whether an arrestee could retrieve a weapon or evidence, Alito said./p |
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US Supreme Court to rule on animal cruelty law
Topics in Legal News |
2009/04/21 09:32
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The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether a federal law that makes it a crime to sell videos of animals being tortured or killed violates constitutional free-speech rights.
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The high court agreed to hear a U.S. Justice Department appeal defending the 1999 animal cruelty law after it was struck down for infringing free-speech protections./pspan id=midArticle_4/spanpA U.S. appeals court declared the law unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of a Virginia man, Robert Stevens, who sold three videos of pit bulls fighting each other and attacking hogs and wild boars./pspan id=midArticle_5/spanpHis conviction in 2005 was the first in the country under the law. Stevens had been sentenced to 37 months in prison./pspan id=midArticle_6/spanpBy a 10-3 vote, the appeals court rejected the government's argument that, for the first time in more than 25 years, there was a new category of speech not covered by constitutional free-speech protections. Usually, videos and other depictions are protected as free speech, even if they show abhorrent conduct./p |
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Court to weigh state's duty to English learners
Law & Court News |
2009/04/20 09:31
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The Supreme Court on Monday takes up an Arizona case that could limit a federal court's power to tell states to spend more money to educate students who aren't proficient in English.
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Arizona state legislators and the state superintendent of public instruction want to be freed from federal court oversight of the state's programs for English learners. They've been ordered by a lower court judge to spend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with rulings in a 17-year-old case./ppParents of students attending southern Arizona's Nogales Unified School District sued the state in 1992, contending programs for English-language learners in Nogales were deficient and received inadequate funding from the state./ppIn 2000, a federal judge found that the state had violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act's requirements for appropriate instruction for English-language learners. He ordered state legislators to create a plan to provide sufficient funds and placed the state's programs for non-English speaking students under court oversight./ppSince then, the two sides have fought over what constitutes compliance with the order. Arizona has more than doubled the amount that schools receive per non-English speaking student and taken several other steps prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act, a broader education accountability law passed by Congress in 2002./ppPlaintiffs say that's not enough to comply with federal law and a judge agreed. But the state appealed, and now the high court will answer the question./p |
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Davis Polk Recruits Ex-SEC Aide
Law & Court News |
2009/04/13 09:30
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pLaw firm Davis Polk amp; Wardwell recruited the Securities and Exchange Commission's former enforcement chief and another former high-level government lawyer to join its white-collar defense group, part of an effort to expand its Washington practice.
Linda Chatman Thomsen, who left the SEC earlier this year, and Raul Yanes, former staff secretary to President George W. Bush, are joining the law firm as partners./ppBoth had worked at Davis Polk in New York before joining the government./ppThe duo will be the first litigators in the 11-person Washington office in years./ppFormer SEC Commissioner Annette Nazareth and Robert Colby, a former deputy director of the SEC's trading and markets division, also recently joined the firm's Washington office to focus on financial regulatory issues./ppDavis Polk clients, including large financial institutions, are closely entangled with the government as it has pumped billions of dollars into financial rescue plans. Congress is studying new regulation of financial markets./p |
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Man jailed for dodging child support for 14 kids
Attorney Blog News |
2009/04/12 09:31
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Authorities in Michigan say a man fathered 14 children with 13 different women and owes more than $530,000 in unpaid child support.
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The Flint Journal reports 42-year-old Thomas Frazier was jailed Thursday. Court records say he hasn't made a support payment in six years./ppThe newspaper says the unemployed man could be held for 90 days if he doesn't pay $27,900./ppFrazier says he thinks he fathered only three of the children and that it's unrealistic for authorities to expect him to pay child support that was $3,000 a month at one point./ppFrazier remains held at the Genesee County Jail. It wasn't immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak for him./p |
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