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Algerian court certifies Tebboune’s landslide reelection win
Law & Court News |
2024/09/14 11:04
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Algeria’s constitutional court on Saturday certified the landslide victory of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in last weekend’s election after retabulating vote counts that he and his two opponents had called into question.
The court said that it had reviewed local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals on Monday.
“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes,” it had lowered Tebboune’s vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, said Omar Belhadj, the constitutional court’s president.
The court’s decision makes Tebboune the official winner of the Sept. 7 election. His government will next decide when to inaugurate him for a second term.
The court’s retabulated figures showed Tebboune leading Islamist challenger Abdellali Hassan Cherif by around 75 percentage points. With 7.7 million votes, the first-term president won 84.3% of the vote, surpassing 2019 win by millions of votes and a double-digit margin.
Cherif, running with the Movement of Society for Peace, won nearly 950,000 votes, or roughly 9.6%. The Socialist Forces Front’s Youcef Aouchiche won more than 580,000 votes, or roughly 6.1%.
Notably, both challengers surpassed the threshold required to receive reimbursement for campaign expenses. Under its election laws, Algeria pays for political campaigns that receive more than a 5% vote share. The results announced by the election authority last week showed Cherif and Aouchiche with 3.2% and 2.2% of the vote, respectively. Both were criticized for participating in an election that government critics denounced as a way for Algeria’s political elite to make a show of democracy amid broader political repression.
Throughout the campaign, each of the three campaigns emphasized participation, calling on voters and youth to participate and defy calls to boycott the ballot. The court announced nationwide turnout was 46.1%, surpassing the 2019 presidential election when 39.9% of the electorate participated.
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A man who attacked a Nevada judge in court pleads guilty but mentally ill
Law & Court News |
2024/09/05 08:14
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A man whose courtroom attack on a judge in Las Vegas was recorded on video has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and other charges.
Deobra Delone Redden ended his trial Thursday after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus testified that she feared for her life when Redden vaulted over her bench and desk and landed on her. The attack happened Jan. 3 as Holthus was about to deliver Redden’s sentence in a separate felony attempted battery case.
Redden’s defense attorney, Carl Arnold, said in a statement Friday that the plea “reflects a delicate balance between accepting responsibility for a regrettable incident and recognizing the impact of Mr. Redden’s untreated mental illness at the time.”
Arnold told jurors who began hearing evidence on Tuesday that Redden had not taken prescribed medication to control his diagnosed schizophrenia. Holthus testified that she felt “defenseless” during the attack and that court officials and attorneys who came to her aid saved her life, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Law clerk Michael Lasso told the jury he saw Holthus’ head hit the floor and Redden grab her hair. “I absolutely thought, ‘He’s going to kill her,’” Lasso testified. He said he wrestled Redden away, punched him to try to subdue him and saw Redden hitting a corrections officer who also intervened.
An armed courtroom marshal suffered a bleeding gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder, according to court officials and witnesses. Holthus was not hospitalized and returned to work after treatment for her injuries. A prosecutor for more than 27 years, she was elected to the state court bench in 2018.
Redden, 31, is already serving prison time for other felony battery convictions. Prosecutor John Giordani said Friday he could face up to 86 years for his pleas to eight felonies, which also included battery of a protected person age 60 or older resulting in substantial bodily harm, intimidating a public officer and battery by a prisoner.
Clark County District Court Judge Susan Johnson ruled that Redden was competent and capable of entering his plea, the Review-Journal reported. Sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 7.
Arnold said in his statement that he will ask Johnson to order mental health treatment for his client behind bars.
Giordani said Redden told three correctional staff members after the attack that he tried to kill Holthus.
“While he clearly has past mental issues, he made a choice that day and failed to control his homicidal impulses,” the prosecutor said. |
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Congolese military court hands down death sentence to leader of rebel coalition
Law & Court News |
2024/08/09 11:04
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A military court in Congo on Thursday sentenced 25 people, including the leader of a rebel coalition, to death after a high-profile televised trial that started late last month.
Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo, or AFC, was found guilty of war crimes, participation in an insurrection and treason. Naanga and 19 other defendants sentenced to death were absent from the trial as they are currently on the run.
“This nauseating judicial saga reinforces our struggle for democratic normality in Congo,” Nangaa told the Associated Press in a text message from an undisclosed location.
The AFC is a political-military movement launched by Nangaa in December with the aim of uniting armed groups, political parties and civil society against Congo’s government. One of its most renown members is the M23, an armed group accused of mass killings in eastern Congo’s decadeslong conflict.
Congo’s president Felix Tshisekedi, along with U.S. and U.N. experts, accuse neighboring Rwanda of giving military backing to M23. Rwanda denies the claim, but in February it effectively admitted that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border.
The court’s decision against Nangaa follows the announcement of a cease-fire between Congo and Rwanda last week following talks mediated by Angola. The cease-fire took effect on Sunday but prospects are slim with previous truces not lasting more than a few weeks and fighting having already resumed near the border with Uganda.
The death sentence against Nangaa might be a way to have more leverage in possible future negotiations with Rwanda or the armed groups themselves, Yvon Muya, a conflict studies researcher at Saint Paul University, said.
The decadeslong conflict in eastern Congo has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with over 100 armed groups fighting in the region, most for land and control of mines with valuable minerals. Some are fighting to try to protect their communities.
Many groups are accused of carrying out mass killings, rapes and other human rights violations. The violence has displaced about 7 million people, including thousands living in temporary camps. Many others are beyond the reach of aid.
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Arkansas court orders state to count signatures collected by volunteers
Law & Court News |
2024/07/27 18:15
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The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday night ordered the state to begin counting signatures submitted in favor of putting an abortion-rights measure on the ballot — but only ones collected by volunteers for the proposal’s campaign.
The one-page order from the majority-conservative court left uncertainty about the future of the proposed ballot measure. Justices stopped short of ruling on whether to allow a lawsuit challenging the state’s rejection of petitions for the measure to go forward.
The court gave the state until 9 a.m. Monday to perform an initial count of the signatures from volunteers.
Election officials on July 10 said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding signature gatherers it hired.
The group disputed that assertion, saying the documents submitted complied with the law and that it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed. Arkansans for Limited Government sued over the rejection, and the state asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit.
Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.
“We are heartened by this outcome, which honors the constitutional rights of Arkansans to participate in direct democracy, the voices of 101,000 Arkansas voters who signed the petition, and the work of hundreds of volunteers across the state who poured themselves into this effort,” the group said in a statement Tuesday night.
Attorney General Tim Griffin said Wednesday morning he was pleased with the order.
“(Arkansans for Limited Government) failed to meet all legal requirements to have the signatures collected by paid canvassers counted, a failure for which they only have themselves to blame,” Griffin said in a statement.
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Supreme Court allows signatures of inactive voters to count on ballot petitions
Law & Court News |
2024/07/24 11:59
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Montana’s Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would allow the signatures of inactive voters to count on petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights.
District Court Judge Mike Menahan ruled last Tuesday that Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office wrongly changed election rules to reject inactive voter signatures from three ballot initiatives after the signatures had been turned in to counties and after some of the signatures had been verified. The change to longstanding practices included reprogramming the state’s election software.
Jacobsen’s office last Thursday asked the Montana Supreme Court for an emergency order to block Menahan’s ruling that gave counties until this Wednesday to verify the signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected. Lawyers for organizations supporting the ballot initiatives and the Secretary of State’s Office agreed to the terms of the temporary restraining order blocking the secretary’s changes.
Justices said Jacobsen’s office failed to meet the requirement for an emergency order, saying she had not persuaded them that Menahan was proceeding under a mistake of law.
“We further disagree with Jacobsen that the TRO is causing a gross injustice, as Jacobsen’s actions in reprogramming the petition-processing software after county election administrators had commenced processing petitions created the circumstances that gave rise to this litigation,” justices wrote.
A hearing on an injunction to block the changes is set for Friday before Menahan.
The groups that sued — Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and Montanans for Election Reform — alleged the state for decades had accepted signatures of inactive voters, defined as people who filed universal change-of-address forms and then failed to respond to county attempts to confirm their address. They can restore their active voter status by providing their address, showing up at the polls or requesting an absentee ballot.
Backers of the initiative to protect the right to abortion access in the state constitution said more than enough signatures had been verified by Friday’s deadline for it to be included on the ballot. Backers of initiatives to create nonpartisan primaries and another to require a candidate to win a majority of the vote to win a general election have said they also expect to have enough signatures. |
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