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4 suspects in NJ mall carjacking plead not guilty
Topics in Legal News |
2014/01/10 15:48
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Four men charged in the fatal carjacking of a young lawyer outside an upscale New Jersey mall pleaded not guilty Wednesday to felony murder and other charges.
Hanif Thompson, 29, of Irvington, and Newark residents Karif Ford, 31, Basim Henry, 32, and Kevin Roberts, 33, are accused in the Dec. 15 carjacking and killing of Dustin Friedland outside The Mall at Short Hills.
The four men were arraigned Wednesday on charges of murder, felony murder, carjacking, conspiracy, possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for unlawful purpose. Their public defenders entered not-guilty pleas for them.
A state Superior Court judge in Newark continued their bail at $2 million each. The four have been in custody since their arrests about a week after the shooting.
Friedland, a 30-year-old lawyer from Hoboken, was killed while returning to his car in the mall parking garage with his wife after a shopping trip, authorities said. The carjackers confronted the couple and Friedland was shot in the head, authorities said. His wife was unharmed. |
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Pa. monsignor due in court after leaving prison
Topics in Legal News |
2014/01/06 11:48
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A Roman Catholic church official is due in court Monday for the first time since his conviction in the priest sex-abuse scandal was reversed.
Monsignor William Lynn is not quite a free man. He must remain under electronic monitoring while prosecutors try to restore the conviction.
Lynn served 18 months in prison for felony child-endangerment. He was the first U.S. church official ever convicted over his handling of abuse complaints.
Lynn says he tried to protect children as secretary for clergy in Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004, but prosecutors say he sought only to protect the church.
The 63-year-old Lynn will appear in court to review terms of his release from prison last week.
A judge says he must live in Philadelphia and report weekly to probation. |
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Serial rapist Coe appeals confinement in US court
Topics in Legal News |
2014/01/02 14:53
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Kevin Coe, who was arrested in 1981 after dozens of women were raped in Spokane, is appealing his confinement as a sexually violent predator to federal court.
Coe was suspected in the rapes, attributed to the "South Hill Rapist," but only one conviction stood against him. He served 25 years in prison, and was confined at the state's Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island in 2008, following a monthlong civil trial.
Coe argues that the jurors at his civil trial should not have been asked to determine that he suffered from a "personality disorder" without having that term defined for them. He also says the jury should not have heard evidence of the other cases linked to the South Hill rapist because he was never convicted of them and because he was not allowed to challenge some of the victims through cross-examination.
The state Supreme Court rejected those arguments in 2012.
On Monday, a federal magistrate judge recommended that Coe's request to proceed as an indigent plaintiff be rejected. The judge found that Coe can afford to pay the fee required to file the case. |
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Minnesota Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Assisted Suicide Case
Topics in Legal News |
2013/12/30 14:57
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The Minnesota Supreme Court will consider the case of a national right-to-die group accused of playing a role in the 2007 suicide of an Apple Valley woman.
The high court agreed to hear Dakota County prosecutors' appeal of a Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling in September that a state law prohibiting advising or encouraging suicide was unconstitutional on free speech grounds, the Star Tribune reported Friday (http://strib.mn/JhC7zY ). The Appeals Court, however, sent charges of aiding and abetting suicide against the Florida-based group Final Exit Network and two members back to a district court for trial.
The Supreme Court also agreed in an order dated Dec. 17 to hear the cross-appeal of Final Exit Network, which says all of the charges are unconstitutional. The high court did not set a date for oral arguments.
The high court also stayed all proceedings in the Final Exit case pending its ruling in the separate case of William Melchert-Dinkel, of Faribault, an ex-nurse who was convicted in 2011 of "advising and encouraging" the suicides of a man in England and a teenager in Canada. The Court of Appeals upheld his conviction last year. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in May.
Robert Rivas, an attorney for Final Exit, said the group believes the Appeals Court decision was correct. |
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Canadian court strikes down anti-prostitution laws
Topics in Legal News |
2013/12/23 13:10
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Canada's highest court struck down the country's anti-prostitution laws Friday, a victory for sex workers who had argued that a ban on brothels and other measures made their profession more dangerous. The ruling drew criticism from the conservative government and religious leaders.
The court, ruling in a case brought by three women in the sex trade, struck down all three of Canada's prostitution-related laws: bans on keeping a brothel, making a living from prostitution, and street soliciting. The ruling won't take effect immediately, however, because the court gave Parliament a year to respond with new legislation, and said the existing laws would remain in place until then.
The decision threw the door open for a wide and complex debate on how Canada should regulate prostitution, which isn't in itself illegal in the country.
Robert Leckey, a law professor at McGill University, said the court found that the law did nothing to increase safety, but suggested in its ruling that more finely tailored rules might pass constitutional scrutiny in the future. |
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