Newswire

Supreme Court Watch

Court Sidesteps Sodomites Adopting Children
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rebuffed an appeal by four sodomites who challenged Florida's law banning sex perverts from adopting children. Florida is the only state with a blanket law prohibiting homosexuals from adopting children, and the court was told that other states can now feel free to copy Florida's law. Justices, in an unconstitutional opinion, barred the state of Texas in 2003 from criminalizing sodomy. The court said then that Texas "cannot demean their (sodomites) existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." (News Source: The Associated Press)

Court: Sentencing System Wrongly Applied
WASHINGTON -- A splintered Supreme Court threw the nation's federal sentencing system into turmoil Wednesday, ruling that the way judges have been sentencing some 60,000 defendants a year is unconstitutional. In ordering changes, the court found 5-4 that judges have been improperly adding time to some criminals' prison stays. Courts can immediately expect a deluge of cases from inmates who claim they were wrongly sentenced. Congress may also craft its own solution, and the justices seemed to expect that.

Court Limits Detention for Immigrants
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the government may not indefinitely detain criminals who are illegal immigrants, undercutting a Bush administration policy applied to foreigners deemed too dangerous to be freed. In a separate ruling, the justices said the United States can deport immigrants without first getting permission from the receiving country. The 5-4 ruling will hasten the return of thousands of Somalis who have resisted going back to their war-torn homeland. The detention case involved two men who were part of the 1980 Mariel exodus, in which Cuban President Fidel Castro sent criminals and psychiatric patients to the United States along with thousands of other fleeing Cubans.

Court Will Review Death Row Wins
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court said Friday it would review victories by death row inmates in Ohio and Tennessee, adding to an already busy year for capital punishment cases. While neither appeal involves blockbuster issues, they demonstrate the court's continuing interest in the death penalty and how it is imposed. Other cases the court is dealing with this term involve the constitutionality of executing juvenile killers, the rights of foreign nationals facing capital charges, and the practice of shackling death row defendants in front of the jury.

Court Won't Hear Gun Industry's Appeal
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court declined to consider dismissing a lawsuit seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the 1999 shooting of a letter carrier by a white supremacist. Without comment, justices let stand a ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated a lawsuit against gun manufacturers and distributors. The companies' weapons were used by Buford Furrow to kill Filipino-American Joseph Ileto and wound five people at a Jewish day care center in a Los Angeles-area rampage. A federal judge initially threw out the case, but a divided 9th Circuit panel reinstated the lawsuit in 2003. The panel said a since-repealed California statute immunizing gun manufacturers in product liability actions did not apply, because it did not address the plaintiffs' theories of negligent marketing and distribution. In urging their colleagues to rehear the case, dissenting Judge Consuelo Callahan wrote that courts should "be chary of adopting broad new theories of liability." Congressional legislation barring lawsuits targeting the industry failed last spring.

Court Considers Litigation of Spy Deals
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court considered Tuesday whether shadowy spy deals should ever end up in federal court, hearing the case of former Soviet-bloc spies who claim the CIA stiffed them on a pledge of lifetime support. At issue is a 130-year-old Supreme Court ruling that said former spies may not sue the U.S. government because of the secret nature of their pacts, which are made with the understanding that "the lips of the other were to be forever sealed."

Lawyer Argues Against Litigating Spy Deals
WASHINGTON -- Secret spy deals should never be litigated in court because of the danger to national security, the Supreme Court was told Tuesday, as it heard arguments in a case involving former Cold War spies who say the CIA backed out of a pledge of lifetime support. The Supreme Court is considering whether the former Eastern bloc diplomat and his wife may sue the CIA for allegedly breaking a promise to provide them financial security for life. "There's something inherent about an espionage relationship that you understand you have no protected status under the law," said acting Solicitor General Paul Clement.

Court Upholds Money Laundering Convictions
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court made it easier Tuesday for prosecutors to win money laundering convictions, ruling unanimously in a large religious scam case that the government does not have to prove "overt acts" by defendants. Justices upheld the convictions of two people accused of pocketing more than $1.2 million as part of a nationwide religious investment scheme. David Whitfield and Haywood "Don" Hall were convicted in Florida of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Court Won't Block KKK From Highway Cleanup
WASHINGTON -- Missouri lost a Supreme Court appeal Monday over its decision to bar a Ku Klux Klan group from a highway litter cleanup program. The court's rejection, made without comment, means that the KKK chapter must be allowed into Missouri's Adopt-A-Highway program, which is designed to save money by using volunteers for garbage pickup. Volunteer groups are publicly thanked with signs along the highway acknowledging their help.

Scalia Fears Chaos if Tribe Wins Tax Case
WASHINGTON -- In trying to determine where the modern Indian reservation ends and where tax laws begin, a Supreme Court justice worried Tuesday that a ruling in favor of an upstate New York tribe would create governmental chaos. The court heard arguments in the fight between the city of Sherrill, N.Y., over unpaid taxes on a gas station, convenience store and defunct T-shirt factory purchased by the New York Oneidas. The city foreclosed on the properties in 2000, and the tribe sued.

Court Declines to Hear Nader's Case
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court declined on Monday to consider whether Pennsylvania officials were wrong to keep Ralph Nader off the presidential ballot last November. At issue was whether more than 6,000 signatures on Nader's nomination papers were improperly deemed as invalid, leaving him short of the number required to be listed as an independent candidate.

Court Turns Down Traficant Appeal
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider former Rep. James A. Traficant's challenge to his bribery and racketeering conviction. The Ohio Democrat, notorious for his flamboyant speeches and unkempt hair, had been sentenced to eight years in prison and ousted from Congress in 2002. Traficant's lawyer contends that he was tried twice for the same crimes — by federal prosecutors and the U.S. House of Representatives.

Court Hears Securities Fraud Case
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court considered Wednesday the proper standard to prove securities fraud, a key question as investors seek to recoup billions in damages after the collapse of major companies such as Enron Corp. The high court heard arguments in the case of Dura Pharmaceuticals Inc., which is being sued for fraud following its November 1998 disclosure that its asthma drug dispenser didn't receive federal approval as expected. At issue is a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which allowed investors to proceed with their lawsuit under the corporate fraud theory of "loss causation."

Court Declines to Hear WorldCom Suit
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court let stand a lower ruling Monday that said the California Public Employees' Retirement System must proceed with its securities fraud lawsuit on behalf of WorldCom Inc. bondholders in federal, rather than state, court. At issue were two federal statutes, which disagreed on which court should hear the litigation after the telecom giant announced major accounting problems in 2002. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit belongs in federal court to the extent it is "related to" a bankruptcy case.

Court to Review Arthur Andersen Case
Justices will review a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the former Big Five accounting firm's June 2002 conviction. At issue is whether the jury instructions at trial were too vague and broad for jurors to determine correctly whether Andersen obstructed justice. "This appeal is enormously significant," said Stephen Presser, a business and law professor at Northwestern University, who called the government's prosecution "overkill." "You had one of the oldest, most venerable accounting firms in the nation, and this indictment destroyed the firm."

Court to Hear Drug Patent Dispute
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court agreed to step into a dispute Friday over how far a patent can go to thwart a rival drug company's efforts to conduct research, a question with big-money ramifications in the pharmaceutical industry. Justices will review a lower ruling that a competitor's patent prohibited Germany's Merck KGaA from beginning research into a potential new anticancer drug, even if the drug could not feasibly be marketed until after the patent expired.

Rehnquist Not Expected Back on the Bench
WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will not preside on Monday when the Supreme Court returns from the holidays, a court spokeswoman said Friday. Rehnquist, who has thyroid cancer, missed about 25 cases that were argued in November and December while receiving chemotherapy and radiation. The 80-year-old chief justice was diagnosed with the disease in October and worked from home for two months after being hospitalized and undergoing a tracheotomy to help him breathe. Posted by Editor at January 13, 2005 04:30 AM