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Supreme Court: Trump can use Pentagon funds for border wall
Court News |
2019/07/24 20:44
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The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to tap billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to build sections of a border wall with Mexico.
The court’s five conservative justices gave the administration the green light on Friday to begin work on four contracts it has awarded using Defense Department money. Funding for the projects had been frozen by lower courts while a lawsuit over the money proceeded. The court’s four liberal justices wouldn’t have allowed construction to start.
The justices’ decision to lift the freeze on the money allows President Donald Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term. Trump tweeted after the announcement: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”
The Supreme Court’s action reverses the decision of a trial court, which initially froze the funds in May, and an appeals court, which kept that freeze in place earlier this month. The freeze had prevented the government from tapping approximately $2.5 billion in Defense Department money to replace existing sections of barrier in Arizona, California and New Mexico with more robust fencing.
The case the Supreme Court ruled in began after the 35-day partial government shutdown that started in December of last year. Trump ended the shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding. But the amount was far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking, and Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall.
The money Trump identified includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion in Defense Department money and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund. |
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Louisiana judge orders man's mouth taped for interruptions
Court Watch |
2019/07/23 20:46
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Court logs show a Louisiana district court judge ordered a man's mouth be taped shut for repeatedly interrupting proceedings.
The Acadiana Advocate reports Michael C. Duhon was being sentenced July 18 for theft and money laundering.
Court minutes show Duhon objected when Judge Marilyn Castle asked him to stop submitting motions on his own behalf instead of through his attorney. After repeatedly requesting for Duhon to be quiet, Castle ordered the bailiff to tape Duhon's mouth shut.
The tape was removed after an objection from Duhon's public defense attorney, Aaron Adams, who requested the judge remove his client from the courtroom instead.
Castle sentenced Duhon to 11 years in prison and recommended he be transferred to a facility with mental health treatment options.
Another public defender in the courtroom faces contempt charges for recording the incident.
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High court rejects appeal of killer of 4 people in Omaha
Legal Interview |
2019/07/20 12:15
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The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday upheld the convictions and death sentence of a man who killed four people in Omaha, seemingly at random, shortly after his release from prison in 2013.
Nikko Jenkins pleaded no contest in 2014 to four counts of first-degree murder and multiple weapons counts for three separate, deadly attacks around Omaha. He was sentenced to death in 2017 after years of delays over concerns regarding his mental health. The high court’s opinion addressed combined direct appeals on Jenkins’ behalf.
Among the arguments Jenkins’ attorneys made is that the trial court abused its discretion in accepting his no-contest pleas in a death penalty case. In a no-contest plea, a defendant does not admit guilt, but concedes there is enough evidence for a conviction. The plea has the same effect as a guilty plea.
The Douglas County Public Defender office also argued that the court was wrong to allow Jenkins to represent himself and that, because it believes Jenkins is mentally ill, sentencing him to death violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. |
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Jeffrey Epstein will remain jailed as judge mulls bail
Court News |
2019/07/19 12:01
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Financier Jeffrey Epstein will remain behind bars for now as a federal judge mulls whether to grant bail on charges he sexually abused underage girls.
The judge said he needed more time to make a decision during a hearing Monday in New York.
Federal prosecutors maintained the well-connected Epstein, 66, is a flight risk and danger to the community ? saying he should remain incarcerated until he is tried on charges that he recruited and abused dozens of underage girls in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.
Prosecutors said their case is getting “stronger by the day” after several more women contacted them in recent days to say he abused them when they were underage.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Rossmiller also revealed Monday that authorities found “piles of cash,” ″dozens of diamonds” and an expired passport with Epstein’s picture and a fake name during a raid of his Manhattan mansion following his July 6 arrest .
Epstein’s lawyers said he has not committed crimes since pleading guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution charges in Florida in 2008 and that the federal government is reneging on a 12-year-old plea deal not to prosecute him. They said they planned to file a motion to dismiss the case and that Epstein should be allowed to await trial under house arrest in his $77 million Manhattan mansion, with electronic monitoring.
In a written submission Friday to U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman, prosecutors shared new information about their investigation and why they perceive Epstein as dangerous.
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Dutch Supreme Court upholds Srebrenica deaths liability
Legal Business |
2019/07/17 12:15
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The Dutch Supreme Court upheld Friday a lower court’s ruling that the Netherlands is partially liable in the deaths of some 350 Muslim men who were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The Netherlands’ highest court ruled that Dutch United Nations peacekeepers evacuated the men from their military base near Srebrenica on July 13, 1995, despite knowing that they “were in serious jeopardy of being abused and murdered” by Bosnian Serb forces.
Presiding Judge Kees Streefkerk said “the state did act wrongfully” and told relatives of the dead they can now claim compensation from the Dutch government.
“They are responsible and they will always have a stain,” Munira Subasic, one of the relatives who brought the case, said angrily of the Dutch. “We know what happened; we don’t need this court to tell us.”
The ruling upholding a 2017 appeals court judgment was the latest in a long-running legal battle by a group of relatives known as The Mothers of Srebrenica to hold the Dutch government accountable for the deaths of their family members in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.
Dutch Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld-Schouten said the government accepted the ruling.
“We want to express again our sympathy to the relatives of the victims,” she said in a statement. “The Srebrenica genocide must never be forgotten.” |
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