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Supreme Court adopts new rules for cell phone tracking
Legal Business |
2018/06/24 15:53
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The Supreme Court says police generally need a search warrant if they want to track criminal suspects’ movements by collecting information about where they’ve used their cellphones. The justices’ 5-4 decision Friday is a victory for privacy in the digital age. Police collection of cellphone tower information has become an important tool in criminal investigations.
The outcome marks a big change in how police can obtain phone records. Authorities can go to the phone company and obtain information about the numbers dialed from a home telephone without presenting a warrant. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court’s four liberals. Roberts said the court’s decision is limited to cellphone tracking information and does not affect other business records, including those held by banks.
He also wrote that police still can respond to an emergency and obtain records without a warrant. Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Kennedy wrote that the court’s “new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement” and “keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.”
The court ruled in the case of Timothy Carpenter, who was sentenced to 116 years in prison for his role in a string of robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Michigan and Ohio. Cell tower records that investigators got without a warrant bolstered the case against Carpenter. Investigators obtained the cell tower records with a court order that requires a lower standard than the “probable cause” needed to obtain a warrant. “Probable cause” requires strong evidence that a person has committed a crime.
The judge at Carpenter’s trial refused to suppress the records, finding no warrant was needed, and a federal appeals court agreed. The Trump administration said the lower court decisions should be upheld. The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Carpenter, said a warrant would provide protection against unjustified government snooping. The administration relied in part on a 1979 Supreme Court decision that treated phone records differently than the conversation in a phone call, for which a warrant generally is required.
In a case involving a single home telephone, the court said then that people had no expectation of privacy in the records of calls made and kept by the phone company. That case came to the court before the digital age, and the law on which prosecutors relied to obtain an order for Carpenter’s records dates from 1986, when few people had cellphones. The Supreme Court in recent years has acknowledged technology’s effects on privacy. In 2014, the court held unanimously that police must generally get a warrant to search the cellphones of people they arrest. Other items people carry with them may be looked at without a warrant, after an arrest.
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Police shooting of boy spurs more protests, appeals
Court Watch |
2018/06/23 16:16
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Protesters demonstrated Friday for a third day over the fatal police shooting in Pennsylvania of an unarmed black teen fleeing a traffic stop as they sought to get the attention of a nation engrossed by the immigration debate, and to pressure officials to charge the officer.
Hundreds of marchers chanting "Who did this? The police did this" shut down a Pittsburgh area highway in the early morning hours, and a small group staged a sit-in outside the district attorney's office later in the day.
Demands for answers to why a police officer shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose Jr. seconds after he bolted from a car grew with an emotional speech by state Rep. Jake Wheatley at the state Capitol, and a videotaped appeal by the legislator and two other black Pittsburgh area lawmakers for a "thorough and transparent investigation that builds community."
"My heart is heavy right now," Wheatley said , decrying both Rose's death and the street violence that earlier in the week left a young rapper dead. "We cannot casually keep closing our eyes and ears to the fact there's a group of people whose lives seemingly don't matter."
Rose was shot Tuesday night in East Pittsburgh, a suburb of Pittsburgh, after the car he was riding in was pulled over by Officer Michael Rosfeld because it matched the description of a car wanted in a shooting in a nearby town, police said. The car had bullet damage to a back window.
As Rosfeld was taking the driver into custody, a video taken from a nearby house shows Rose and a second passenger running from the car. Three gunshots can be heard, and the passengers can be seen either falling or crouching as they pass between houses. It is unclear from the video if Rosfeld yelled for them to stop.
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Yankton lawyer Jason Ravnsborg wins GOP attorney general nod
Legal Business |
2018/06/22 16:17
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South Dakota Republicans on Saturday chose Yankton lawyer Jason Ravnsborg to run against Democratic former U.S. Attorney Randy Seiler in the race for state attorney general.
GOP delegates voted to nominate Ravnsborg at their state party convention, where the attorney general contest was the main show for attendees. Democrats nominated Seiler as their candidate at a party gathering last week.
Ravnsborg won out over state Sen. Lance Russell in a second round of voting after Lawrence County State's Attorney John Fitzgerald was dropped from consideration following his third-place showing in the initial ballot.
"We've been working hard," Ravnsborg said after he won. "I've been to every county in our state at least twice."
Ravnsborg has proposed expanding programs that allow lower-level prisoners to work while serving their sentences and establishing a meth-specific prison and mental health facility in the western part of the state. He said he has leadership and management experience and touted his support among county sheriffs to delegates.
Ravnsborg, 42, of Yankton, is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He's looking to succeed outgoing Attorney General Marty Jackley as the state's chief lawyer and law enforcement officer.
The high-profile office has served as a frequent springboard for gubernatorial hopefuls and takes on the state's top legal cases, such as South Dakota's recent successful push to get the U.S. Supreme Court to allow states to make online shoppers pay sales tax.
Russell, a former state's attorney and current chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had said he wanted to be attorney general to address rising crime and improve government transparency. Fitzgerald has been the Lawrence County state's attorney since 1995 and campaigned on his experience.
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Michigan court ends conflict over juvenile life sentences
Legal Business |
2018/06/20 14:52
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Judges, not juries, have the sole power to decide whether someone under 18 gets life in prison without parole, the Michigan Supreme Court said Wednesday.
The 4-2 decision settles a conflict at the state appeals court and clears the way for more than 200 new sentencing hearings for so-called juvenile lifers that have been on hold for more than a year.
The Supreme Court said there are no constitutional violations in allowing a judge to order a no-parole sentence for a teen. Chief Justice Stephen Markman, writing for the majority, said a trial judge doesn't need to find any particular fact before choosing the highest punishment.
The case landed at the Supreme Court after the Michigan appeals court in 2015 said a no-parole sentence for a minor would fit only if a jury finds that the crime is the result of "irreparable corruption," something so heinous that parole shouldn't apply. Markman, however, said the interpretation was wrong.
"If the trial court simply finds that there are no mitigating circumstances, it can sentence a juvenile to life without parole," he wrote.
Separately, many Michigan juvenile lifers who are serving no-parole sentences are eligible for a new hearing because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision. But those hearings were suspended while the state Supreme Court grappled with two cases that led to a decision Wednesday. |
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Palin's son moves to court program after assaulting father
Headline Legal News |
2018/06/19 14:52
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Track Palin was formally accepted into a diversion court program Tuesday after assaulting his father, the former first gentleman of the state of Alaska, so severely it left him bleeding from the head.
Palin, the son of 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Todd Palin, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal trespass after breaking into the family home north of Anchorage last December. The change of plea will allow him to take part in Alaska's Veterans Court, a therapeutic diversion program intended to rehabilitate veterans.
If he completes the program, he will serve 10 days in jail. But under the plea agreement, if he doesn't complete the Veterans Court program, he will serve a year in jail. Palin, a 29-year-old Army veteran who served one year in Iraq, was initially charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor counts of assault and criminal mischief.
Palin, who was dogged by television cameras at a Monday Veterans Court appearance, did not appear in the Anchorage courtroom for Tuesday's change of plea hearing, and instead was allowed to call in from Wasilla.
Palin had attempted to bar the media from covering proceedings in Veterans Court, but the move was challenged by The Associated Press and Anchorage television stations KTVA and KTUU. Judge David Wallace ruled the media and the public have a right to be in the courtroom, but didn't allow cameras in.
During Monday's informal Veterans Court session, Wallace asked Palin how things were going for him. "Doing good, sir," Palin responded, adding he was taking classes and learning patience.
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