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NM court to hear case over educator pension cuts
Court Watch |
2013/09/03 22:18
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New Mexico's highest court is mulling whether the state can cut cost-of-living increases for retired educators to help shore up the pension system's long-term finances.
The state Supreme Court is to hear from lawyers on Wednesday in a case brought by four retirees, who say the state Constitution protects their pensions from reductions like those required under a law enacted earlier this year.
The retirees contend the law gives them a "vested property right" in their retirement benefits and they are legally entitled to the cost-of-living adjustments previously promised, which would have been 2 percent this year without the change in law.
The attorney general's office and the Educational Retirement Board, in written arguments to the court, said the Constitution includes a provision that allows pensions to be modified to preserve the solvency of a retirement plan.
However, the retirees said in their lawsuit that provision only applies to retirement benefits before an employee works long enough to become vested in a pension system.
The Democratic-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Susana Martinez agreed on a package of pension changes this year to improve the solvency of the educational retirement program, which has a $6 billion gap between its assets and the benefits expected to be paid out in the future.
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Custody dispute goes to Okla. Supreme Court
Court Watch |
2013/09/01 22:17
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An Oklahoma man who is seeking custody of his Cherokee daughter has appealed a lower court decision to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Dusten Brown filed a writ of prohibition Friday in Oklahoma Supreme Court. The filing is appealing a decision from Nowata County District Court.
Brown for years has been fighting Matt and Melanie Capobianco of South Carolina over the custody of 3-year-old Veronica.
Veronica's birth mother put her up for adoption. Brown is Veronica's birth father and a member of the Cherokee Nation. He fought the Capobiancos' adoption of Veronica under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Brown and the Capobiancos were in a Nowata County court Friday, but a gag order meant neither side would comment.
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Minn. Supreme Court sides with HIV-positive man
Topics in Legal News |
2013/08/26 11:59
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The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a prosecutor's effort to reinstate the conviction of an HIV-positive man accused of passing the virus to another man, ruling Wednesday that the statute under which he was convicted was ambiguous.
Groups supporting gay rights said the ruling affirms the need for government to respect the personal and private decisions of consenting adults regarding sexual intimacy. The prosecutor contended the case was never a civil rights issue, but rather about protecting the public from people who know they're infected but practice unprotected sex anyway.
The high court affirmed a Court of Appeals decision that reversed the attempted first-degree assault conviction of Daniel James Rick, 32, of Minneapolis, who learned he was HIV positive in 2006. He had consensual sex several times starting in early 2009 with a man identified in court papers as D.B., who tested positive that October.
A jury acquitted Rick in 2011 under the first part of a Minnesota statute that applies to cases involving sex without first informing the other person that the defendant has a communicable disease. But it convicted him under another section that the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday applies only "to the donation or exchange for value of blood, sperm, organs, or tissue and therefore does not apply to acts of sexual conduct." |
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Appeals court affirms AWOL soldier's life sentence
Headline Legal News |
2013/08/21 12:42
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A federal appeals court has affirmed two life terms against an AWOL soldier who planned to detonate a bomb inside a Texas restaurant frequented by Fort Hood soldiers.
Naser Jason Abdo appealed that his arrest was unlawful, that he had been denied access to an expert witness and that he was unfairly charged twice for the same offense. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday threw out all Abdo's claims, saying the August 2012 sentence stands.
Stan Schwieger, Abdo's lawyer, said the aim of the appeal was to get a trial and now he will most likely request an "en banc" review of the appeal, meaning that all the judges of the 5th Circuit would have to review the three-judge panel's opinion. Such a review is discretionary and, according to Schwieger, only 1 percent of cases that go before the Circuit Court of Appeals get it.
Abdo was AWOL from Fort Campbell, Ky., when he was arrested with bomb-making materials in 2011. A federal jury convicted him in May 2012 on six charges including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Abdo also was found guilty of attempted murder of U.S. officers or employees and four counts of possessing a weapon in furtherance of a federal crime of violence. |
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NY man pleads guilty in Paula Deen extortion case
Court News |
2013/08/19 15:43
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A New York man pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to trying to extort $200,000 from Paula Deen by threatening to reveal damaging information about the embattled celebrity cook if she didn't pay him to stay quiet.
"I had, I guess, some bad judgment," 62-year-old Thomas George Paculis told a U.S. District Court judge in Savannah.
"I do take responsibility for what I have done."Paculis, of Newfield, acknowledged sending emails to Deen's attorney offering to trade his silence for cash in June. It came a few days after documents became public that revealed the former Food Network star had said under oath that she used racial slurs in the past.
As Deen's culinary empire began to crumble, Paculis claimed he could reveal things that would bring her "financial hardship and even ruin," according to one email that invited Deen's lawyer to "make me an offer I can't refuse."
Neither Paculis nor federal authorities have revealed what sort of dirt the defendant claimed he could dish up regarding Deen or if he truly had any at all. He owned a restaurant in Savannah in the 1990s, but Deen told the FBI she didn't recognize his name or his face. |
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