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2nd Circuit denies Yanks request in letter unsealing case
Court Watch |
2022/04/20 13:54
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The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals has denied a request by the New York Yankees to rehear the team’s attempt to keep sealed a letter from baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to general manager Brian Cashman detailing an investigation into sign stealing.
In a brief order without explanation Thursday, the appellate court said its active judges had denied the team’s petition to have the entire 13-member court hear the case or order a rehearing before a three-judge panel.
Circuit Judge Joseph F. Bianco ordered the letter unsealed on March 21 after hearing the case with Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston and Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch. They upheld an April 2020 ruling by U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff to dismiss a lawsuit by fantasy sports contestants who claimed they were damaged by sign stealing in Major League Baseball. Rakoff also ordered Manfred’s letter be unseald.
The five men who sued participated in fantasy contests hosted by DraftKings from 2017-19. Manfred ruled in January 2020 that the Houston Astros violated rules against electronic sign-stealing during home games en route to their World Series title in 2017 and again in 2018. He suspended manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow for one season each, and both were fired by the team. Manfred fined the Astros $5 million, the maximum under MLB rules and stripped the team of its next two first- and second-round amateur draft picks. |
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Man who waved Confederate flag pleads guilty in Capitol riot
Court Watch |
2022/03/29 15:38
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A Maryland man who waved a Confederate flag attached to a lacrosse stick during the siege at the U.S. Capitol pleaded guilty on Tuesday to interfering with a police officer who was trying to disperse a crowd of rioters.
David Blair, 27, faces a maximum prison sentence of five years after pleading guilty to a felony charge of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder. Estimated sentencing guidelines in Blair’s case recommend a term of imprisonment ranging from eight to 14 months.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper is scheduled to sentence Blair on July 13.
Blair was charged with assaulting a Metropolitan Police Department officer outside the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Wearing a skull-themed face mask, Blair profanely taunted the officer and struck him with a wooden lacrosse stick adorned with a Confederate battle flag, prosecutors said. An officer’s body camera captured video of Blair waving the flag in front of a crowd that police were trying to disperse. |
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West African court to rule on Venezuelan’s extradition to US
Court Watch |
2021/08/06 15:30
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A protracted legal battle over the extradition from Cape Verde to the United States of a businessman close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro comes to a head next week when the West African country’s Constitutional Court is due to rule on the case.
Alex Saab was arrested when his jet made a refueling stop on the small island chain, formerly a Portuguese colony, on a June 2020 flight to Iran.
U.S. officials believe Saab holds numerous secrets about how Maduro, the president’s family and his top aides allegedly siphoned off millions of dollars in government contracts amid widespread hunger in oil-rich Venezuela.
Saab is fighting extradition. His lawyers argue that he has diplomatic immunity because he was acting as a special envoy for Venezuela when he was detained in Cape Verde.
José Pinto Monteiro, Saab’s lead counsel in Cape Verde, said Friday there are two possible outcomes when the Constitutional Court sits on Aug. 13.
Either the judges throw out Saab’s appeal and the extradition goes ahead, or they accept that there are unconstitutional elements in the case and send it back to a lower court to correct them, Pinto Monteiro told a press conference via video link.
Cape Verde’s Supreme Court ruled last March that the extradition could proceed, and the Constitutional Court appeal is Saab’s last hope.
Saab’s international legal team argues that the extradition has a political motive.
Federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Saab in 2019 on money-laundering charges connected to an alleged bribery scheme that pocketed more than $350 million from a low-income housing project for the Venezuelan government that was never built. |
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High court to rule whether to hear Maine school choice case
Court Watch |
2021/06/25 10:18
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The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are set to decide whether to hear a case filed by Maine families who want to use a state tuition program to send their children to religious schools.
The case concerns a Maine Department of Education rule that allows families who live in towns that don’t have public schools to receive public tuition dollars to send their children to the public or private school of their choosing. The program excludes religious schools, and families who want to send their children to Christian schools in Bangor and Waterville sued to try to change that.
The justices were slated to meet Thursday to consider whether to hear the case. It was unclear when they would issue a decision about whether the case can go forward.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected the lawsuit last year, and the families appealed to the high court. They face the possibility of taking their case to a Supreme Court that has shifted in a conservative direction since they first filed in federal court three years ago.
Conflicting rules about the subject of public tuition assistance have led to confusion in lower courts, so the Supreme Court should take up the case, said Michael Bindas, the lead attorney for the families and a lawyer with the libertarian public interest firm Institute for Justice.
“Only the Supreme Court can provide that clarity, and make sure students aren’t being treated differently based on where they reside,” Bindas said. “The government shouldn’t be able to deny those parents the ability to send their children to the best available education for them.”
The lawsuit was first filed after the Supreme Court ruled that a Missouri program was wrong to deny a grant to a religious school for playground resurfacing. The issue of public funding for religious schools has also come up in other states.
The Supreme Court ruled in a Montana case last year that states have to give religious schools the same access to public money that other private schools benefit from. Vermont has also faced lawsuits over a voucher program for students who live in locales that don’t have their own schools. The issue has also been raised in New Hampshire.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine has filed court papers in support of Maine’s law that excludes religious schools from the tuition program. States aren’t obligated to fund religious schools, ACLU of Maine legal director Zachary Heiden said.
“Religious views infuse everything, as part of their curriculum and how they are dedicated to training future religious leaders,” Heiden said. “Which is absolutely something they can do, but it’s not something the government should be required to fund.”
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Appeals court upholds guilty verdicts in NCAA bribes case
Court Watch |
2021/06/04 10:47
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The convictions of a sports business manager and an amateur basketball coach in a conspiracy to bribe top college coaches to get them to steer NBA-bound athletes to favored handlers were upheld Friday by an appeals court.
The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan affirmed the 2019 convictions of Christian Dawkins and youth basketball coach Merl Code on a single conspiracy count. Dawkins was also convicted of bribery. They were acquitted of some other charges.
The prosecution resulted from a criminal probe that exposed how financial advisers and business managers paid tens of thousands of dollars to college coaches and athletes’ families to steer highly regarded high school players to big-program colleges, sometimes with the help of apparel makers who signed sponsorship deals with schools.
During the trial, universities were portrayed by prosecutors as victims of greedy financial advisers and coaches while defense lawyers asserted that schools were complicit in any corruption that occurred in 2016 and 2017.
Circuit Judge William J. Nardini, writing for a three-judge panel, said the judges rejected arguments that the law used to convict the men was unconstitutionally applied and that various rulings about evidence and other matters by the trial judge were erroneous.
“We are unpersuaded by these arguments,” Nardini wrote, saying the judges did not agree with arguments that the federal law used to convict the men should be limited as it pertains to the universe of “agents” to be influenced or the business of the federally funded organizations involved.
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