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Weinstein pleads not guilty, released on bail
Legal Business |
2018/07/09 09:45
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Harvey Weinstein, who was previously indicted on charges involving two women, was released on bail on Monday while fighting sex crime accusations that now include a third woman.
"We fight these battles one day at a time, and today we won this round," defense attorney Ben Brafman said outside court. Brafman said during the arraignment that he expects more charges.
Weinstein pleaded not guilty after he was brought into the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was then uncuffed for the proceeding.
An updated indictment unveiled last week alleges the movie mogul-turned-#MeToo villain performed a forcible sex act on a woman in 2006. The new charges include two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison upon conviction.
Attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the third woman, said outside court that her client will testify if the case goes to trial. She said she doubts Weinstein's lawyer would allow him to do the same because it would subject him to cross examination by prosecutors.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said the 66-year-old Weinstein is charged with "some of the most serious sexual offenses" that exist under state law.
"Mr. Weinstein maintains that all of these allegations are false and he expects to be fully vindicated," Brafman said.
More than 75 women have accused Weinstein, who was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, of wrongdoing as allegations detailed in Pulitzer Prize-winning stories last October in The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine swelled into the #MeToo movement. |
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McConnell touts Thapar for Supreme Court seat
Legal Business |
2018/07/03 09:50
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday he has touted fellow Kentuckian Amul Thapar to fill a looming vacancy on the Supreme Court, but acknowledged he has "no idea" who President Donald Trump will choose.
McConnell told reporters he has encouraged Trump to consider Thapar, and said he hopes the federal appeals court judge is "in the final group" as the president looks for a successor to retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Thapar is a former U.S. District Court judge in Kentucky. He has already been nominated once by Trump, for his current seat on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. McConnell has been a longtime supporter of Thapar, stretching back to the judge's tenure as a federal prosecutor.
"I think he's absolutely brilliant, with the right temperament," McConnell said of Thapar. "But others have their favorites. And I have no idea who the president may choose."
Trump has said he will announce his choice on July 9. The president has promised to draw the next justice from a list of 25 prospective candidates that was first established during the 2016 presidential campaign and updated last fall, with advice from conservatives. Thapar's name has come up among possible nominees being eyed.
In a speech Saturday to a GOP gathering in Louisville, McConnell said the goal is to have a new justice in place in time for the start of the Supreme Court's next term in October. As majority leader, McConnell sets the schedule in the narrowly divided Senate.
"There's not any doubt in my mind that we'll be able to get this new nominee confirmed, and I'm confident the president is going to send up an all-star, somebody of very high quality," McConnell told reporters later.
McConnell predicted the nominee will be similar to Trump's first Supreme Court selection, Neil Gorsuch, in terms of background and philosophy on the judiciary's role. |
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Court deals major financial blow to nation's public employee unions
Legal Business |
2018/07/01 09:50
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A deeply divided Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the nation's public employee unions Wednesday that likely will result in a loss of money, members and political muscle.
After three efforts in 2012, 2014 and 2016 fell short, the court's conservative majority ruled 5-4 that unions cannot collect fees from non-members to help defray the costs of collective bargaining. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision, announced on the final day of the court's term, with dissents from Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
About 5 million workers could be affected by the decision overruling the court's 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education — those who pay dues or "fair-share" fees to unions in 22 states where public employees can be forced to contribute. Workers in 28 states already cannot be forced to join or pay unions.
"We recognize that the loss of payments from nonmembers may cause unions to experience unpleasant transition costs in the short term and may require unions to make adjustments in order to attract and retain members," Alito wrote. "But we must weigh these disadvantages against the considerable windfall that unions have received under Abood for the past 41 years."
From the bench, he noted that Illinois, whose Republican governor initiated the challenge, "has serious financial problems" that are exacerbated by costly union contracts. Gov. Bruce Rauner has sought to renegotiate public employee contracts.
Kagan's main dissent for the four liberal justices accused the court of "weaponizing the First Amendment in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy."
"It wanted to pick the winning side in what should be -- and until now has been -- an energetic policy debate," she wrote. "Today, that healthy -- that democratic -- debate ends. The majority has adjudged who should prevail."
Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the deciding vote against what conservative opponents have labeled a form of compelled speech. The money helps labor unions maintain political power in some of the nation's most populous states, including California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
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Police shooting of boy spurs more protests, appeals
Legal Business |
2018/06/27 09:49
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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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Lawsuit seeks lawyer access to immigrants in prison
Legal Business |
2018/06/26 09:48
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A rights group filed an emergency lawsuit in federal court Friday against top officials of U.S. immigration and homeland security departments, alleging they have unconstitutionally denied lawyers' access to immigrants in a prison in Oregon.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred 123 immigrants in early June to the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, because other holding facilities have been overloaded since the Trump administration enacted a "zero tolerance" policy in April involving people entering the U.S. illegally.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon filed the lawsuit in Portland on behalf of the detainees, who are mostly from Mexico and Central America. The lawyers say they've been denied meaningful access to the detainees, many of whom escaped violence in their home countries and are seeking asylum in the U.S.
"The U.S. Constitution protects everyone who is on U.S. soil," said Mat Dos Santos, legal director of the ACLU of Oregon. "You have fundamental rights to due process of law. You can't just throw them in prison."
An interfaith group, meanwhile, announced it would be holding Sunday morning services outside the prison. The Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice, which is organizing the services, is based in Portland.
"With Attorney General Jeffrey Sessions invoking Romans 13 to validate the immoral separation of immigrant children from their families, this can no longer be a time for 'business as usual' for Christian communities," said the Rev. Michael Ellick of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Portland.
Last week, Sessions cited a Bible verse urging obedience to the laws of government "for the purpose of order."
Among the people being held in the medium-security prison is Luis Javier Sanchez Gonzalez, whose family was separated at the border when they sought asylum at a port of entry, the ACLU said. |
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