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Court reverses itself and restores woman's murder conviction
Legal Interview |
2017/12/09 01:34
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Georgia's highest court has reversed it own recent decision and restored the murder conviction of a woman whose husband shot and killed a police officer.
The Georgia Supreme Court issued a new opinion Monday that upholds Lisa Ann Lebis' felony murder conviction in the 2012 slaying of Clayton County police officer Sean Callahan.
Barely a month ago the same court had axed Lebis' conviction, saying prosecutors failed to prove she "jointly possessed" the gun that her husband, Tremaine Lebis, used to kill the officer as the couple tried to flee a Stockbridge motel.
The new decision concludes that Lisa Ann Lebis could still be held accountable for the slaying as a co-conspirator.
The opinion Monday does not say why the high court chose to revisit the case. |
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Supreme Court won't hear dispute involving NC TV network
Topics |
2017/12/05 01:34
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A lawsuit against a North Carolina city for allegedly discriminating against an African-American-owned television network will go forward after the Supreme Court declined to get involved in the case.
The Supreme Court's announcement Monday that it would not get involved in the dispute leaves in place a ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit earlier this year that revived the lawsuit. A trial court had initially dismissed it.
Black Network Television claims the City of Greensboro rescinded a $300,000 economic development loan because of race. The city says race had nothing to do with it. Appeals court judges ruled 2-1 that the lawsuit had been improperly dismissed.
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Supreme Court rejects case over Mississippi Confederate emblem
Court Issues |
2017/11/28 21:57
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected hearing a case that challenges the use of Confederate imagery in the Mississippi state flag.
Carlos Moore, an African-American attorney from Mississippi, argued that the flag represents "an official endorsement of white supremacy."
"The message in Mississippi's flag has always been one of racial hostility and insult and it is pervasive and unavoidable by both children and adults," Moore said in his court appeal.
"The state's continued expression of its message of racial disparagement sends a message to African-American citizens of Mississippi that they are second-class citizens."
The justices did not comment on their decision to decline Moore's appeal to have the flag ruled as an unconstitutional symbol of slavery, The Associated Press reported.
"We always knew it was a long shot," Moore told the news wire.
After a lower court rejected the lawsuit for lack of standing in April, Moore appealed the case to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit had given the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause too narrow of an interpretation. |
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Walker signs bill inspired by cabin-owners' court fight
Court Issues |
2017/11/28 05:58
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Just five months after an adverse ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court had her in tears, Donna Murr was celebrating Monday after Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a bill that gives Wisconsin property owners more rights.
The Murr family fought for more than a dozen years, and all the way to the Supreme Court, for the ability to sell undeveloped land next to their cottage along scenic Lake St. Croix in western Wisconsin.
One of two property rights bills Walker signed Monday will give the family the right to sell or build on substandard lots if the lots were legal when they were created.
The Supreme Court ruled against the Murrs in June, but hours later state Rep. Adam Jarchow was on the phone with Donna Murr promising her he would take the fight to the Legislature.
"It's been a long road," Murr said after she and six other family members came to Walker's Capitol office for his signing of the bill Jarchow and Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, introduced. "It just felt like a culmination of everything we've worked for, coming to a head today after so many years of struggling and battling."
Donna Murr's parents bought two adjacent lots in the early 1960s and built a cottage on one but left the other vacant as an investment. In 2004, Donna Murr and her siblings wanted to sell the undeveloped lot to help pay for renovations to the cottage, but county officials barred the sale because conservation rules from the 1970s treat the two lots as a single property that can't be divided.
The regulations were intended to prevent overcrowding, soil erosion and water pollution. The county argued before the Supreme Court that not enforcing the rules would undermine its ability to minimize flood damage and maintain property values in the area.
But the family claimed those rules essentially stripped the land of its value and amounted to an uncompensated seizure of the property. They sought compensation for the vacant property they were forbidden to sell. The government argued, and the Supreme Court agreed in June, that it's fair to view the property as a whole and said the family is owed nothing.
Now with the law changed in Wisconsin, the Murr family can sell the vacant section. Donna Murr said she and her siblings will take some time to decide what to do next.
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