|
|
|
British arms-to-Iran suspect faces Texas court
Court Issues |
2012/02/27 18:25
|
A retired British businessman is to appear in a federal court in El Paso after being extradited last week on charges that he tried to sell missile batteries to Iran in 2006.
Christopher Tappin turned himself in Friday after fighting extradition from the United Kingdom for two years. Two other men were sentenced in 2007 to 20 and 24 months in federal prison for their roles in the scheme.
The 65-year-old Tappin was denied a final appeal of his extradition last month and delivered to El Paso by federal marshals. His deportation sparked a debate in the U.K. over whether British and American citizens are treated equally under the two countries' extradition treaty.
Don Cogdell, Tappin's attorney in Texas, said he plans to aggressively push to have Tappin granted bail. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Court: California can force inmates to submit DNA
Legal Network |
2012/02/24 17:56
|
A divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday that California law enforcement officials can keep collecting DNA samples from people arrested for felonies.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said law enforcement’s interest in solving cold cases, identifying crime suspects and even exonerating the wrongly accused outweigh any privacy concerns raised by the forced DNA collections.
The 2-1 ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by four Californians who were arrested on felony charges but never convicted.
The arrestees sought a court order barring collection of DNA from people who are arrested but not convicted, arguing the process is an unconstitutional search and seizure since some suspects will later be exonerated.
The DNA samples are obtained with a swab of the cheek and stored in the state’s DNA database, which contains 1.9 million profiles. Arrestees who are never charged with a felony can apply to have their samples expunged from the database.
The state Department of Justice said it has had roughly 20,000 “hits’’ connecting suspects with previous crimes since it began collecting the DNA profiles.
Judge Mylan Smith Jr., writing for the two-judge majority, said the useful law enforcement tool wasn’t any more intrusive than fingerprinting. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Strauss-Kahn has March court date in US
Legal Network |
2012/02/23 17:48
|
A New York court has scheduled a hearing on a lawsuit filed by the woman who accused former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel.
Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn last year, but his accuser has demanded damages in civil court.
The March 15 hearing will deal with issues that must be resolved before a trial, which has yet to be scheduled.
Strauss-Kahn wants the lawsuit dismissed because he says he had diplomatic immunity. He isn't required to attend the March court session.
The hotel maid who says she was attacked and forcibly sodomized by Strauss-Kahn is Nafissatou Diallo (na-fee-SAH'-too dee-AH'-loh). Her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, says she is "looking forward to her day in court and can't wait to get to trial." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Court says police cannot be sued over warrant
Court Issues |
2012/02/22 17:56
|
The Supreme Court said Wednesday that California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman's house.
The high court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials, who were being sued personally by Augusta Millender for the search on her house and confiscation of her shotgun.
Police were looking for her foster son, Jerry Ray Bowen, who had recently shot at his ex-girlfriend with a black sawed-off shotgun. She told police that he may be at his foster mother's house, so Messerschmidt got a warrant to look for any weapons on the property and gang-related material, since Bowen was supposed to be a member of the Mona Park Crips and the Dodge Park Crips. The detective had his supervisors approve the warrant before submitting to the district attorney and a judge, who also approved the warrant. |
|
|
|
|
|
| Lawyer & Law Firm Websites |
|
|
Legal News RSS Feed
