January 20, 2012

Chandra Levy juror info outted

#WaPost wins, as a D.C. #appeals #court has ordered release of juror questionnaires in the high-profile, now-concluded trial of Chandra Levy's killer.

In a 20-page decision issued this week, elavorated upon in this fresh-from-the-oven McClatchy article, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge went too far when he blocked release of the 11-page, 55-question forms filled out by the Levy jurors.

"The values underlying the First Amendment right of access _ for example, the public trial as a check on the fair functioning of the criminal justice system _ are served even after the verdict is in," Associate Judge Kathryn A. Oberly wrote.

The trial ended in November 2010 with the conviction of Ingmar Guandique, now serving a 60-year prisoni sentence. The Washington Post led the way on the fight to open up the juror questionnaires, first with the paper's dogged courthouse reporters Keith Alexander and Henri Cauvin agitating to obtain the forms and then with lawyers weighing in. Attorney Bruce D. Brown successfully argued the case last fall before the appellate court.

Separately, attorney Bruce Gottleib filed an amicus brief on behalf of 16 media organizations including the Associated Press, Atlantic Media, Inc., Dow Jones and Company, Inc., Gannett Co., Hearst Corporation,  National Public Radio,  The New York Times Company and The New Yorker.

Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher will now have to specifically identify what parts, if any, will be redacted before the questionnaires are released.

January 17, 2012

Army CID veteran honored for anti-rape efforts

A veteran #Army CID investgator is being honored for his efforts to combat sexual assault in the military.

Russell Strand, a retired CID  special agent and currently chief of the Family Advocacy Law Enforcement Training Division at the U.S Army Military Police School, has been selected to win the 2012 Visionary Award by the End Violence Against Women International Board of Directors.

A previous winner of the award was Vice President Joe Biden.

Strand has been training investigators in a new technique interviewing technique called Forensic Experiential Trauma Interviews. Strand also developed and implemented the DoD Special Victims Unit (SVU) course.

Criminal justice reporting honored

McClatchy's coverage of #military #justice won honorable mention in this year's John Jay College/H.F. Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting contest.

Wait, that's called burying the lede.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Gina Barton and Mother Jones magazine won the top prizes in the contest, sponsored by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Barton won for her series entitled "Both Sides of the Law," a close look at rule-breakers on the Milwaukee Police Department. Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones won the single-story category, for a story on FBI spying on Muslim-American communities; Aaronson conducted his reporting with Lowell Bergman's Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California at Berkeley.

Two honorable mentions will also be presented, on Feb. 6. Kelly Virella of City LImits Investigates took an honorable mention for a look at intimate relationships between inmates and corrections officers. The other honorable mention, for a series, goes to McClatchy for "Military Injustice," a year-long series led by reporters Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle that investigated every facet of the military justice system. The McClatchy series revealed bungling at the military's chief crime lab, lengthy appellate delays, congressional missteps and more.

January 13, 2012

Scotus set to spank 9th Circuit again

#Scotus appears poised to thump the 9th Circuit #Court of Appeals again.

And the California attorney general's office, laying it on thick, is really playing up the 9th Circuit's serial perfidy.

On Friday, the Supreme Court granted California's petition in Cavazos v. Williams. Williams is a female inmate serving life in prison without parole for her part in a 1993 murder. Williams, 20 at the time, was the driver of the get-away car during a liquor store robbery in which one of her accomplices shot the store owner.

The 9th Circuit overturned Williams' conviction, ruling the trial judge improperly removed a juror who was resisting conviction. But the real issue now is whether the 9th Circuit was too, you know, activist in allowing Williams to pursue her appeals despite losing at the state level.

So check out how the California attorney general's office puts in rhetorical bold face, in its petition, the fact that Hey, Supreme Court, that darn liberal 9th Circuit needs to be put in its place again!Said the state:

This Court, of course, has in the recent past twice reversed the Ninth Circuit...for similar judicial disregard of state-court fact findings. Here it once again strayed far beyond the bounds of appropriate federal habeas review of state-court fact finding.

and

Having repeatedly misapplied AEDPA’s highly deferential standard of review, the Ninth Circuit here has circumvented it altogether.

and

As demonstrated by this Court’s many grants of certiorari to review and reverse Ninth Circuit judgments flawed by “judicial disregard” of the deferential § 2254 standard, the Ninth Circuit’s errors here warrant this Court’s attention too.

All of which, of course, is catnip to the likes of Justice Antonin Scalia, who as recently as Monday sighed about the "Ninth Circuit’s latest unsupportable §2254 judgment."

January 05, 2012

Rahm Emanuel gets lawsuit tossed

#Rahm Emanuel, former #WH chief of staff, has prevailed in #court. #***!

In an 18-page decision issued Jan. 4, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell dismissed a long-shot but non-trivial lawsuit filed against Emanuel for his alleged actions as President Barack Obama's first White House chief of staff.

A former White House worker accused Emanuel, now Chicago mayor, of employment discrimination, retaliation and assorted other problems. In (very) brief, the former worker, a 36-year veteran of government service, had initially filed an equal opportunity complaint concerning her treatment as an African-American. She reached a settlement with the White House to leave. Emanuel's office then defamed her, she said, by reporting that the early retirement was involuntary.

Judge Howell dismissed the complaint because of jurisdictional grounds, sovereign immunity and other reasons.

December 29, 2011

D.C. must pay $1.1 million in gun-case attorneys fees

Losing a landmark #Scotus case on #gun rights will now cost Washington, D.C. $1.1 million in attorneys fees.

In a 65-page decision Thursday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan awarded fees to six attorneys who represented lead plaintiff Dick Heller and others in the 2008 Second Amendment case that struck down D.C.'s stringent handgun ban.

Big winner: attorney Alan Gura, who was awarded $662,424 of the total. This amounts to a rate of $420 an hour, for 1,577.2 billable hours.

As often happens, the judge opted for a total somewhere in between competing proposals. The plaintiffs' attorneys had asked for $3.1 million, while D.C. had proposed several lower numbers, including a low of $657,252.

Complicating the court's calculations was the fact that the gun-rights attorneys, some from non-profit, self-styled public interest organizations, did not have the standard hourly rate common in commercial practice.

December 28, 2011

Judge approves big vets' PTSD settlement

#Vets win, as a #court approves a big #PTSD class-action claim.

In a 14-page decision, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge George Miller has approved a class-action settlement covering several thousand veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The claim was filed by the National Veterans Legal Services Program and the pro-bono co-counsel, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

The settlement itself, fully unveiled in July, provides lifetime disability retirement benefits to 1,029 veterans with PTSD. Under the agreement , the military also agreed to increase the PTSD disability rating of another 1,066 vets.

Judge Miller, in his Dec. 22 decision approving the settlement, noted that 96 percent of the class-action members who responded were in favor of the deal; he praised, as well, the attorneys for plaintiffs and government alike for their "zealous, dedicated, and thorough" work.

December 27, 2011

Reported sex assaults increase at military academies

The #Pentagon is reporting more sex #crime allegations at #military academies over the past year.

In an annual report issued Tuesday, the Defense Department is reporting it received a total of 65 allegations of "sexual harassment and violence" at West Point, Annapolis and other national military service academies.Last year, the service academies reported a total of 41 allegations of sexual harassment and violence.

The total for the 2010-2011 school year is the highest since the Pentagon began compiling the sexual assault reports, at the direction of Congress, for 2004-2005. The increase, to some degree, could reflect a greater willingness of academy students to report an allegation, rather than an increase in the number of incidents.

Officials, moreover, note that sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported.

The Air Force Academy reported more allegations of sexual assault than the other service academies, followed by Naval Academy.

December 23, 2011

Decades-old misdemeanor blocks gun purchase

Attention, #NRA and other #gun rights advocates: a federal judge Friday said a misdemeanor that occured in 1968 is sufficient to block a gun purchase in the 21st century.

In a 15-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said the gun-purchase prohibition does not violate the Second Amendment rights of Jefferson Wayne Schrader. The facts are these, as related by Judge Collyer:

Back in 1968 when Jefferson Schrader was 20 years old and in the Navy, he was in a fistfight with a member of a gang that had previously attacked him on the street in Annapolis, Maryland. He was arrested and convicted in a Maryland State court of common law misdemeanor assault and battery. He received a $100 fine and no jail time. Forty years later, as Mr. Schrader attempted to purchase firearms, his attempts were rebuffed when he was identified in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) as ineligible since his 1968 conviction could have resulted in a sentence of two years or more and federal law prohibited his purchase.

 Collyer concluded that, as old and seemingly minor as it was, Schrader's conviction was still sufficient to fit under the prohibitions enumerated in the Brady gun control act.

December 22, 2011

Judge dismisses damages claim by ex-Gitmo detainee

A #judge has dismissed damages claim by #Syrian #Gitmo alumnus Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Janko, who sought recompense for alleged abusive treatment.

Al Janko's is a sorrowful tale. First he was captured and tortured by Al Qaeda, whose operatives accused him of being an American spy, then he was held at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 through 2009, when a judge ordered him released. In U.S. custody, he alleges that U.S. forces used abusive interrogation techniques against him, such as striking his forehead; threatening to remove his fingernails; sleep deprivation; exposure to very cold temperatures, humiliation and rough treatment. He claims that unidentified U.S. forces urinated upon him when he first arrived in Guantanamo.

He says he attempted suicide 17 times. Once freed, he sued a host of former Pentagon officials.

In his decision Thursday, U.S, District Judge Richard Leon dismissed Al Janko's complaint, with the following observation:

"War, by its very nature, victimizes many of those caught in its wake. Innocent civilians are invariably killed, and sometimes even mistakenly imprisoned. Our legal system was never designed to provide a remedy in our Courts for these inevitable tragedies, especially in a conflict like this where terrorists cunningly morph into their surroundings."