National Roundup

California Soldier shot at homecoming in critical condition LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A soldier who survived a suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan continues to fight for his life after he was critically wounded at his Southern California homecoming party. Police on Monday arrested Ruben Ray Jurado after he turned himself in to authorities in Chino Hills, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. The 19-year-old is suspected of shooting 22-year-old Christopher Sullivan at the party in San Bernardino on Friday night after getting into a fight with the soldier's brother. Sullivan remains in critical condition. Sullivan's relatives say the Purple Heart recipient, which is awarded to those wounded in combat, was hit twice at the party by gunfire, which shattered his spine and left him paralyzed from the neck down. Authorities believe Jurado, who had played football with Sullivan in high school, began arguing with Sullivan's 16-year-old brother Brandon over football teams and then punched him. Sullivan intervened and Jurado pulled a gun and fired multiple shots, hitting Sullivan in the neck, San Bernardino police Sgt. Gary Robertson said. Jurado has been transferred to the custody of the San Bernardino Police Department where he was booked on suspicion of attempted murder. The district attorney's office has until Wednesday to file charges. Police said Jurado had an attorney but officials couldn't immediately provide the lawyer's name. It wasn't immediately possible to locate a number for Jurado. Sullivan was wounded in a suicide bombing attack last year in Kandahar province while serving with the 101st Infantry Division. He suffered a cracked collarbone and brain damage in the attack and had been recovering in Kentucky, where he is stationed. California Disgraced ex-journalist fights for CA law license SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A former journalist who became the subject of a Hollywood movie after he was caught fabricating articles in the late 1990s is fighting to become a lawyer in California over the objections of a state bar committee. Stephen Glass, whose ethical missteps at The New Republic and other magazines were recounted in the film "Shattered Glass" and an autobiographical novel, has challenged the bar committee's decision to deny him a license to practice law, the San Francisco Chronicle (http://bit.ly/sfh2je) reported Monday. Glass attended law school at Georgetown University and passed California's bar exam in 2007. His application for an attorney's license was turned down by the state's Committee of Bar Examiners, which judged him morally unfit for his new profession. But an independent state bar court ruled in Glass's favor in July and the California Supreme Court has since agreed to hear the committee's appeal. No date for oral arguments has been set. The bar association's lawyers said in written filings that even though Glass' transgressions occurred when he was in his 20s, his attempts at atonement were inadequate and in some cases coincided with the publication of his novel. They faulted him for never compensating anyone who was hurt by his falsehoods. Law and journalism "share common core values -- trust, candor, veracity, honor, respect for others," Rachel Grunberg, a lawyer for the State Bar of California, told the Chronicle. "He violated every one of them." The bar court that overruled the committee in July was convinced, however, that Glass was genuinely repentant and had been rehabilitated. His appeal included character references from 22 witnesses, including two judges who had employed him, two psychiatrists, and Martin Peretz, who owned The New Republic when Glass' deception occurred. In his own statement to the bar, Glass said he was "greatly ashamed and remorseful about my lying" but "forthright and candid about my years of misconduct." Glass tried to become a lawyer in New York after he passed that state's bar exam in 2003, but withdrew his application when his request for moral character approval from the New York bar languished. Now 39, Glass works as a law clerk at a Beverly Hills firm. His Los Angeles-based attorney Susan Margolis declined to comment Monday evening. Texas Supreme Court gay privacy case victor dead at 68 HOUSTON (AP) -- The Texas man whose case led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted privacy rights to gay men and lesbians has died at age 68. John G. Lawrence died in Houston on Nov. 20, according to Sarah Wilson of R.S. Farmer Funeral Home in Silsbee, Texas. Lawrence died of a heart condition, his partner, Jose Garcia, told the Houston Chronicle. Mitchell Katine, a Houston attorney who represented Lawrence in the case Lawrence vs. Texas, told the newspaper he learned of his client's death Saturday while trying to invite him to an April celebration of the 2003 ruling. The case began in 1998 when a neighbor with a grudge faked a distress call to police, telling them that a man was "going crazy" in Lawrence's apartment just outside Houston. Police went to the home, pushed open the door and found Lawrence and Tyrone Garner having sex. Both paid $200 fines after spending several hours in the county jail for alleged violation of the state sodomy statute, a misdemeanor. Katine said Lawrence did not view himself as an activist. "He was angry at how he was treated, both physically and personally," he told the Chronicle. "He was taken to jail in the middle of the night in his underwear." The Associated Press left a phone message Monday evening at Katine's law office, and Garcia's phone number was unlisted. At the time of the Lawrence ruling, gay rights advocates called it the most important legal advance ever for gay people in the United States. Since then, gay rights have advanced nationwide. Gay marriage is now allowed in some states and Washington, D.C., and the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning gay's from serving openly took effect in September. "This ruling lets us get on with our lives and it opens the door for gay people all over the country," Lawrence said at the time. Garner died of meningitis in 2006. In an opinion for the court majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that the two men "are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." The U.S. Constitution's framers "knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," Kennedy wrote. Published: Wed, Dec 28, 2011