Justices turn away Israeli spyware maker in WhatsApp suit
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an Israeli spyware maker's bid to derail a high-profile lawsuit filed by the WhatsApp messaging service.
The justices left in place lower court rulings against the Israeli firm, NSO Group. WhatsApp claims that NSO targeted some 1,400 users of the encrypted messaging service with highly sophisticated spyware.
WhatsApp parent Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., is trying to block NSO from Facebook platforms and servers and recover unspecified damages.
NSO argued that it should be recognized as a foreign government agent and therefore be entitled to immunity under U.S. law limiting lawsuits against foreign countries. The request appeals a pair of earlier federal court rulings that rejected similar arguments by the Israeli company.
The Biden administration recommended that the court turn away the appeal. The Justice Department wrote that "NSO plainly is not entitled to immunity here."
NSO's flagship product, Pegasus, allows operators to covertly infiltrate a target's mobile phone, gaining access to messages and contacts, the camera and microphone and location
history. Only government law enforcement agencies can purchase the product and all sales are approved by Israel's Defense Ministry, NSO said. It does not identify its clients.
WhatsApp says at least 100 of the users connected to its lawsuit were journalists, rights activists and civil society members. Critics have said that NSO's clients include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Poland and that those countries have abused the system to snoop on critics and stifle dissent.
NSO said it has safeguards in place to prevent abuses, although the company also said it has no control over how its clients use the product.
The WhatsApp case is among a series of legal battles plaguing NSO. In a separate lawsuit, Apple says it aims to prevent NSO from breaking into products. It claimed Pegasus had affected a small number of iPhone users worldwide, calling NSO's employees "amoral 21st century mercenaries."
In November, journalists from an investigative news outlet in El Salvador also sued NSO in a U.S. court after Pegasus spyware was detected on their iPhones.
"NSO's spyware has enabled cyberattacks targeting human rights activists, journalists, and government officials. We firmly believe that their operations violate U.S. law and they must be held to account for their unlawful operations," WhatsApp spokesperson Carl Woog said in a statement.
A lawyer for the journalists who sued also praised the court's action. "Today's decision clears the path for lawsuits brought by the tech companies, as well as for suits brought by journalists and human rights advocates who have been victims of spyware attacks," Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement.
In its own statement, NSO said: "We are confident that the court will determine that the use of Pegasus by its customers was legal."
NSO also has been blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department, limiting its access to U.S. technology. U.S. officials said the company's products were complicit in "transnational repression."
Court revives claims by Texas death row inmate backed by DA
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday revived claims by a Texas inmate who has the rare support of the state prosecutor's office that put him on death row.
The justices threw out a Texas appeals court ruling that refused to grant the inmate, Areli Escobar, a new trial. The state appeals court had overruled a lower court judge who documented the flaws in the forensic evidence used to convict Escobar.
The high court's action returns the case to the appeals court.
Escobar was convicted and sentenced to death in the May 2009 fatal stabbing and sexual assault of Bianca Maldonado, a 17-year-old high school student in Austin. They lived in the same apartment complex.
The focus of the prosecution case against Escobar was evidence from the Austin Police Department's DNA lab.
But a later audit turned up problems at the lab that led Judge David Wahlberg of the Travis County District Court to conclude that Escobar's trial was unfair.
"The State's use of unreliable, false, or misleading DNA evidence to secure (Escobar's) conviction violated fundamental concepts of justice," Wahlberg wrote.
When the case returned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Travis County prosecutors no longer were defending the conviction. Voters had elected a new district attorney, Jose Garza, who ran on a promise to hold police accountable in Austin, the state capital and county seat.
But the appeals court refused to go along, saying it had conducted its own review that justified affirming the conviction and sentence, and not mentioning the prosecution's change of position. Even after Garza's office pointed out it was no longer standing behind the conviction, the appeals court stuck with its ruling.
In its filing with the Supreme Court, Garza's office wrote that prosecutors have a duty to see justice done and that the appeals court "undermined the District Attorney's historical role in the criminal justice system."
Escobar's lawyers, unsurprisingly, agreed, telling the court that their case is so clear, the justices could reverse the appellate ruling without hearing arguments.
"If ever there were a case calling for summary reversal, it is this capital case. Denying the petition would be a grave miscarriage of justice," they wrote.
US Supreme Court won't hear appeals from 'Wichita massacre'
By John Hanna
Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear the appeals of two brothers who were sentenced to death for four fatal shootings on a Kansas soccer field in December 2000 known as "the Wichita massacre."
Former Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the high court's decision means Jonathan and Reginald Carr no longer have any direct appeals of their death sentences.
However, he said they can still file lawsuits in state and federal courts to try to prevent their executions by lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court's action came a little less than a year after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the two brothers had received fair trials and upheld their death sentences.
Kansas has nine men on death row, but the state has not executed anyone since the murderous duo James Latham and George York were hanged on the same day in June 1965.
"The slow but steady march toward justice continues," Schmidt said in a statement Monday.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision came just hours before Schmidt stepped down as Kansas attorney general after 12 years in office, having lost the governor's race in November. The new attorney general is Kris Kobach, a fellow Republican.
Clayton Perkins, an attorney representing Jonathan Carr in his appeals, declined to comment. Reginald Carr's attorney for his appeals, Debra Wilson, did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
Prosecutors said the brothers broke into a home in December 2000 and forced the three men and two women there to have sex with one another and later to withdraw money from ATMs. Jonathan Carr was 20 and Reginald Carr was 23 when the murders occurred; they are now 42 and 45 and both are incarcerated at the state's maximum-security prison in El Dorado, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Wichita.
According to authorities, the women were raped repeatedly before all five victims were taken to a soccer field and shot. Four of them died: Aaron Sander, 29; Brad Heyka, 27; Jason Befort, 26; and Heather Muller, 25. The woman who survived testified against the Carr brothers. They were also convicted of killing another person in a separate attack.
Each of the brothers accused the other of carrying out the crimes.
The Kansas court upheld their convictions in 2014 but overturned their death sentences, concluding that not having separate hearings violated the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision in 2016, returning the case to the Kansas Supreme Court.
The Kansas court's ruling in 2014 led crime victims' friends and families to campaign for the ouster of four of the court's seven justices in the November 2016 election. Although that effort was unsuccessful and the four justices prevailed in statewide yes-or-no votes on whether they should stay on the bench, it was by smaller than normal margins.
When the Kansas Supreme Court took up the brothers' cases again, their attorneys raised questions about how their cases weren't conducted separately when jurors were considering whether the death penalty was warranted. Other issues they raised included the instructions that were given to jurors and how closing arguments were conducted.
The Kansas court's majority concluded that while the lower-court judge and prosecutors made errors, those errors did not warrant overturning their death sentences again.
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://legalnews.com/subscriptions
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://www.legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
