Court declines Mich. emergency manager law case
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't take up a challenge to a Michigan law that allows the state to temporarily take away local officials' authority during financial crises and appoint an emergency manager.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the case. Voters and elected officials were challenging a state law that says that to rescue financially stressed cities and school districts the state can reassign the governing powers of local officials to a state-appointed emergency manager. An emergency manager was in place during the water crisis in Flint.
Those bringing the lawsuit said emergency managers have been appointed in a high number of areas with large African-American populations but not in similar areas with majority white populations.
Lower courts said lawsuit was brought under a federal law that didn't apply.
Michigan sex offender registry case turned down
By Ed White
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) - Michigan's sex offender registry law must be rewritten after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision that found the state was treating people as "moral lepers" by saddling them with excessive restrictions.
The Supreme Court turned down an appeal from the state, 13 months after a federal appeals court struck down many retroactive rules as unconstitutional.
In 2006, Michigan lawmakers changed the law to prohibit registrants from living, working or even loitering within 1,000 feet of a school. Five years later, the Legislature said registrants should be divided into three tiers solely on the type of conviction, not based on any individual assessment. The rules were made retroactive.
The law "resembles, in some respects at least, the ancient punishment of banishment," appeals court Judge Alice Batchelder wrote for the 3-0 majority.
The court said Michigan presented no evidence that residential restrictions were having positive effects. One plaintiff in the lawsuit is on the registry because of a non-sexual kidnapping.
The court said a requirement that registrants check in frequently in-person with police has "no relationship to public safety at all."
"The Legislature is going to have to go back and address these issues," said Miriam Aukerman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit with University of Michigan law school. "This requires the Legislature to adopt laws that keep us safe and are grounded in research and fact."
Sen. Rick Jones, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he'll invite the ACLU, state police and prosecutors to discuss the next steps.
"We'll work together to bring (Michigan) into compliance," he said. "What we've done is what a majority of Michiganders want. They want children to be protected from sex offenders."
Justices will not hear NM tree clearing dispute
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has left in place a lower court ruling that prevents New Mexico from greenlighting tree clearing on federal land in the state in the name of fire prevention.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a dispute between New Mexico and the federal government.
The issue dates back to 2001 when New Mexico passed a law saying the U.S. Forest Service had failed to reduce the threat of forest fires by not clearing undergrowth and removing trees on Forest Service land. The law then gave counties in the state permission to do the work.
When Otero County moved to cut trees on land in the Lincoln National Forest without federal approval in 2011, the United States government sued. Lower courts sided with the federal government.
Justices won't weigh in on Cliven Bundy lawyer issue
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is declining to weigh in on conservative activist Larry Klayman's efforts to represent state's rights figure Cliven Bundy during a trial over the 2014 standoff near Bundy's Nevada ranch.
The court said Monday that it won't address a dispute in which Klayman claims he was improperly prevented from joining Bundy's defense team. Bundy, two sons and four other defendants are scheduled to go on trial Oct. 10.
Bundy and his sons were among 19 people arrested in early 2016, nearly two years after the armed standoff with federal authorities near his Nevada ranch. The standoff near Bunkerville happened after federal authorities attempted to roundup roughly 1,000 of Bundy's cows from public lands following a decades-long dispute over grazing rights.
Court rejects appeal by convicted killer of 11 in Ohio
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by a Cleveland man sentenced to die for killing 11 women and hiding the remains in and around his home.
At issue were arguments by 58-year-old Anthony Sowell over the closure of an evidence hearing during his trial and his rejected offer to plead guilty.
Sowell lost the argument in the Ohio Supreme Court and appealed to the nation's high court, which turned down the appeal Monday.
The trial judge closed a pre-trial hearing to the public about the admissibility of Sowell's 11-hour videotaped police interrogation. Sowell's attorneys objected to the move.
The judge ultimately allowed the use of the video.
Defense attorney Jeff Gamso called the ruling disappointing and said he's determining how to proceed.
NJ case on lengthy juvenile sentences declined
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court is leaving in place a ruling by New Jersey's highest court that helped prompt new legislation prohibiting mandatory life without parole for juveniles in the state.
The court declined Monday to take up the case involving Ricky Zuber and James Comer, both of whom were convicted of serious crimes as juveniles and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for multiple offenses.
The sentencing of Zuber and Comer prompted New Jersey's highest court to rule earlier this year that judges need to take additional care in sentencing juveniles to long prison terms, and said Zuber and Comer should be re-sentenced.
Responding to the ruling, state lawmakers passed legislation barring life without parole for juvenile offenders. The legislation means that juveniles convicted of murder in New Jersey now face a minimum of 30 years up to a life sentence, but even those who receive the maximum would be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
New Jersey wanted the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue of lengthy sentences that are the equivalent of life without parole.
Alexander Shalom, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's New Jersey chapter, said that Monday's decision brings finality to the case and confirms that the men will get re-sentencing hearings.
Comer was convicted of participating in four armed robberies in 2000 when he was 17, one of which led to the killing of a victim by an accomplice. He was sentenced to 75 years with no parole eligibility for about 68 years.
"He will have an opportunity to show that the person he was when he was 17 is a lot different than the man he is 17 years later," Shalom said of Comer, who the ACLU represents. Zuber is represented by a public defender.
Zuber was sentenced for his role in two gang rapes in 1981 when he was 17 to 110 years in prison with 55 years of parole ineligibility.
In the state Supreme Court ruling, the New Jersey justices wrote that juveniles should be considered differently than adults at sentencing, particularly if the length of parole ineligibility amounts to a de facto life-without-parole sentence, as in the Zuber and Comer cases. Comer would be 85 before he would be eligible for parole, and Zuber would be in his early 70s.
Case of man who shot student turned down
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving in place a 70-year prison sentence for a Montana man convicted of shooting a German exchange student who was trespassing in his garage.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the case of Markus Kaarma.
Kaarma was convicted of the 2014 death of 17-year-old Diren Dede, who had apparently gone into Kaarma's garage in Missoula to steal beer. Kaarma had argued the shooting was in self-defense. Prosecutors said Kaarma and his girlfriend were trying to lure a burglar into the garage by leaving the garage door open despite having been burglarized twice before.
Kaarma told the Supreme Court that he didn't get a fair trial because media coverage of the case prejudiced the outcome.
Justices uphold man's conviction over Facebook post
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving in place the conviction of a Pennsylvania man who posted violent rap lyrics on Facebook that took aim at his estranged wife, an elementary school and law enforcement.
The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up for a second time the case of Anthony Elonis. The court ruled in 2015 that a jury should have weighed Elonis' intent and not just the lyrics when convicting him of making threats. The Supreme Court then sent the case back to an appeals court.
The appeals court upheld Elonis' conviction saying no jury would have found that he didn't intend to threaten his targets or didn't know his targets would view the lyrics as a threat.
Minnesota sex offender case rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't hear a challenge to Minnesota's sex offender civil commitment system, which allows people deemed sexually dangerous to be committed to a treatment facility for an indefinite period of time.
The court's order, which declines to hear the case, came Monday.
According to the sex offenders who brought the lawsuit, more than 700 people are now committed in the state as "sexually dangerous" or a "sexual psychopathic personality." They argued the "fatal flaw" in the scheme is that Minnesota doesn't require a regular review of those cases to see if the individuals should still be held.
Minnesota told the court that offenders can petition for release using a simple-to-obtain form.
Court won't upend NY Democrat's conviction
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has left in place the conviction and prison sentence of a former Democratic state senator from New York who wanted to run for mayor of New York City as a Republican.
The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting an appeal from former Sen. Malcolm Smith.
Prosecutors said Smith authorized about $200,000 in bribes to secure Republican leaders' backing to avoid a crowded Democratic field and run on the GOP line in the 2013 mayoral race.
Smith had served in the state Senate for more than a decade before his arrest in 2013. He is serving a seven-year prison term after his conviction on conspiracy, bribery and other charges.
Megaupload case declined by court
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving in place lower court rulings against internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom and others associated with his now defunct file-sharing website Megaupload.
The Supreme Court said Monday it would not take a case in which a lower court ordered the forfeiture of bank accounts, cars, and a property in New Zealand linked to the group.
U.S. authorities shut down Megaupload in 2012 and filed charges against Dotcom and several colleagues, alleging they conspired to commit copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering. Two years later, officials moved to have assets forfeited that the government said were proceeds of the alleged conspiracy.
Courts found that Dotcom, who lives in New Zealand, and others were fugitives avoiding prosecution in the United States and ordered the assets forfeited.
Published: Wed, Oct 04, 2017
