Miss. death row cases before nation’s high court
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear appeals in two death penalty cases from Mississippi.
The high court Monday turned back appeals for Paul E. Woodward and Gerald James Holland.
Woodward was convicted in Perry County in the 1986 slaying of volunteer Youth Court worker Rhonda Crane.
Woodward claimed his rights were violated when a Mississippi court sent him to a state hospital for a mental evaluation rather than letting him be examined by an independent expert.
Holland was convicted in Harrison County for the 1987 death of 15-year-old Krystal King.
Holland claimed a trial judge erred in denying him the right to counter evidence of rape raised by prosecutors during the trial’s sentencing phase.
Texan’s appeal denied over DA’s affair with judge
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has left in place the conviction of a man, despite the admission of an affair between his trial judge and the prosecutor.
The justices did not comment Monday in turning down the appeal of Charles Dean Hood. A Texas appeals court threw out Hood’s death sentence earlier this year on a point unrelated to the affair.
Hood was seeking an entirely new trial based on the once-secret romantic relationship between the trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, and Tom O’Connell, the former district attorney in Collin County.
Kaufman seeks political savvy on Supreme Court
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman says the next member of the Supreme Court should have a background in politics.
The Delaware Democrat is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, putting him in position to have an early say on President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Kaufman tells The News Journal of Wilmington that rulings like the one in January that allow unions and corporations to spend unlimited amounts on campaign ads show a need for a political background.
Kaufman says he’d like to see more justices like Sandra Day O’Connor, who had experience as a lawmaker in Arizona before being named the Supreme Court.
Court to hear fired reserve lab technician’s appeal
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will review the case of a fired hospital worker who claims he lost his job over his service in the U.S. Army Reserve.
Vincent Staub, a lab technician at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Ill., won $57,640 in damages from a jury that found he was fired because of his military service, only to have a federal appeals court throw out the judgment. The justices said Monday they will consider reinstating the award.
The court could use the case to settle an unresolved question about whether an employer can be found liable for discrimination when a biased supervisor does not make employment determinations but influences the decision-maker.
Staub was fired in 2004 after roughly 15 years as an angiography technician at the hospital. He also has been in the Reserves since 1984 and his duties include training other lab technicians. He was called to active duty in 2003 in connection with the U.S. war in Iraq and spent time instructing soldiers how to set up a radiology unit in a field hospital in a combat situation.
Staub claimed, and the jury found, that his supervisor was out to get him, motivated by what the trial judge described as her “negative opinion of Staub’s military service.”
But a more senior executive, not the supervisor, made the ultimate decision on Staub’s employment. The federal appeals court in Chicago said there was no evidence that the decision-maker shared the supervisor’s anti-military bias. It threw out the verdict and upheld the firing.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether an employer can be held liable for the discriminatory acts of supervisors who do not make final employment decisions.
The Obama administration recommended that the justices use this case to answer that question.
The case will be argued in the fall.
The case is Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 09-400.
High court to look at Costco sale of Swiss watches
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is stepping into a legal fight over Omega’s effort to stop Costco from offering the Swiss maker’s watches for up to a third less than they cost elsewhere.
The case has important implications for discount sellers like Costco and Target as well as eBay, Amazon and other companies that form an estimated $58 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer.
The justices said Monday they will hear Costco’s appeal of a lower court ruling that sided with Omega in its attempt to invoke U.S. copyright law to halt the discount sales. Omega owns a U.S. copyright on the Omega Globe Design symbol that is engraved on its watches at the time they are made.
The high court has previously ruled that copyright protections do not apply to goods made in the United States, sold abroad and then imported back into the country for resale. At issue in this case are items that are manufactured overseas, sold by their maker abroad and then brought back here for resale.
This means of purchase, importation and resale is sometimes called the secondary-goods or gray-goods market, and it is a big part of Costco’s business.
Roy Englert, Costco’s lawyer, said in court papers that there is no basis in law for “the distinction between goods made at home and those made abroad.”
In response, Omega said that the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was faithful to copyright law, which is designed to “prevent the importation, without the authority of the U.S. copyright holder, of genuine copies made and sold overseas.”
The Obama administration said it was troubled by aspects of the appeals court ruling, but urged the justices to stay out of the case.
The case will be argued in the fall.
The case is Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A., 08-1423.
