State must recognize historic tribal boundaries The Court begins, “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise” to the Five Tribes of land in Oklahoma in exchange for giving up their ancestral lands in Georgia and Florida. The Court ruled today this land is still “Indian cou[...]
Posts Tagged ‘courts’
Washington joins states without a death penalty
Washington became a non-death penalty state Thursday when the state supreme court declared the state’s capital punishment statute “invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” The ruling effectively converts the state’s eight outstanding death senten[...]
Trump calls U.S. legal system “laughing stock”
Frustrated that the NYC attacker’s constitutional rights* might stand in the way of arbitrary detention at Gitmo or summary execution, President Trump today tweeted the U.S. legal system is a “laughing stock.” (Read story here.) Sounds like he admires the way things were done under[...]
9th Circuit: Concealed carry NOT a 2nd Amendment right
The Ninth Circuit en banc ruled today that concealed carry is not a Second Amendment right and California can require applicants for CCW permits to demonstrate a good reason for carrying a gun in public beyond a general desire for self-defense. The 11-judge decision overturns an earlier 3-judge ruli[...]
Idaho must pay activists’ legal bills in “ag-gag” case
A federal judge has ordered Idaho to pay $250,000 to animal-rights activists for their legal bills incurred in challenging an unconstitutional “ag-gag” law that made it a crime to video abuse of farm animals. Read story here. Several Republican-dominated farm states have passed such laws[...]
Cliven Bundy wants taxpayers to foot his legal bills
Cliven Bundy is the ultimate deadbeat. He owes the government over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees. Now that he’s behind bars for fomenting armed insurrection and threatening to kill law enforcement officers, he wants — you guessed it — the government he hates so much to provide [...]
Texas judge orders defendants to get married or face jail time
This story is almost too bizarre to believe, but it’s apparently true. A judge in Smith County, Texas, apparently is ordering people charged with minor crimes to write Bible verses and get married as conditions of getting probation instead of jail time. I don’t see how that can possibly [...]
Another railroaded black man is released from death row
“Anthony Ray Hinton is thankful to be free after nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row for murders he says he didn’t commit. And incredulous that it took so long. Hinton, 58, looked up, took in the sunshine and thanked God and his lawyers Friday morning outside the county jail in [...]
Lying cops and flawed legal system sent innocent teens to death row
In 1975, a white man was murdered on a Cleveland street corner by black robbers. Ricky Jackson, 18, and two friends, brothers Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman, were convicted and sentenced to death. Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman ended up serving 39 years in prison; Ronnie Bridgeman was paroled in 2003[...]