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Court overturns $1M award against U of M, Smith
Court News |
2012/08/08 12:26
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The Minnesota Supreme Court has overturned a $1 million award against the University of Minnesota and men's basketball coach Tubby Smith over the hiring of an assistant coach.
Jimmy Williams quit his job as an assistant coach at Oklahoma State in 2007 because he believed Smith had hiring authority when he offered him an assistant coaching job. Minnesota later withdrew the offer because Williams had NCAA rules violations during a previous stint as an assistant for the Golden Gophers more than 20 years ago.
Williams sued, and a Hennepin County jury and the state appeals court sided with him. But the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed those decisions, saying Williams was not entitled to protection against negligent misrepresentations from Smith about his hiring authority.
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Ind. court upholds life sentence for teen killer
Court News |
2012/08/03 11:52
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The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a sentence of life without parole for a teenager who said he wanted to be like the fictional television serial killer Dexter a few weeks before strangling his 10-year-old brother.
Andrew Conley was 17 in November 2009 when he killed his brother, Conner, while wrestling in their home near Rising Sun and dumped the boy's body in a park. He unexpectedly pleaded guilty in September 2010, averting a murder trial.
In the 3-2 ruling, the justices said Conley acted "as if nothing was out of the ordinary" after the killing. According to testimony during the five-day sentencing hearing, Conley joked with his mother and watched football the day after he killed Conner.
Conley told police he fantasized about killing people since he was in eighth grade. A few weeks before the killing, Conley told his girlfriend that he wanted to be just like the TV serial killer as they walked on the trail where he later disposed of his brother's body.
Three different psychological experts who interviewed Conley all said he was seriously mentally ill, but his appellate lawyer, Leanna Weissmann, said the judge gave too much credence to a psychologist's testimony that the teen could be a psychopath.
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Tenn. court says convicted killer can keep money
Court News |
2012/07/18 15:53
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A Tennessee appeals court has reluctantly ruled that a Johnson City man convicted of killing his wife in a bathtub for the insurance money can keep $200,000 in life insurance proceeds.
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported Wednesday that the Tennessee Court of Appeals agreed with a trial court's decision to let Dale Keith Larkin keep the life insurance proceeds he collected in a settlement with the daughter of his wife, Teresa Larkin, who was found dead in a bathtub in 2003.
"This court is not happy with the results of our decision," wrote Appellate Judge D. Michael Swiney in the opinion released last week.
Teresa Larkin's body was found by her then-11-year-old daughter, Tia Gentry, in the bathtub of the Johnson City home she shared with her stepfather, Dale Keith Larkin.
The Johnson City Police Department continued to work the case and in 2009 convinced prosecutors to have her body exhumed. A second autopsy revealed that she had suffered 21 separate injuries, including a broken sternum and bone breaks in her arms, before she was found drowned in the bathtub.
Charges were filed against Dale Larkin and in February 2011 he was convicted in her death. He is now serving a life sentence.
Gentry filed a lawsuit alleging her stepfather tricked her into a settlement in the life insurance case by claiming he was innocent in her mother's death. She also cited a Tennessee law, also known as the "slayer's statute," that bars people convicted of murder from inheriting property from the victim.
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High court sides with state in DNA case
Court News |
2012/06/18 12:40
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The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a rape conviction over objections that the defendant did not have the chance to question the reliability of the DNA evidence that helped convict him.
The court's 5-4 ruling went against a run of high court decisions that bolstered the right of criminal defendants to confront witnesses against them.
Justice Clarence Thomas provided the margin of difference in the case to uphold the conviction of Sandy Williams, even though Thomas has more often sided with defendants on the issue of cross-examination of witnesses.
The case grew out of a DNA expert's testimony that helped convict Williams of rape. The expert testified that Williams' DNA matched a sample taken from the victim, but the expert played no role in the tests that extracted genetic evidence from the victim's sample.
And no one from the company that performed the analysis showed up at the trial to defend it.
The court has previously ruled that defendants have the right to cross-examine the forensic analysts who prepare laboratory reports used at trial. |
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Massive LA County court layoffs to begin Friday
Court News |
2012/06/15 10:50
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Squeezed by state budgets cutbacks, the Los Angeles County court system is launching massive job layoffs, pay cuts and transfers, court officials said Thursday.
Cutbacks that will be implemented Friday will affect 431 court employees and 56 courtrooms throughout the nation's largest superior court system.
Presiding Judge Lee Smalley Edmon bemoaned the loss of longtime employees as well as the impact on public services.
"We are laying off people who are committed to serving the public," she said. "It is a terrible loss both to these dedicated employees and to the public."
The union representing state and municipal employees called Friday's action a "freeze on justice in Los Angeles" and warned that the county would experience "an end to timely justice" with cases being delayed for years, particularly in civil courts.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — AFSCME — planned to have representatives on hand to assist employees who will not know they are losing their jobs until they are informed individually Friday.
A spokeswoman for the California Judicial Council said other courts in the state will also be impacted by the budget cuts but will handle them individually. Los Angeles' court system, as the largest, will be the most heavily affected.
Edmon said the drastic actions are the result of a state mandate to reduce annual spending by $30 million. She noted that earlier reductions already saved $70 million, but more cuts in state support for trial courts are scheduled for the next fiscal year. |
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Arizona court approves fifth execution this year
Court News |
2012/06/13 15:11
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The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday approved the execution of a death-row inmate who was spared from the death penalty last year after winning a last-minute delay from the nation's highest court.
Daniel Wayne Cook, 50, is now scheduled for execution on Aug. 8 at the state prison in Florence.
Cook was sentenced to death for killing a 26-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, Carlos Cruz-Ramos, and a 16-year-old boy, Kevin Swaney, in 1987, after police say he tortured and raped them for hours in his apartment in Lake Havasu City in far western Arizona.
Cook had been scheduled for execution on April 5 of last year, but the U.S. Supreme Court granted him a last-minute stay to consider whether he had ineffective counsel during his post-conviction proceedings. They since have turned him down.
Another death-row inmate, Samuel Villegas Lopez, is set to be executed in two weeks.
Lopez would become the fourth inmate executed in Arizona this year, while Cook would become the fifth. Two other inmates who are nearing the end of their appeals could bring the number of executions in the state this year to seven. |
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