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Wash. man pleads guilty to defrauding ID investors
Law News |
2011/08/10 09:00
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A Washington man has pleaded guilty in federal court in Idaho to cheating investors out of more than $2 million and using the cash for his own benefit.
Federal prosecutors say 59-year-old Dale Edward Lowell, of Colbert, Wash., pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud Tuesday.
Investigators say Lowell, while living in northern Idaho in 2005, started raised money from investors by telling him he was a savvy options trader. He also told investors he had taken steps to cover losses.
Altogether, prosecutors say Lowell duped 22 investor groups and raised about $2.2 million that he ultimately lost in the market, used for personal expenses or to pay off investors to keep the scheme going. |
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New hearings sought in Chicago police torture case
Law News |
2011/08/10 09:00
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Fifteen incarcerated men who claim they were sent to prison by confessions that were beaten, burned and tortured out of them by convicted Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers are getting some high-profile help — including from a former Illinois governor.
In a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed Wednesday with the Illinois Supreme Court, ex-Gov. Jim Thompson and more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers are asking for new evidentiary hearings for inmates who say their convictions were based on coerced confessions.
The brief marks the first effort on behalf of alleged Burge victims as a group and not separate individual cases, attorneys said.
Burge's name has become synonymous with police abuse in the nation's third-largest city, and more than 100 men — most of them African-American and Latino— have alleged Burge and his men tortured them from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Burge was convicted last year of lying about whether he ever witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects. He's serving a 4 1/2-year sentence at Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.
Burge never has faced criminal charges for abuse. He was fired from the police department in 1993 over the 1982 beating and burning of Andrew Wilson, a suspect later convicted of killing two police officers. |
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No class-action for suits over Calif. fish kill
Law News |
2011/08/06 09:27
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An appeals court has rejected class-action status for a lawsuit prompted by efforts to kill off an invasive fish in Northern California.
The Sacramento Bee says the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled last week that people suing the state had too little in common to comprise a single class and must sue individually.
In 2007, the state Fish and Game Department dumped thousands of gallons of poison into Lake Davis in Plumas County to kill the voracious northern pike. The lake was closed for several months.
The city of Portola and a number of businesses and property owners sued in 2009, arguing that the action caused a decline in tourism that hurt their income, property values and tax receipts. |
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Calif. court hears appeal on gay juror dismissals
Law News |
2011/08/05 09:14
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A federal appeals case pending in California could determine if trial lawyers should be barred from dismissing potential jurors because they are gay.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday in Pasadena that challenge a Los Angeles prosecutor's decision to strike a lesbian from the jury in an assault case against a gay federal inmate.
The Los Angeles Times reports a favorable ruling could extend constitutional discrimination protections to homosexuality, along with race, creed and gender.
Inmate Daniel Osazuwa says he hugged a guard who was homophobic and he overreacted. The guard fell and Osazuwa landed on him.
A public defender argues the trial judge erred in dismissing a lesbian from the jury, but a prosecutor says she was let go for another legitimate reason. |
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Phone hack lawsuits loom, foam attack sentence cut
Law News |
2011/08/04 09:14
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Several alleged victims of tabloid phone hacking in Britain will soon file lawsuits against a second newspaper group, Piers Morgan's former employer Trinity Mirror PLC, their lawyer said Friday.
Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in a few weeks, but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the papers would be presented at court.
Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World tabloid while she was still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
The phone hacking scandal centers on allegations that journalists eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police for information and hacked email accounts.
So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch's media empire, leading him to shut down the News of the World and abandon a bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping.
But there have also been allegations of hacking by other newspapers. This week Paul McCartney's ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001. |
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