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WikiLeaks case file fight moves to federal court
Legal News Digest |
2013/05/24 09:15
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The WikiLeaks organization and a handful of journalists asked a federal judge Wednesday to order greater transparency in the court-martial of an Army private who has acknowledged sending reams of classified document to the WikiLeaks website.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, representing WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, filed the petition in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. It seeks an order requiring public access to all documents in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning.
It also seeks to have the lawyers and military judge "reconstitute" in open court certain conferences they have held out of public view.
Shaunteh Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Military District of Washington, where Manning is being court-martialed, said the Army has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.
Manning's 3-year-old espionage case is headed for trial next month at Fort Meade, near Baltimore. Many records of the pretrial proceedings remain secret because the military contends the First Amendment doesn't require it to provide prompt public access to court-martial documents.
Unlike civilian courts, where case files are readily available for public inspection in a clerk's office, there is no central repository for court-martial records. The military initially required reporters covering the Manning case to file federal Freedom of Information Act requests for documents, including the military judge's rulings. In February, it began releasing redacted versions of some court-martial records on a public website. In April, the judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, started releasing some of her written rulings to reporters the same day.
Still, the petition says, the public is being denied its First Amendment right to scrutinize the Manning case as it proceeds. |
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US appeals court grants Hobby Lobby full hearing
Legal News Digest |
2013/03/30 16:04
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A federal appeals court has granted Hobby Lobby's request for the entire court to hear its challenge of a federal requirement that it provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraceptives.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced its decision Friday. Appeals are usually decided by a three-judge panel, but a total of nine judges will hear the appeal from the Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain.
Hobby Lobby is challenging a requirement in the new federal health care law that says the company must provide and pay for emergency contraceptives. The company says the requirement violates the beliefs of its Christian owners.
The Denver-based court also said it would hear Hobby Lobby's appeal on an expedited basis, with oral arguments expected this spring.
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Parties in Va. Tech suit seek high court hearing -
Legal News Digest |
2013/02/15 14:51
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Attorneys for the parents of two students who were killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre want a state Supreme Court hearing on their request to put Tech's president on trial for negligence. Meanwhile, the state wants to reverse a jury's conclusion that the university was negligent for failing to alert students right away when the shootings began.
Attorneys for both sides asked a panel of three Supreme Court justices Tuesday to decide if the full court will hear the appeals. A decision is expected in four to six weeks.
The dueling appeals stem from a jury's findings in March 2012 that the university botched its response to the massacre, which left the gunman and 32 students and faculty dead in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. |
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Boston mobster's lawyer seeks to have judge tossed
Legal News Digest |
2013/01/11 01:08
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A lawyer for mobster James "Whitey" Bulger on Tuesday framed an attempt to get the presiding judge kicked off his client's murder case as an effort to protect the court's integrity.
"I'm not really representing James Bulger," J.W. Carney Jr. told a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel. "I'm representing us, the people who care about the perception of the federal prosecution system in Boston."
Bulger is the former head of the Winter Hill Gang who faces charges that he participated in 19 murders.
He fled Boston in late 1994 and was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list when authorities captured him in June 2011 in California. The 83-year-old has pleaded not guilty and faces a June trial.
The defense claims U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns can't be impartial during the trial because he was a federal prosecutor in charge of the U.S. attorney's office criminal division during some of the time Bulger was an FBI informant.
But a government lawyer countered Tuesday that Stearns, who has rejected recusal appeals, didn't participate in and didn't know of any investigations involving Bulger while serving as a federal prosecutor. |
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Court won't stop embryonic stem cell research
Legal News Digest |
2013/01/09 19:50
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The Supreme Court won't stop the government's funding of embryonic stem cell research, despite some researchers' complaints that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.
The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from two scientists who have been challenging the funding for the work.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia earlier this year threw out their lawsuit challenging federal funding for the research, which is used in pursuit of cures to deadly diseases. Opponents claimed the National Institutes of Health was violating the 1996 Dickey-Wicker law that prohibits taxpayer financing for work that harms an embryo.
Researchers hope one day to use stem cells in ways that cure spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's disease and other ailments.
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