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Mom pleads guilty to forcing beer on children
Court Issues |
2011/10/21 16:39
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A Connecticut mother has pleaded guilty to charges that she forced her 4-year-old son to drink beer and gave her 10-month-old daughter beer and cocaine.
The Connecticut Post reports Juliette Dunn, of Bridgeport, pleaded guilty Wednesday to risk of injury to a child under the Alford Doctrine, where the defendant doesn't agree to the facts but agrees the state has enough evidence to win a conviction.
A companion, 33-year-old Lisa Jefferson, pleaded guilty to the same charges.
Police say officers were waved down in June by a neighbor who complained that a woman was feeding children beer at a playground.
The children were turned over to the Department of Children and Families after 29-year-old Dunn's arrest. Custody hasn't been decided. |
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US House group files motion in gay marriage suit
Court Issues |
2011/10/17 17:09
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Gays and lesbians are not entitled to the same heightened legal protection and scrutiny against discrimination as racial minorities and women in part because they are far from politically powerless and have ample ability to influence lawmakers, lawyers for a U.S. House of Representatives group said in a federal court filing.
The filing Friday in San Francisco's U.S. District Court comes in a lesbian federal employee's lawsuit that claims the government wrongly denied health insurance coverage to her same-sex spouse. Karen Golinski says the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.
But attorneys representing the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group counter that DOMA is subject to a lower level of court scrutiny because gays and lesbians don't meet the legal criteria for groups who receive heightened protection from discrimination. Under that lower standard, DOMA is constitutional, they argue. |
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High court to rule on Stolen Valor Act
Court Issues |
2011/10/16 17:10
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The Supreme Court will decide whether a law making it a crime to lie about having received military medals is constitutional.
The justices said Monday they will consider the validity of the Stolen Valor Act, which passed Congress with overwhelming support in 2006. The federal appeals court in California struck down the law on free speech grounds and appeals courts in Colorado, Georgia and Missouri are considering similar cases.
The Obama administration is arguing that the law is reasonable because it only applies to instances in which the speaker intends to portray himself as a medal recipient. Previous high court rulings also have limited First Amendment protection for false statements.
The court almost always reviews lower court rulings that hold federal laws unconstitutional.
The case concerns the government's prosecution of Xavier Alvarez of Pomona, Calif. A member of the local water district board, Alvarez said at a public meeting in 2007 that he was a retired Marine who received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. In fact, he had never served in the military. |
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US court turns down Philly DA in cop-killing case
Court Issues |
2011/10/11 16:47
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The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request from prosecutors who want to re-impose a death sentence on former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of killing a white Philadelphia police officer 30 years ago.
The justices on Tuesday refused to get involved in the racially charged case. A federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal after finding that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial were potentially misleading.
Courts have upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction for killing Officer Daniel Faulkner over objections that African-Americans were improperly excluded from the jury.
The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said prosecutors could agree to a life sentence for Abu-Jamal or try again to sentence him to death. |
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