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Tag: law courts and tribunals

  • Religious leader linked to Kenya starvation cult says court hearing is a ‘matter of intimidation’ | CNN

    Religious leader linked to Kenya starvation cult says court hearing is a ‘matter of intimidation’ | CNN


    Mombasa, Kenya
    CNN
     — 

    The leader of a Christian cult who has been accused of encouraging his followers to starve themselves appeared in court in Mombasa, Kenya on Friday, telling CNN afterwards that the hearing is a “matter of intimidation” and time-wasting.

    Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was arrested last month after police received a tipoff that his land on the Shakahola forest in the Kilifi County of eastern Kenya contained mass graves.

    According to court documents, investigators have so far found 249 bodies and at least 10 mass graves in the Shakahola forest area.

    Mackenzie who appeared before the magistrate’s court in Mombasa, told CNN’s David McKenzie that he had “never seen anybody starving” when asked about accusations that followers of his group had starved their children following his instructions.

    In court documents dated Friday, the state prosecutor said it would seek to extend the respondents’ custody period by a further 60 days.

    The prosecutor has maintained that the “extended period of 60 days is the least period possible within which investigations are to be completed under the prevailing circumstances.”

    The prosecutor is also arguing that there are “compelling reasons” to deny the respondents bail, including evidence gathered thus far which “demonstrates a high likelihood of serious charges against the accused.”

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  • Here’s why Idaho student murder suspect Brian Kohberger may have chosen to ‘stand silent’ in court, experts say | CNN

    Here’s why Idaho student murder suspect Brian Kohberger may have chosen to ‘stand silent’ in court, experts say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of stabbing four Idaho college students to death, sat wordlessly in court during his arraignment on Wednesday as a judge read aloud the murder and burglary charges against him and asked whether the suspect was prepared to announce his plea.

    Instead of entering a plea, Kohberger’s attorney replied, “Your honor, we are standing silent.”

    The unconventional legal strategy, also known as “standing mute,” relies on an Idaho criminal rule which requires a judge to then enter a not guilty plea on the defendant’s behalf, effectively allowing him to avoid verbally committing to being guilty or not guilty.

    “It doesn’t matter what he says or doesn’t say,” Seattle attorney Anne Bremner told CNN. “Either way, he’s on the record with a not guilty plea.”

    Though highly unusual, standing silent is not unheard of. The tactic was also used in the case against Nikolas Cruz, the gunman responsible for the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

    As the October trial looms, Kohberger faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary for the November 13 killings of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho.

    Though a sweeping gag order has largely shrouded details of the case from the public, investigators have said Kohberger, a graduate student in the Department of Criminology at nearby Washington State University, broke into the victims’ home and stabbed them repeatedly before fleeing the scene.

    The gruesome killings and prolonged investigation blanketed the college campus and surrounding city in uncertainty and apprehension. After nearly seven weeks, Kohberger was arrested and identified as the alleged killer.

    There are a number of reasons defendants may choose to “stand silent,” especially in such a high-profile and highly scrutinized case as Kohberger’s, according to University of Idaho law professor Samuel Newton.

    The defendant may want to avoid criticism that could come with a certain plea, Newton said. A not guilty plea, for example, may spark public outrage that they are not taking responsibility for their alleged actions, he explained.

    Prosecutors and defense attorneys may also be negotiating behind the scenes, potentially discussing a plea agreement, Newton said.

    Bremner dismissed the idea that the move could indicate Kohberger’s attorney may be considering a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity because there is no insanity defense in Idaho.

    Bryan Kohberger listens during his arraignment in Latah County District Court on May 22, 2023.

    Kohberger has been held without bail since he was arrested in December at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania and brought back to Idaho, where he awaits trial.

    The trial is set to begin October 2 and is expected to last about six weeks.

    Prosecutors have 60 days from Monday to announce, in writing, whether they plan to seek the death penalty in their case against him.

    Two hearings are also scheduled for June 9 to address motions, filed by an attorney representing the family of Goncalves and a media coalition, regarding concerns over the wide-ranging gag order in the case.

    The restriction currently prohibits prosecutors, defense lawyers, attorneys for victims’ families and witnesses from publicly discussing details of the case that are not already public record.

    After Kohberger was arrested, investigators laid out some of the evidence that led them to home in on the 28-year-old as their suspect, including surveillance footage, a witness account and DNA evidence.

    A key lead came from surveillance footage which caught a white Hyundai Elantra near the victims’ home that night, according to a probable cause affidavit. The vehicle, which was later found by police at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, was registered to Kohberger, authorities said.

    Kohberger’s driver’s license information was consistent with a description of the suspect given to police by once of the victims’ surviving roommates, officials said.

    The roommate told investigators that she saw a masked figure clad in black in the house on the morning of the killings, according to an affidavit. She described the person as “5’10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” it said.

    As the investigation was still ongoing, Kohberger drove cross-country to his parents’ house in Pennsylvania, arriving there about a week before Christmas, Monroe County Chief Public Defender Jason LaBar told CNN in December.

    There, investigators were finally able to connect Kohberger to the crime scene by linking DNA found in trash collected from his family’s home to DNA on a tan leather knife sheath found lying next to one of the victims, the affidavit said.

    A cache of items was seized from the Pennsylvania home after the suspect’s arrest, including a cell phone, black gloves, black masks, laptops, a Smith and Wesson pocket knife and a knife in a leather sheath, according to an evidence log.

    Authorities also seized a white 2015 Hyundai Elantra an attorney for the suspect previously said he’d used to drive, accompanied by his father, to his parents’ home for the holidays.

    The vehicle was dismantled by investigators, who collected parts, fibers and swabs for further examination, court documents show.

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  • Alabama death row inmate cannot be executed due to intellectual disability, appeals court rules | CNN

    Alabama death row inmate cannot be executed due to intellectual disability, appeals court rules | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    An appeals court has ruled the state of Alabama cannot execute man with an intellectual disability who was sentenced to death for murdering a man in 1997, upholding a lower court’s decision.

    The US Eleventh Court of Appeals’ decision on Friday means that 53-year-old Joseph Clifton Smith cannot be executed unless the decision is overturned by the US Supreme Court.

    In a statement released after the appeals court decision, Amanda Priest, communications director for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, said, “Smith’s IQ scores have consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled. The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional.”

    “The Attorney General disagrees with the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling, and will seek review from the United States Supreme Court,” the statement concluded

    In 2021, a US District Court judge ruled that due to his intellectual disability, Smith could not “constitutionally be executed,” and vacated his death sentence.

    The judge referenced the district court’s finding that Smith’s “intellectual and adaptive functioning issues clearly arose before he was 18 years of age,” according to the 2021 appeals court ruling, which agreed with the lower court.

    Smith confessed to murdering Durk Van Dam, whose body was found “in an isolated area near his pick-up truck” in Mobile County in southwest Alabama, according to the court’s Friday ruling. Smith “offered two conflicting versions of the crime,” the ruling says – first admitting he watched Van Dam’s murder and then saying he participated but didn’t intend to kill the man.

    The case went to trial and the jury found Smith guilty, the order states. During his sentencing proceedings, Smith’s mother and sister testified that his father was “an abusive alcoholic,” according to the ruling.

    Smith had struggled in school since as early as the first grade, the order says, which led to his teacher labeling him as an “underachiever” before he underwent an “intellectual evaluation,” which gave him an IQ score of 75, the court said. When he was in fourth grade, Smith was tested again and placed in a learning-disability class – at the same time as his parents were going through a divorce, the court said.

    “After that placement, Smith developed an unpredictable temper and often fought with classmates. His behavior became so troublesome that his school placed him in an ‘emotionally conflicted classroom,’” the ruling states.

    Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school entirely, the ruling says, and he then spent “much of the next fifteen years in prison” for burglary and receiving stolen property.

    One of the witnesses in Smith’s evidentiary hearing held by the district court to determine whether he has an intellectual disability was Dr. Daniel Reschly, a certified school psychologist, the ruling says.

    The court ultimately determined that Smith “has significant deficits in social/interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent home living, and functional academics,” the ruling says.

    In its conclusion, the appeals court wrote: “We hold that the district court did not clearly err in finding that Smith is intellectually disabled and, as a result, that his sentence violates the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment vacating Smith’s death sentence.”

    “This case is an example of why process is so important in habeas cases and why we should not rush to enforce death sentences—the only form of punishment that can’t be undone,” the office of Smith’s federal public defender said in a statement after the appeals court decision.

    “Originally, this same District Court denied Mr. Smith the opportunity to be heard, and it was an Eleventh Circuit decision that allowed a hearing that created this avenue for relief,” the statement said.

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  • Driver of SUV that crashed into a Massachusetts Apple store accelerated to 60 mph before deadly crash, prosecutor says | CNN

    Driver of SUV that crashed into a Massachusetts Apple store accelerated to 60 mph before deadly crash, prosecutor says | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A man accused of driving an SUV into a Hingham, Massachusetts, Apple store last year – killing one person and injuring 22 others – now faces more than two dozen additional charges, including second-degree murder, as prosecutors say there were no signs the brakes were applied before the deadly crash.

    Bradley Rein, 53, drove up onto a sidewalk on November 21, 2022 crashed through the store’s glass door, went across the sales floor and slammed into a rear wall, striking and killing a 65-year-old construction worker who was in his path, Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney David Cutshall said in court.

    Rein was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the crash at the Derby Street Shops outdoor mall and pleaded not guilty to one charge of reckless homicide by motor vehicle. He now faces a host of new charges after a grand jury voted to indict him late last month on murder in the second degree and motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation.

    The panel also indicted Rein on 18 counts of aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, four counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, as well as reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office.

    Rein pleaded not guilty to the new charges in court on Monday.

    Rein – who prosecutors say had no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the crash – told police his right foot got stuck on the accelerator pedal and he was pressing on the brake with his other foot but couldn’t stop the vehicle from crashing into the store, Cutshall said.

    Electronic data downloaded from the SUV showed in the five seconds leading up to the crash, Rein’s vehicle accelerated to 60 mph, the prosecutor said.

    “There was no indication of brake application during those five seconds,” Cutshall told the court.

    An inspection of the vehicle also revealed “no mechanical defects that could have contributed to this crash,” Cutshall said, though, noting a police collision analysis and reconstruction report has not yet been finalized.

    Rein’s defense attorney told CNN the crash was an accident, and the vehicle has not yet been fully examined.

    “This was an accident. There was no intent,” defense attorney Joan Fund told CNN. “I am astonished by the second-degree murder charge. The accident reconstruction report has not been completed, the vehicle has not been fully examined due to the damage to the vehicle, and the data recording has contradictory information, and I look forward to litigating this in court.”

    The crash fueled numerous 911 calls and led to a large law enforcement response, with the Hingham fire chief describing first responders finding people “pinned against the wall by the vehicle.”

    Most of the 22 who were injured in the incident had serious injuries and were taken to local hospitals, Cutshall said. The man killed in the crash was identified as Kevin Bradley of New Jersey.

    “Obviously, at this point, there’s allegations of intentional conduct so that’s something we’ll have to deal with,” Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told CNN affiliate WCVB. “We will make sure that there’s justice for Mr. Bradley, there’s justice for all the people whose lives were changed and altered forever.”

    Rein – who previously posted $100,000 bail – will be fitted with a GPS tracking device and was ordered to surrender his passport. He was also ordered not to leave the state without approval and told he can’t possess any weapons or operate a motor vehicle, as conditions of his bail, according to the district attorney’s office.

    He is scheduled to be back in court on June 21.

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  • Boy Scouts of America will begin to compensate sexual abuse victims from a $2.4 billion trust after emerging from bankruptcy | CNN

    Boy Scouts of America will begin to compensate sexual abuse victims from a $2.4 billion trust after emerging from bankruptcy | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The Boy Scouts of America will begin to distribute compensation to thousands of victims of sexual abuse after emerging from bankruptcy Wednesday, the organization announced.

    As part of a settlement with more than 82,000 survivors of abuse, the BSA will pay out $2.4 billion from a Victims Compensation Trust that was established by the court during its bankruptcy reorganization.

    “This is a significant milestone for the BSA as we emerge from a three-year financial restructuring process with a global resolution approved with overwhelming support of more than 85% of the survivors involved in the case,” Chief Scout Executive, President and CEO Roger Mosby said in a statement.

    “Our hope is that our Plan of Reorganization will bring some measure of peace to survivors of past abuse in Scouting, whose bravery, patience and willingness to share their experiences has moved us beyond words,” Mosby added.

    The youth organization filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, when it was facing hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits involving thousands of alleged abuse survivors. In September 2022, a judge in Delaware federal bankruptcy court granted final approval for the confirmation of a reorganization plan.

    “These boys – now men – seek and deserve compensation for the sexual abuse they suffered years ago,” Chief Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein wrote in an order last year. “Abuse which has had a profound effect on their lives and for which no compensation will ever be enough. They also seek to ensure that to the extent BSA survives, there is an environment where sexual abuse can never again thrive or be hidden from view.”

    The co-founder of the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice, a group including more than two dozen law firms representing more than 70,000 of the claimants, said it was the largest sexual abuse settlement fund in history.

    Coalition co-founder and attorney Adam Slater also commended the court for “bringing survivors one step closer to justice.”

    “After years of protracted bankruptcy proceedings and decades of suffering in silence, tens of thousands of survivors of childhood sexual assault will now receive some tangible measure of justice. With this decision, the Plan will now become effective, and the Trust will be able to begin distribution of the historic $2.45B settlement fund,” Slater said.

    “Even more important, it means that the safety measures and protections for current and future Scouts included in the Plan will also be put into place – and we know that for many survivors, this has been the highest priority,” Slater added.

    The Boy Scouts of America have since enacted a number of protocols to “act as barriers to abuse.”

    The protocols include mandatory youth protection training for volunteers and employees, a screening process that includes criminal background checks for new adult leaders and staff, and a policy requiring at least two youth-protection trained adults to be present with youth at all times during scouting activities.

    The policy also bans one-on-one situations where adults would have any interaction alone with children.

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  • Supreme Court seems sympathetic to postal worker who didn’t work Sundays in dispute over religious accommodations | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court seems sympathetic to postal worker who didn’t work Sundays in dispute over religious accommodations | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court seemed to side with a former mail carrier, an evangelical Christian, who says the US Postal Service failed to accommodate his request to not work on Sundays.

    A lower court had ruled against the worker, Gerald Groff, holding that his request would cause an “undue burden” on the USPS and lead to low morale at the workplace when other employees had to pick up his shifts.

    But during oral arguments on Tuesday, there appeared to be consensus, after almost two hours of oral arguments, that the appeals court had been too quick to rule against Groff.

    There seemed to be, as Justice Elena Kagan put it, some level of “kumbaya-ing” between the justices on the bench at times.

    But as justices sought to land on a test that lower courts could use to clarify how far employers must go to accommodate their employees’ religious beliefs, differences arose when a lawyer for Groff suggested that the court overturn decades-old precedent. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed open to the prospect.

    Critically, however, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh were sympathetic to arguments made by the Postal Service that granting Groff’s request might cause morale to plummet among the other employees. Kavanaugh noted that “morale” among employers is critical to the success of any business. And several justices nodded to the financial difficulties the USPS has faced over the years.

    Groff, who lives in Pennsylvania, served in 2012 as a rural carrier associate at the United States Postal Service, a position that provides coverage for absent career employees who have earned the ability to take off weekends. Rural carrier associates are told they need flexibility.

    In 2013, Groff’s life changed when the USPS contracted with Amazon to deliver packages on Sundays. Groff’s Christian religious beliefs bar him from working on Sundays.

    The post office contemplated some accommodations to Groff such as offering to adjust his schedule so he could come to work after religious services, or telling him he should see if other workers could pick up his shifts. At some point, the postmaster himself did the deliveries because it was difficult to find employees willing to work on Sunday. Finally, the USPS suggested Groff choose a different day to observe the Sabbath.

    The atmosphere with his co-workers was tense and Groff said he faced progressive discipline. In response, he filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against an employee because of religion.

    Groff ultimately left in 2019. In a resignation letter, he said he had been unable to find an “accommodating employment atmosphere with the USPS that would honor his religious beliefs.”

    Groff sued arguing that the USPS violated Title VII – a federal law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee based on his religion. To make a claim under the law, an employee must show that he holds a sincere religious belief that conflicts with a job requirement, he must inform his employer and has to have been disciplined for failing to comply.

    Under the law, the burden then shifts to the employer. The employer must show that they made a good faith effort to “reasonably accommodate” the employee’s belief or demonstrate that such an accommodation would cause an “undue hardship” upon the employer.

    District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled against Groff, holding that that his request to not work on Sundays would cause an “undue hardship” for the USPS.

    The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in a 2-1 opinion.

    “Exempting Groff from working on Sundays caused more than a de minimis cost on USPS because it actually imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale,” the 3rd Circuit wrote in its opinion last year.

    “The accommodation Groff sought (exemption from Sunday work)” the court added, “would cause an undue hardship on USPS.”

    A dissenting judge, Thomas Hardiman, offered a road map for justices seeking to rule in favor of Groff. The main thrust of his dissent was that the law requires the USPS to show how the proposed accommodation would harm “business” – not Groff’s coworkers.

    “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed Gerald Groff from the completion of his appointed rounds,” wrote Hardiman, a George W. Bush nominee who was on a shortlist for the Supreme Court nomination that went to Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017. “But his sincerely held religious belief precluded him from working on Sundays.”

    Groff’s lawyer, Aaron Streett, told the high court that the USPS could have done more and was wrong to claim that “respecting Groff’s belief was too onerous.” He urged the justices to cut back or invalidate precedent and allow an accommodation that would allow the worker to “serve both his employer and his God.”

    “Sunday’s a day where we get together and almost taste heaven,” Groff told The New York Times recently. “We come together as believers. We celebrate who we are, together. We worship God. And so to be asked to deliver Amazon parcels and give all that up, it’s just really kind of sad.”

    The Biden administration has urged the high court to simply clarify the law to make clear that an employer is not required to accommodate an employee’s Sabbath observance by “operating shorthanded or regularly paying overtime to secure replacement workers.”

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar acknowledged, however, that employer could still be required to bear other costs such as administrative expenses associated with rearranging schedules.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • FBI arrests two alleged Chinese agents and charges dozens with working inside US to silence dissidents | CNN Politics

    FBI arrests two alleged Chinese agents and charges dozens with working inside US to silence dissidents | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The FBI has arrested two alleged Chinese agents and federal prosecutors have charged dozens of others with working to silence and harass dissidents within the United States – with some even operating an “undeclared police station” in New York City.

    Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping allegedly operated the police station in New York City’s Chinatown. Both men are US citizens and have been charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing justice. The police station has been shut down since a search warrant was executed at the location last fall, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for the US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

    The two men appeared in court Monday, with Lu being released on a $250,000 bond and Chen on a $400,000 bond. They are not permitted to travel within half a mile of the Chinese consulate nor mission or communicate with co-conspirators. Neither has entered a plea.

    Lu retained counsel but was represented in the proceeding by a public defender, and a public defender was appointed to represent Chen. Both of the public defenders at the hearing declined to comment.

    The Justice Department also announced charges against 34 officers of the national police of the People’s Republic of China with harassing Chinese nationals in the US critical of the Chinese government.

    All 34 are believed to live in China and remain at large, according to Justice Department. The officers were part of an effort by the Chinese government called the “912 Special Project Working Group” to influence global perceptions of the People’s Republic of China, or PRC.

    The agents allegedly used social media to post favorably about the PRC and to attack their “perceived adversaries,” including the United States and Chinese pro-democracy activists around the world, the Justice Department said. The illegal police operation is the “first known overseas police station in the United States” set up on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, or MPS, the Justice Department said.

    The agents were allegedly directed by the MPS to create and maintain accounts that looked like they were run by American citizens. Topics of their propaganda machine include US foreign policy, human rights issues in Hong Kong, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Covid-19 and racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, according to prosecutors.

    Agents also posted videos and articles targeting Chinese pro-democracy advocates in the US, the Justice Department alleged, some of which included explicit death threats. In addition, the agents allegedly used threats to intimidate people into skipping pro-democracy protests within the United States.

    “The PRC, through its repressive security apparatus, established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and those critical of its government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said in a statement. “The PRC’s actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression.”

    In another case, federal prosecutors allege that an executive at a videoconferencing company conspired with others to disrupt a meeting on the platform commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre at the direction of the Chinese government.

    Though the videoconferencing company was not named in court documents, CNN has previously reported the company is Zoom.

    The executive, Xinjiang “Julien” Jin, was previously charged by the Justice Department for the alleged plot. The new complaint adds charges against nine additional individuals, including six Ministry of Public Security officers and two officials with the Cyberspace Administration of China.

    According to the Justice Department, the executive, who is based in China, and his codefendants repeatedly sought in 2018 to interfere with video calls organized by a Chinese dissident living in New York City after a request from the Chinese government to do so. Jin also tried to identify any other account associated with that dissident and place them in a server with lagging response times, prosecutors say.

    In 2019, Jin and his codefendants allegedly worked with the Chinese government to block accounts seeking to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

    According to court documents, the secret police station was set up in early 2022 to identify, track and intimidate Chinese dissidents within the United States.

    Prosecutors say one such victim was an unnamed person living in California who was a “PRC dissident and PRC pro-democracy advocate” who “reported to the FBI that he/she served as an adviser to a 2022 congressional candidate from New York State” who also was the target of a PRC pressure campaign.

    That victim told the FBI that they have received threatening phone calls and social media messages from people they believe are associated with the Chinese government, and that person’s car was broken into immediately after that person gave a pro-democracy speech.

    During an interview with the FBI, Lu said that he had established the office, which he called an “oversees service center,” to help Chinese nationals living in the United States “renew Chinese government documents.” Lu told investigators during the interview that Chen acted as the primary point of contact with officials back in China.

    During a separate interview, Chen initially denied having any direct contact with the Chinese government, according to court documents, though he later recanted.

    Investigators say that during that interview, Chen took a seven-minute bathroom break, during which an agent repeatedly warned him through the bathroom door not to delete anything on his phone. When agents later searched the phone, they found that chat logs with MPS officials had been cleared.

    Both Lu and Chen later acknowledged deleting messages between themselves and their liaison in the MPS, according to court documents.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Justice Clarence Thomas says trips with billionaire didn’t need to be disclosed at the time | CNN Politics

    Justice Clarence Thomas says trips with billionaire didn’t need to be disclosed at the time | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday that he did not disclose luxury travel paid for by a Republican donor because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.

    In a rare statement sent via the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas said that the trips he and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, took with the donor Harlan Crow and his wife – whom Thomas describes as among his family’s “dearest friends” – were the “sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” that he was advised did not require disclosure.

    Thomas’ travel with the Crows, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet, was the subject of a bombshell ProPublica report published Thursday. Congressional Democrats have called for an investigation into the matter and for a stronger ethics code for the justices, and some federal judges are also speaking out.

    The justice notes that the guidelines for reporting personal hospitality have been recently changed.

    “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” Thomas said.

    The ProPublica report describes Thomas accepting travel hospitality from Crow that included lavish trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, California, Texas and Georgia. Some of these trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company.

    Thomas’ critics quickly pushed back on his defense Friday, with Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse zeroing in on Thomas’ assurance that the Crows did not have business before the high court.

    “Oh, please,” tweeted Whitehouse, who chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the federal bench. “If you’re smoking cigars with Leonard Leo and other right-wing fixers, you should know they don’t just have business before the Court — their business IS the Court.”

    The ProPublica report described a portrait hanging at a New York property owned by Crow’s company that depicts Thomas, Crow and other influential figures in Republican politics, including Leo, the former Federalist Society head who played a crucial role in former President Donald Trump’s makeover of the federal bench. They are sitting together smoking cigars in the painting. The report says that some trips Thomas took with the Crows were also attended by executives of major corporations as well as a leader of a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Crow himself sits on the board of AEI, ProPublica said, and the think tank’s scholars have occasionally filed friend-of-court briefs in Supreme Court cases.

    The controversy has cast a bright light on the judiciary that is increasingly called upon to resolve raging disputes between the political branches of government.

    As confirmation hearings have turned into political spectacles and hot-button cases on abortion, gun rights and religious liberty have broken along familiar conservative-liberal ideological lines, critics say the court appears more and more political.

    Two dozen Democratic lawmakers from both chambers sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday, calling for a “swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation” into whether ethics rules and laws were violated by Thomas’ trips.

    It also triggered reaction with another constituency that is rarely heard from: federal judges who serve on the lower courts. Current and retired federal judges don’t normally speak up about internal matters outside the confines of the courtroom, but they agreed to talk to CNN if their names were withheld.

    One retired judge – a Republican appointee – told CNN that the disclosure of the trips made them “livid.”

    “This is precisely why the public respect for the Supreme Court has plummeted,” the judge said. “This is far greater than mere ethics violations. It’s about the perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”

    The federal court system judiciary consists of the nine justices who sit on the highest court in the land, as well as 94 district level trial courts and 13 courts of appeal.

    But another judge, also a Republican appointee, sided with Thomas in the dispute, saying that the rules had not been clear and that a committee on the Administrative Office of the US Courts had been working for months to clarify them, only issuing revisions recently.

    “I always thought this area was kind of confusing,” the judge said, adding that regulations concerning what constitutes “personal hospitality” in the rules had never been made clear until a clarification went into effect on March 14.

    “Hospitality was never defined, and it seemed odd to think of a situation where you are spending social time with a close friend where at least occasionally some transportation doesn’t get involved,” the judge said. “If I go spending a weekend with my buddies – someone is going to be driving someone where we are going.”

    Another also sided with Thomas, saying that they had actually been told on two occasions that they had shared more information than was necessary. “The Administrative Office of the United States Courts are concerned with consistency – they want the reports to look the same” the judge said.

    “They don’t want a situation where one judge reports information that others aren’t reporting,” the judge added.

    “The new rules draw a line,” the judge said. “In the end, we are bound by whatever rules we have.”

    Another government source with close ties to the judiciary noted that the dispute around Thomas concerns regulations that apply to all federal judges, but, he says, it has also reignited a dispute about the fact that Supreme Court justices do not have a code of conduct that applies directly to them.

    As things stand, all lower court judges must abide by a code of conduct, but the justices have so far declined to either bind themselves to the current code or create one for themselves. The source said that the sentiment of the lower court judges they had spoken with was that they felt like the judiciary as a whole was being tainted by the fact that the nine justices won’t adopt a code of conduct.

    The source said that the sentiment among some lower court judges is that it “makes us all look bad.”

    In a 2011 report, Chief Justice John Roberts addressed critics who say that the Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct for United States Judges should apply to the Supreme Court.

    He said that “Article III of the Constitution creates only one court, the Supreme Court of the United States.” It empowers Congress to establish additional lower courts. Roberts said that the two bodies are different, and so a code of conduct instituted by the Judicial Conference that Congress created could not apply to the highest court in the land.

    Roberts did concede that the members of the high court “consult” the code of conduct as well as other materials including advice from the court’s legal office. But, he concluded, the court has “no reason to adopt” a code of conduct.

    “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” Roberts wrote at the time.

    In a statement to ProPublica and CNN, Crow said that he has been friends with Thomas and his wife Ginni for more than 30 years, and that the hospitality he has extended the justice over the years was “no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends.”

    “Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality,” Crow said in the statement. He said that we “never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one.”

    “Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years. As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.

    “Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable. I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines.

    “These guidelines are now being changed, as the committee of the Judicial Conference responsible for financial disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance. And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Democrats optimistic about saving abortion access in Wisconsin after liberal’s state Supreme Court win | CNN Politics

    Democrats optimistic about saving abortion access in Wisconsin after liberal’s state Supreme Court win | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The victory of a liberal judge in Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election marks a significant political realignment toward the left in a crucial swing state, potentially closing the door on an era of Republican dominance with issues such as abortion rights at stake.

    With liberals now poised to effectively control the seven-judge court, Democrats are newly optimistic about saving abortion access in the state, establishing a firewall against any Republican challenges to the 2024 elections and potentially redoing GOP-drawn state legislative and congressional maps. That combination of issues proved a potent force in a race that attracted massive turnout and spending.

    And as they did in last year’s midterms in some places around the country, Democrats, once again, appear to have capitalized on a broad backlash to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a base still energized by the specter of another Donald Trump presidency.

    Republican-supported Daniel Kelly lost the technically nonpartisan contest to Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz, who will begin a 10-year term this summer, effectively flipping control of the divided bench to liberals. Conservative Justice Patience Roggensack’s retirement opened the seat, triggering a contentious race that attracted national attention – and donor dollars. It was the most expensive state judicial election in the country ever.

    “Anger about Roe hasn’t dissipated. Fear for our democracy remains. Voters are still alarmed by the MAGA extremism of candidates like Dan Kelly. And if this race is an early bellwether – we can safely say that Republicans didn’t learn their lesson in 2022,” said Sarah Dohl, the chief campaigns officer for Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group.

    Wisconsin has emerged as one of the country’s most competitive political fronts, with ground that’s expected to again be hotly contested in next year’s presidential and Senate races. But the state government – outside the governor’s office – has been bossed by Republicans. Since defeating GOP Gov. Scott Walker more than four years ago, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed roughly 150 bills and been hamstrung in pursuing large parts of his own agenda. Now, GOP policy gains at the state level – most notably its crushing of public sector labor unions – are in doubt.

    In the years before Trump’s emergence, the Wisconsin GOP ran roughshod over state politics and sought to export its national playbook around the country. Walker entered the 2016 GOP presidential primary as an early favorite, pitching his state as a model for the nation. But like so many others in that year’s Republican field, he never got off the blocks as Trump thundered to the nomination.

    That fall, Trump shattered the Democratic illusion of a “blue wall” in the Upper Midwest, defeating Hillary Clinton by fewer than 25,000 votes in the Wisconsin general election.

    But Trump’s victory also triggered a backlash – and a mini Democratic resurgence at the state level.

    Evers was first elected governor during the 2018 Democratic wave. He won a second term last year. And though Republican Sen. Ron Johnson held his seat in 2022, Trump had lost the state two years earlier by a little more than 20,000 votes. His false allegations of 2020 election fraud infuriated Democrats, along with many swing voters, and ultimately in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race hobbled Kelly, who faced blowback for his role in advising GOP officials in their efforts to hatch a fake electors scheme

    And while the court could find itself ruling on election laws again, abortion may the most immediate battle to reach the justices.

    The state’s high court is expected to decide a lawsuit challenging an 1849 law that bans nearly all abortions, which had been dormant for decades but snapped back into place with last year’s US Supreme Court ruling. Protasiewicz, Wisconsin Democrats and allied groups such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List all worked to frame the race as another referendum on abortion rights.

    “For over a decade, anti-choice ideologues have held their iron grip on Wisconsin’s highest court, leaving voters hungry for change,” NARAL president Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. “Judge Janet’s resounding victory comes as abortion access faces an onslaught of attacks by extremist state courts determined to tear up our rights at every step.”

    Victory for abortion rights activists follows a similar result in neighboring Michigan, which voted last fall to enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights into the state constitution while reelecting Democratic women to its three most powerful executive offices. Those results continued a streak of successes for Democrats who dug in hard on the issue – a political winner in many swing states and legislative districts.

    Kelly, the conservative in Wisconsin, was coy about how he would rule on a slate of potential hot-button cases, but his past writings and work for anti-abortion groups allowed Protasiewicz, who signaled her skepticism about the ban, to attack him on the issue. Her past comments also suggest a new day’s dawning for the labor community and Democrats seeking to upend the state’s skewed legislative maps.

    “Everything from gerrymandering to drop boxes to Act 10 may be revisited to women’s right to choose,” Protasiewicz told Wisconsin Radio Network in February. (Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining for most public sector employees.)

    And with another presidential election on the horizon, her willingness to consider attempts to roll back or reverse restrictive voting laws or regulations could have clear national implications.

    The state’s voter ID laws, put in place by Republicans, are among the strictest in the country. Wisconsin’s high court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election, rejecting a Trump lawsuit aimed at invalidating Joe Biden’s victory – but only by a 4-3 margin with one conservative justice siding with the liberals.

    In the event of another challenge like that, Democrats would now only need their allies to hold the line to prevent a similar bid.

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  • Maryland court reinstates murder conviction of ‘Serial’ subject Adnan Syed | CNN

    Maryland court reinstates murder conviction of ‘Serial’ subject Adnan Syed | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A Maryland appellate court on Tuesday reinstated the conviction of Adnan Syed, the man who spent over two decades behind bars for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee and whose murder case was featured in the landmark podcast “Serial.”

    In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate court said the lower court had violated the rights of the victim’s brother, Young Lee, to attend a key September hearing when a judge vacated Syed’s conviction, leading to his release.

    “Because the circuit court violated Mr. Lee’s right to notice of, and his right to attend, the hearing on the State’s motion to vacate … this Court has the power and obligation to remedy those violations, as long we can do so without violating Mr. Syed’s right to be free from double jeopardy,” the court’s opinion said.

    “We remand for a new, legally compliant, and transparent hearing on the motion to vacate, where Mr. Lee is given notice of the hearing that is sufficient to allow him to attend in person, evidence supporting the motion to vacate is presented, and the court states its reasons in support of its decision,” it added.

    The Lee family is “very pleased” with the ruling, their attorney Steve Kelly told “CNN This Morning” Wednesday.

    “We think it really represents a step toward transparency and the rule of law. You can’t have a trial by podcast or a trial by publicity,” Kelly said, contending the proper judicial process was not followed when Syed’s conviction was tossed out.

    “It’s in everyone’s interest, including Mr. Syed’s, to have all the evidence aired publicly,” Kelly said, adding later that the Lee family is “not vengeful.”

    “We want the truth,” he said. “If Adnan Syed is not the guy, then we want him out.”

    David Sanford, another Lee family attorney, similarly told CNN in a statement the family was “delighted” with the court’s decision and the order for a “transparent hearing where the evidence will be presented in open court.”

    Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic, said the appellate court reinstated the conviction “not because the Motion to Vacate was erroneous, but because Ms. Lee’s brother did not appear in person at the vacatur hearing.”

    “We agree with the dissenting judge that the appeal is moot and that Mr. Lee’s attendance over Zoom was sufficient,” Suter said in a statement provided to CNN by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.

    “There is no basis for re-traumatizing Adnan by returning him to the status of a convicted felon. For the time being, Adnan remains a free man,” the attorney said.

    “We remain optimistic that justice will be done,” Suter added. “We intend to seek review in Maryland’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Maryland, and will continue to fight until Adnan’s convictions are fully vacated.”

    The decision to vacate Syed’s conviction came nearly eight years after the podcast dug into the case and raised questions about the conviction and Syed’s legal representation.

    In explaining her decision to vacate, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn cited material in the state investigation ​that was not properly turned over to defense attorneys, as well as ​the existence of two suspects ​who may have been improperly cleared as part of the investigation.

    Lee’s brother had requested a redo of that hearing, arguing in part he didn’t have enough notice to attend in person. Attorneys for Lee, who was able to watch September’s proceedings by Zoom, previously alleged in court documents that prosecutors and the circuit court that overturned Syed’s conviction had violated the brother’s rights.

    That happened, they allege, by failing to give him adequate notice, withholding evidence from the family and not giving the brother a proper chance to be heard at the proceedings.

    Sanford, the family’s attorney, told Maryland’s appellate court last month that the circuit court and prosecutors “failed repeatedly” ahead of September’s decision to vacate Syed’s conviction.

    “The victim, or victim’s representative … has a right to be heard,” the attorney said.

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  • Supreme Court humors itself as it considers whether Jack Daniel’s can stop a dog toy company from parodying its brand | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court humors itself as it considers whether Jack Daniel’s can stop a dog toy company from parodying its brand | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday delved into the complexities of federal trademark law in a case concerning a poop-themed dog toy that resembles a Jack Daniel’s bottle, at times erupting into laughter as the justices explored how much protection should be given to parodists that rip off trademarks they don’t own.

    At the center of the case is a “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” toy created by VIP Products that is strikingly similar to Jack Daniel’s bottles. The distiller sued the company over the toy – which is replete with scatological humor – claiming it violated federal trademark law, which usually centers around how likely a consumer is to confuse an alleged infringement with something produced by the true owner of the mark.

    But at oral arguments, at least one justice admitted she didn’t understand the joke being sold by VIP Products.

    “What is there to it? What is the parody here?” Justice Elena Kagan asked an attorney for the toy company, leading the courtroom to burst into laughter. “Because maybe I just have no sense of humor. But what’s the parody?”

    Kagan went on to list a number of different marks the company pokes fun at, drawing laughter from Justice Clarence Thomas: “Doggie Walker, Dos Perros, Smella Arpaw, Canine Cola, Mountain Drool. Are all of these companies taking themselves too seriously?”

    And a misunderstanding by Lisa Blatt, an attorney representing Jack Daniel’s, over a hypothetical posed by Justice Samuel Alito led to another round of giggles.

    Alito was trying to ask how likely it was that a reasonable person would believe Jack Daniel’s approved the toy at hand or a similar theoretical toy that joked it contained “dog urine.”

    “So a reasonable person would not believe Jack Daniel’s had approved this?” he asked Blatt.

    “I think if you’re selling urine you’re probably going to win on a motion to (dismiss), but you’re probably also violating some state law,” she replied.

    “Oh no, you’re not selling urine. It’s exactly this toy, which purportedly contains some sort of dog excrement or urine,” Alito said, humoring the courtroom as he attempted to clarify his hypothetical.

    “Well, just showing how confused I was suggests that I would be your perfect consumer,” Blatt said.

    Jokes – intentional or not – aside, some of the justices were skeptical of the distillery, whose attorneys want the court to toss out a heightened standard of review an appeals court used when it ruled in favor of the toy maker.

    “I have some hesitation doing away with the Rogers Test,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in part, referring to a court-created test used to determine whether a potential trademark infringement in non-commercial instances enjoys constitutional protection.

    Alito seemed to agree.

    “Well, I’m concerned about the First Amendment implications of your position and you began by saying, by stressing that Rogers is atextual, it was made up.”

    “You know, there is a text that says that Congress shall make no law infringing the freedom of speech. That’s a text that takes precedence over the Lanham Act and you said there are no constitutional issues,” he added, referring to the trademark law at the center of the dispute.

    Joining the dog pile, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “concerned about impairing artists” if the court sided with Jack Daniel’s and issued a decision that effectively prevents the unauthorized use of marks in artistic works.

    The case pits the rights of a famous trademark holder against the First Amendment rights of a company that wants to use those marks to sell a humorous product.

    VIP’s “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” toy has the same general shape of a Jack Daniel’s bottle. The plastic bottle, like its glass counterpart, has a similar font style and uses a black label.

    VIP borrows Jack Daniel’s “Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey” to sell “The Old No. 2 On Your Tennessee Carpet,” a reference to dog excrement. And it changes the liquor bottle’s “40% ALC. BY VOL. (80 PROOF)” with “43% POO BY VOL.” and “100% SMELLY.”

    A tag affixed to the toy notes that it’s “not affiliated with Jack Daniel Distillery.”

    That, however, was not enough to keep Jack Daniel’s from suing the company to take the toy off the market. The distiller argues VIP violates federal trademark law and that the toy, especially the references to dog excrement, damage its reputation because it could confuse consumers into thinking the product belongs to the “oldest registered distillery in the United States.”

    “To be sure, everyone likes a good joke,” lawyers for Jack Daniel’s wrote in court papers. “But VIP’s profit-motivated ‘joke’ confuses consumers by taking advantage of Jack Daniel’s hard-earned goodwill.”

    Depending on how they rule, the justices could strip away some trademark protections by giving entities cover to legally use registered marks not belonging to them so long as they do so in a way that expresses humor.

    A district court ruled in favor of Jack Daniel’s, finding that the toy infringed on the distiller’s trademark. But an appeals court later sided with VIP Products, invoking the so-called Rogers Test.

    The court said VIP’s use of Jack Daniel’s trademark was non-commercial and that because it was done humorously for an “expressive work,” it’s protected by the First Amendment.

    The case “deals with a very common thing of pitting somebody who has trademark rights … against another who is saying, ‘I’m entitled to (use those marks) under the First Amendment because it is parody. And I need to take enough of the mark in order to make it funny. People have to get the joke,’” said Mark Sommers, a trademark attorney based in Washington, DC.

    Sommers added that the justices’ decision in the matter has the potential to be a landmark ruling if they “help define that line that exists between the First Amendment right of expression – be that parody, be that art, whatever you want to express – versus the important trademark issues that are here where brand owners who have invested a tremendous amount of goodwill don’t want their trademarks used in a manner which could result in potential confusion among the consuming public.”

    Attorneys for Jack Daniel’s told the justices in court papers that the appeals court ruling “gives copycats free license to prey on unsuspecting consumers and mark holders,” and warned that if it wasn’t reversed, companies could use trademarks they don’t own to flood the markets with allegedly unserious products.

    Santa Claus, the KKK, and other bizarre hypotheticals raised by Supreme Court in LGBTQ rights case

    “No one disputes that VIP is trying to be funny. But alcohol and toys don’t mix well, and the same is true for beverages and excrement,” they wrote. “The next case could involve more troubling combinations – food and poison, cartoon characters and pornography, children’s toys and illegal drugs, and so on.”

    VIP argues consumers can easily distinguish between the two products, with lawyers for the Arizona-based company writing in court papers that it “has never sold whiskey or other comestibles, nor has it used ‘Jack Daniel’s’ in any way (humorously or not). It merely mimicked enough of the iconic bottle that people would get the joke.”

    “This is a case about speech, and a popular brand’s attempts to control that speech by weaponizing the Lanham Act,” they wrote, referring to the federal trademark law at the center of the dispute.

    “It is ironic that America’s leading distiller of whiskey both lacks a sense of humor and does not recognize when it – and everyone else – has had enough,” the toy company told the court.

    The Biden administration had urged the justices to take the case, with the Justice Department siding with Jack Daniel’s in the dispute.

    “The First Amendment does not confer any right to use another person’s trademark, or a confusingly similar mark, as a source identifier for goods sold in commerce,” the department wrote in court papers. “Indeed, the absence of any such right is a basic animating premise of trademark-infringement law. If such a right existed, states and the federal government might lack authority to prohibit trademark infringement.”

    Several major companies also filed briefs to the court in support of Jack Daniel’s, including Nike and Levi Strauss & Co.

    “Though defendants will often have an incentive to label it as such, not every humorous use of another’s trademark is a parody,” Nike wrote in its brief. “Courts therefore should take a disciplined approach to this important classification in cases where ‘parody’ is claimed.”

    The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this term in another high-profile intellectual property law case, with the justices having heard arguments last year in a copyright infringement case concerning the late Andy Warhol and the late musician Prince. During those arguments, the justices attempted to determine when a new work based on a prior piece is substantially transformative, and when it simply amounts to a copycat version of an existing work subject to copyright rules.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Justice Department convinces federal judge Trump used his attorney in furtherance of a crime in classified docs probe | CNN Politics

    Justice Department convinces federal judge Trump used his attorney in furtherance of a crime in classified docs probe | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department has convinced a federal judge that former President Donald Trump used one of his defense attorneys in furtherance of a crime or fraud related to the existence of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

    The finding – part of a major ruling Friday from Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court – makes clear for the first time that the Justice Department is arguing it has evidence that Trump may have committed a crime. And Howell ruled that prosecutors met the burden to overcome Trump’s right to shield discussions with his lawyers normally protected under attorney-client privilege.

    The evidence would likely be significant in the obstruction probe being pursued by special counsel Jack Smith’s team. It also underscores how critical the testimony of Trump’s defense lawyers would be in the federal grand jury investigation.

    ABC News first reported the development.

    The revelation comes as the former president continues to face a number of notable investigations and lawsuits, including a separate yearslong investigation into his alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star. There are signs that case is nearing an end and Trump and his advisers are awaiting a potential indictment.

    Trump has not been charged in the documents case, but is still under investigation by the grand jury in Washington. Prosecutors had relied on surveillance videos in arguing their case to Howell, one source said.

    A spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    The Justice Department is still seeking testimony from Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran, after he cited attorney-client privilege, as well as from another Trump lawyer, Jennifer Little, CNN has learned.

    CNN has reached out to Corcoran and Little for comment.

    Corcoran’s critical testimony in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation is now in the hands of the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

    CNN was first to report the action at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday referred to in anonymized court records and confirmed by CNN, following Trump’s loss on Friday before Howell.

    A three-judge panel – Judges Nina Pillard, Michelle Childs and Florence Pan – at the appeals court now is positioned to decide whether to put on hold a lower-court ruling that Corcoran must provide additional testimony to the grand jury about his conversations with Trump. Trump’s team has argued those conversations are covered by attorney-client privilege and should be shielded in the investigation.

    Howell, in her sealed ruling, determined prosecutors were able to show Corcoran’s legal services were used in furtherance of a crime, so attorney-client privilege didn’t apply, sources told CNN.

    What happens next is crucial because the Justice Department has successfully argued that Corcoran’s conversations with Trump would reveal Trump was trying to advance a crime – but the grand jury hasn’t yet heard from Corcoran directly about those conversations.

    If the appeals court sides with the Justice Department, Corcoran could be forced to testify again to a federal grand jury within days, ushering the investigation into the handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice toward a conclusion.

    The extremely tight deadlines – a turnaround essentially unheard of in this court – indicates the seriousness of the matter.

    The DC Circuit judges also mentioned documents involved in the dispute, asking that Trump’s side “specify” them. The court order doesn’t explain any further what’s happened with documents. But Corcoran also was ordered to hand over a number of documents, including handwritten notes and notes transcribed of a verbal conversation.

    Trump sent a statement to his supporters Tuesday night criticizing ABC and calling the details “illegally leaked false allegations.”

    When Corcoran first testified to the grand jury in January, he was asked about what happened in the lead up to the August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    Corcoran had drafted a statement in June 2022 that attested Trump’s team had done a “diligent search” of boxes moved from the White House to Florida and that all classified documents had been returned. Christina Bobb, the attorney who signed the letter, added the caveat, “to the best of my knowledge.”

    After that, the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and found hundreds of government records, including classified material, raising questions about the lawyer’s attestation.

    This headline and story have been updated with additional reporting.

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  • DOJ seeks fast-track Supreme Court review of ruling against gun ban for people under domestic violence restraining orders | CNN Politics

    DOJ seeks fast-track Supreme Court review of ruling against gun ban for people under domestic violence restraining orders | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to fast-track its consideration of a recent appeals court ruling that deemed unconstitutional a federal law barring gun possession by those under domestic violence restraining orders.

    “The presence of a gun in a house with a domestic abuser increases the risk of homicide sixfold,” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in her petition Friday, urging the high court to decide before its summer recess whether to take up the case.

    The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in February that the 1996 law was unconstitutional, and while the ruling applies only to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, advocates worry it will have wide implications, including that it will discourage victims from coming forward.

    The circuit court cited the major Second Amendment ruling handed down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority last year that laid out a new test for lower courts to use to analyze a gun regulation’s constitutionality.

    Prelogar told the Supreme Court on Friday that the 5th Circuit’s reasoning was wrong and the high court should take up the case so “that it can correct the Fifth Circuit’s misinterpretation of Bruen,” referring to last summer’s Supreme Court opinion.

    The high court’s majority opinion in June said that part of the test was whether a gun restriction had a parallel to the regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.

    The 5th Circuit said, with its opinion regarding the domestic violence gun restriction earlier this year, that the prohibition on alleged abusers lacked that kind of historical parallel and therefore was unconstitutional.

    If the 5th Circuit’s “approach were applied across the board,” Prelogar wrote, “few modern statutes would survive judicial review; most modern gun regulations, after all, differ from their historical forbears in at least some ways.”

    At the time of the circuit court ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Congress had determined the gun ban statute “nearly 30 years ago” and signaled the department’s plan to appeal the ruling.

    “Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional. Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision,” he said.

    Guns are used to commit nearly two-thirds of intimate partner homicides, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. A 2021 study found that the majority of mass shootings are also linked to domestic violence.

    Though some of the states covered by the appeals court have similar state law restrictions, the new ruling undermines a crucial tool that survivors have to protect themselves from their abusers. If the 5th Circuit’s logic were adopted nationwide by the US Supreme Court, the consequences would be devastating, advocates say.

    “People are going to know that their abuser still has their gun. They’re going to continue to live in absolute, abject fear,” said Heather Bellino, the CEO of the Texas Advocacy Project, which works with victims of domestic violence. “They are going to be afraid to get a protective order, because now that gun’s not going away.”

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  • There’s a new chief judge in DC who could help determine the fate of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    There’s a new chief judge in DC who could help determine the fate of Donald Trump | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A new chief judge in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, is poised to take over as that position has become one of the most influential in the nation’s capital, playing a key role in deciding issues that could factor into whether former President Donald Trump is indicted.

    Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who has served in that role since 2016, has repeatedly green-lit Justice Department requests to pursue information about Trump’s actions, from his top advisers and lawyers and even inside the White House. She’ll be succeeded by James “Jeb” Boasberg, a fellow Barack Obama appointee and one-time Brett Kavanaugh law school roommate who’s well-known in Washington.

    While presiding over the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2020 and 2021, Boasberg encouraged the declassification of information so that the public could read proceedings related to the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between Trump and Russia.

    If the Justice Department were to indict Trump, the case would be randomly assigned to one of the district court’s judges, meaning the chief could handle the case but may not. Still, the chief judge has unusual sway over the pace and scope of investigations as the Justice Department attempts to enforce its grand jury subpoenas, obtain warrants and access evidence it has collected by arguing to the chief judge in sealed proceedings.

    “This court would be ready,” Howell said in a recent interview with CNN, when asked about the historic possibility of a Trump indictment. She added any judge on that court “would do it justice.”

    Howell, who steps down from the position on Friday, may conclude her tenure by issuing decisions in sealed cases related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago. Already, she granted Kash Patel – a former administration official – immunity for testimony he provided the grand jury investigation. She also held off a Justice Department request to place Trump in contempt for his alleged failure to turn over subpoenaed classified documents.

    The DC federal courthouse has embraced its role in major criminal investigations of politicians in the past. A framed Time Magazine is displayed outside the courthouse with the District Court’s Watergate-era Chief Judge John Sirica on the cover. Howell, in recent years, has nodded to Sirica, who allowed federal investigators access to records related to then-President Richard Nixon that hastened his resignation.

    Sirica embraced an unusually public role in one of the most fraught criminal investigations ever in Washington. Howell and Boasberg prefer working behind the scenes.

    “Neither of us will be Time’s person of the year,” Boasberg told CNN.

    Much of Howell’s work on those cases remains under seal, but details have trickled out on approximately 10 cases related to Smith’s investigation. Those include ongoing challenges around a grand jury subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence and the Justice Department’s attempt to force Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran to answer potentially incriminating questions about his interactions with Trump on classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

    Still, the chief judge’s role generates attention because the cases before the court in recent years have been so politically charged – and sometimes criticized publicly by Trump himself.

    Fan social media accounts sprung up about Howell, with one TikTok user getting tens of thousands of views. The posts generally highlight Howell’s no-nonsense quips and vivid facial expressions in public speeches.

    Howell said she and other judges were shocked to discover the clips of her on TikTok.

    “I just do my job. We’re all pretty much a bunch of nerds,” she said. “For a nerdy lawyer, getting novel, important cases is a dream.”

    Howell said she’s been surprised and at times uncomfortable with being the focus of attention in the investigations around Trump. Still, she regularly pens searing opinions allowing for public and congressional access to grand jury-related matters.

    Following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, Howell became one of the most cutting voices in the federal government’s response, handling several proceedings of rioter defendants early on. She also had to manage a courthouse in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it faced an influx of new criminal cases like it never had before.

    The courthouse was closed on January 6, but Howell recognized as she watched the rioters overwhelm the Capitol building that the DC District Court would handle the brunt of cases. She called the senior judges who had largely reduced their case loads and asked them if they would take on more criminal rioter cases.

    “We’re going to be very busy,” Howell remembers telling them. Nearly all agreed to take on full criminal dockets – a testament to the DC bench’s camaraderie.

    Later, in a riot defendant’s proceeding that the public was able to listen to by calling in on a phone line, Howell spoke furiously about how she could see armed guards from her chambers’ window overlooking the National Mall.

    “We’re still living here in Washington, DC, with the consequences of the violence that this defendant is alleged to have participated in,” she said at the hearing in 2021.

    In the known cases during the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation and the current Smith probe, Howell has repeatedly sided with investigators seeking confidential information in their probes.

    In her last weeks as chief, Howell has made clear in her orders that she is trying to make public as much as she can – though there are severe limitations from higher courts that protect the secrecy of the grand jury in ongoing investigations.

    She allowed the Justice Department access to GOP Rep. Scott Perry’s phone contents in the election interference investigation, a ruling now under appeal at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Howell also ruled against Trump in attempts he made to protect presidential communications with former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Deputy Patrick Philbin and vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short, eliciting their testimony.

    Yet she is denying requests from journalists for access to grand jury records from the ongoing Trump January 6 investigation.

    One of those opinions railed against the DC Circuit precedent that severely limits when judges, including her, can allow grand jury materials to be released.

    “If public interest in a significant and historical event or high-level government officials could serve as the sole ground to justify the disclosure of grand jury matters in exceptional circumstances, the petitioners’ case here would be incredibly strong,” Howell wrote. “Unfortunately for petitioners, that is not the standard for disclosure of grand jury material.”

    Boasberg recently told CNN that he hopes to keep a similar approach to Howell on transparency around sealed proceedings – doing what he can to make public information under the law, when it’s possible.

    Chief U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Beryl A. Howell

    At the FISA court, Boasberg released redacted orders he wrote, chastising the FBI for relying on applications to the court that contained misleading information, including when the investigators sought to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump adviser who was criminally investigated after the 2016 campaign but never charged.

    In one partially redacted opinion, Boasberg wrote that the “frequency and seriousness of these errors in a case that, given its sensitive nature, had an unusually high level of review at both DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called into question the reliability of the information proffered in other FBI applications.”

    More recently, Boasberg had before him the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to compel GOP megadonor Steve Wynn to register as a foreign agent for his alleged efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of the Chinese. Boasberg agreed with Wynn to dismiss the case, and it is now on appeal before the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Like Howell, Boasberg did not hide his concerns about appeals court precedent that he said constrained his approach. He also showed his sense of humor. The Wynn opinion included multiple references to lyrics by the 1990s hip hop band the Fugees, as a member of the band was accused of having connections to the alleged influence scheme.

    Boasberg was confirmed to the federal bench in 2011, after receiving a nod from President George W. Bush for a position on the DC Superior Court eight years prior. The local DC Court is where the former college basketball player cut his chops as assistant US attorney, specializing in homicide prosecutions.

    In DC legal circles, he’s earned a reputation for being friendly with a wide social circle and grew up with several prominent Washingtonians.

    “Jeb is so social and Beryl is very reserved,” said Amy Jeffress, a prominent Washington defense lawyer whose spouse, Christopher “Casey” Cooper, is also a judge in the DC District Court.

    Boasberg is currently the president of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, a professional advancement organization for DC attorneys that regularly brings together top prosecutors and defense lawyers.

    As a student at Yale Law School, Boasberg lived in a house with now-Justice Kavanaugh and six other law students. The group of former roommates still remain close and organize annual trips together.

    “Fairness is very important to him,” said Jim Brochin, an attorney who lived with Boasberg in the eight-person Yale Law house.

    Brochin pointed to Boasberg’s experience as a prosecutor trying murder cases, including some of the “hardest” cases his office had at the time, as well as his time as a judge leading the FISA court.

    “He is not afraid of tackling hard subjects,” Brochin said. “Nothing fazes him.”

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  • 2 personal stories shed light on the unforeseen consequences of Brown v. Board of Education | CNN Politics

    2 personal stories shed light on the unforeseen consequences of Brown v. Board of Education | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Everett R. Berryman Jr. was 11 years old when the Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which made racial segregation in public schools illegal.

    But supervisors in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where Berryman was attending public school, had no intention of complying. Five years later, in 1959, as Berryman was looking ahead to attending 7th grade, the county shuttered all public schools and opened a private school – for White children only. It would take five years, an intervention by the Department of Justice and another Supreme Court order, before integrated public schooling in Prince Edward County proceeded.

    Around the same time, in North Carolina, Dr. E.B. Palmer was working as the executive secretary of state for the North Carolina Teachers Association, advocating for Black teachers after Brown was decided.

    “When the school system said ‘separate but equal,’ that was fine,” Palmer recalled to CNN. “But when we moved a little further, they tried to say, ‘We don’t want Black teachers teaching White students.’”

    Nearly 40,000 teaching positions held by Black teachers in 17 southern and border states would be lost in the ensuring years, according to Samuel B. Ethridge, a National Education Association official who was a leader in the movement to integrate teacher organizations during the civil rights movement.

    Today, Brown v. Board of Education is remembered as a watershed moment in the history of America’s civil rights progress and the fight against systemic racism. But the ruling also had the unintended effect of leaving behind thousands of Black students and educators whose fates were not considered when America moved to reshape its education system.

    Berryman and Palmer shared their stories with CNN as part of the “History Refocused” series, which explores surprising and personal stories from America’s past that may bring new understanding of today’s conflicts.

    The Supreme Court officially struck down the legal basis for segregated classrooms in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but a second, follow-up ruling a year later outlined the process for implementing school desegregation. In “Brown II,” the Supreme Court ordered district courts to enforce desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” reasoning that such language would provide local authorities with time to adjust to the new law of the land.

    Instead, those opposed to desegregation exploited the terms, including officials in Prince Edward County, who figured that by starving the local public school system of funding, they could do an end-run around the high court’s order by opening a private – and all-White – school.

    “Even in cases where White children or White families rather could not afford to attend the school, they even charged as little as a dollar to allow White students to attend school,” Dawn Williams, dean of Howard University’s School of Education, told CNN. “Now, for the Black community – something totally different for the Black community. There were no forms of public schooling.”

    To combat the lack of educational opportunities, members of the Black community in the area created a grassroots community center, which also served as a makeshift school, but it was not the real thing.

    Two years into the lockout, the Berryman family looked for other ways to keep their children in school. They tried to enroll their children in the neighboring county of Appomattox, Virginia, only to find out that they had to live in the county and present a valid address to do so. The next step was to move in with a family friend.

    At that point, Berryman was a 14-year-old who stood 6-foot-2 but was still in 7th grade, when he should have been in the 9th grade had he not missed out on years of public schooling.

    “I was the tallest guy in the whole school,” he recalled.

    Eventually, the Supreme Court had to become involved again. In 1964, it ruled that the time for desegregating schools “with all deliberate speed” had passed and that there was no justification for “denying these Prince Edward County school children their constitutional rights to an education equal to that afforded by the public schools in the other parts of Virginia.”

    Berryman and his family returned to Prince Edward County when the public schools reopened, and he remembered feeling “happy to be back home.” But there were constant reminders of the toll taken on the Black community.

    “We ran across students – all students were with us that hadn’t been in school for going on five years. And some of the students here began school at 10 years old. … And on the upper end, we had guys and girls graduating high school at 21 and 22 years old,” Berryman said. “So we had – it was like a kaleidoscope of pupils every which way in this grand scheme of school opening again.”

    Brown was intended to protect education opportunities for students. It didn’t say anything about teachers whose jobs would be soon jeopardized by school integration, when Black students often moved to White facilities that had superior conditions.

    In the wake of Brown, various tactics were used across the nation to undercut Black teachers and educators, from outright dismissals or demotions to forcing teachers to teach unfamiliar subjects or grades – making it easier to fire them based on poor performance.

    In Alabama, tenure rules were rewritten in several counties and teachers believed they were dismissed because of their participation in the civil rights movement, the NEA found in a 1965 report. North Carolina and South Carolina repealed their teachers’ continuing contract laws.

    “I had to spend day and night traveling all over the state following behind complaints of Black teachers being dismissed where schools were being desegregated,” recalled Palmer, the former official with the North Carolina Teachers Association.

    Ethridge, writing in the Negro Educational Review in 1979, found that by the mid-1970s, 39,386 teaching positions had been lost by Black teachers as a result of desegregation in 17 states, mostly in the South. In the 1970-71 school year alone, the cumulative loss in income to the Black community in those states totaled $240,564,911, the NAACP found.

    “The cumulative amount is staggering to the imagination,” Ethridge wrote in his research, noting that even as the Black student population grew in those years, the number of Black teachers decreased in those states.

    The Black teaching force has never recovered from the tremendous losses. In the 2017-18 school year, even though Whites accounted for less than half of the students in public schools – the result of a steady increase in diversity over the last 30 years – White teachers made up 79% of the workforce, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, down from 87% three decades earlier. The percentage of public school Black teachers – 7% in 2017-18 – decreased one percentage point over that same time period.

    “Sadly, the reasons for this disparity go far back, and a key impetus happened just as the nation attempted to fix our public education system,” Williams said.

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  • South Korean court grants gay couple health benefits in landmark ruling | CNN

    South Korean court grants gay couple health benefits in landmark ruling | CNN


    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    A South Korean court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a same-sex couple seeking equal health benefits, overturning a lower court’s earlier decision in a ruling hailed by supporters and activists as the first recognition of the legal rights of such couples.

    The plaintiff, So Seong-wook, had previously been registered as a “spousal dependent” for state health insurance coverage, under the government-affiliated National Health Insurance Service (NHIS), according to his lawyer Park Han-hee.

    But the NHIS revoked So’s rights as a dependent and imposed premium payments after realizing he was in a same-sex relationship, Park told reporters after Tuesday’s hearing.

    South Korea does not legally recognize same-sex marriage.

    So and his partner sued the NHIS in 2021 citing discrimination, but lost in a lower court. They appealed the decision, with South Korea’s High Court ruling in their favor on Tuesday.

    The NHIS now has two weeks to appeal against the High Court’s decision.

    “After the first trial, despite the loss, I said that our love won, is winning and will win. And today demonstrates more clearly that our love has won and is winning,” So said Tuesday. “I’m really happy that through this ruling, the world will be more aware of the inequality that my husband and I, as well as other sexual minorities in South Korea, have gone through.”

    LGBTQ organizations and supporters around the world also celebrated the decision.

    Korean advocacy group Gagoonet, which includes the law firm representing So and his partner, congratulated the couple in a statement Tuesday, saying it welcomed “the first ruling where the judiciary recognized the equal rights of same-sex couples.”

    Amnesty International also praised the ruling, with its East Asia Researcher Boram Jang saying it “moves South Korea closer to achieving marriage equality” and “offers hope that prejudice can be overcome.”

    However, Jang added, the country has a long way to go. For instance, it has no anti-discrimination law despite years of campaigning and multiple draft legislation proposals.

    South Korea has also drawn international criticism for its military penal code, which makes sexual activity between men punishable by up to two years in prison. In past years, dozens have been arrested in what critics have called a “gay witch-hunt.”

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  • Wisconsin voters head to polls for high-stakes state Supreme Court election | CNN Politics

    Wisconsin voters head to polls for high-stakes state Supreme Court election | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Wisconsin voters on Tuesday will cast their primary ballots in what’s turned into an expensive and high-stakes battle for control of the state Supreme Court in a key political battleground where power is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature.

    Voters will narrow the field of candidates down to two, who will then advance to April’s general election for a seat on a court where conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority. Although the election is technically nonpartisan – there are no party labels on the ballot – interest groups align, party operations mobilize and money flows into races for its seats as if they were partisan contests.

    The departure of a conservative justice, Patience Roggensack, has given liberals an opportunity to seize the majority on a court that could decide on issues such as abortion, redistricting, and voting rights ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

    Conservatives have controlled the state’s high court for 14 years – a span in which the court has sided with Republicans’ union-busting efforts and affirmed voting restrictions, including ID requirements and a ban on ballot drop boxes.

    “This seat is crucial to the balance of the court, and the court is crucial to the balance of the state,” said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center.

    The candidates hoping to advance to the April general election are liberals Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, and Everett Mitchell, a circuit judge in Dane County; and conservatives Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, and Jennifer Dorow, a judge perhaps best known for presiding over the trial of a man convicted of killing six and injuring scores more in a 2021 attack on a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

    Outside money has flooded the race, surpassing candidate spending. As of Thursday afternoon, orders for TV and radio ads focused on the race had hit $7 million, according to advertising tracked by Kantar Media/CMAG for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school. Experts say the spending on the race could smash the previous record – $15.2 million spent on a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race, according to the liberal-leaning Brennan Center – for the most expensive campaign for a single state Supreme Court seat.

    The court could become the final arbiter on a host of critical issues in Wisconsin in the coming years – including the fate of the state’s 1849 law prohibiting abortion in nearly all cases. The US Supreme Court’s decision last summer ending federal legal protections for the procedure has super-charged the rhetoric – and spending – around abortion in the Wisconsin race.

    The state Supreme Court could also play a crucial role in the 2024 election. Wisconsin was a key location of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 loss, and the refusal of a conservative justice on the state Supreme Court to go along with an effort that year to toss out ballots in two heavily Democratic counties looms large in the rivalry between the two right-leaning candidates in this year’s race.

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  • Kentucky Supreme Court ruling allows state’s near-total abortion bans to remain in place for now | CNN Politics

    Kentucky Supreme Court ruling allows state’s near-total abortion bans to remain in place for now | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled Thursday that a lower court wrongfully stopped the enforcement of two state abortion laws, according to court documents.

    The two measures are Kentucky’s so-called trigger law banning the procedure and a separate “heartbeat” law restricting abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy.

    Siding with Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Justice Debra Hembree Lambert asserted in her opinion that the circuit court “abused its discretion by granting abortion provider’s motion for a temporary injunction.”

    Planned Parenthood, along with an abortion provider represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kentucky, sued to block Kentucky’s sweeping abortion laws after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

    They filed two complaints challenging the two statutes, which effectively prohibit abortions in Kentucky except in limited circumstances where it is necessary to preserve the life of the mother, according to the opinion.

    The near-total bans outlaw abortion in most instances with no exceptions for rape or incest, making Kentucky one of 13 states that have banned or severely restricted abortion.

    The plaintiffs argued that the laws violate the state’s constitutional rights to privacy, bodily autonomy, and self-determination, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU said in a statement.

    After a circuit court temporarily enjoined the abortion bans last summer, an appellate court judge granted the attorney general’s emergency request to dissolve the injunction, but an appellate panel later recommended that the state’s highest court weigh in on the injunction.

    The Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled that the abortion providers did not have the standing to challenge the six-week ban because they had not argued it violated their own constitutional rights, only those of their patients.

    Although the court found that the abortion providers have standing to challenge the trigger ban, it ruled that the abortion providers did not show they were sufficiently harmed by the ban to warrant a temporary injunction on its enforcement, according to the opinion.

    Instead, the court remanded the case to the lower court to determine the constitutionality of the trigger ban, the opinion stated.

    The opinion does not determine whether the Kentucky Constitution protects the right to receive an abortion, as there was no “appropriate party” to raise the issue in the suit, according to Lambert.

    “Nothing in this opinion shall be construed to prevent an appropriate party from filing suit at a later date,” she said.

    In a statement, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU expressed disappointment with the ruling but said “this fight is not over.”

    “Once again, the Kentucky Supreme Court failed to protect the health and safety of nearly a million people in the state by refusing to reinstate the lower court order blocking the law,” the statement said.

    The statement added, “Even after Kentuckians overwhelmingly voted against an anti-abortion ballot measure, abortion remains banned in the state. We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision, but we will never give up the fight to restore bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom in Kentucky.”

    Cameron called the ruling a “significant victory” Thursday.

    “Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last June, we have vigorously defended Kentucky’s Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law,” he said in a statement. “We are very pleased that Kentucky’s high court has allowed these laws to remain in effect while the case proceeds in circuit court.”

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  • ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

    ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

    Editor’s Note: The HBO docuseries “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” chronicles the family’s influence in South Carolina. It airs on CNN Sunday, February 19, at 8 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    The jury in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial saw footage Wednesday from a crucial interview he had with state investigators where he was asked for the first time if he killed his wife and son.

    The interview on August 11, 2021, was the third Murdaugh had with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which was investigating the murders of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and grown son, Paul Murdaugh, two months earlier, according to testimony Wednesday by SLED agent Lt. David Owen.

    The interview was about to end when Owen told Murdaugh he had “a few more questions.”

    “Did you kill Maggie?” Owen asked, according to the footage played in court.

    “No,” Murdaugh said. “Did I kill my wife? No, David.”

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said.

    “Did you kill Paul?”

    “No, I did not kill Paul,” Murdaugh said.

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, sir, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said. “Do you think I killed Maggie?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said.

    “I understand that. And you think I killed Paul?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said again. “And I don’t have anything that points to anybody else at this time.”

    “So does that mean that I am a suspect?”

    Owen told Murdaugh he was “still in this,” adding, “I have to put my beliefs aside, and go with the facts.”

    Owen’s testimony Wednesday comes as the state nears the end of its case, in which prosecutors contend Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from a mountain of alleged financial crimes he had committed and to stave off a “day of reckoning” when those crimes might come to light.

    The defense maintains Murdaugh – who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings – was a loving father and husband who called 911 the night of the killings after he found his wife and son shot at the family’s estate in Islandton, South Carolina, a property known as Moselle.

    At the time of the August 11, 2021, interview, Murdaugh was “the only known suspect” in the murders, Owen testified Wednesday.

    The case was transferred that same day from the local solicitor to the Attorney General’s Office, which has been prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s long ties with the local solicitor: Three generations of Murdaughs served as the 14th Circuit Solicitor over about 87 years.

    Murdaugh’s statements during the August 2021 interview were voluntary, Owen testified Wednesday. Murdaugh wanted to ask SLED agents questions about the investigation, Owen said, and the agent told him he wanted to ask Murdaugh some questions, too. Murdaugh indicated he was comfortable answering the agents’ questions.

    Murdaugh claimed to law enforcement he last saw Maggie and Paul earlier in the evening of the murders. They ate dinner together before Murdaugh took a nap and then drove to Almeda to visit his mother. He discovered the bodies of his wife and son, he said, when he returned home and called 911 at 10:07 p.m.

    The footage played in court Wednesday showed SLED agents confronting Murdaugh about evidence that appeared to contradict his earlier statements to law enforcement.

    It was the first time, Owen testified, that Murdaugh was confronted with the fact that Paul’s friend, Rogan Gibson, said he heard Murdaugh’s voice in the background of a phone call he had with Paul that night, shortly before the murders took place.

    “You were heard in the background, and that was prior to 9 p.m. … Was it you?” Owen asked Murdaugh, per the footage shown in court Tuesday.

    “At nine o’clock? No, sir,” Murdaugh said, “not if my times are right.”

    “Who do you think it could have been?”

    “I have no idea.”

    “And Rogan’s been around your family for pretty much all his life,” Owen said, something Murdaugh agreed with. “And he recognizes your voice, and you have a distinct voice. Can you think of anybody else that has a voice similar to yours that he may have misinterpreted?”

    “No, sir.”

    Months later, investigators discovered a video on Paul’s phone that he filmed immediately after that call, at 8:44 p.m. in the area of the family’s dog kennels, near where the bodies were found. Multiple witnesses at trial have identified Murdaugh’s voice, along with Maggie’s and Paul’s, in that video, contradicting Murdaugh’s statements to investigators he had not gone to the kennels before finding the bodies.

    The footage played Wednesday also showed the agents confront Murdaugh about another piece of footage filmed by Paul the night of the killings: A Snapchat video showing Murdaugh looking at a sapling on the family’s property. In it, Murdaugh is seen wearing pants and a blue shirt. But later, he was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt.

    “There’s a video on Paul’s phone of you and him on the farm that night. You’re wearing khaki pants and a dress shirt … When I met you that night, you were in shorts and a T-shirt,” Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”

    “I’m not sure,” Murdaugh said. “What time of day was that? I would have thought I would have already changed.”

    Testimony in recent days similarly undermined statements Murdaugh made to SLED during the August 2021 interview – namely, that Maggie decided to go to Moselle the night of the killings because she was worried about him and his father, whose health was deteriorating.

    Two witnesses disagree: On Tuesday, Maggie’s sister testified it was Murdaugh who wanted Maggie to come to Moselle. Maggie was staying in the family’s Edisto Beach property and did not want to go to Islandton, Marian Proctor said, recalling a conversation they had the day of the murders.

    Proctor encouraged Maggie to go, she said, breaking down in court.

    Blanca Simpson, a family housekeeper, similarly testified last week that Maggie told her the day of the murders that Alex had asked both Maggie and Paul to come to Moselle that night.

    During cross-examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin noted that investigators had the Snapchat video in July, but did not ask Murdaugh about the whereabouts of the blue shirt and pants he was seen wearing in that footage. Owen testified that he never asked Murdaugh for those clothes.

    “And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. Your investigation had been focused since early June on the T-shirt he was wearing, the shorts he was wearing and shoes he was wearing at the time he called 911,” Griffin said.

    “Yes,” Owen replied.

    Owen testified that he had told a county grand jury that an expert found multiple particles of blood spatter on the front of the T-shirt, and it was sent to a lab for testing. The test, however, found no blood on the shirt.

    “Y’all completely overlooked the fact that when you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there’s blood, it came up negative. Wasn’t that overlooked?” asked Griffin.

    “I had never seen that report,” responded Owen, who admitted he did not see it until November 2022, just months before the trial began.

    “Whoever killed Maggie and Paul would likely have biological material on them from the blasts that killed the two victims, right?,” Griffin asked Owen.

    “They would have some, yes,” Owen answered.

    Griffin established that Murdaugh’s mother’s property in Almeda was not searched until months after the killings, in September 2021. No weapons were found on that property, Owen testified.

    Owen also testified that nearby waterways and the route from Moselle to Almeda was “driven several times,” but not walked over.

    At one point Wednesday, Judge Clifton Newman ruled against allowing testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man, Curtis Edward Smith, to shoot him so his surviving son could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

    But the judge later Wednesday decided to allow that testimony after Smith was brought up during Owen’s cross-examination.

    Griffin seemed to suggest the killings could have been related to a money dispute with a drug gang, telling the court that Murdaugh was buying $50,000 worth of drugs each week from Smith. Owen agreed, testifying that he has been told the same.

    Griffin said Smith owed a lot of money to a drug gang, and Owen testified that he was told the gang was not worried about the money because it knew it was going to get paid.

    Owen testified that Smith was brought into the investigation on September 4, 2021, the day of the roadside incident. Before that, Murdaugh had never mentioned his involvement with Smith in relation to Maggie’s and Paul’s killings, according to Owen.

    “Prior to that day, had Alex Murdaugh ever mentioned to you Curtis Edward Smith or anyone else that might have been involved in his son’s or his wife’s murder?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

    “No, sir,” responded Owen.

    Asked if a cell phone analysis had been performed to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area the night of the killings, Owen said drug gang members typically use burner phones, and he didn’t have their phone numbers. But state investigators performed an analysis around Moselle and had identified only first responders as coming to the scene, Owen said.

    The defense attorney also asked Owen if any DNA analysis had been done to match a small amount of unknown male DNA found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernail. Owen said no.

    The drug investigation is ongoing, Owen testified.

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  • After recent student fentanyl overdoses in Texas community, court documents reveal drug supplier lived blocks away from schools | CNN

    After recent student fentanyl overdoses in Texas community, court documents reveal drug supplier lived blocks away from schools | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Parents across the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District (CFBISD), located in a Dallas, Texas, suburb, are reeling following a string fentanyl overdoses by nine students who attend schools in the district.

    The students, who range in age from 13 to 17 and are not identified by name in court documents, overdosed between September 18, 2022 and February 1, 2023. Three of the students died, and one of the students, a 14-year-old girl, overdosed twice, according to a statement by the US Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas.

    Law enforcement officers traced the drugs the students overdosed on to a house within walking distance from a middle school and a high school, court documents say.

    “First with all the school shootings, now this with drugs,” Lupe Rebadan, who has two children, as well as nieces and nephews, attending schools in the district told CNN. “Our kids are not safe at school… When is this all going to stop?”

    Luis Eduardo Navarette and Magaly Mejia Cano have been charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, according to the US Attorney’s Office.

    “To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors – naive middle and high school students – is to shatter futures. These defendants’ alleged actions are simply despicable,” US Attorney Leigha Simonton said in the statement.

    The complaint illuminates a network of drug dealers and users, most of them teenagers who attend R.L. Turner High School, Dan Long Middle School and Dewitt Perry Middle School, and traced the proliferation of fentanyl tainted “M30” pills to Navarette and Cano’s residence.

    International drug trafficking organizations often produce M30 pills by mixing highly addictive fentanyl with acetaminophen “and other binder type substances and pressed into various tablets/pills,” says an affidavit by a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer included in the criminal complaint.

    Many fake pills are made to look like prescription opioids such as oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet), hydrocodone (Vicodin), and alprazolam (Xanax); or stimulants like amphetamines (Adderall),” according to the DEA’s “One Pill Can Kill” website.

    Criminal organizations, according to the DEA officer’s affidavit, sell M30 pills for $1 to $2 dollars per pill when the purchasers buy in bulk amounts. Those are later sold to “street level dealers” for $3 to $5 per pill, and later sold to consumers for $10 per pill.

    Law enforcement tracked multiple teenagers engaging in “hand-to-hand transactions” with Navarette and Cano outside of their house, which is approximately five blocks from R.L. Turner High School and two blocks from DeWitt Perry Middle School, the court documents reveal.

    On January 12, a Carrollton Street Crimes Unit detective observed a 16-year-old obtain M30 pills from Navarette and Cano’s residence.

    The teenager appeared to crush and snort a pill on their front porch, “possibly package” the drugs, then walk toward the high school, where he was enrolled, according to the complaint.

    The school was notified by law enforcement, and later that day a school resource officer located the teenager in a bathroom making a “snorting sound” and appearing intoxicated.

    Navarette and Cano made their initial appearances in court on Monday, Erin Dooley of the US Attorney’s Office in Northern Texas told CNN. Naverette waived his right to a detention hearing and was ordered detained pending trial, and Cano had her detention hearing on Friday, she added. Attorneys for Navarette and Cano haven’t responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

    Days after the complaint outlining the 10 overdoses became available to the public, CFBISD released a statement expressing sorrow and concern over “the loss of young lives.”

    The district explained how it has educated the community about the threat from fentanyl over the past several months.

    “We will continue to work cooperatively with local law enforcement agencies to address this issue and to maximize safety on our campuses in every way possible. We believe if we work together as a community, we can avoid these tragedies,” the district said.

    The district said Narcan, or naloxone, an emergency drug used to treat fentanyl overdoses, had been obtained for all district facilities in October and random canine searches were being conducted on secondary campuses.

    Drug awareness presentations for parents will also resume this year, according to the district.

    “The fentanyl crisis is claiming far too many young Texans,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted Wednesday. Abbott launched the #OnePillKills campaign in October 2022 to “combat the growing national fentanyl crisis plaguing Texas.”

    In the first week of school in 2022, four students died from “fentanyl poisoning, or suspected poisoning” in Hays County Independent School District (HCISD), located in a suburb of Austin. This prompted the district to create “Fighting Fentanyl,” an informational campaign warning students and faculty about the deadly drug.

    Tim Savoy, the chief communication officer at HCISD, noted that the district has spent tens of millions of dollars for preventative measures against school shootings and Covid-19, two issues that have affected schools nationwide. The fentanyl crisis on school campuses deserves the same level of concern and response, he said.

    “This is a threat. We’re losing students, too. And so we made the decision that we have to get this equal attention and resources and do what we can,” Savoy told CNN.

    Despite the district’s awareness-raising campaign, an email from the superintendent on January 9 informed parents of “three more suspected accidental fentanyl poisonings” and one death in which fentanyl may have been to blame.

    “Our students are dying from this, and we have to do what we can,” Savoy said. “This is not just something that you’re seeing elsewhere. This is really happening in our community.”

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, median monthly overdose deaths among 10- to 19-year-olds across the United States involving illicitly manufactured fentanyl surged 182% from December 2019 to December 2021.

    Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to fentanyl exposure due to the “proliferation of counterfeit pills resembling prescription drugs containing IMFs (illicitly manufactured fentanyls), and the ease of purchasing pills through social media,” according to the CDC.

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