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Court upholds guilty verdict for Russian opposition leader
Headline Topics |
2017/02/04 00:13
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A Russian court on Wednesday found opposition leader Alexei Navalny guilty in the retrial of a 2013 fraud case, which formally disqualifies him as a candidate for president next year.
However, the first time Navalny was convicted, his sentence was suspended and he was allowed to be a candidate for mayor of Moscow. An associate said Navalny will carry on with the presidential campaign he announced in December.
In a webcast hearing in Kirov, a city nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Moscow, Judge Alexei Vtyurin found Navalny guilty of embezzling timber worth 16 million rubles ($270,000) and gave him a five-year suspended sentence. The previous guilty verdict was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights which ruled that Russia violated Navalny's right to a fair trial.
During a break in the proceedings, Navalny told reporters that he and his lawyers were comparing this verdict with the text of the 2013 verdict and found them to be identical.
"You can come over and see that the judge is reading exactly the same text, which says a lot about the whole trial," Navalny told reporters, adding that even the typos in the names of companies were identical in both rulings.
Navalny, the driving force behind massive anti-government protests in Moscow 2011 and 2012, had announced plans to run for office in December and had begun to raise funds.
Navalny's campaign manager, Leonid Volkov, insisted that the campaign goes on even though the guilty verdict formally bars Navalny from running.
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Court ponders mass murderer Breivik's prison conditions
Headline Topics |
2017/01/17 15:55
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An appeals court in Norway is considering whether the prison conditions under which mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is being held amount to a violation of his human rights.
The six-day trial ended Wednesday in a makeshift courtroom inside Skien prison in southern Norway where Breivik, 37, is serving a 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in a 2011 bomb-and-shooting rampage.
Breivik's lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, spent most of the last day seeking to show that restrictions on his client's visitors and the strict control over Breivik's mail and phone calls have led to a lack of human interaction and privacy, which amounts to a violation of his rights.
The case is "really about a person that is sitting very, very alone in a small prison within a prison" since 2012, explained Storrvik.
He dismissed the benefits of the weekly visits by a state-appointed prison confidante for Breivik, saying "it's a paid job."
Addressing the court last week, Breivik said his solitary confinement had deeply damaged him and made him even more radical in his neo-Nazi beliefs.
The Norwegian state rejected the criticism and said efforts to find a prison confidante show the authorities have "gone out of their way" to remedy the situation.
In a surprise verdict last year, the Oslo District Court sided with Breivik, finding that his isolation was "inhuman (and) degrading" and breached the European Convention on Human Rights. It ordered the government to pay his legal costs.
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Court says convicted killer Skakel's defense was adequate
Headline Topics |
2017/01/07 13:38
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Convicted killer Michael Skakel could be headed back to prison after the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated his 2002 conviction for the gruesome murder of his 15-year-old neighbor Martha Moxley.
Moxley was killed — bludgeoned with a golf club belonging to the Skakel family and stabbed in the neck with the broken-off handle — the night before Halloween in 1975 in the driveway of her Greenwich home. No physical evidence tied Skakel to the crime, but he was convicted because of incriminating things he said to friends and a weak alibi he gave investigators.
Skakel, the now 56-year-old nephew of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, served a decade of his 20-to-life sentence until he was released in 2013 when an appeals court ruled he didn’t get an adequate legal defense from his lawyer Mickey Sherman.
Connecticut’s highest court rejected that ruling yesterday in a divided 4-3 decision that found Sherman “rendered constitutionally adequate representation” — setting in motion a series of last-ditch efforts by Skakel’s appellate attorneys to keep him from heading back to the lock-up.
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Airport shooting suspect due for Florida court appearance
Headline Topics |
2017/01/07 13:36
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The Iraq war veteran accused of fatally shooting five people and wounding six at a crowded Florida airport baggage claim is due for his first court appearance.
Esteban Santiago is scheduled to be in Fort Lauderdale federal court Monday morning. The 26-year-old from Anchorage, Alaska, faces airport violence and firearms charges that could mean the death penalty if he's convicted.
The initial hearing Monday is likely to focus on ensuring Santiago has a lawyer and setting future dates. Santiago has been held without bail since his arrest after Friday's shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The FBI has says Santiago flew on a one-way ticket from Alaska to Florida with a handgun in his checked bag. Agents say he retrieved the gun and emerged from an airport bathroom firing.
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Ohio Supreme Court delays serial killer's execution date
Headline Topics |
2017/01/05 13:38
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The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to delay the execution date for a Cleveland man convicted of killing 11 women and hiding the remains in and around his home.
The court on Thursday granted the request from attorneys for serial killer Anthony Sowell.
The execution had been set for Nov. 18, 2010. The court said the execution would be delayed until Sowell had exhausted all his appeals, most likely through the federal courts.
The court's action was similar to its approach to other death penalty cases. It regularly sets initial execution dates after upholding death sentences, then delays them on request.
Jurors found Sowell guilty of killing 11 women from June 2007 to July 2009.
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Kansas Supreme Court to hear death row inmate's appeal
Headline Topics |
2016/12/20 14:01
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Attorneys for a Kansas death row inmate convicted of killing his estranged wife, their two daughters and his wife's grandmother in 2009 will get to make their case to the state's highest court about why he should be spared.
James Kraig Kahler argues in his appeal that the court where he stood trial made mistakes, and he questions whether his death sentence was warranted.
Friday's hearing will be the Kansas Supreme Court's first death penalty case since Election Day, when voters retained four of its justices who were targeted for ouster partly because the court overturned other death sentences.
Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994 but hasn't executed anyone in more than half a century. The state Supreme Court has overturned death sentences seven times in 20 years, with five of those decisions later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kahler was convicted in 2011 of fatally shooting Karen Kahler, 44, her 89-year-old grandmother, Dorothy Wight, and the Kahlers' two daughters, 18-year-old Emily and 16-year-old Lauren, at Wight's home in Burlingame, about 65 miles southwest of Kansas City. Authorities said he went from room to room shooting his victims. The couple's 10-year-old son survived unharmed.
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High court turns away appeal from former AIG executives
Headline Topics |
2016/12/19 14:00
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from two former American International Group executives seeking to avoid civil fraud claims on charges they hid hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from investors.
The justices on Monday let stand a lower court ruling that said former chief executive officer Maurice Greenberg and former chief financial officer Howard Smith must stand trial.
executives of manipulating AIG's accounting records to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from investors.
The state seeks an order banning Greenberg from working in the securities industry or as an executive for any public company. It also is seeking $53 million, including bonuses Greenberg received during the period he is alleged to have manipulated the company's finances.
Greenberg was seen at Trump Tower in New York on Monday. He did not stop to speak with the press. |
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