Decisions and Verdicts

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Sedition Panda,’ a Jan. 6 Rioter in a Costume Head, Is Convicted

      by

      Jesse James Rumson, known as Sedition Panda for the costume head he wore, was found guilty of eight charges related to his participation in the breach of the U.S. Capitol.A Florida man who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while wearing a costume panda head was convicted on Friday of assaulting a police officer and other charges related to the events of that day.The man, Jesse James Rumson, 38, who became known as Sedition Panda, was found guilty of eight total charges, two felonies and six misdemeanors, after a bench trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.He was convicted by Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has garnered his own headlines for challenging the Justice Department’s use of a federal obstruction law to prosecute Jan. 6. rioters.In a separate case, Judge Nichols, a Trump appointee, dismissed a charge against another Jan. 6 defendant, Joseph Fischer, for violating a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding.The judge dismissed the charge in that case on the grounds that the law strictly concerns white-collar crime, saying that it required a defendant to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object.” An appeals court reversed the judge’s ruling, and Mr. Fischer successfully brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to release a decision this summer.Prosecutors have invoked the obstruction law against hundreds of rioters, typically in the most serious cases. But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Rumson with violating that law, and Judge Nichols did not appear to have any reservations about the applicability of the charges prosecutors did bring.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Judge in Robert Menendez Bribery Case Bars Some Prosecution Evidence

      by

      The ruling could undermine prosecutors’ ability to prove certain elements of the bribery case against Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat.In a potential setback for the government, a federal judge on Friday blocked the introduction of certain evidence that prosecutors wanted to use to support their case that Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey accepted bribes in exchange for approving billions of dollars in aid to Egypt.The judge’s order, which comes two weeks into Mr. Menendez’s corruption trial in Manhattan, could undermine prosecutors’ ability to prove certain elements of the multifaceted bribery charges against the senator.The ruling rests on protections afforded to members of Congress under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which bars the government from citing specific legislative actions in seeking to prove a federal lawmaker committed a crime.The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York has said it intended to sidestep discussion of official legislative acts and focus instead on promises it says preceded Mr. Menendez’s votes and congressional actions.The judge, Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court, ruled in March that although Mr. Menendez’s performance of a legislative act was protected conduct, “his promise to do the same is not.”Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Denies Alec Baldwin’s Bid to Dismiss Manslaughter Indictment

      by

      The ruling increases the likelihood that Mr. Baldwin will stand trial this summer in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust.”A judge in New Mexico denied Alec Baldwin’s bid to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge he faces in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the movie “Rust,” ruling on Friday that the case had been properly presented to a grand jury.The ruling by Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer increased the likelihood that the trial of Mr. Baldwin would move forward this summer.Lawyers for Mr. Baldwin — who was rehearsing with an old-fashioned revolver on the set in 2021 when it fired a live bullet, killing the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins — have lodged numerous objections to how the case against the actor has been handled, arguing that the prosecution had not sufficiently showed jurors evidence that could have supported Mr. Baldwin’s case. They claimed that the prosecution had “steered grand jurors away” from witnesses who would have testified that it was not Mr. Baldwin’s responsibility to check that the gun was safe to handle on set.In a written order, Judge Marlowe Sommer, of the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, N.M., ordered that the indictment would stand, finding that the prosecution had not operated in bad faith and that the grand jurors had been properly alerted to the existence of the defense’s witnesses and evidence, though they decided not to examine them.“The court is not in a position to second-guess the grand jury’s decision in this regard,” Judge Marlowe Sommer wrote.In a statement on Friday, lawyers for Mr. Baldwin, Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, said, “We look forward to our day in court.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      ICJ Orders Israel to Halt Its Military Incursion Into Rafah

      by

      The International Court of Justice has no means to enforce its order in the Gazan city, but the ruling added pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.The International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to “immediately” halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, dealing another blow to the country as it faces increasing international isolation and a drumbeat of criticism over its conduct in the war.The court has few effective means of enforcing its order, and it stopped short of ordering a cease-fire in Gaza, with some of the court’s judges arguing that Israel could still conduct some military operations in Rafah under the terms of their decision.But the order added more pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced domestic and external calls to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would lead to the release of hostages held in Gaza.“The court considers that, in conformity with obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” the court’s president, Nawaf Salam, said in reading the 13-2 ruling.The court, based at The Hague, also specified the need for open land crossings, in particular the Rafah crossing, as part of its request for “the unhindered provision” of humanitarian assistance and services. Israel has controlled the Rafah crossing for more than two weeks, and very few aid trucks have entered the enclave since, according to United Nations data.The Israeli government said in a statement that its military “has not and will not” take actions that would lead to the partial or complete destruction of the Palestinian population of Rafah. In effect, it said that the court’s decision has no bearing on Israel’s offensive because the prohibited acts are not occurring. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Blocks Attempt to Sell Graceland, at Least for Now

      by

      Elvis’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop what her lawyers said was a fraudulent auction off her family home.Graceland will not be sold at auction, at least for now.On Wednesday, a Tennessee judge deferred ruling on an apparent attempt to sell Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home in Memphis, but kept a temporary injunction in place that would prevent the property from going to auction imminently.The bizarre case came into wide public view this week when a lawsuit surfaced that had been filed by Mr. Presley’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough. In it, Ms. Keough sued to prevent what her lawyers described as a fraudulent effort to auction the home by a company claiming that Lisa Marie Presley — Ms. Keough’s mother and Mr. Presley’s daughter — had borrowed $3.8 million and put Graceland up as collateral before she died in 2023.At Wednesday’s hearing at Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., the judge, Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, said he needed to continue the case, in part because no one showed up in person to represent the defendants and in part because he said lawyers for Ms. Keough needed to present additional evidence.The defendants included a company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC, which had scheduled a sale of Graceland for Thursday, according to court papers. The court said it had received a filing on Wednesday morning from a man named Gregory Naussany who had asked the court to continue the case.It was not clear when the next hearing would take place.Lawyers for Ms. Keough had argued that the company appeared to be a “false entity.” They also claimed that the company had presented fake documents purporting to show that Ms. Presley had borrowed the money and put Graceland up as collateral.Several attempts to reach Naussany Investments through the email addresses and phone numbers listed for the company in the court documents have not been successful.Graceland, a popular tourist attraction, is a major source of income for Elvis Presley Enterprises and the family trust, which Ms. Keough controls. More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Civilian Prosecutors Rejected Evidence in 9/11 Case That Military Calls Crucial

      by

      The revelation sets in stark relief the decision by military prosecutors to seek to include the evidence, which has opened the door to years of litigation over confessions by the men accused of plotting the attacks.For years, a thorny question has dominated pretrial hearings in the military commissions case over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Did the men accused of plotting them voluntarily confess in 2007 after the C.I.A. had stopped torturing them, and could those statements be used as evidence at their eventual death-penalty trial?So it came as a surprise when a veteran F.B.I. analyst revealed that in 2009, when the Obama administration was planning to instead try the men in civilian court, federal prosecutors had decided against trying to offer the statements as evidence.The revelation sets in stark relief the contrary decision by military prosecutors to build their case around summoning the F.B.I. interrogators as witnesses, calling such potential testimony their “most critical” evidence. It also underlines how that decision has opened the door to years of litigation and contributed to a lengthy delay in getting the case to trial.Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo from 2011 until his retirement in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.During a closed hearing on March 6, Kimberly Waltz, a supervisory intelligence analyst at the F.B.I. who works on the Guantánamo prosecution team, disclosed that civilian prosecutors had decided the statements were unnecessary. In 2009, when she helped the civilian prosecution team evaluate the evidence, federal prosecutors rejected using the confessions at trial, according to a transcript of the hearing recently released by the government.“At that time it was my understanding,” she said, that “we were not going to be able to use them; they weren’t admissible.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Consumer Watchdog’s Funding

      by

      A decision against the agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, could have cast doubt on all of its regulations and enforcement actions.The Supreme Court rejected a challenge on Thursday to the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is funded, one that could have hobbled the bureau and advanced a central goal of the conservative legal movement: limiting the power of independent agencies.The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the majority opinion.Had the bureau lost, the court’s ruling might have cast doubt on every regulation and enforcement action it had taken in its 13 years of existence, including ones concerning mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans and banking.The central question in the case was whether the way Congress chose to fund the bureau had violated the appropriations clause of the Constitution, which says that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”Justice Thomas said the mechanism was constitutional.“Under the appropriations clause,” he wrote, “an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes. The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the appropriations clause.”Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.The bureau, created after the financial crisis as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, is funded by the Federal Reserve System, in an amount determined by the bureau so long as the sum does not exceed 12 percent of the system’s operating expenses. In the 2022 fiscal year, the agency requested and received $641.5 million of the $734 million available.A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled in 2022 that the bureau’s funding method ran afoul of the appropriations clause.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Justice Thomas Denounces ‘the Nastiness and the Lies’ Faced by His Family

      by

      The statement was among the few public remarks he has made since revelations that he had failed to report lavish gifts and travel from wealthy conservatives.Justice Clarence Thomas denounced on Friday “the nastiness and the lies” that have shadowed him in recent years as public scrutiny has mounted over his wife’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and luxury gifts he has accepted from billionaire friends.It amounted to some of the most extensive public remarks he has made since revelations that he failed to disclose years of lavish trips from wealthy conservatives, like the Texas real estate magnate Harlan Crow, including on private jets and a superyacht.“My wife and I, the last two or three years, just the nastiness and the lies,” said Justice Thomas, who did not specify what he was referring to in addressing a full ballroom of lawyers and judges gathered for a judicial conference in Alabama. “There’s certainly been a lot of negativity in our lives, my wife and I, over the last few years, but we choose not to focus on it.”The justice faced calls for recusal after text messages and emails showed that his wife, Virginia Thomas, known as Ginni, sought to overturn the election, appealing to administration officials and lawmakers. Justice Thomas has continued to participate in a number of cases related to the 2020 election, including three about Jan. 6 on the docket this term.The remarks were part of a wide-ranging conversation at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Judicial Conference held at a luxury resort on the waters of Mobile Bay, a shallow inlet of the Gulf of Mexico.Interviewed by a former clerk, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, now a federal judge in Florida best known for overturning the Biden administration’s mask mandate, Justice Thomas reminisced about past years on the court, when he said it would have been impossible to imagine anyone leaking opinions. That appeared to be a reference to the 2022 leak of the draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More