Decisions and Verdicts

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      José Rubén Zamora Will Leave Prison After Nearly Two Years

      by

      The case against José Rubén Zamora became a sign of crumbling democracy in Guatemala and a symbol of threats against press freedom across Latin America.After spending more than 810 days in a cramped cell with little more than his books to keep him company, one of Guatemala’s most renowned journalists will be released to house detention this weekend as he waits to find out whether he will be granted a new trial.The decision comes after a judge ruled Friday that José Rubén Zamora, the founder and publisher of elPeriódico, a leading newspaper in Guatemala that aggressively investigated government corruption, had spent too much time in prison without a trial and that he was not likely to flee. “I have never wanted to flee Guatemala, which is also my country, not just the country of the authorities in power,” Mr. Zamora, 68, told the judge. “If you place your trust in me, I will honor it.”Mr. Zamora was convicted last year of money laundering, sentenced to as many as six years in prison and fined about $40,000. He called the charges politically motivated and said they were retaliation for his newspaper’s focus on public corruption.As part of his detention outside jail, he will be required to report periodically to the authorities and remain confined in his home.His trial was plagued with irregularities and was broadly seen as fundamentally unfair — another move to undermine democracy and target critical press coverage during the administration of former President Alejandro Giammattei.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 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights for Felons

      by

      The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state on Wednesday to allow people with felony convictions to vote after finishing their sentences, resolving confusion about who can participate in this year’s election and rejecting an argument by the state attorney general that lawmakers overstepped in extending voting rights to those with convictions.The ruling, issued with early balloting in the state already underway and voter registration deadlines approaching quickly, will help shape the state’s electorate, which can carry special importance in presidential races because of the way Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than using the winner-takes-all approach of most states. Nebraska also has a competitive U.S. Senate race this year, as well as a tightly contested U.S. House race in the Omaha area. The ruling on Wednesday was expected to affect thousands of potential voters.Nebraska, which usually votes Republican in statewide races, was part of a national trend in loosening voting rules for people with criminal records. In 2005, lawmakers in the state abolished a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of felonies, but continued to require people to wait two years to vote after finishing their sentences. This year, in a bipartisan vote, lawmakers got rid of that waiting period, clearing the way for people to cast ballots immediately after finishing prison and parole terms.Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but the measure attracted skepticism from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans.Just before the new measure was set to take effect this summer, Mr. Hilgers released a written opinion saying that both the new law and the 2005 law were improper. He argued that under the Nebraska Constitution, only the state’s Board of Pardons could restore voting rights to someone with a felony conviction. Mr. Evnen then instructed county election officials to stop registering voters with felony convictions. The Board of Pardons is made up of Mr. Pillen, Mr. Hilgers and Mr. Evnen.Reached on Wednesday morning, Cindi Allen, a deputy secretary of state, said Mr. Evnen’s office planned to comment on the ruling on Wednesday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hilgers said they were reviewing the ruling.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

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Georgia Judge Blocks Hand-Counting of Election Ballots

      by

      The ruling was confined to the current election, halting the measure from going into effect for 2024 while the judge further weighs its merits in the future.A county judge in Georgia on Tuesday blocked a new rule mandating a hand count of election ballots across the state. Enacting such a sweeping change for the November election, he said, was “too much, too late.”Judge Robert C.I. McBurney did not, however, knock down the rule outright; his decision was confined to the current election, halting the rule from taking effect for 2024 while he further weighs its merits.The rule, passed last month by the State Election Board, would have required poll workers across Georgia to break open sealed containers of ballots and count them by hand to ensure that the total number of ballots matched the total counted by tabulating machines. (It would not have required officials to tally for whom the ballots were cast.)But Judge McBurney agreed with challenges from several county election boards that the rule was made too close to the election.“Clearly the S.E.B. believes that the hand count rule is smart election policy — and it may be right,” Judge McBurney said, using shorthand for State Election Board. “But the timing of its passage makes implementation now quite wrong.”The rule was one of many new election provisions approved in Georgia since summer that hewed closely to policy goals of right-wing election activists. It was a key achievement of the State Election Board, which has recently been governed by a 3-2 right-wing majority.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

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      50 Years After Killing, a Berlin Court Convicts a Stasi Officer of Murder

      by

      The court handed down a guilty verdict and a 10-year sentence to a former officer of East Germany’s dreaded secret police, in a case straight out of the Cold War.It was a brutal act from another time, almost another world, when the Cold War was hot and Germany was divided: An officer of East Germany’s feared secret police shot and killed a man trying to cross into the West.Half a century later, a German court on Monday found the 80-year-old former officer, Manfred Naumann, guilty of murder and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, one of the harshest penalties meted out for the reign of terror by the secret police, known as the Stasi.Over several days in March and April of this year, the only known living witnesses to the shooting faced the defendant in a high-security courtroom in Berlin, testifying to what they saw on March 29, 1974.The witnesses — then schoolgirls, now retired women — all said that seeing a killing so young affected them for the rest of their lives. Trim and neatly dressed, Mr. Naumann, who lived for years in comfortable anonymity in a house in Leipzig, Germany, looked on in silence.The trial, almost 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was a reminder of the pervasiveness and impunity of the dreaded Stasi, and of the dark sides of the oppressive Communist regime, which many people in the East now view with some nostalgia.In November 1989, when the wall fell, the Stasi had an estimated 91,000 employees and 180,000 part-time spies, using coercion and violence to keep the Communists in power for four decades. It pressed ordinary people into spying on their co-workers, neighbors, friends, even their families, and building dossiers on millions of people.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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Ruling Means Italy’s ‘Bunga Bunga’ Saga Is Not Over

      by

      The ruling sets the stage for yet another trial related to the scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who died last year.After 14 years, the 21 women accused of helping to cover up Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s evening bacchanals had hoped that their long legal saga over the so-called “Bunga Bunga” scandal might be over.But Italy’s Supreme Court overturned their acquittals, ruling on Monday that the women could be retried, according to the general prosecutor on the case — a setback for the women and an indication of how large the shadow of Mr. Berlusconi, who died last year, still looms in Italy.The court decision sets the stage for yet another trial related to a scandal that gripped Italy and set off an international tabloid frenzy in 2010, when news emerged about parties Mr. Berlusconi was hosting at his villa near Milan.In the first trial, Mr. Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with a 17-year-old woman at one of the parties and abusing his office to cover it up. Both the woman and Mr. Berlusconi denied it. Mr. Berlusconi was initially found guilty, but was later acquitted because of a lack of evidence that he was aware at the time that the teen was underage. In the second trial, several of Mr. Berlusconi’s associates were convicted of aiding and abetting prostitution by procuring women for the bacchanals, which became known as the “Bunga Bunga parties.”The third trial involved 21 women accused of accepting hush money to lie and protect Mr. Berlusconi in the earlier court proceedings. A lower court had acquitted them on procedural grounds, but prosecutors in Milan appealed the verdict.The deputy prosecutor general at the Supreme Court, Roberto Aniello, confirmed that Italy’s Supreme Court in Rome had ruled on Monday that the 21 women could be retried. The court has not yet explained its decision; that typically follows in a statement.An appeals court in Milan is set to take up the case, though it was not immediately clear when that would take place.The New York Times reached out to several of the women, who were not immediately available for comment. Some of the 21 have, in the past, admitted to taking money or expensive gifts from Mr. Berlusconi, but said it was not intended to buy their silence. More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Former U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to 14 Years for Planning to Help ISIS

      by

      Pvt. Cole Bridges pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.A former soldier in the U.S. Army was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to provide ISIS with information to help plan an ambush he thought would result in the deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, according to the U.S. Justice Department.The soldier, Pvt. Cole Bridges, 24, of Stow, Ohio, also discussed potential locations for terrorist attacks in New York City with an undercover F.B.I. agent whom he believed to be a supporter of the Islamic State.Private Bridges enlisted in the military in 2019 and joined an infantry division in Fort Stewart, Ga. Before enlisting, he had already been persuaded by radical ideologies, according to the Justice Department.“Cole Bridges used his U.S. Army training to pursue a horrifying goal: the brutal murder of his fellow service members in a carefully plotted ambush,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.Beginning in at least 2019, Private Bridges began researching jihadist propaganda and posted his support for ISIS on social media. About a year after joining the Army, he began a correspondence with an F.B.I. agent who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with the group in the Middle East.A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York detailed the soldier’s fervent intent on aiding the Islamic State, describing Private Bridges as “a supporter of ISIS and its mission to establish a global caliphate.”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 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Outlines Google Search Changes It’s Weighing in Antitrust Case

      by

      They include making Google’s data available to rivals and forcing it to break off parts of the company, the Justice Department said in a court filing.The Justice Department said Tuesday night that it was considering asking a federal court to force Google to break off parts of the company or change its practices in order to eliminate its monopoly in search, moves that could redefine the $2 trillion company’s core business.In a filing, the government said it could ask the court to require Google to make the underlying data that powers its search engine available to competitors.It said it was considering asking for “structural” changes to Google to stop the company from leveraging the power of its Chrome browser, Android operating system or Play app store to benefit its search business. But it stopped short of identifying what those changes could be.“Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms that present unprecedented complexities in a highly evolving set of markets,” the government said in its filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “These markets are indispensable to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or as business owners, and the importance of effectively unfettering these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a blog post in response to the filing that the company was concerned the Justice Department was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”In a landmark ruling in August, a judge on that court, Amit P. Mehta, said Google “is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” It crossed a line when it paid companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine in web browsers and on smartphones, Judge Mehta ruled in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google.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 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      U.N. Official Took $3 Million in Secret Gifts From Businessman

      by

      The official secretly took $3 million in gifts from a businessman to whom he steered the organization’s funds, a court ruled. The U.N. got a song about the ocean.A high-ranking United Nations official secretly took $3 million in gifts from a British businessman while he steered more than $58 million of the organization’s money to the man’s companies, according to a ruling from an internal U.N. court.The decision provided a potential answer to a question that has baffled the organization since news broke in 2022 of Vitaly Vanshelboim’s disastrous investments: Why did a 20-year veteran of the United Nations defy auditors and common sense by entrusting his agency’s entire investment portfolio to a man he purportedly met at a party?The court found last week that Mr. Vanshelboim, a Ukrainian, had committed fraud and “blatant misconduct” by failing to disclose the gifts from the businessman, David Kendrick. It said Mr. Vanshelboim had received interest-free loans, home repairs, a new Mercedes and a $1.2 million sponsorship for his teenage son, who was a tennis player.“This is insane, how is this possible,” the son wrote back to his father at the time, according to an email cited in the court ruling. “I’m not even a good tennis player yet.”“Part of my job is to make insane things happen,” Mr. Vanshelboim replied, the court said.The United Nations now says that all $58 million that Mr. Vanshelboim’s agency entrusted to Mr. Kendrick has been lost. Mr. Vanshelboim was fired last year, fined a year’s pay and ordered to repay all the money lost through the United Nations’ dealing with Mr. Kendrick.He appealed those penalties, but the court largely rejected his arguments, saying he had to pay $58 million or lose his U.N. pension. Mr. Vanshelboim declined to comment. Mr. Kendrick did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.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