Decisions and Verdicts

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Myanmar Arms Dealer Acquitted in Thai Money Laundering Case

      by

      U Tun Min Latt was placed under sanctions last year by the United States for supplying drones and aircraft parts to the military regime in Myanmar.A wealthy Myanmar arms broker with close ties to the leader of Myanmar’s brutal military regime was acquitted on Tuesday by a Bangkok court on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, raising fears that he will be free to resume his activities aiding the junta.U Tun Min Latt, who was placed under sanctions by the United States last year for supplying the Myanmar regime with weapons, had spent 16 months in a Thai jail awaiting trial. The case is the first known instance of a close associate of Myanmar’s army commander, Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, being arrested abroad and put on trial since the military seized power in a coup three years ago.The Thai authorities had accused Mr. Tun Min Latt and three associates of engaging in a scheme to launder drug money by using it to buy electricity in Thailand and sending it across the border to Myanmar. But the Thai criminal court found that the record of bank transactions presented by prosecutors did not provide sufficient evidence to prove the charges.With the ruling, about two dozen family members and supporters of the accused burst into applause in the courtroom. Some wept tears of joy.But Phil Robertson, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch in Asia, expressed disappointment.“It’s hard to believe that a Burmese tycoon that many have referred to as being junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s bagman got off,” he said. “The only people happy with this outcome are the junta generals who are increasingly desperate to find resources and, quite clearly, Tun Min Latt has proved very helpful in that regard in the past.”In recent months, an armed resistance made up of pro-democracy forces and ethnic rebel groups has reported gaining ground against the military, saying it has seized hundreds of military outposts and dozens of towns in Myanmar’s border regions.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?  More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Real Estate Giant China Evergrande Will Be Liquidated

      by

      After multiple delays and even a few faint glimmers of hope, a Hong Kong court has sounded the death knell for what was once China’s biggest real estate firm.Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted I.O.U.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out.On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, Evergrande was ordered by a court in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold.The order is also likely to send shock waves through financial markets that are already skittish about China’s economy.Evergrande is a real estate developer with more than $300 billion in debt, sitting in the middle of the world’s biggest housing crisis. There isn’t much left in its sprawling empire that is worth much. And even those assets may be off limits because property in China has become intertwined with politics.Evergrande, as well as other developers, overbuilt and over promised, taking money for apartments that had not been built and leaving hundreds of thousands of home buyers waiting on their apartments. Now that dozens of these companies have defaulted, the government is frantically trying to force them to finish the apartments, putting everyone in a difficult position because contractors and builders have not been paid for years.What happens next in the unwinding of Evergrande will test the belief long held by foreign investors that China will treat them fairly. The outcome could help spur or further tamp down the flow of money into Chinese markets when global confidence in China is already shaken.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?  More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      On Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll and the Limits of Libel Law

      by

      In the days since a New York jury ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to the libel plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, the question has been whether the dollar amount was high enough to put a stop to his lies.That we must ask this question tells us something important about the moment in which we find ourselves. And it tells us something important about both the value and the limits of libel law.Doubt about what will come next is well placed. As Ms. Carroll’s lawyers argued, Mr. Trump has bragged of wealth far exceeding this amount. He has publicly resolved to repeat the falsehood “a thousand times.” Indeed, he doubled down on his false claims about Ms. Carroll on social media and on the campaign trail even as the jury was hearing his case.But this “will he or won’t he?” speculation is only the latest data point in a larger, more alarming trend of libel damages simply not seeming to carry the deterrent effect that defamation law presupposes they will have. We have entered an era in which the incentives to serve up lies for politics or profit are so strong that libel damage awards and settlements may not meaningfully change behaviors.Several examples show a stark break from the past. For most of the long history of libel law, a jury determination that material was false and defamatory settled the question, and defendants facing that liability would take every possible step not to repeat the lie — both because it would be socially reprehensible to do so and because the risk of punitive damages was a powerful deterrent unlikely to be overcome by any stronger incentive. In short, libel law used to stop the libel.But recent cases have revealed some defendants who seem motivated to defame even as their assets are depleted or made unreachable to plaintiffs. Rudy Giuliani, who reasserted his defamatory allegations against two Georgia poll workers outside the courthouse as the jury decided his case, filed for bankruptcy just days after he was ordered to pay $148 million for those lies. Alex Jones did the same less than two months after a jury ordered him and his Infowars parent company to pay close to $1 billion for years of lies about the Sandy Hook families. He had used his broadcasts to rail against the suits throughout the proceedings and to seek audience donations to fund them.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?  More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      After Help From Kenyan Police Is Blocked, Haitians Ask: What Now?

      by

      As Haiti sank into gang-dominated chaos, Kenya promised to send officers to pacify the streets. Now a court has rejected that plan, and there does not seem to be another.Gangs have taken over entire neighborhoods in Haiti’s capital, and killings have more than doubled in the past year, but for the organizers of the Port-au-Prince Jazz Festival, the show simply had to go on.So while judges an ocean away deliberated whether to send a contingent of officers to pacify Haiti’s violence-riddled streets, festival organizers made do by shortening the length of the event to four days from eight, moving the acts from a public stage to a restricted hotel venue and replacing the handful of artists who canceled.As 11.5 million Haitians struggle to feed their families and ride the bus or go to work because they fear becoming the victims of gunmen or kidnappers, they also are pushing forward, struggling to reclaim a safe sense of routine — whether or not that comes with the assistance of international soldiers.“We need something normal,” said Miléna Sandler, the executive director of the Haiti Jazz Foundation, whose festival is taking place this weekend in Port-au-Prince, the capital. “We need elections.”A Kenyan court on Friday blocked a plan to deploy 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti, the key element of a multinational force meant to help stabilize a nation besieged by murders, kidnappings and gang violence.Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has sunk deeper into turmoil in the nearly three years since the president was assassinated. The terms of all mayors in the country ended almost four years ago, and the prime minister is deeply unpopular largely because he was appointed, not elected, and has been unable to restore order.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?  More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      E. Jean Carroll Promises to Do ‘Something Good’ With Money Won From Trump

      by

      The writer was awarded $83.3 million for his defamation. Now, she will have to figure out how to use it.As soon as E. Jean Carroll heard the verdict on Friday — $83.3 million in defamation damages against Donald J. Trump — a world of possibility opened before her: How to use the money?The amount vastly eclipsed the $5 million awarded to her by a jury last spring in a different trial against Mr. Trump. It could take years before she sees the money, as Mr. Trump has said he will appeal, but she is already considering how she might use the money once she obtains it.“I’m not going to waste a cent of this,” she said. “We’re going to do something good with it.”Figuring that out will take some time, she added. But she will splurge on one luxury, she said — for her Great Pyrenees and her pit bull. “I’m going to be able to buy some premium dog food now,” she said.Ms. Carroll, appearing relaxed and happy in her lawyers’ offices on Saturday, spoke in her first interview since the Manhattan jury’s award in her favor a day earlier.Ms. Carroll, 80, sued Mr. Trump, 77, for defamation after he called her a liar in June 2019, when she first publicly accused him, in a magazine article, of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room decades earlier. Mr. Trump continued to attack Ms. Carroll, in posts on his Truth Social website that lasted right into the trial, as well as in news conferences and on the campaign trial.After the verdict on Friday, Mr. Trump, issued a new attack on social media: “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon.” But he avoided criticizing Ms. Carroll, a silence that spoke volumes. Ms. Carroll said she was not ready to assume that the former president was finished with her.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?  More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      After Carroll Verdict, Haley Says ‘America Can Do Better’ Than Trump or Biden

      by

      Nikki Haley criticized Donald J. Trump on Friday, saying, “America can do better than Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” after a Manhattan jury had ordered the former president to pay $83.3 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.It was the latest iteration of Ms. Haley’s new attack line against Mr. Trump, portraying another Trump presidency as just as bad for the country as another four years of President Biden. Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, began making similar statements after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida dropped out of the race on Sunday, leaving her as the last serious threat to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.“Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee and we’re talking about $83 million in damages,” Ms. Haley wrote on social media, adding that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continued to be a distraction. “We’re not talking about fixing the border. We’re not talking about tackling inflation.”Ms. Haley is preparing for what may be the final stand of her presidential campaign, facing off against Mr. Trump next month in a critical primary in her home state of South Carolina. Ms. Haley has largely avoided commenting on Mr. Trump’s legal cases, but the former president leads her by wide margins in polls, and she appears to be turning up the heat in an effort to catch him.Mr. Trump lashed out on social media soon after the verdict, attacking the civil trial as a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt” despite the fact that Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump in 2019, before he had left office and while Mr. Biden was just one of many Democratic presidential candidates.The verdict was an extraordinary moment for a front-runner in a presidential nominating contest. A jury penalized Mr. Trump $83.3 million for defamation just three days after he had won a second nominating contest — in New Hampshire, by 11 percentage points. Mr. Trump also faces 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases.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?  More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Bali Bombing Conspirators Get 5 More Years at Guantánamo Bay

      by

      A military jury sentenced two Malaysian men to 23 years for helping perpetrators of the bombing that killed 202 people, but a side deal reduced the punishment.A military jury at Guantánamo Bay sentenced two prisoners to 23 years in confinement on Friday for conspiring in the 2002 terrorist bombing that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia. But the men could be freed by 2029 under a secret deal and with sentencing credit.Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, have been held by the United States since the summer of 2003, starting with three years in C.I.A. black site prisons where they were tortured. They pleaded guilty to war crimes charges last week.About a dozen relatives of tourists who were killed in the attacks spent an emotional week at the court and testified to their enduring grief. A jury of five U.S. military officers, assembled to decide a sentence in the 20-to-25-year range, returned 23 years after deliberating for about two hours on Friday.But, unknown to the jurors, a senior Pentagon official reached a secret agreement over the summer with the defendants that they would be sentenced to at most six more years. In exchange for the reduced sentence, they were required to provide testimony that might be used at the trial of an Indonesian prisoner, known as Hambali, who is accused of being a mastermind of the Bali bombing and other plots as a leader of the Qaeda affiliate group Jemaah Islamiyah.Then, separately, the judge, Lt. Col. Wesley A. Braun, cut 311 days off Mr. Bin Amin’s sentence and 379 days off Mr. Bin Lep’s because prosecutors missed court deadlines for turning over evidence to defense lawyers as they prepared their case.But the men could go home earlier. “The pretrial agreement contemplates the possibility of repatriation before the sentence is complete,” said Brian Bouffard, Mr. Bin Lep’s lawyer. When they are returned, he added, it will be to Malaysia’s state-run deradicalization program and a lifetime of monitoring by national security authorities.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?  More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Read the Supreme Court’s Decision Allowing an Alabama Execution to Proceed

      by

      4

      SMITH v. HAMM

      SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

      likelihood of success on the merits of his claim challenging Alabama’s undeterred implementation of its heavily redacted, 5-month-old protocol. The equities here, as in nearly all capital cases where the prisoner has shown a reasonable probability of success on the merits, favor Smith. See Bucklew, 587 U. S., at (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting). While I would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and summarily reverse the Eleventh Circuit’s order affirming the denial of Smith’s preliminary-injunction motion, at a minimum, I would grant Smith’s request for a stay of execution.

      *

      *

      *

      Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its “guinea pig” to test a method of execution never attempted before. Barber, 600 U. S., at The world is watching.2 This Court yet again permits Alabama to “experiment . . . with a human life,” while depriving Smith of “meaningful discovery” on meritorious constitutional claims. Id., at _______. This time around, Alabama has adopted a new protocol concerning a never-before-used method of execution. Consistent with Alabama’s “familiar veil of secrecy over its capital punishment procedures,” it has released only a “heavily redacted” version of that protocol. 2024 WL 116303, *3. Smith should be allowed to complete discovery and litigate the merits of his claims challenging this new protocol in the ordinary course. That information is important not only to Smith, who has an extra reason to fear the gurney, but to anyone the State seeks

      2 See, e.g., US: Alarm Over Imminent Execution in Alabama, United Nations (Jan. 16, 2024), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/ 2024/01/us-alarm-over-imminent-execution-alabama; United States: UN Experts Alarmed at Prospect of First-Ever Untested Execution by Nitrogen Hypoxia in Alabama, United Nations (Jan. 3, 2024), https://www. ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/united-states-un-experts-alarmed

      prospect-first-ever-untested-execution. More