According to the Associated Press, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruther Bader Ginsberg says the justices won't duck the issue of same-sex marriage after several courts around the country have found bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. She expects a case on the issue to be heard by June 2016.
I am really struck that, through public records, The Arizona Republic was able to learn that Arizona death row inmate Joseph Wood was injected 15 times with drugs midazolam and hydromorphone over a two-hour period before he was finally pronounced dead. It was supposed to just take two doses to kill him. The Associated Press reported he "gasped more than 600 times over the next hour and 40 minutes." But before Wood was executed he lost his First Amendment fight to find out the details of the state's methods for lethal injections, including where it obtains its supply of the drugs or the executioners' medical qualifications. While the Ninth Circuit put his execution on hold, according to the AP, the Supreme Court lifted the stay. So Wood couldn't get access to information before his execution. But it can be obtained after the fact.
After the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter's administration to create an Office of Conflict of Counsel faltered, one of the main opponents of that plan has secured Department of Justice funding for a study on the quality of Philadelphia's indigent defense. I'm cross-posting the piece I wrote for Philly City Paper:
One of the main opponents of a plan to create a new Office of Conflict Counsel has secured Department of Justice funding to study the quality of defense that is available to Philadelphia's indigents.
Councilman Dennis O'Brien says the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded $25,000 for the Sixth Amendment Center's David Carroll to conduct interviews with judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors and others involved in the criminal-justice system. Carroll will make recommendations this fall on how Philadelphia can better meet the American Bar Association's 10 Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System. Carroll has done similar work in Delaware, Utah, Tennessee, Mississippi and elsewhere.
Last winter, the Nutter administration had to scuttle its plan to award cases to a new, private law firm when the Defender Association of Philadelphia has a conflict. Currently, those cases go to a long list of lawyers who take such appointments.
Philadelphia attorney Daniel-Paul Alva's bid was the winner to start a new Office of Conflict Counsel in Philadelphia, but the contract process came to a halt over a legal technicality involving the name of the entity.
In an interview during a visit to Philadelphia on Thursday, Carroll said that he testified in City Council about that proposal because the focus was too much on whether a for-profit model was a bad idea and not enough on how to reach the ABA standards.
He said he has seen terrible public defenders and horrible private lawyers paid by the government to represent defendants. But he also has seen terrific public defenders and fantastic private appointed counsel.
A for-profit model is not inherently wrong if it is meeting the standards for ensuring defendants' Constitutional rights to adequate counsel, he says.
Pennsylvania "is the only state that has never contributed even a dime to the Sixth Amendment right of counsel," Carroll said. "It's an issue most urban jurisdictions don't need to deal with."
Most cities are not under the same pressure for cost containment in their criminal courts, he said.
Philadelphia also does not have any system of oversight to ensure defendants are getting good representation from their public defenders or private lawyers appointed by the court, Carroll said.
Matt Braden, O'Brien's chief of staff, said the fact that the funding for the study is independent is important — there can be no question of Carroll's independence and lack of bias.
In requesting the money for a study, O'Brien wrote that there are issues because Pennsylvania requires local governments to bear the entire cost of providing attorneys to poor defendants.
"Though it is not believed to be unconstitutional for a state to delegate such responsibilities to local government, in doing so, a state must guarantee that local governments are not only able to provide such services, but they are, in fact, doing so," O'Brien said.
Alva was proposing to create a for-profit law firm to represent criminal defendants and family-court defendants when the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Community Legal Services or the Support Center for Child Advocates was already representing another person in the case. The new firm was to handle the first appointments in criminal cases and juvenile-delinquent cases in which the Defender Association has a conflict, and to represent the primary caregiver in every dependency case. The firm, which bid $9.5 million, would have taken on all new appointments.
In a major landmark in the development of digital privacy, a federal judge has ordered Microsoft to turn over to the U.S. government a customer's emails and other account information stored in an Irish data center, Re/code reports. Microsoft unsuccessfully argued that a U.S. warrant couldn't extend to customer information held abroad.
Re/code said the case appears to be the first in which a U.S. warrant for data held overseas was challenged by an Internet firm.
The California Court of Appeal has ruled that a healthcare provider did not violate that state's medical confidentiality law when a laptop containing four million patients' medical records was stolen, The Recorder reports. Sutter Medical Foundation could have faced $4 billion in statutory damages.
The court concluded there could not be liability without evidence that anyone actually looked at the records and the patients' confidentiality was breached, The Recorder also reports.
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled last week that same-sex couples should be entitled to receive death benefits when one partner dies--despite a ban on same-sex marriage in Alaska, Reuters reports.
The Supreme Court also ruled earlier this spring that same-sex couples must be given the same treatment regarding tax exemptions for disabled veterans and senior citizens, Reuters also reports.
Microsoft is fighting a U.S. warrant for data stored overseas in Ireland, Corporate Counsel reports. The outcome of the litigation could have big implications for cloud computing and data privacy.
Microsoft argues that the warrant doesn't extend to data stored on servers located overseas, while the U.S. government said that the pre-cloud computing-era Stored Communications Act gives it access, Corporate Counsel also reports.
Arguments on the dispute are set to be heard Thursday.
I've been covering an asbestos bankruptcy in which there are major allegations that plaintiffs lawyers misrepresented that their clients were exposed to certain sources of asbestos in the tort system, while indicating something different when seeking payments from opaquely-run trusts formed out of the bankruptcy of companies that made products containing asbestos. Last week, a district court ruled that court proceedings should not have been closed to the public and the press on the issue. I reported on the case for Law.com:
A trial held to estimate the liability of a company undergoing an asbestos-related bankruptcy should not have been closed to the public and press, a federal district court judge, sitting on appeal, has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. of the Western District of North Carolina remanded the case back to a bankruptcy courtroom in order for the lower court to conduct fact-finding about the public's right of access because of the common law or because of the First Amendment.
Senior Bankruptcy Judge George R. Hodges has been presiding over gasketmaker Garlock Sealing Technologies LLC's bankruptcy. During hearings held to estimate Garlock's liability to claimants who allegedly developed fatal mesothelioma because of exposure to asbestos from Garlock products, Hodges closed part of the trial.
Hodges concluded that past settlements Garlock had entered into were not a reliable way to estimate the company's liability. Discovery into 15 of those cases showed a pattern of misrepresentation by plaintiff's lawyers. Plaintiffs' counsel allegedly indicated their clients were exposed to certain sources of asbestos in the tort system, while indicating something different when seeking payments from opaquely-run trusts formed out of the bankruptcy of companies that made products containing asbestos.
Later, Hodges rejected the request to unseal the evidence upon which he concluded that there was a pattern of misrepresentation regarding claims made against Garlock.
Hodges should not have relied upon a confidentiality order alone to close the estimation trial because that “shifted the presumption that favors open courts to a presumption favoring the closure of proceedings based on confidentiality designations by counsel,” the district court found.
Legal Newsline, a business-oriented news outlet owned by the Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was the media outlet that sought access to the Garlock case.
“The court finds that, although done with the best judicial intentions of providing for the efficient administration of justice, Judge Hodges' decision to seal the estimation hearing and maintain the seal as to judicial filings and the transcript of those proceedings after his estimation order was contrary to the requirements of prevailing case law,” Cogburn said.
Separately, Cogburn has ordered that the Garlock's claims. asserting that plaintiffs' lawyers violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and engaged in fraud, be consolidated in front of one U.S. magistrate judge for pretrial case management, including any motions by the plaintiffs' counsel to transfer venue to their home districts.
The Fourth Circuit has become the second circuit court of appeals to uphold a state ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional. The Tenth Circuit already ruled that Utah's ban and Oklahoma's bans are unconsitutional, and now the Fourth Circuit has ruled the same for Virginia's ban. The Fourth Circuit, 2-1, ruled today that "'denying same-sex couples this choice prohibits them from participating fully in our society, which is precisely the type of segregation that the (U.S. Constitution's) Fourteenth Amendment cannot countenance,'" Reuters reports.
There has been a flurry of legal activity eroding Colorado's ban on same-sex marriage. Most recently, a federal judge rejected Colorado Attorney General John Suthers' request to halt proceedings after the judge's decision declaring Colorado's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the Denver Post reports. Both state and federal judges have declared the ban unconstitutional, and "some attorneys and advocates have accused Suthers of standing alone in opposition," the Post further reports.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
