Category Archives: US justice system

‘A truly incredible amount of money’: millions ride on one US judicial election

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The race for a place on Wisconsin’s supreme court could have major implications for abortion, democracy and the 2024 election

More than $37m has already been spent in an election that will this month determine control of Wisconsin’s supreme court, easily making it the most expensive judicial contest in US history.

Spending in the race easily shatters the $10m spent in the 2020 Wisconsin supreme court race, the previous record in the state. It also easily surpasses the previous national record, $15m spent on an Illinois supreme court race in 2004. The race has national implications – it will probably ultimately determine the legality of abortion in the state as well as play a key role in setting voting rules for the 2024 election in one of America’s most competitive states.

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Police stopped a Black couple in Tennessee – and took their children

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Bianca Clayborne and Deonte Williams’ case fits pattern of child welfare services fueling disparities in who gets to remain a family

Nearly a month ago, Bianca Clayborne, Deonte Williams, and their five children were on their way from Georgia to Chicago for Clayborne’s uncle’s funeral when a highway patrol officer stopped them in Manchester, Tennessee.

That moment – about 60 miles outside Nashville – has since upended their lives as Clayborne and Williams try to regain custody of their children after they say state authorities “kidnapped” them on account of a minuscule amount of marijuana in the car, the Tennessee Lookout first reported.

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Ransomware attack on US Marshals compromises sensitive information

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Federal agency best known for tracking down fugitives suffered security breach on 17 February

The US Marshals service fell victim to a ransomware security breach this month that compromised sensitive law enforcement information, a spokesperson said on Monday.

The federal agency which is perhaps best known for its work in tracking down and capturing fugitives wanted by law enforcement notified the US government of the breach, and agents there began a forensic investigation, the chief of the Marshals’ public affairs office, Drew Wade, told Reuters in a statement.

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‘I would never give up’: how a Missouri man was exonerated after decades in prison

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Lamar Johnson’s long fight to prove his innocence paid off and helped change state law: ‘I can’t say I knew it would happen’

As he languished in a Missouri prison for nearly three decades, Lamar Johnson never stopped fighting to prove his innocence, even when it meant doing much of the legal work himself.

This week, a St Louis judge overturned Johnson’s murder conviction and ordered him freed. Johnson closed his eyes and shook his head, overcome with emotion. Shouts of joy rang out from the packed courtroom, and several people – relatives, civil rights activists and others – stood to cheer. Johnson’s lawyers hugged each other and him.

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Missouri man freed after serving nearly three decades in prison for 1994 murder

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Lamar Johnson, convicted to life for the killing, was released after judge found ‘reliable evidence of actual innocence’

A Missouri judge on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man who has served nearly 28 years of a life sentence for a killing that he has always said he didn’t commit.

Lamar Johnson, 50, closed his eyes and shook his head slightly as a member of his legal team patted him on the back when Judge David Mason issued his ruling. In coming to his decision, Mason explained that there had to be “reliable evidence of actual innocence – evidence so reliable that it actually passes the standard of clear and convincing”.

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Emmett Till relative’s lawsuit seeks to serve white woman’s arrest warrant

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Cousin of murdered Black teenager tries to compel sheriff to enforce 1955 warrant against Carolyn Bryant Donham, now 89

A relative of Emmett Till has filed a lawsuit seeking the arrest of the white woman whose allegations resulted in the 14-year-old Black boy’s kidnapping, torture and murder nearly 70 years ago.

Earlier this week, Till’s cousin, Patricia Sterling, filed a federal lawsuit against Ricky Banks, the sheriff in Leflore county, Mississippi, seeking to compel the elected official to serve a 1955 arrest warrant against Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was then identified as “Mrs Roy Bryant” on the document.

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Exonerated US man buys his mom a home after she sold hers for legal bills

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Greg Kelley, who was exonerated in 2019, uses money from settlement to buy 1.3-acre Texas property for his mother

Years before Greg Kelley was freed from a wrongful conviction, the Texas man’s mother – Rosa Kelley – sold her home to help pay his legal bills.

But she once again has a home of her own after her son recently bought her one as a gesture of his gratitude for her support, which helped set the stage for his exoneration in 2019, his state’s capital’s daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, reported this week.

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Bill Cosby plans to tour again in 2023 despite new sexual assault lawsuit

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Actor’s radio announcement met with incredulity after his 2018 conviction and new complaint filed by five women in New York

The actor Bill Cosby, the 80s TV comedian who was convicted in Pennsylvania of a criminal sex assault charge in 2018, is looking to return to live performing next year, according to a report on Tuesday.

In a WGH Talk radio interview, 85-year-old Cosby answered “yes” when asked if he planned to tour again in 2023.

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Adnan Syed hired by Georgetown to advocate for prison reform

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Syed, whose case was subject of the podcast Serial, has begun as a program associate with the school’s Prisons and Justice Initiative

Adnan Syed, who spent 23 years in prison before he was freed from his conviction for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, has gotten a job advocating for prison reform at Georgetown University, according to the prestigious US school.

Syed, whose case was the subject of the hit podcast Serial, began his role as a program associate with Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative on 12 December, school officials announced in a news release Friday. The gig is Syed’s first nine-to-five office job after the 41-year-old has spent more than half his life behind bars for a conviction by which authorities no longer stand.

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House January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump

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The referral marks the first time in US history that Congress has taken such action against a former president

The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the justice department to face criminal charges, accusing the former president of fomenting an insurrection and conspiring against the government over his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and the bloody attack on the US Capitol.

The committee’s referrals approved by its members on Monday are the first time in American history that Congress has recommended charges against a former president. They come after 18 months of investigation by the bipartisan House of Representatives panel tasked with understanding Trump’s plot to stop Joe Biden from taking office.

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Brooklyn pastor who was robbed on live stream in July charged with fraud

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Lamor Miller-Whitehead, the ‘bling-bling bishop’ with hip-hop connections, is accused of swindling his own parishioners

The Brooklyn pastor who made headlines when he was robbed of an estimated $1m in jewelry during a church service being broadcast online in July was arrested on federal fraud charges on Monday after he allegedly swindled parishioners.

US prosecutors in Manhattan charged that Lamor Miller-Whitehead, 44, solicited money from victims – including $90,000 from a retired parishioner – using threats or false promises of enriching them, but then pocketed the money for himself and sometimes spent it on luxury goods.

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Who is Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Donald Trump?

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Man named to lead investigations into ex-president is experienced prosecutor most recently at international criminal court

Jack Smith is the man the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed on Friday to be an independent special counsel overseeing parallel justice department investigations into Donald Trump’s hoarding of top secret documents and involvement in the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, and he has been a criminal prosecutor for almost 30 years.

Smith has previously served as the chief of public integrity for the US justice department and dealt in particular with cases involving corruption, bringing cases against prominent Republicans and Democrats. In 2015 he was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. He is a registered independent, not aligned with either of the two dominant political parties in the US.

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Ohio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in state

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The midterms include key elections to the state’s highest court as the judicial system becomes increasingly politicized

In Ohio, a highly partisan fight over three state supreme court seats could determine the political direction of the court on a slew of important issues – particularly abortion.

With the US supreme court increasingly handing issues such as voting rights, abortion, gun rights and gerrymandering back to the states, state supreme court races are becoming more important than ever.

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Special master ruling shows Trump’s takeover of courts has started to sting

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Aileen Cannon, who Trump nominated in 2020, granted his wish over the Mar-a-Lago search – a maverick decision that is the thin end of the wedge

In the first televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, the sitting president was asked why voters should re-elect him to the White House. He gave a relatively obscure answer – it was all about the judges, he said.

By the end of his first term in office, Trump bragged, he would have smashed all records for the number of his appointments to the federal bench. “I’ll have approximately 300 federal judges.”

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Senate panel to investigate Trump allies’ alleged meddling in prosecutions

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Judiciary committee notifies justice department of investigation into claims made by fired US attorney Geoffrey Berman

The US Senate judiciary committee has said it will investigate claims made in a recent book that allies of Donald Trump politically interfered with a prominent US attorney’s office.

William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general, fired Geoffrey Berman from the powerful southern district of New York (SDNY) five months before the 2020 election. In a memoir – Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department – which is published in the US on Tuesday, Berman alleges interference both on behalf of Trump allies and against Trump enemies.

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Two Pennsylvania judges ordered to pay $200m to kids-for-cash scandal victims

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Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan accepted $2.8m in illegal payments to send children to for-profit jails

Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200m to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes.

US district judge Christopher Conner awarded $106m in compensatory damages and $100m in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”.

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Federal judge supports seizure of John Eastman’s cell phone for January 6 inquiry

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The US Justice Department seized the phone of Donald Trump’s former lawyer in June; Eastman filed a motion to get it back

The US Justice Department was justified when it seized the cell phone of John Eastman, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, a federal judge in New Mexico ruled on Friday.

In its investigation into a scheme by the ex-president and his lawyers to overturn the 2020 election using “fake electors”, the justice department took Eastman’s phone on 22 June as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico. Eastman, in turn, filed a court motion in an attempt to get his phone back, arguing that the justice department violated his constitutional rights.

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Joe Biden scraps plan to nominate anti-abortion lawyer to Kentucky judgeship

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Senator Rand Paul announced Friday he would not consent to Chad Meredith’s nomination, vetoing the president’s effort

After weeks of criticism from fellow Democrats and abortion advocacy groups, Joe Biden has deserted plans to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to be a federal judge in Kentucky.

The White House said on Friday that Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul would not be consenting to the nomination of Chad Meredith, effectively vetoing Biden’s move to put him on the bench.

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High-stakes California races will decide LA mayor and San Francisco recall

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Analysts watch to see if voters in America’s more liberal cities will address police reform, homelessness and mass incarceration

High-stakes primary races taking place on Tuesday in California are expected to have major consequences for police reform, incarceration and the state’s growing homelessness crisis.

The most closely watched race is the mayor’s contest in Los Angeles, where voters are deciding between a tough-on-crime real estate developer, Rick Caruso, who has already poured nearly $40m of his own fortune into his primary campaign, and the former community organizer and Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass.

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Suspected shooter who killed retired Wisconsin judge in ‘targeted’ attack identified

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John Roemer, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years, was found dead in his home by police

A retired Wisconsin judge was gunned down and killed in his home on Friday, and his suspected killer – a former defendant in his courtroom – shot himself in the basement, a government official familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The official confirmed John Roemer, 68, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years beginning in 2004, was found shot dead in his home in the community of New Lisbon about 6.30am Friday. His alleged killer, identified Saturday as 56-year-old Douglas Uhde, was then discovered in the basement with a self-inflicted bullet wound, and was brought to a hospital.

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