Cultivated Compendium

Politico's David Perera reports on a cybersecurity proposal that President Barack Obama put forth today. One key part, pushed for a long time, would provide limited safe harbors to firms that share cybersecurity information with the government: "A central portion of the White House’s plan would grant targeted liability protection to companies that share cyberthreat information with the government — removing what critics say is a major stumbling block to private-sector partnership with federal authorities on cyber issues." The Department of Homeland Security, in turn, would share cyberthreat data with other federal agencies and with private-sector information-sharing organizations.

There are privacy safeguards as part of the plan. Firms would be required to take steps to remove personally identifiable information unrelated to cyberthreats when sharing that information.

David Schultz, writing on MinnPost, argues that Minnesota's system for selecting judges needs to be changed. While judges are supposed to be elected, "studies have shown that approximately 90 percent of all individuals who become a judge in Minnesota do so initially by gubernatorial appointment, thereby circumventing the election process." Secondly, judicial candidates rarely face contested elections, and "more than a quarter of Minnesotans opt not to vote for judges, or simply vote based on familiar-sounding names that are Nordic." Third, judicial candidates, who rely on donations from lawyers for their campaigns, are going to be even more awash in contributions after court decisions invalidating restrictions on fundraising. Schultz suggests an appointed system, including fixed judicial terms or limitations on the selection of judges by the governor.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has changed the jury instructions that should be given about eyewitness evidence, which is often more fallible than people think, the Boston Globe's Travis Andersen and Martin Finucane report. While the defendant did not get his conviction overturned, the high court has issued new instructions to be used in criminal cases going forward, including "a warning that a witness’s expressed certainty may not indicate accuracy, especially when the witness did not express the same level of certainty when first making the identification. The template also includes commentary on the complexity of recalling past events, the effect of stress on eyewitness identification, the length of time that elapsed between a crime and a person being identified, and issues associated with having a witness view a suspect multiple times during identification procedures. In addition, the instructions allow jurors to consider whether witnesses were exposed to descriptions given by others, including police officers, which 'may inflate the witness’s confidence in the identification.'"

New York Times' James Risen won't be called to testify about his confidential sources after all, his colleague Matt Apuzzo reports. As Jeffrey Sterling goes on trial for allegedly leaking classified information about a CIA operation in Iran, federal prosecutors have dropped their efforts to have Risen testify in the trial on the theory that Sterling was Risen's source. However,  Joel Kurtzberg, a lawyer with Cahill Gordon & Reindel, told Apuzzo, "while Mr. Risen ultimately may not have to testify, the Justice Department used the case to create court precedent that could be used to force journalists to testify in the future."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1oth Circuit rejected the requests for stays in four executions in Oklahoma, the Washington Post's Mark Berman reports. The executions are the first since Clayton Lockett's lethal injection was botched: "Lockett grimaced, clenched his jaw and writhed on the gurney before dying inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester on April 29. A state investigation released later found that the execution team failed to properly insert the needle to deliver the lethal injection drugs, a problem that was exacerbated when no one monitored the IV and compounded when no one involved knew what to do as the situation unfolded."

Oklahoma has a new protocol that the four death-penalty inmates are objecting to; they argue that the planned use of sedative midazolam would make them suffer a burning, intense pain as they are executed.

SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports that South Dakota's ban on same-sex marriage was struck down today. U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier applied the highest constitutional test--strict scrutiny--after finding that marriage is a fundamental right that must be open to gays and lesbians. The judge also rejected the argument that federal courts have no jurisdiction over domestic relations, Denniston further reports.

Reuters' Lawrence Hurley reports that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal brought by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and the Alliance for Natural Health USA, challenging "various aspects of the law known as Obamacare including the so-called individual mandate that requires people to obtain health insurance or pay a tax."

Two families of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting two years ago have sued the town of Newtown over allegedy lax security at the school, the Hartford Courant's Dave Altimari reports. The lawsuit alleges that a substitute teacher "had neither a key to lock the door nor any knowledge of the … safety and security protocols rehearsed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in case an intruder or other dangerous individual gained access to the school." In that classroom, shooter Adam Lanza killed all but one girl.

 

Shortly after the U.S. Court of Appeals of Fifth Circuit heard oral argument in a case that upheld Louisiana's ban on same-sex marriages, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up that case, The Guardian's Amanda Holpuch reports. There are four other cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that went through the Sixth Cicuit, which is the only federal circuit court to uphold bans on same-sex marriage so far.

The Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow Jr. reports: "Leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Friday called on the Justice Department to end the sharing of civil seizure proceeds with local and state police, a change that with few exceptions would cut the flow of hundreds of million of dollars annually to departments in every state." The concern is that law enforcement is incentivized to keep assets because the program allows police to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds, while federal agencies get 20 percent. In an investigation, the Washington Post found that more than $2.5 billion from cash seizures, conducted without search warrants and indictments, has been made since September 11, 2001.