Cultivated Compendium

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has accepted three cases arising out of an investigation into whether Governor Scott Walker's campaign illegally coordinated with the conservative groups supporting him, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick Marley reports.

The appeals will likely be shrouded with some secrecy: "Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice David Prosser ... expressed concern that much of the court record is sealed and not available to the public — a highly unusual situation for most matters that go before the state's high court," Marley reports.

The investigation is being conducted under a "John Doe proceeding," a unique procedure in Wisconsin in which a judge, instead of a grand jury, hears secret evidence in order to decide if there is a basis to charge a criminal offense.

Separately, Marley notes that four of the justices have benefited from spending by the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which is one of the groups at the center of the investigation. One justice recused herself because her son works at a law firm representing one of the targets of the investigation.

President Barack Obama has now appointed many more federal judges than his predecessors had by this point in their time in the Oval Office; this will define his presidency long after he is out of office, The Huffington Post's Jennifer Bendery reports: "He'll wrap up his sixth year in office with a grand total of 305 district court and circuit court confirmations -- a tally that puts him well beyond where his predecessors were by this point in their presidencies. ... In total, [President George W.] Bush confirmed 256 district and circuit court nominees after six years in office, Clinton confirmed 302, and President Ronald Reagan confirmed 295."

The higher rate of confirmation of Obama judicial appointees in the Senate is probably because the Democratic-controlled Senate "changed the rules last year to require a simple majority, or 51 votes, instead of 60 votes to advance most judicial nominees," Bendery further reports.

The Washington Post's Supreme Court beat reporter Robert Barnes says that the regular pattern for the justices is to take a case before the end of January in order to set render a decision by the end of the term in June. While the court declined to take up the issue of same-sex marriage last fall, this time there is a split between circuit court of appeals on whether same-sex marriage bans are constitutional or not. Barnes notes a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit "upheld marriage bans in Michigan and Kentucky, and recognition bans in Ohio and Tennessee."

Maybe Mr. Chen won't go to Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted the case of a man representing himself in his battle with the city of Baltimore over a rowhouse that has now been torn down, The Wall Street Journal's Brent Kendall and Colleen Wilson report. But Bobby Chen is missing and can't be found at his last known address. His email account is no longer functioning.

While Chen can't be found and his brief is due just in a few days, lawyers for the city of Baltimore are preparing their defense just in case, the WSJ reports.

At issue in the case is not "the demolition issue but to provide clarity on when judges have discretion to give litigants more time. ... Chen said he encountered delays and difficulty in serving legal papers on Baltimore officials. One judge gave him a time extension, but the case was transferred to another who dismissed the suit because ... Chen missed a deadline."

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has proposed expanding Medicaid to cover more poor residents of his state, although the plan, if accepted by regulators and conservative legislators, would not follow traditional Medicaid rules, The New York Times' Abby Goodnough reported. Haslam said he still opposes the Obamacare plan to expand Medicaid to everyone earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, but he is proposing a second option to use "federal Medicaid funds available under the law to cover some 200,000 low-income residents through their employer’s health insurance plan or the state’s Medicaid program," Goodnough reported.

Hospitals have found that the amount they spend on charity care or uncompensated care has risen in states that don't have the Medicaid expansion, but fallen in states that do have the expansion.

There is an interesting twist in Haslam's plan that would keep the expansion revenue-neutral for Tennessee, Goodnough reports: Tennessee Hospital Association has agreed to pay expansion costs beyond what the federal government covers. 

Clayton Lockett took 43 minutes to die when he was executed by the state of Oklahoma earlier this year. But investigators "downplayed and omitted disturbing details" about the botched execution, including that lawyers from the Attorney General's Office helped select the drug combination used for Lockett's execution, the Tulsa World reports.

Attorneys for death-row inmates said in a motion that a witness said "the scene 'was like a horror movie' as Lockett was bucking and attempting to raise himself off the gurney when he was supposed to be unconscious and dying," the newspaper further reports. A paramedic who struggled to start numerous IVs on the night of the execution told investigators that the process was a "'a cluster.'" The lawyers are challenging the state's execution procedures as cruel and unusual punishment.

The families of 20 first-graders killed by Adam Lanza at a Connecticut elementary school have sued the manufacturer of the military assault rifle used in the school shooting, Bloomberg's Phil Milford and Christian Dolmetsch reports. Lawyers for the families said in a statement that the Bushmaster Firearms International LLC rifle was specifically designed for combat, not for defending one's home or for hunting.

Milford and Dolmetsch report that the complaint alleges "Bushmaster knew or should have known that selling assault rifles to civilians posed an 'unreasonable and egregious' risk of injury to others."

The lawsuit also names names "Camfor, a firearm wholesaler, and Riverview Gun Sales, the East Windsor store where the gun was purchased by Lanza's mother, Nancy," the Connecticut Law Tribune reported. Lanza also killed his mother with the gun before killing 20 children, six adults and himself at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.
 

Several judges on the Ninth Circuit, sitting during en banc arguments yesterday, expressed skepticism about whether an actress has a copyright interest in an anti-Muslim video and can show enough "irreparable harm" from the video to force its takedown from YouTube, Bloomberg's Edvard Pettersson reports. A three-judge panel gave Cindy Lee Garcia a copyright interest in her performance in "Innocence of Muslims," which sparked riots in Muslim countries and was originally linked to the attack on the American consulate in Libya. 

U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, writing for the 2-1 panel, said the case was the rare one in which a filmmaker exceeded the bounds of an actor's implied license.

Several judges on the en banc panel questioned "whether Garcia, who alleges the maker of the YouTube clip lied to her about how he would use her performance, should be pursuing a remedy under a fraud or publicity rights claim instead of copyright law," Bloomberg further reports.

Google was forced to take down the video on YouTube and other sites.

Alaska Native tribes will now be able to prosecute domestic violence crimes committed against American Indians by non-Natives, The Washington Post's Sari Horwitz reports. A previous amendment to the Violence Against Women Act gave jurisdiction to tribal courts to prosecute domestic violence crimes and address the lack of legal protection that Native women have from assailants, but Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) added an exemption for Alaska Native tribes. Murkowski supported the rollback of the exemption.

Minnesota lawmakers are mulling whether to legislate drones, including restricting the use of drones by law enforcement, the Associated Press' Kyle Potter reports: "Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union ... and several lawmakers suggested a handful of protections like requiring a search warrant before any drone flight, imposing limits for how long agencies can keep images and requiring law enforcement to get local government approval before buying a drone."