criminal law

The Legal Intelligencer's Max Mitchell reports on the defenses being raised by the three ex-Penn State administrators charged with covering up Jerry Sandusky's sexual abuse: "The defendants, former university President Graham Spanier, ex-vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz and ex-athletic director Tim Curley, contended in the filings that what they view as [ex-GC Cynthia] Baldwin's murky role led to deprivation of counsel, violations of grand jury secrecy and breach of attorney-client privilege."

According to The Legal, the defendants also argue, when Baldwin accompanied them to their grand jury appearances, that Baldwin had a conflict of interest and that the prosecutors committed misconduct by not ensuring Baldwin was not conflicted. Baldwin later testified against them in grand jury proceedings.
 

Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that the 7th Circuit is questioning its authority to review an "unprecedented order giving defense attorneys access to the paperwork supporting secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders used to build a criminal case." The 7th Circuit issued a one-page order expressing doubt that it has the jurisdiction to consider the pre-trial ruling. Responses to the jurisdictional question have to be filed next week, Politico further reports.

The Asbury Park Press in New Jersey reports that the exoneration of 25 people across the country who were mistakenly linked to crimes through bitemark evidence has led to some questioning whether that type of evidence should ever be allowed in court. I covered one such case in upstate New York: Roy Brown's conviction of a woman's brutal murder on the basis of bitemark evidence was overturned.

"Critics says a key drawback of bite-mark analysis is its subjectivity, which lends itself to bias," the Press also reports. Other issues include that human skin "is not a reliable medium on which to record bite marks." the Press further reports.

While American Indian reservations are sovereign nations, tribes have not had the legal authority to arrest non-Indian women who assault or rape Indian women on reservations, The Washington Post reports. But the Violence Against Women Act, signed in March, will for the first time give Indian tribes jurisdiction over some crimes of domestic violence committed by "non-Indians in Indian Country," The Post further reports (The law won't cover assaults committed by non-Indians against native women and it doesn't cover native women in Alaska).

The level of violence against American Indian women is startling: "An estimated one in three Native American women are assaulted or raped in their lifetimes, and three out of five experience domestic violence," The Post also reports.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has taken up a case of a man convicted of murder in which an eyewitness identified him as the shooter even though she was 265 feet away in a fifth-floor apartment, the Associated Press reports. As part of the case, the Supreme Court is considering "whether Connecticut should join other states and abandon a balancing test created by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977 and used by judges nationwide to determine whether to allow eyewitness identifications as evidence."

The balancing test is used after judges find that law enforcement was suggestive with witnesses identifying suspects, and then the judges must decide if the identifications are still admissible when weighing the eyewitnesses' certainty, the accuracy of their descriptions and other factors, the AP further reports.

There are two other cases pending before the Supreme Court on witness identification issues, the AP also reports.

Joan Orie Melvin, the former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice appealing her criminal conviction for political corruption, should have her conviction and her sentence upheld, prosecutors argued in a court filing, the Associated Press reported. As part of her sentence, Melvin was ordered to write an apology to every judge in the state on a picture of her in handcuffs.

Mayor Michael Nutter's administration opposes legislation pending in the Philadelphia City Council that would create legislative oversight of contracts for the legal representation of Philadelphians too poor to afford their own lawyers in family court and criminal court, The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio reports. Instead of having individual attorneys take court appointments, the administration is trying to contract with a new private law firm to do that work.

A City Council committee passed ordinances that would authorize City Council to review contracts involving legal representation of poor Philadelphians of more than $100,000, among other proposed changes.

According to The Legal, Michael Resnick, Nutter's director of public safety, testified in opposition: "The point of my testimony is that we contract for other services that implicate constitutional rights, we do it well, and we don't need the charter to be changed."

Defense lawyers for the accused Aurora, Colorado, movie shooter are going to seek access to a reporter's confidential sources all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Reuters reports. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that state's shield law protects Jana Winter from having to reveal her sources in the Colorado criminal case.

(Hat tip to How Appealing, where I first saw this news.)