Recent Updates
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Court: Transgender asylum seekers can't be equated with gays
Law Firm News 09/04/2015asylum, a federal appeals court said Thursday.The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling in the case of a transgender Mexican woman who sought shelter in the U.S. on the grounds that she would likely be tortured if re...
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Appeals court overturns county's longest-ever drug sentence
Political and Legal News 09/04/2015Pennsylvania Superior Court has overturned the longest drug sentence ever imposed in a central Pennsylvania county as "manifestly unreasonable and excessive."Blair County Senior Judge Thomas Peoples imposed the 104½- to 216-year sentence four years a...
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Court rules against St. Louis police in ticket scandal
Political and Legal News 08/20/2015The St. Louis police department will have to turn over records from its probe into a scandal over 2006 World Series tickets now that the Missouri Supreme Court has thrown out a final appeal that sought to block the documents' release.The state high c...
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Court fines Washington state over education funding
Political and Legal News 08/14/2015Washington officials are considering a special legislative session after the state Supreme Court issued daily fines a of $100,000 until lawmakers comply with a court order to improve the way the state pays for its basic education system. Thursd...
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Man charged with killing Memphis officer to appear in court
Political and Legal News 08/14/2015An ex-convict charged with fatally shooting a Memphis police officer during a struggle is scheduled to appear in county court Wednesday.Twenty-nine-year-old Tremaine Wilbourn is being held on $10 million bond on a first-degree murder charge in the Au...
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Court hearing set for Alabama inmate who wants abortion
Political and Legal News 07/23/2015A federal judge is considering a lawsuit filed by an Alabama inmate who wants out of jail temporarily so she can get an abortion. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Monday on behalf of a female inmate, identified only as Jane Doe, who is i...
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Court agrees with tossing strict North Dakota abortion law
Daily Legal News 07/23/2015A federal appeals court agreed Wednesday that one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws is unconstitutional — a North Dakota statute banning abortions when a fetal heartbeat is detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The 8th U...
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Court Halts Execution Of Tyler Woman's Killer
Daily Legal News 07/23/2015The Texas Court of Criminal of Appeals halted the scheduled lethal injection of Clifton Lamar Williams until questions about some incorrect testimony at his 2006 trial can be resolved. Williams, 31, had faced execution Thursday evening for the k...
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Peterson returns to court in murder-for-hire trial
Practice Legal News 07/07/2015Former suburban Chicago police sergeant Drew Peterson is due back in court as his trial on charges of plotting to kill a prosecutor approaches. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in the southern Illinois county where Peterson is impr...
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Doctor with hundreds of fraud victims faces sentencing
Political and Legal News 07/07/2015A Harvard medical professor says patients of a Detroit-area cancer doctor were at high risk of infection because of excessive doses of powerful, expensive drugs.Dr. Farid Fata will be sentenced in federal court for fraud. But a judge first is hearing...
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In Supreme Court loss, death penalty foes see an opening
Political and Legal News 07/07/2015A strongly worded dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court's narrow decision this week upholding the use of an execution drug offered a glimmer of hope to death penalty opponents in what they considered otherwise a gloomy ruling. One advocate went so far Tu...
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Texas turns away from criminal truancy courts for students
Daily Legal News 06/21/2015A long-standing Texas law that has sent about 100,000 students a year to criminal court — and some to jail — for missing school is off the books, though a Justice Department investigation into one county's truancy courts continues.Gov. Greg Abbott ha...