Court won't hear Lake Michigan beach case
LONG BEACH, Ind. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from Indiana residents who want to extend their property rights to the state's Lake Michigan shoreline.
The (Northwest Indiana) Times reports that the high court denied a petition by two landowners in Long Beach, Indiana, who live adjacent to the lake.
Don and Bobbie Gunderson were appealing a ruling last year by the Indiana Supreme Court that set the ordinary high water mark as the boundary between state-owned land under Lake Michigan and private property. They contended their lakefront property extends to the water's edge and that landowners have the right to limit who uses the beaches abutting their properties.
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the state owns the shoreline and holds it in trust for all residents.
Michigan man's petition in wife's slaying denied
BEULAH, Mich. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a man's efforts for a new trial after he was convicted of killing his wife by dragging her into a northern Michigan lake.
The court on Tuesday denied Mark Unger's petition to review a lower court's ruling.
Unger had argued that his rights were violated due to an ineffective trial lawyer. A federal appeals court last year rejected that claim, saying evidence against Unger was "overwhelming" and any failures by his lawyer were unlikely to affect the verdict in Benzie County.
Authorities have said Florence Unger of Huntington Woods was pushed in 2003 from a boathouse roof and dragged into Lower Herring Lake, where she drowned. Unger's lawyers argued that she accidentally fell and died from injuries. She was seeking a divorce.
Connecticut speech case rejected
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the appeal of a Connecticut man who said his right to free speech was violated when he was arrested and convicted of threatening the judge in his divorce case.
Edward Taupier, 53, of Cromwell, recently finished an 18-month prison sentence for threatening state Judge Elizabeth Bozzuto, who is now the deputy chief court administrator of the Connecticut court system.
The Supreme Court did not explain why it declined to hear Taupier's case, as is custom in such rejections. Taupier was trying to appeal a decision in September by the Connecticut Supreme Court that upheld his convictions.
Prosecutors said Taupier sent an email to six acquaintances in 2014 that described Bozzuto's home and how certain rifles could be fired at it from a nearby cemetery. The email was a "hyperbolic expression of vitriol" protected by free speech rights, Taupier's lawyer, Norman Pattis, wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court.
"It's a bad day for the First Amendment. We are obviously disappointed," Pattis said Tuesday.
Taupier argued he did not send Bozzuto the email and had no intent to terrorize her.
Bozzuto testified at trial that she was so worried about Taupier's comments that she did a "massive" security upgrade at her home, alerted officials at her children's school, had judicial marshals escort her to her car in the evenings and told a relative not to come to her home without a police escort.
In addition to the 18 months Taupier served for threatening Bozzuto, Taupier also served a concurrent four-month sentence for making separate online threats to kill judges and employees at the state courthouse in Middletown.
Appeal of drug price-gouging law turned down
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a Maryland appeal to uphold the state's law against pharmaceutical price gouging.
The high court on Tuesday denied Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh's appeal without comment, letting a lower court ruling against the law stand.
The law approved in 2017 enabled the state's attorney general to sue makers of off-patent or generic drugs for price increases that state officials considered "unconscionable." That was defined as an excessive increase, unjustified by the cost of producing or distributing the drugs.
The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 last year that the law was unconstitutional, because it forces manufactures and wholesalers to act in accordance with Maryland law outside of the state and burdened interstate commerce.
The law was challenged by the Association for Accessible Medicines.
Justices decline to hear Montana campaign and rape cases
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined without comment to hear two cases from Montana.
In the first case, the nation's high court dismissed a request from Montana Attorney General Tim Fox to reconsider a previous ruling that he says prevents the state from bringing a sex offender to justice in a 1987 child rape case.
Fox sought to charge Ronald Dwight Tipton for the rape of an 8-year-old girl based on new DNA evidence, but a 2003 court decision says it's unconstitutional to charge him after the statute of limitations has expired.
The second case is a challenge to Montana's campaign disclosure laws.
Montanans Against Community Development petitioned the court after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected its case to strike down the law that requires groups such as itself to disclose its donors and spending.
Tennessee death row inmate's case denied
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't hear the case of a Tennessee death row inmate who claimed his rights were violated when he was forced to represent himself at trial.
The Supreme Court said Tuesday it wouldn't hear the case of Tony Von Carruthers. Carruthers and an accomplice were arrested in 1994 and charged with robbing, kidnapping and murdering three people by burying them alive.
Carruthers went through several lawyers. Some asked to withdraw from the case after Carruthers threatened them.
Eventually the judge overseeing Carruthers' case told him that if he couldn't reconcile with his most recent lawyer he'd have to represent himself. After further threats, the judge told Carruthers he was responsible for his own defense, with two lawyers acting as advisers.
State and federal courts upheld that decision.
Justices staying out of actor's 'Empire' lawsuit
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is staying out of a lawsuit involving the television show "Empire."
The high court said Tuesday it won't take a case involving the Fox show, which follows a black family navigating the ups and downs of the record industry. That means a decision in favor of "Empire" co-creators Danny Strong and Lee Daniels stands.
Actor Clayton Prince Tanksley sued in 2016, claiming that "Empire" was substantially similar to a television show he had pitched at a competition in 2008. The lawsuit said Daniels was a judge at the competition and expressed an interest in the show Tanksley called "Cream," which involved a black record executive. A trial court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the shows weren't substantially similar. An appeals court agreed.
"Empire" debuted in 2015
Court won't take case of ex-Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is declining to get involved in the corruption case against former Illinois congressman Aaron Schock.
The Republican resigned from Congress in 2015 amid scrutiny of his lavish spending. That included redecorating his Capitol Hill office in the style of the "Downton Abbey" TV series.
Schock has tried to get the case against him dismissed, but a federal judge and federal appeals court have declined. The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to step in and revisit those rulings.
Schock was first elected to Congress in 2008 at the age of 27. After he resigned he was charged with a series of offenses including using campaign money and an allowance from Congress for personal expenses.
Anti-death penalty Arkansas judge suit turned down
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by a judge in Arkansas who was barred from overseeing execution-related cases after he participated in an anti-death penalty demonstration.
The justices said Tuesday that they wouldn't get involved in the lawsuit filed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen.
Griffen participated in an anti-death penalty demonstration outside the governor's mansion in 2017 during which he was photographed laying on a cot wearing an anti-death penalty button. Earlier that day, Griffen blocked Arkansas from using a lethal injection drug over the claims that the state misled a medical supply company.
Arkansas' highest court removed Griffen from that case and prohibited him from hearing death penalty cases. Griffen sued, but a federal appeals court dismissed the case.
Court rules out death penalty for Texas inmate
By Juan A. Lozano
Associated Press
HOUSTON (AP) - A long legal fight over whether a Texas death row inmate could be executed ended Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the 59-year-old man is intellectually disabled and thus cannot be put to death.
The Supreme Court's ruling came after prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney's Office agreed with Bobby James Moore's attorneys that he should be spared the death penalty. The Texas Attorney General's Office had asked to take over the case in an effort to carry out the execution.
"The Harris County District Attorney's Office disagreed with our state's highest court and the attorney general to stand for justice in this case. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Bobby Moore is intellectually disabled," District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement.
Cliff Sloan, Moore's attorney, said he was "very pleased that justice will be done."
Moore fatally shot 72-year-old Houston grocery store clerk James McCarble in 1980 during a robbery. He has been on death row for nearly 39 years.
This was the second time Moore's case had come before the high court. In 2017, the Supreme Court said the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had used outdated standards to decide that Moore was not intellectually disabled. The case went back to the Texas appeals court, which in June again ruled Moore was not mentally disabled.
The Supreme Court in 2002 barred execution of mentally disabled people but has given states some discretion to decide how to determine intellectual disability. However, justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.
Texas looks at three main points to define intellectual disability: IQ scores, with 70 generally considered a threshold; an inmate's ability to interact with others and care for himself or herself; and whether evidence of deficiencies in either of those areas occurred before age 18.
In 2004, the Texas appeals court created additional factors, including whether an individual's conduct showed leadership and whether a person could "hide facts or lie effectively."
In Tuesday's 6-3 ruling in the Moore case, the Supreme Court criticized the Texas appeals court for continuing to rely on the additional factors it had created.
The high court has said these factors, named after a former death row inmate named Jose Briseno, have no grounding in prevailing medical practice and invite lay stereotypes to guide assessment of such disability.
The Supreme Court said the Texas appeals court did not discuss evidence that seemed to support Moore's claims of intellectual disability, including that when he was in school, Moore was made to draw pictures when other kids were reading and that by sixth grade, he struggled to read at a second-grade level
In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts - who had previously sided against Moore - joined the majority, saying the Texas appeals court "repeated the same errors that this Court previously condemned."
Moore's case is expected to be remanded back to a judge in Houston, who will resentence him to life in prison. While the change in his sentence means Moore would be eligible for parole, prosecutors say it's highly unlikely he will be released.
Published: Thu, Feb 21, 2019
