Court will not hear appeal of slavery conviction
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court will not overturn convictions of a suburban New York City couple convicted of enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers.
The high court refused on Tuesday to hear appeals from Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani that sought to overturn their forced-labor convictions.
The couple was convicted of enslaving two domestic servants they brought from Indonesia by keeping their travel documents and having them perform forced labor on their behalf.
Prosecutors said Varsha Sabhnani was primarily responsible for inflicting years of abuse on the poorly educated servants. They said her husband let the abuse take place and benefited from the work the women performed in their $2 million Long Island home.
Varsha Sabhnani says pretrial news coverage prevented her from getting a fair trial, while her husband argues that he should not have been convicted for aiding and abetting because he did not stop his wife.
Justices let Sudan lawsuit dismissal stand
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court will not reconsider the dismissal of a $50 million lawsuit against the United States over President Bill Clinton's 1998 missile strikes in Sudan.
The court refused on Tuesday to hear an appeal from the El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries plant in North Khartoum, Sudan.
The strikes were in retaliation for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Clinton said the plant was connected to bin Laden's terrorist activities.
The plant owners sued, saying they had been defamed to justify the strike. They also were never compensated for the plant's destruction.
The lower courts threw out the lawsuit, saying the strike was a political decision that cannot be reviewed by the courts.
Man's gun arrest appeal denied by Supreme Court
By Jesse J. Holland
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Missing a plane connection cost Utah gun owner Greg Revell 10 days in jail after he was stranded in New Jersey with an unloaded firearm he had legally checked with his luggage in Salt Lake City.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court without comment refused on Tuesday to let Revell sue Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police for arresting him on illegal possession of a firearm in New Jersey and for not returning his gun and ammunition to him for more than three years.
Revell was flying from Salt Lake City to Allentown, Pa., on March 31, 2005, with connections in Minneapolis and Newark, N.J. He had checked his Utah-licensed gun and ammunition with his luggage in Salt Lake City and asked airport officials to deliver them both with his luggage in Allentown.
But the flight from Minneapolis to Newark was late, so Revell missed his connection to Allentown. The airline wanted to bus its passengers to Allentown, but Revell realized that his luggage had not made it onto the bus and got off. After finding his luggage had been given a final destination of Newark by mistake, Revell missed the bus. He collected his luggage, including his gun and ammunition, and decided to wait in a nearby hotel with his stuff until the next flight in the morning.
When Revell tried to check in for the morning flight, he again informed the airline officials about his gun and ammunition to have them checked through to Allentown. He was reported to the TSA, and then arrested by Port Authority police for having a gun in New Jersey without a New Jersey license.
He spent 10 days in several different jails before posting bail. Police dropped the charges a few months later. But his gun and ammunition were not returned to him until 2008.
Revell said he should not have been arrested because federal law allows licensed gun owners to take their weapons through any state as long as they are unloaded and not readily accessible to people. He said it was not his fault the airline stranded him in New Jersey by making him miss his flight and routing his luggage to the wrong destination.
Prosecutors said it doesn't matter whose fault it was: Revell was arrested in New Jersey with a readily accessible gun in his possession without a New Jersey license.
Lower courts have sympathized with Revell but refused to let him sue the police.
"We recognize that he had been placed in a difficult situation through no fault of his own," wrote Judge Kent A. Jordan of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. However, the law "clearly requires the traveler to part ways with his weapon and ammunition during travel; it does not address this type of interrupted journey or what the traveler is to do in this situation."
The case is Revell v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, 10-236.
Gitmo detainee appeal rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to take a new case involving a Guantanamo Bay detainee who was ordered released by a federal judge before an appeals court said he could continue to be held.
The court turned down an appeal from Mohammed Al-Adahi, a Yemeni who has spent more than eight years at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
In 2009, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said there was not "reliable evidence" to justify al-Adahi's continued detention, despite his family ties to Osama bin Laden, his admission that he met with the terrorist mastermind in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks and his attendance at an al-Qaida training camp.
But last year, the federal appeals court in Washington voted 3-0 to reverse Kessler's decision, saying she displayed insufficient skepticism about al-Adahi.
The appeals court opinion was written by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, whose decisions against the detainees have fared poorly at the court.
The justices have overruled him three times and sided with detainees who were seeking access to U.S. courts to argue that they should not be detained.
Randolph has been openly critical of the high court rulings, even delivering a lecture on the topic in October to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
His talk argued that the court's decision in 2008 that extended some constitutional protections to the detainees created a "legal mess" that the justices were leaving for other judges to clean up.
In the 3-0 decision, the appeals court said there is ample evidence that al-Adahi was more likely than not part of al-Qaida.
"One of the oddest things about this case is that despite an extensive record and numerous factual disputes," the judge "never made any findings about whether al-Adahi was generally a credible witness," wrote Randolph, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.
Randolph said that "put bluntly, the instructions to detainees are to make up a story and lie."
The other appeals judges on the case were Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of former President George W. Bush; and Karen LeCraft Henderson, an appointee of Bush's father.
Al-Adahi said he attended al-Qaida's Al Farouq training camp for seven to 10 days out of curiosity and was expelled for disobeying rules.
High court turns down Ford plea for $16 million
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Ford Motor Co.'s financing arm that sought a $16 million refund of taxes paid to the state of Michigan.
The justices did not comment Tuesday in leaving in place a state appeals court ruling that said Ford was not entitled to refunds of sales taxes on vehicles that were purchased by people who later could not make their loan payments.
Ford challenged a state law that requires the sales tax be paid up front and prohibits auto makers from recouping some of the taxes when buyers default on their loans. The company said the state retroactively changed its tax law in conflict with a Supreme Court ruling that limits retroactive tax legislation.
Justices remove roadblocks in two Texas executions
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has rejected appeals from two Texas death row inmates whose executions the court had previously blocked.
In denying appeals Tuesday from former Army recruiter Cleve Foster and Gayland Bradford, the justices cleared the way for the state to schedule new execution dates for the two men.
Last week, the court stopped Foster's lethal injection hours before he was to die for a rape and killing in Ft. Worth nine years ago. In October, Justice Antonin Scalia granted a reprieve to Bradford who received a death sentence for the shooting death of a Dallas grocery store security guard more than two decades ago.
Justices reject appeal in inmate's execution
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from death row inmate Daniel Wayne Cook, convicted of strangling two men in Arizona in 1987.
The justices did not comment on their order Tuesday. Cook says his death sentence should be reversed because he has post-traumatic stress disorder and organic brain damage.
Separately, he was challenging the state's use of a sedative drug in executions. Arizona has acknowledged buying the sedative from a company in Britain because of a shortage of the drug in the United States. The state has refused to disclose the company that manufactures it.
Appeal of toy maker trademark win won't be heard
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from a South Carolina children's literature publisher of a court decision ordering it to pay $3.6 million to an international toy maker in a trademark case.
The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from Super Duper Publications. A federal judge ordered the company to pay Mattel Inc. about $1 million in damages and $2.6 million in attorney fees. The Greenville-based publisher must also destroy some merchandise.
The toy maker claims the company used its catch phrase "say" in some products, like "See It! Say!" and "Fish and Say." Mattel has held a trademark on the phrase for 40 years, beginning with its "See N Say" pull toy.
The case is Super Duper Inc. v. Mattel, Inc., 10-603.
Supreme Court turns down appeal of child porn conviction
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a man who was convicted of child pornography charges based on the nude pictures he kept from his mid-1970s affair with his teenage sister-in-law.
Gary Peel wanted the court to throw out the conviction because no federal child pornography law existed when he took the shots of his sister-in-law in 1974. She was 16 at the time. The justices turned down his appeal Tuesday without comment.
Authorities learned of the pictures when Peel, after filing for bankruptcy in 2005, tried to blackmail his ex-wife into reopening the financial arrangement they made as part of their divorce. She went to the police.
Peel once was a successful lawyer in Illinois.
Class-action suit against Pella won't be stopped
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court won't stop the class-action certification of a lawsuit against Pella Corp. over a purported defect in one of its windows.
The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from the window-maker.
The lower courts have certified a class-action lawsuit against Pella. The lawsuit alleges that Pella's aluminum clad wood "Proline" casement windows have a design defect that allows water to seep behind the aluminum cladding. They claim that allows the wood to rot at an accelerated rate, and that Pella committed consumer fraud by not declaring publicly the role that the purported design flaw had in the rot.
But Pella fought the class-action certification, saying consumer fraud claims are inappropriate for class treatment.
The case is Pella v. Saltzman, 10-355.
Court rejects appeal over DC gay marriage law
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from opponents of same-sex marriage who want to overturn the District of Columbia's gay marriage law.
The court did not comment Tuesday in turning away a challenge from a Maryland pastor and others who are trying to get a measure on the ballot to allow Washingtonians to vote on a measure that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Bishop Harry Jackson led a lawsuit against the district's Board of Elections and Ethics after it refused to put that initiative on the ballot. The board ruled that the ballot question would in effect authorize discrimination.
Last year, Washington began issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples and in 2009, it began recognizing gay marriages performed elsewhere.
Published: Thu, Jan 20, 2011
