National Roundup

Washington, D.C. Court reinstates death penalty for inmate WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the death penalty for a man convicted in a double murder despite complaints that his lawyers did not offer evidence of his psychological condition at his penalty trial. The high court overturned an appeals court decision to throw out the death penalty for Scott Pinholster because of bad legal representation. Pinholster was convicted in 1984 of brutally beating and stabbing two men to death when they interrupted a burglary he and two accomplices were committing in Los Angeles. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Pinholster's death sentence because his lawyer did not give a jury evidence of mental illness during the penalty phase of his murder trial. The San Francisco-based court said that evidence might have persuaded the jury to reject the death sentence. The high court, in a decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, overturned that ruling. "There is no reasonable probability that the additional evidence Pinholster presented in his state habeas proceeding would have changed the jury's verdict," Thomas said. He was joined in the majority judgment in full by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, while Justice Samuel Alito joined the majority judgment in part. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined the majority judgment in part and dissented in part. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, and was joined her dissent in part by Kagan and Ginsburg. She noted that Pinholster's state appeals lawyer conducted virtually no mitigation investigation despite him having a long history of emotional disturbances and neurological problems. The case is Cullen v. Pinholster, 09-1088. Washington, D.C. Court to hear NJ man's appeal over strip searches WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear the case of a man who claims that strip searches in two New Jersey jails violated his constitutional rights. Albert Florence was searched twice in seven days after he was arrested on a warrant for a traffic fine he had already paid. The justices will review an appeals court decision upholding the searches. Most other federal courts have found routine strip searches to be unconstitutional, although more recent decisions have gone the other way. Florence argues the jailhouse searches were unreasonable because he was being held for failure to pay a fine, which is not a crime in New Jersey. Florence's lawsuit over his treatment arose from his arrest in March 2005. A state trooper stopped the family SUV as Florence, his wife, April and 4-year-old child were headed to dinner with Florence's mother-in-law. His wife was driving, but Florence identified himself as the vehicle's owner. The trooper ran a records check and found an outstanding warrant for an unpaid fine. Florence, who is African-American, had been stopped several times before, and he carried a letter to the effect that the fine, for fleeing a traffic stop several years earlier, had been paid. Despite the letter, the trooper handcuffed Florence and drove him to the Burlington County Jail in southern New Jersey. At the time, the State Police were operating under a court order, spawned by allegations of past racial discrimination, that provided federal monitors to assess state police stops of minority drivers. But the propriety of the stop is not at issue, and Florence is not alleging racial discrimination. The first strip search took place in Burlington jail. Florence was made to undress and submit to a second search when he was transferred to a jail in Newark six days later. The next day a judge freed Florence and dismissed all charges. The fine had been paid, as Florence had insisted. A federal judge agreed with Florence that the searches were improper, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said that is reasonable to search everyone being jailed, even without suspicion that a person may be concealing a weapon or drugs. Since 2008 -- and in the first appellate rulings on the issue since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- appeals courts in Atlanta and San Francisco decided that authorities' need to maintain security justified a wide-ranging search policy, no matter the reason for someone's detention. Those rulings stand in sharp contrast to a series of decisions over 30 years that held that strip searches without suspicion violated the Constitution. The appeals court decisions flow from a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a blanket policy of conducting body cavity searches of prisoners who had had contact with visitors on the basis that the interaction with outsiders created the possibility that some prisoners got hold of something they shouldn't have. The case will be argued in the fall. The case is Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, 10-945. Washington, D.C. High court nixes new appeals from Gitmo detainees WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has turned away appeals from foreigners seeking their release after nine years of detention at Guantanamo Bay. The court on Monday rejected three separate claims asking the justices to review rulings against the detainees by the federal appeals court in Washington. In 2008, the high court ruled that the Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to ask a federal civilian judge to review their cases and suggested that a judge could order their release. But in a series of cases since, the D.C. Circuit has limited the authority of federal district judges and made it harder for the detainees to challenge their continued confinement. The appeals that the court turned down Monday came from: Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani, a Yemeni who served as a cook for Taliban forces and said he never fired a shot in battle; Fawzi al-Odah, a Kuwaiti who says he was an Islamic studies teacher, not part of terrorist forces; and Adham Mohammed Al Awad of Yemen, who lost part of his right leg in an air raid in Afghanistan but denied being an al-Qaida fighter. The justices did not act on a separate appeal filed by five Chinese Muslims, who U.S. authorities agree should no longer be held. They had previously declined an offer to be resettled in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, where six other Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, have gone to live. It is not clear why the five refused to go to Palau. They want the court to consider the question of whether a judge can order detainees released into the United States. Published: Tue, Apr 5, 2011