All posts tagged "Courts"

A bipartisan coalition of veteran lawyers, former judges, and voting experts is expanding its legal fight against President Donald Trump's executive orders.

The group includes the Democracy Defenders Fund, the Campaign Legal Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which have all challenged two Trump orders that would rewrite voting rules and strip states of authority the Constitution reserves for them, according to a Monday article by The Guardian.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, said the advocacy groups are drawing the kind of firepower that large corporate firms once supplied but no longer do....

Lawyers for a Black man serving life in prison in Alabama are seeking to overturn his conviction for the murder of a white woman, citing evidence his state-provided attorney was active in the Ku Klux Klan.

“Was he well positioned to represent a Black man?” one investigator asked.

“I think the answer is no.”...

Defendants on trial in Texas in the Trump administration’s first “antifa” prosecution are claiming self-defense, in answer to attempted murder and terrorism charges stemming from a chaotic confrontation outside an ICE detention facility that culminated with the shooting of a local police officer.

After defense lawyers cross-examined Alvarado police Lt. Thomas Gross, who suffered minor injuries after allegedly being shot by one of the nine defendants, the government last Friday filed a motion in court in Fort Worth, seeking to bar defendants from making a self-defense claim.

The government argues that because any claim of self-defense or defense of others was “legally unsupportable,” introducing evidence or arguments that raise that defense would amount to “a thinly veiled attempt to encourage the jury to nullify any verdict in this case.”...

The fallout from President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has created serious concerns among judges, who issued an urgent plea to lawmakers Tuesday over crumbling courthouses, according to a new report.

Falling ceilings, contaminated water and malfunctioning elevators are among the problems facing federal judges and courts, Politico reported Tuesday. A top federal courts official has asked for courts to have the right to build or manage their own facilities. Courthouses are currently operated under the General Services Administration.

“Federal courthouses are in crisis. Without immediate action, the problems will continue to worsen,” Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, wrote in a letter to Congress. “Action is needed now to reverse a downward spiral of critical-system failures, long-term underfunding of repairs, security risks, and climbing costs.”...

The judge overseeing the so-called “Texas Antifa” case of nine defendants accused of attacking an ICE detention facility abruptly declared a mistrial on Tuesday, while scolding a defense lawyer for reportedly wearing a tee-shirt displaying civil rights icons.

But in a case widely seen as a test of the Trump administration strategy of criminalizing the antifascist movement and collectively punishing political opposition, friends and family members on the defendants’ support committee said they see another reason for the action by Judge Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.

The jury pool, such observers say, was unexpectedly cool to the Trump administration generally and more specifically to federal immigration enforcement....

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) would rather not be in the national spotlight because the President of the United States called for him to be hanged, but that doesn't mean he's not prepared to fight to the bitter end.

And this week, the only bitterness was emanating from the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Trump White House suffered major setbacks in its attempt to make an example out of Kelly and other veterans in Congress who cut a video calling on active-duty service members to refuse any unconstitutional orders from Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. ...