A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on Wednesday that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairperson, lied to the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. According to Judge Amy Jackson, prosecutors showed by preponderance of the evidence that Manafort intentionally made false statements about payments made to a law firm to [...]
Two “Personhood Acts” were introduced in the South Carolina legislature this week that would criminalize receiving or performing an abortion. State Senator Richard Cash introduced the bill in the Senate on Wednesday, and State Representative Josiah Magnuson introduced a similar bill on Thursday. The Senate bill reads, “The General Assembly acknowledges that personhood is God-given rather than an endowment of [...]
The House Intelligence Committee announced on Wednesday that it will be releasing “transcripts of testimony taken before the Committee” to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, as well as the rest of the Department of Justice. More than 50 transcripts will be sent to Mueller, including conversations with Donald Trump Jr. and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Committee also [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday for force-feeding detained migrants. According to a report released on Thursday by the Associated Press, detained men in the El Paso Processing Center have been participating in a hunger strike since early January. ICE officials said that 11 men are striking, but AP reports the [...]
Zel Fischer, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri, announced a pretrial reform plan on Thursday. In his annual State of the Judiciary address, Fischer said, “We all share a responsibility to protect the public–but we also have a responsibility to ensure those accused of crime are fairly treated according to the law, and not their pocket [...]
The Supreme Court of Nebraska upheld death sentences for eight death row inmates on Friday. The plaintiffs, who had all been sentenced before 2015, claimed that when the Nebraska legislature repealed capital punishment in 2015, their sentences should have been commuted, even though capital punishment was reinstated by referendum in 2016. One of the eight plaintiffs had been [...]
The New York Supreme Court convicted a white supremacist of terrorism charges on Wednesday, the first time the state has ever done so. White supremacist James Jackson plead guilty to Murder in the First Degree in Furtherance of an Act of Terrorism, Murder in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism, Murder in the Second Degree as a [...]
Virginia’s state senate passed a bill on Thursday by a vote of 23-17 that prohibits the state from sentencing defendants with severe mental illness to death. The bill defines “severe mental illness” as the “exhibition of active psychotic symptoms that substantially impair a person’s capacity to (i) appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of the person’s conduct; (ii) exercise [...]
The US Supreme Court wrapped up its January sitting with two oral arguments Wednesday morning. At issue in Knick v. Township of Scott, Pennsylvania is whether a plaintiff must use up state court remedies prior to bringing a Fifth Amendment takings claim. In this case, the township, after finding burial markers on the petitioner’s land, said that the [...]
The European Commission launched an investigation on Thursday into whether the Netherlands violated EU rules by allegedly giving Nike unfair tax advantages. Two Nike operating companies based in the Netherlands, the Netherlands of Nike European Operations Netherlands BV and Converse Netherlands BV, were able to claim a tax deduction for royalty payments to two other non-taxable Dutch [...]
