Court News 2024/03/28 12:46
Texas’ plans to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S. will remain on hold under a federal appeals court order that likely prevents enforcement of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s new immigration law until a broader decision on whether it is legal.
The 2-1 ruling late Tuesday is the second time a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has put a temporary hold on the the Texas law. It follows a confusing few hours last week the Supreme Court allowed the law to take effect, setting off anger and anticipation along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The same panel of appeals judges will hear arguments on the law next week.
“I think what we can draw from this, from the chaos that this has been are several conclusions,” said Lisa Graybill, vice president of law and policy at the National Immigration Law Center. “One is that this is clearly a controversial law. Two is that the politics of the justices on the bench are very clearly playing out in their rulings.”
Texas authorities announced no arrests made under the law during that short window on March 19 before the appellate panel stepped in and blocked it.
In Tuesday’s order, Chief Judge Priscilla Richman cited a 2012 Supreme Court decision that struck down portions of a strict Arizona immigration law, including arrest power. The Texas law is considered by opponents to be the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since that Arizona law.
“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has held that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of noncitizens — is exclusively a federal power,” wrote Richman, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush.
The Justice Department has argued that Texas’ law is a clear violation of federal authority and would create chaos at the border. Texas has argued that President Joe Biden’s administration isn’t doing enough to control the border and that the state has a right to take action.
The Texas law, Richman wrote, “creates separate, distinct state criminal offenses and related procedures regarding unauthorized entry of noncitizens into Texas from outside the country and their removal.”
She was joined in the opinion by Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Biden appointee.
Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump and a former aide to Abbott, dissented from the majority decision.

Court News 2024/03/15 14:24
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that thousands of low-level drug dealers are ineligible for shortened prison terms under a Trump-era bipartisan criminal justice overhaul.
The justices took the case of Mark Pulsifer, an Iowa man who was convicted of distributing at least 50 grams of methamphetamine, to settle a dispute among federal courts over the meaning of the word “and” in a muddy provision of the 2018 First Step Act.
The law’s so-called safety valve provision is meant to spare low-level, nonviolent drug dealers who agree to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors from having to face often longer mandatory sentences.
Some courts had concluded the use of the word indeed means “and,” but others decided that it means “or.” A defendant’s eligibility for a shorter sentence depended on the outcome.
“Today, we agree with the Government’s view of the criminal-history provision,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority in the 6-3 decision that did not split the justices along liberal-conservative lines.
In dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch referred to the First Step Act as possibly “the most significant criminal-justice reform bill in a generation.” But under the court’s decision, “thousands more people in the federal criminal justice system will be denied a chance—just a chance at” a reduced sentence, Gorsuch wrote, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.
Nearly 6,000 people convicted of drug trafficking in the 2021 budget year alone are in the pool of those who might have been eligible for reduced sentences, according to data compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
The provision lists three criteria for allowing judges to forgo a mandatory minimum sentence that basically looks to the severity of prior crimes. Congress wrote the section in the negative so that a judge can exercise discretion in sentencing if a defendant “does not have” three sorts of criminal history.
Before reaching their decision, the justices puzzled over how to determine eligibility for the safety valve — whether any of the conditions is enough to disqualify someone or whether it takes all three to be ineligible.
Pulsifer’s lawyers argued that all three conditions must apply before the longer sentence can be imposed. The government said just one condition is enough to merit the mandatory minimum.

Court News 2024/02/13 16:40
Former President Donald Trump arrived Monday morning at a federal courthouse in Florida for a closed hearing in his criminal case charging him with mishandling classified documents.
The hearing was scheduled to discuss the procedures for the handling of classified evidence in the case, which is currently set for trial on May 20. Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing FBI efforts to get them back.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon expects to hear arguments in the morning from defense lawyers and in the afternoon from prosecutors, each outside of the other’s presence.
“Defense counsel shall be prepared to discuss their defense theories of the case, in detail, and how any classified information might be relevant or helpful to the defense,” Cannon wrote in scheduling the hearing.
Trump’s motorcade arrived at the courthouse in Fort Pierce shortly after 9 a.m.
The hearing is one of several voluntary court appearances that Trump has made in recent weeks — he was present, for instance, at appeals court arguments last month in Washington — as he looks to demonstrate to supporters that he intends to fight the four criminal prosecutions he faces while also seeking to reclaim the White House this November.

Court News 2024/01/30 11:02
A Hong Kong court ordered China Evergrande, the world’s most heavily indebted real estate developer, to undergo liquidation following a failed effort to restructure $300 billion owed to banks and bondholders that fueled fears about China’s rising debt burden.
“It would be a situation where the court says enough is enough,” Judge Linda Chan said Monday. She said it was appropriate for the court to order Evergrande to wind up its business given a “lack of progress on the part of the company putting forward a viable restructuring proposal” as well as Evergrande’s insolvency.
China Evergrande Group is among dozens of Chinese developers that have collapsed since 2020 under official pressure to rein in surging debt the ruling Communist Party views as a threat to China’s slowing economic growth. But the crackdown on excess borrowing tipped the property industry into crisis, dragging on the economy and rattling financial systems in and outside China.
Chinese regulators have said the risks of global shockwaves from Evergrande’s failure can be contained. The court documents seen Monday showed Evergrande owes about $25.4 billion to foreign creditors. Its total assets of about $240 billion are dwarfed by its total liabilities.
“It is indisputable that the company is grossly insolvent and is unable to pay its debts,” the documents say.
About 90% of Evergrande’s business is in mainland China. Its chairman, Hui Ka Yan, who is also known as Xu Jiayin, was detained by authorities for suspected “illegal crimes” in late September, further complicating the company’s efforts to recover.
It’s unclear how the liquidation order will affect China’s financial system or Evergrande’s operations as it struggles to deliver housing that has been paid for but not yet handed over to families that put their life savings into such investments.
Evergrande’s Hong Kong-traded shares plunged nearly 21% early Monday before they were suspended from trading. But Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index was up 0.9% and some property developers saw gains in their share prices.

Court News 2024/01/20 09:40
Thailand’s Constitutional Court is set to decide Wednesday whether popular politician Pita Limjaroenrat, who was blocked from becoming prime minister, should now lose his seat in Parliament.
The election victory last year by Pita’s progressive Move Forward party reflected a surprisingly strong mandate for change among Thai voters after nearly a decade of military-controlled government. But the party was denied power by members of the unelected and more conservative Senate.
Pita was suspended from his lawmaking duties pending the court ruling Wednesday on whether he violated election law due to his ownership of shares in ITV, a company that is the inactive operator of a defunct independent television station. By law, candidates are prohibited from owning shares in any media company when they are registered to contest an election.
The Senate, whose members are appointed by the military, cast votes to choose a prime minister, under a constitution that was adopted in 2017 under a military government. The Move Forward party now heads the opposition in Parliament.

Court News 2024/01/02 09:56
Prominent activist and publisher Jimmy Lai on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to three charges of sedition and collusion with foreign countries in a landmark national security trial in Hong Kong.
Lai was arrested during a crackdown on dissidents following huge pro-democracy protests in 2019. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing. The trial is expected to last about 80 days without a jury.
The 76-year-old media tycoon who founded the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper faces one count of conspiring to print seditious publications to incite hatred against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, as well as two counts of collusion with foreign countries to call for sanctions and other hostile actions against China and Hong Kong.
Flanked by three prison officers, Lai formally pleaded not guilty to the charges read to him, shortly after the court rejected a last-ditch attempt by his counsel to throw out a sedition charge.
Prosecutor Anthony Chau in his opening statements described Lai as a “radical political figure” and the “mastermind” behind a conspiracy. Chau also said that Lai had used his media platform to advance his political agenda.
Clips of interviews that Lai gave to foreign media as well as speeches at events between 2019 and 2020 were also played in court. In the video, Lai called for support from foreign governments and urged U.S. officials as well as then-President Donald Trump to impose “draconian” measures on China and Chinese officials in retaliation for imposing the national security law and restricting freedoms in Hong Kong.
His prosecution has drawn criticism from the United States and the United Kingdom. Beijing has called those comments irresponsible, saying they went against international law and the basic norms of international relations.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, an international political group that’s critical of China’s human rights record and foreign policy, said Lai’s trial “fabricated” evidence that the media mogul was involved in its work.
