An inmate involved in a federal capital crime can stand trial in federal court, says the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a 3-2 decision on Monday, the appellate court reversed its panel decision, and ruled in favor of the government in the case against Jason Pleau.
The removal of a controversial mural by Maine Governor Paul LePage is heading to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where the court will determine if the governor was within his rights to remove the mural.
Was the mural entitled to First Amendment protection or was the removal of the mural protected government speech? The U.S. District Court has already ruled in favor of the latter.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the decision of the district court regarding a prisoner's right to notice of the rejection of mail by prison officials.
Here's a recap.
The prisoner, Darren Starr, argued a violation of his Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process after mail that was addressed to him was rejected and returned to its senders.
Is it constitutional to deny homosexual couples the right to federal marriage benefits? Was the adoption of the Defense of Marriage Act in violation of Congressional authority?
Wednesday morning, the First Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments relating to the Defense of Marriage Act. The cases, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. Health and Human Services bring the constitutionality of DOMA to the forefront of legal debate.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed a lower court's denial on a request for habeas corpus relief of a prisoner, Alfredo Companonio.
Companonio is currently serving a life sentence for a 1987 conviction on first degree murder. He claims that he was wrongly convicted as he received ineffective assistance of counsel during the course of his murder trial. Specifically, Companonio is alleging that his counsel failed to present a mental impairment defense.
The Gill v. OPM plaintiffs got a boost this week with another federal court decision that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutionally discriminates against gay marriage. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White ruled in Golinski v. OPM that DOMA Section 3 “treats gay men and lesbians differently on the basis of their sexual orientation” without any legal basis, and that “the imposition of subjective moral beliefs of a majority on a minority cannot provide a justification.”
The decision hit on many of the same points that District Judge Joseph Louis Tauro highlighted in his summary judgment ruling in favor of the Gill plaintiffs in 2010.
A woman disgruntled with the way a Camden burglary investigation was conducted lost her challenge in the First Circuit Court of Appeals last Tuesday.
Finding in favor of the Camden Police Department, the First Circuit held that Linda Ann Irving’s appeal offered “little in the way of substantive challenges to the district court’s decision.”
Irving had initially argued that the police failed to properly investigate a March 2008 burglary of her Camden home. She alleged that her neighbor had entered her home to steal her financial identity by obtaining her computer compact discs; however, the police could not obtain enough evidence to target any suspects or even conclude if a burglary had occurred.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently signed a bill into law legalizing winery direct shipping in the Garden State, but does the new law taunt federal appellate court precedent?
The law allows out-of-state, licensed wineries to directly ship, at most, 12 cases annually to New Jersey residents who are 21-years or older. It is reportedly the 39th state to allow direct shipping.
However, the new law doesn't allow direct shipping from wineries that make over 250,000 gallons of wine annually, which is known as a "capacity cap limit."
While we wait for the First Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the “big guns” challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, the court dealt with a related issue to gay marriage in a decision released on Tuesday.
Upholding a Maine law that requires groups that spend more than $5,000 on referendum advocacy to disclose the identity of donors that gave more than $100, the First Circuit held that the law provided fair warning of its reach, it was not overbroad and its $100 threshold was narrowly tailored to meet Maine’s compelling interest in an informed electorate.
A convicted murderer is slowly making his way up the appeals process ladder in his attempt to get Maine officials to allow him to fully practice Satanism in prison.
Joshua Cookson, a devout Satanist, is allowed to practice in his cell and has reportedly done so on a daily basis since 2007. Cookson, however, wants the same opportunity to practice in the prison’s activities building as other prisoners of religious groups - including paganism and American Indian spirituality - because it “is one of the fundamental parts of his religious beliefs.”
