Sanford Bail Bonds – Legal Challenges, Politics Delay Naming Zimbabwe’s Chief Justice

Source     : VOA News
By             : Sebastian Mhofu
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

Legal Challenges, Politics Delay Naming Zimbabwe’s Chief Justice

In Zimbabwe, the process to name a new chief justice of the Supreme Court has become mired in legal challenges and politics. At his farewell party Wednesday night, the outgoing chief justice, Godfrey Chidkyausiku, was asked if he had any disappointments in his career. “Yes, there are times when things are not going the way they should. One of them is the way we are quarreling about my successor,” Chidkyausiku said. “It’s a big disappointment, but it’s nothing that we can’t overcome. In my view is, there is really no dispute, there is really no issue. With the passage of time, things are going to fall into place. I would have wanted to leave one, very united judiciary that is fearless, independent and with the back bone of steel.”

His retirement didn’t come as a surprise. The law requires the chief justice to retire at the age of 70, which Chidkyausiku reached in February. Two months prior, the Judiciary Service Commission started public interviews to replace him. The commission then sent President Robert Mugabe a list of the three final candidates from which, by law, he can choose. Then, from out of nowhere, Romeo Zibani, a law student, surfaced and successfully challenged the process at the High Court. That ruling was then dismissed by the Supreme Court after an appeal.

Zibani is represented by ruling party Member of Parliament and lawyer Jonathan Samukange. They have appealed to the Constitutional Court to uphold the High Court’s ruling. “A chief justice is different from an ordinary judge,” Samukange said. “A chief justice does not only wear a judicial hat. He must also wear a political hat. That is why it is important and crucial that we have a chief justice who can work in harmony with his excellence the president. The president must choose who he wants to work with. It is like marriage, you marry someone whom you can stay with and work with in harmony for the interests of Zimbabwe as a whole.” Prior to 2013, the president had the power to handpick judges. But that year, Zimbabweans overwhelmingly voted to pass a new constitution that included this new procedure.

Mugabe has made no public statements on the chief justice question. However, a request to amend the constitution has been initiated by his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. The next Supreme Court sitting opens July 1. Lovemore Madhuku, a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe, is not optimistic the issue will be sorted out by then.

“I think the president wants to wait for the constitutional amendment,” Madhuku said. “The constitutional amendment provides for an appointment which is not subject to controls by anybody. So it is the president’s love for total control of the country which is always his approach to the way he governs.” Madhuku says politics are tangled up in this dispute, with elections just a year away. The Supreme Court would rule on electoral disputes. Mugabe has announced his intention to run for re-election, but as the 93-year-old leader advances in age, debate over his succession grows louder and the chief justice could one day weigh in. Local analysts say the country’s current leadership would prefer a war veteran as the new chief justice. None of the three candidates proposed by the commission have that credential.

Read More  voanews.com/a/legal-challenges-politics-delay-naming-zimbabwe-chief-justice/3746808.html

Bail Bonds Sanford – Same-sex marriage law goes into effect in Finland

Source     : Chronicle Live News
By             : Yle
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

Same-sex marriage law goes into effect in Finland

Same-sex marriage became legal in Finland. Same sex couples also gained the legal right to adopt children. According to a Local Register Office’s figures some 41 couples across the country are scheduled to marry this week. The Local Register Office of western Finland, which collected data from across the country, says that some 41 same sex couples plan to get married this week. Same-sex marriage became officially legal in Finland on Wednesday. Maria Lunabbas, who works as a notary public at the Local Register Office in western Finland, says there are fewer same sex couples getting married this week than she had expected.

Lunabbas said that some regional register offices around the country told her that they hadn’t received a single same sex marriage notification for this week. Back in November 2014, gay rights activists and same-sex marriage supporters celebrated the approval of gender-neutral marriage laws by Finnish Parliament.

Pivotal citizens’ initiative

The legislation was also a pivotal moment for participatory democracy in Finland, as the law was started as a citizens’ initiative to legally recognise marriage for same-sex couples. Even though same sex marriage was approved by MPs in 2014, a separate citizens’ initiative petitioned by conservative activists was presented to Finnish lawmakers just weeks before the law was to go into effect. But that initiative was thrown out and Finland now counts itself among the 22 countries of the world where it is legal for same sex couples to get married.

Read More : chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/driving-laws-changing-heres-you-12669480

Skilled Bail Bonds – UK Supreme Court justices are hearing death penalty cases

Source     : Legal Cheek News
By             : Press Release
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

UK Supreme Court justices are hearing death penalty cases

The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court is one of the most cherished institutes in the country. Nestled away beneath the towers of Parliament Square, many would say the cornerstone of the court’s work is to uphold British laws and, in the same breath, British values. Yet, Supreme Court justices are hearing death penalty cases. In their capacity on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), all eleven of the Supreme Court’s justices hear cases from a number of Commonwealth countries, plus UK overseas territories, crown dependencies and military sovereign base areas. These countries include the Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica and Saint Lucia.  A number of these countries still use capital punishment, and the JCPC typically hears appeals on this two to three times a year. Two cases of the sort — namely Lovelace and Hernandez — are currently ongoing.

The first concerns an appeal from Eastern Caribbean Court of Appeal, St Vincent and the Grenadines. Appellant Patrick Lovelace was sentenced to death for murdering a 12-year-old girl in 2010. According to local news reports, the young victim’s naked body was found hanging from a mango tree in an area called London Road. Lovelace, a former long distance runner, is appealing his sentence. He is arguing he should have been given a term of imprisonment instead. The JCPC is considering the following:

1.    Was the Court of Appeal correct to find it lacked jurisdiction to allow the appellant’s application to extend time to appeal his death sentence?
2.    Should permission to appeal against the death sentence be granted because it was unlawfully imposed and/or because five years have elapsed since conviction?

Heard on 8 November 2016 by Lord Kerr, Lord Wilson, Lord Reed, Lord Hughes and Lord Toulson, no judgment hand-down date has yet been confirmed. In the second case, Hernandez, the court is considering whether the death sentence imposed on the appellant is unlawful ‘ab initio’ because of his very low IQ (57) and, as a result, whether his sentence should be reduced. The appellant was convicted of two murders in Trinidad. Although he originally confessed to the crime, at trial he recanted his confession. He was sentenced to death in 2004. Lady Hale, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke, Lord Hughes and Lord Toulson sat on 16-17 May 2016 to hear this case and, like Lovelace, no judgment is expected at least by the end of this term (mid-April). Though it’s not hard to find information on the JCPC’s death penalty jurisdiction, what’s harder to grapple with is its moral implication. Capital cases being heard in Parliament Square doesn’t quite sit right, with one Legal Cheek commenter going as far as to describe the practice as “our judiciary’s dirty little secret”.

Yet having spoken to a number of experts on this, it seems describing this practice as a secret, not least a dirty one, is perhaps a bit unfair. A JCPC spokesperson, for a start, was quick to make clear the court adopts an open and honest approach, as it does with all its cases. He says:
We publish case details for death penalty appeals in the same way as for any other case, and this material has helped inform award-winning journalism on the subject.

Indeed, James Lee — an academic at King’s College London — points out to us that a number of justices have given speeches about their roles in the JCPC in recent years; hardly a cover-up operation. Legal Cheek also spoke to Birmingham Law School’s Dr Bharat Malkani on this. A specialist in human rights law and how it impacts on the criminal justice system, Malkani similarly resists claims the JCPC’s Caribbean jurisdiction is kept under wraps. He tells us:
The JCPC has been very open about its death penalty cases. Maybe there should be greater public knowledge on this issue, but I wouldn’t lay the blame for this at the door of the JCPC.

Though the moral implications of this jurisdiction are “thorny” (“it smacks of colonialism”, he says), Malkani can see the good in it too. He told us:
The JCPC has done a lot to restrict the use of the death penalty in these countries and through this is saving lives. It’s great the court can exert its influence over other legal systems and help them develop.

For the foreseeable future at least, there is little to no appetite for the abolition of the JCPC or its death penalty jurisdiction. For now the court rumbles on; so too does its positive influence.

Read More : legalcheek.com/2017/02/uk-supreme-court-justices-are-hearing-death-penalty-cases/

Sanford Bail Bonds – Texas Anti-abortion Efforts Renew After Supreme Court Defeat

Source     : US News
By             : PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

Texas Anti-abortion Efforts Renew After Supreme Court Defeat

Undeterred by a U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down sweeping abortion restrictions that were sold as protecting women’s health, Texas Republicans are pushing new measures pitched as protecting fetuses, with a hopeful eye toward Washington. New anti-abortion measures are moving through the Legislature — where Democrats are virtually powerless to stop them — and opponents see a shift in GOP strategy after last year’s 5-3 Supreme Court ruling that rejected the state’s claims of trying to safeguard women and dismantled a 2013 law that prompted many of the state’s abortion clinics to close.

A state Senate committee on Wednesday will begin hearing three anti-abortion measures, none of which claim to be aimed at protecting women’s health. And with the Supreme Court apparently set to become more socially conservative under President Donald Trump, Republicans say there is a new opportunity. “You would be almost remiss and neglectful, in my opinion, not to push that envelope going forward knowing what’s coming up,” Republican state Sen. Charles Perry said.

The newest Texas proposals would toughen regulations on what happens to a fetus both before and after an abortion. Perry’s proposal would mostly ban a commonly used second-trimester abortion procedure, known as dilation and evacuation, and is similar to laws that courts have blocked in Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana. Another bill would require fetal remains to be buried or cremated. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has already ordered that change, but it is on hold pending a federal trial.

A third proposal would ban, among other things, the donation of fetal tissue under a measure Republicans have sought since the release of heavily edited, secretly recorded videos shot inside Planned Parenthood clinics by an anti-abortion group in 2015. Perry said his bill has nothing to do with protecting women’s health — a departure from how Republicans defended the former law known as HB2, which imposed building upgrades on abortion clinics and required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges. More than 20 abortion clinics in Texas closed after the law passed.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion striking down that law that it failed to offer “medical benefits” sufficient to justify the burdens placed on women. “The Supreme Court called them out on that,” said Blake Rocap, legislative counsel for the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. “Because the avenue of lying about what is good women’s health and safety is now foreclosed to them, they’re now having to turn to other methods to make operating a practice difficult if not almost impossible.” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into a law a bill similar to Perry’s proposal last month The ban is among a push by abortion opponents nationally and at statehouses around the country with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress. Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, has a conservative legal philosophy seen as similar to the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s.

Read More : usnews.com/news/news/articles/2017-02-14/texas-anti-abortion-efforts-renew-after-supreme-court-defeat

Skilled Bail Bonds – Pat Cash slams Roger Federer’s medical timeout as ‘legal cheating’

Source     : ESPN News
By             : AAP
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

Pat Cash slams Roger Federer’s medical timeout as ‘legal cheating’

Roger Federer rejected Pat Cash’s criticism of his fifth-set medical timeout during his victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final on Sunday night. Cash, working for BBC’s Radio 5 Live, called the lengthy break “legal cheating,” lashing the 18-time Grand Slam winner for his approach.

“It’s cheating and it’s being allowed. It’s legal cheating, but it’s still not right,” the 1987 Wimbledon winner said. Federer also took a timeout during his semifinal success over Stan Wawrinka, although that came after his countryman also needed a medical break.

But the Swiss defended his integrity after the match, saying he was playing through pain and had a track record of avoiding the treatments at all costs. “My leg has been hurting me since the [second-round match vs. Noah Rubin],” he said. “I was able to navigate through the pain. For some reason against Stan I had it from the start on both sides of the groin. I felt my quad midway through the second set already, and the groin started to hurt midway through the third set.

“I just told myself, The rules are there that you can use them. We shouldn’t be using these rules or abusing the system. I think I’ve led the way for 20 years. So I think to be critical there is exaggerating. I’m the last guy to call a medical timeout. I don’t know what he’s talking about.” After losing the fourth set 6-3, Federer recovered to win the final set by the same score. Nadal said he had “no opinion” on Federer’s medical timeout. Federer missed the final six months of last year’s tour after undergoing surgery on an injured knee.

Read More : espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/18579346/pat-cash-slams-roger-federer-medical-legal-cheating

Sanford Bail Bonds – USA Cycling, Bike Law team up to provide legal aid

Source     : Velo News
By             : Velo Press
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

USA Cycling, Bike Law team up to provide legal aid

You just got hit by a car. Who do you call? What do you do? USA Cycling and Bike Law, a network of independent bicycle attorneys in the U.S., want to make procuring legal help a bit easier. The two organizations have announced a partnership that will provide all USA Cycling members with a variety of legal benefits through Bike Law’s network, including a free consultation, reduced legal fees, and priority consideration for pro bono legal representation.

“This partnership aims to provide leadership on cycling legal issues,” said Bike Law founder Peter Wilborn. “USA Cycling is uniquely positioned to be a strong voice and advocate for the sport of cycling, and Bike Law will give the organization, members and clubs the legal tools and know-how to do so.”The goal is to help cyclists in the immediate aftermath of an incident, primarily by guaranteeing any USA Cycling member a priority consultation within 24 hours of the incident at no charge, as well as to provide education. Bike Law is also offering USAC clubs access to its legal experts for speaking engagements, free of charge.

Bike Law is not a legal firm, but a national network of independent lawyers who are also cyclists. It currently has representatives in 22 states and Canada. “This is a double-win for USA Cycling members,” said USAC CEO Derek Bouchard-Hall. “Bike Law’s national network provides a place for our members to turn in the event they require cycling-related legal assistance, and our community can now better drive cycling advocacy efforts with a partner who is uniquely knowledgeable and passionate about cyclists’ rights and cycling safety.”

Read More : velonews.com/2017/01/news/usa-cycling-bike-law-team-provide-legal-aid_429513

Bail Bonds Sanford – Supreme Court won’t hear ‘Sister Wives’ appeal over bigamy law

Source     : Fox News
By             : Associated Press
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

Supreme Court won’t hear ‘Sister Wives’ appeal over bigamy law

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear an appeal from the family on TV’s “Sister Wives” challenging Utah’s law banning polygamy. The decision ends the family’s long legal fight to overturn a seldom used and unique provision of Utah’s law that the Browns and other polygamous families contend has a chilling effect by sending law-abiding plural families into hiding because of fear of prosecution. The provision bars married people from living with a second purported “spiritual spouse” even if the man is legally married to just one woman, making it stricter than anti-bigamy laws in other states.

The reality TLC cable channel TV show follows the lives of Kody Brown, his four wives and all their children. When it debuted in 2010, it was considered ground-breaking by offering viewers a glimpse into how a plural family navigates the unique complexities of the arrangement. Utah prosecutors say they generally leave polygamists alone but that they need the ban to pursue polygamists for other crimes such as underage marriage and sexual assault. Only 10 people were charged with violating the law between 2001 and 2011, prosecutors say.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office declined comment on the Supreme Court’s denial of the case, which the justices issued without comment. The saga between the Browns and Utah officials began in September 2010 when the first episode aired of the TLC show, “Sister Wives.” A county prosecutor opened an investigation, leading the Browns to leave their longtime of Lehi, Utah, in 2011, to settle in Las Vegas where they still live today. That same year, the Browns filed a lawsuit calling the opening of the investigation government abuse. The case was closed without filing any charges.

In 2013, the Browns scored a key legal victory when a federal judge in Utah ruled the law violated polygamists’ right to privacy and religious freedom. But an appeals court in Denver decided last year that the Browns could not sue because they were not charged under the Utah law. It did not consider the constitutional issues. That ruling will now stand. The Brown’s attorney, Jonathan Turley, said in a statement posted on his blog that he and the family are disappointed but not surprised because the high court is on a pace to hear less than 1 percent of the 7,500 appeals it is likely to receive this term.

Turley emphasized that an appeals court ruling was not made based on the merits of the Browns’ assertion that Utah’s law violates their rights of speech and religion. “Our victory in Salt Lake City will remain as a cautionary decision for legislators who wish to marginalize or sanction this community in the future,” Turley said. “It has been a long road for all of us and it is not the end of the road. Plural and unconventional families will continue to strive for equal status and treatment under the law.”

Kody Brown is legally married to Meri Brown, but says he is “spiritually married” to three other women. They live together in a plural relationship and belong to a religious group that believes in polygamy as a core religious practice. Their show continues to air on TLC. About 30,000 polygamists live in Utah, according to court documents. The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the practice in 1890 and strictly prohibits it today.

Read More : foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/01/23/supreme-court-wont-hear-sister-wives-appeal-over-bigamy-law.html

Skilled Bail Bonds – Singapore’s status as legal hub boosted by changes to law

Source     : Reuters News
By             : Andrew Chung
Category :  Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

Singapore’s status as legal hub boosted by changes to law

Amendments to the Civil Law Act passed yesterday will allow businesses involved in international commercial arbitration cases here to get funding from third parties, a move that has been described as a boost to Singapore’s position as a legal hub. The framework may be broadened to other types of cases after a period of assessment, said Senior Minister of State for Law Indranee Rajah. “We want to have (it) tested in a limited sphere,” she said. “If the framework works well, as and when appropriate, the prescribed categories of proceedings may be expanded.” Third-party funding – where an entity not connected to a dispute provides funds to one party in return for financial gain – is allowed in major arbitration centres such as London and Paris.

The new Bill framework will set out rules for parties. Only professionals whose principal business is funding claims will be allowed, and lawyers will have to disclose who the fund providers are. The lawyers also should not hold shares or have ownership interest in these fund providers, or receive referral fees and commission, to prevent conflicts of interest.

While MPs yesterday agreed that third-party funding helps facilitate access to justice by enabling parties who may not have the financial means to prosecute a genuine dispute, they also raised suggestions and concerns on issues such as regulation. Mr Murali Pillai (Bukit Batok) suggested that such funding be allowed in litigation and domestic arbitration. Potential beneficiaries are small and medium-sized enterprises facing cash-flow issues, but which may have legitimate claims. Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang GRC) suggested considering contingency fee arrangements, where lawyers may receive a sum of money only if a case is won. “Unlike jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, Australia and even the United States, we have until now not permitted more creative fee arrangements,” he said.

“So in our competition to be a hub for international arbitration, Singapore is sometimes at a disadvantage,” he added. Contingency fees may have a “bad reputation” with astronomical claims, but the risk of that may not be as great here. Singapore does not have class-action litigation, he said, where lawyers take on claims for large groups of unnamed people, or jury trials where “a lot of the largest personal injury awards are made”. In response, Ms Indranee said event-triggered fee arrangements, including contingency fee arrangements, will be studied as part of the review of the civil justice system.

Until then, it remains prohibited for lawyers and law firms. Other issues raised touched on the regulation of third-party funding and how bad practices will be dealt with. A heavy regulatory framework will have “little practical effect”, said Ms Indranee, as many parties, counsel, arbitrators and fund providers will not be in Singapore’s jurisdiction. The preference was for “soft law regulation”, for example, through International Bar Association guidelines, or collective self-regulation through a code of conduct, she said.

Read More : straitstimes.com/politics/spores-status-as-legal-hub-boosted-by-changes-to-law

Sanford Bail Bonds – U.S. Supreme Court will not examine tech industry legal shield

Source     : Reuters News
By             : Andrew Chung
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

U.S. Supreme Court will not examine tech industry legal shield

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday boosted one of the tech industry’s go-to defenses in suits to hold websites liable for content posted by others, rebuffing an appeal by women who accused an online ad site of promoting child sex trafficking. The justices refused to consider reviving a lawsuit against Backpage.com filed by three young women who claimed the website facilitated their forced prostitution through classified advertisements posted in its “escorts” section. The high court let stand a lower court’s decision last year to dismiss the lawsuit because the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law protecting free speech on the internet, shielded Backpage from liability for the content of the ads. Tech companies commonly invoke the Communications Decency Act in defending against similar lawsuits.

The tech industry could have faced far-reaching consequences had the Supreme Court decided to limit the scope of the statute. The women sued Backpage and several of its parent companies in Boston federal court in 2014, alleging they were “repeatedly forced as minors to engage in illegal commercial sex transactions” in Massachusetts and Rhode Island starting at age 15 by pimps who advertised on the website. Backpage is the second-largest U.S. online classified ad service after Craigslist. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Communications Decency Act, which prevents a website operator from being held liable as the “publisher or speaker” of its user-generated content, granted broad protections to internet publishers.

Over the past two decades, the Communications Decency Act has provided an effective legal shield for the technology industry, protecting social media and e-commerce sites from liability in a variety of lawsuits over unsafe products, stolen property and facilitating prostitution. But some judges have ruled that the law has been stretched too far. Robert Corn-Revere, an attorney for Backpage, said the Supreme Court’s rejection of the women’s appeal was “consistent with all the court of appeals decisions interpreting the law.”

The three women in the Backpage case, not identified by name in the lawsuit, argued that the law is being used to block enforcement of federal and state statutes against human trafficking and could undermine efforts to combat other crimes such as terrorism and racketeering. “According to the women, the site profits from the ads and uses techniques, such as anonymous payments, to help traffickers avoid police detection. A lawyer for the women did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law in California who supports broad protections for speech under the law, said Monday’s action by the high court “takes away one of the most powerful and common plaintiff arguments, that a website was designed to capture illegal content.” It could also be used to help defend website operators if they were accused of facilitating “hate speech” online, although such speech may not be illegal in the first place due to free speech protections under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Goldman said. Backpage has faced scrutiny from the U.S. Senate as well as civil lawsuits over allegations that the website facilitates sex trafficking, especially of children. Its CEO, Carl Ferrer, was arrested last October on criminal charges including pimping but a California state judge later threw out the case against Ferrer and Backpage’s controlling shareholders, ruling that the Communications Decency Act barred prosecution. California prosecutors subsequently refiled charges against the executives, and the case is pending.

Read More : reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-backpage-idUSKBN14T1OR

Bail Bonds Sanford – California Supreme Court to Decide Whether Speed-Up in Executions is Legal

Source     : LA Times News
By             : Maura DolanContact Reporter
Category : Bail Bonds Sanford , Skilled Bail Bonds

California Supreme Court to Decide Whether Speed-Up in Executions is Legal

California voters in November legalized marijuana, approved a plan to reduce the prison population and enacted gun controls. But on one key issue — the death penalty — the liberal tide shifted. Voters rejected a measure to ban capital punishment and instead approved an initiative intended to hasten executions. That measure is now before the California Supreme Court. If the court allows it to go forward, executions are likely to resume this year, lawyers on both sides of the debate agreed. The court voted 5 to 0 in closed session last month to put a hold on Proposition 66, sponsored by prosecutors and passed by 51% of voters.

The measure established strict legal deadlines for death penalty appeals and shifted some capital punishment reviews from the state high court to county trial courts. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Ming W. Chin removed themselves from the case because they both serve on the Judicial Council, the policy-making body of the courts and a defendant in the lawsuit. Depending on which appellate justices are appointed to take their places, the recusal could be good news for opponents of the death penalty. Both Chin and Cantil-Sakauye are among the more conservative members of the court. Death penalty opponents argue the measure violates separation of powers requirements because the voters, acting as lawmakers, stripped authority from the judicial branch.

Government is divided into three equal branches — executive, legislative and judicial — and the Constitution says no branch may usurp the responsibilities of another. “The Legislature doesn’t get to tell the courts how to do their job,” said Christina Von der Ahe Rayburn, who is representing former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp and former El Dorado County Supervisor Ron Briggs in the lawsuit. The measure requires appeals to be decided within five years of sentencing. It can now take a decade or longer for a condemned inmate to have his or her automatic appeal decided by the California Supreme Court. In automatic appeals, condemned inmates challenge their convictions and sentences based on evidence in the trial record. Rulings by the judge and how the jury was picked may be closely examined in these appeals to the California Supreme Court.

Condemned inmates also are entitled to a habeas corpus challenge, which is based on evidence outside the trial record. Did the prosecutor withhold exonerating evidence? Was the defense lawyer incompetent? Did jurors engage in misconduct? Getting lawyers to take death penalty appeals, particularly habeas cases, has been a huge hurdle in California. Relatively low pay and the emotional toll the cases take on lawyers are only part of the problem. They say the $50,000 the state provides for a habeas investigation is much too low to hire the experts needed to investigate the crimes and the inmates’ lives.

In 2014, 352 inmates on death row had no habeas lawyer, said UC Berkeley law professor Elisabeth Semel. To resolve the lawyer shortage, Proposition 66 would require attorneys appointed to defend low-income criminal defendants also to represent condemned inmates in the automatic appeals. The California Supreme Court now decides both the automatic appeal and the habeas petitions and appoints the lawyers. Under Proposition 66, the sentencing judge would decide the habeas challenge and appoint a lawyer to represent the condemned. Kent Scheidegger, legal counsel for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and an author of Proposition 66, said trial judges will have better luck than the state high court in getting lawyers to take the cases.

Read More : latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-executions-20170108-story.html