LAW Archives - ILLEGALS

Civil rights attorneys make 2nd attempt to sue Oregon over public defense failures

Posted on October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Oregon is once again being sued over the state’s troubled public defense system, which has left hundreds of people facing criminal charges without the court-appointed attorneys that they’re entitled to under the US Constitution.

As of Wednesday, roughly 831 people in Oregon were facing criminal charges without attorneys, according to the Oregon Judicial Department. Of those, 45 people were in custody without an attorney.

Related: Listen to “OPB Politics Now”: Oregon’s public defender crisis explodes into public view

This is the second attempt this year by civil rights attorneys to sue the state over its failure to provide attorneys, “in clear violation of basic standards of justice and long-settled state and federal law,” as the most recent lawsuit states. The original lawsuit was dismissed after a judge ruled that she didn’t have jurisdiction to even hear the case, let alone determine it was a class action. She was also unwilling to make a declaration that the defendants’ rights were being violated.

Multinomah County Justice Center front. — A file photo of the Multnomah County Justice Center in downtown Portland, which houses a jail and four courtrooms. A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Multnomah County Court is seeking class-action status over Oregon’s failure to provide defense attorneys to people charged with crimes and unable to afford a lawyer.

*Amanda Troxler*

Like the previous lawsuit, this new complaint was filed by attorneys working with the nonprofit Oregon Justice Resource Center. It was filed on Wednesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court on behalf of the four defendants charged with crimes and who cannot afford an attorney. Despite the four asking for public defenders to handle their cases, the lawsuit states, Oregon did not appoint attorneys for any of them.

In addition to the state of Oregon, the lawsuit names Jessica Kampfe, who was hired less than a week ago

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Lebanon approves some banking law changes demanded by IMF

Posted on October 20, 2022October 20, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s parliament late Tuesday approved some amendments to a banking secrecy law that has been a key demand of the International Monetary Fund before it agrees to a bailout program amid the country’s economic meltdown.

Despite the changes, legal advocacy groups say the alterations to the law will likely not be enough to please the IMF because it restricts moves to lift banking secrecy provisions to judicial authorities. The decades-old law is seen by many as a way to hide the widespread corruption that brought the small nation to bankruptcy over the past three years.

“We agreed on a law to lift banking secrecy with some amendments where we widely expanded the number of groups that can ask to lift banking secrecy,” the head of parliament’s finance and budget committee, Ibrahim Kanaan, said in a tweet. “Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund have not stopped, and we have been in constant communication in the past days and hours so there won’t be flaws in the agreement that Lebanon aspires to.”

Among the amendments is the authority to lift banking secrecy off accounts retroactively to 1988. Kanaan told local television station Al-Jadeed that some proposed amendments in line with the IMF’s critiques were voted out of the legislation during Tuesday’s session.

Since Lebanon’s economic slide began in late 2019, three-quarters of the population of 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, plunged into poverty. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value. The international community has been demanding major reforms in order to help the corruption-plagued nation.

Talks between Lebanon’s government and the IMF began in May 2020 and reached a staff-level agreement in April.

The Lebanese government has implemented a few of the IMF’s demands from the agreement, which are mandatory before

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Kanye comments on George Floyd : Lawyers for slain man’s daughter draft cease-and-desist letter over ‘Drink Champs’ interview

Posted on October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Roxie Washington, acting on behalf of her daughter with the late George Floyd, has retained attorneys after floyd-kanye-west/index.html”Kanye West made a claim about fentanyl and Floyd’s death.

The artist, designer and entrepreneur, who has changed his name to Ye, spoke about Floyd’s death during a recent episode of the podcast “Drink Champs.”

“I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put out. One of the things that his two roommates said was they want a tall guy like me, and the day that he died, he said a prayer for eight minutes,” West said. “They hit him with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

The video above is from a previous report on Ye’s controversial tweet.

The Witherspoon Law Group and Dixon & Dixon Attorneys, in their role as representatives of Washington and her daughter Gianna Floyd, drafted a cease-and-desist letter to West dated Tuesday.

The letter, provided to CNN, states “our clients are very distressed and hurt by the allegations you made.”

“Mr. Floyd’s cause of death is well-settled through evidence presented in courts of law during the criminal and civil trials that were the result of his untimely and horrific death,” the letter reads. “Nevertheless, you have maliciously made statements that are inaccurate and unfounded, causing damage to Mr. Floyd’s estate and his family.”

Former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.

According to Chauvin trial testimony, the medical examiner who performed Floyd’s autopsy george-floyd-day-10″stood by his initial finding that his death was the result of “cardiopulmonary arrest” that occurred during “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker said during his testimony that Floyd’s heart disease and use of

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Ogletree family donates the celebrated law professor and civil rights scholar’s papers to Harvard Law School – Harvard Law School

Posted on October 17, 2022October 17, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

The Harvard Law School Library has been chosen as a steward of the papers of Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., the celebrated and influential Harvard Law professor and civil rights scholar.

“We are pleased to be able to donate my father’s papers to Harvard Law School,” said Rashida Ogletree-George, Ogletree’s daughter, speaking on behalf of the Ogletree family. “We make this donation in recognition of the central role HLS played in his extraordinary career. From his years as a student, through his 30 years as a law professor, our father has always deeply appreciated the many opportunities HLS afforded him. Chief among those opportunities was the blessing to teach, mentor and inspire the next generation of lawyers.”

Ogletree, a 1978 graduate of Harvard Law School who retired in 2020 as the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law Emeritus after a diagnosis of Alzheimers, is currently living in Maryland with his wife.

“Charles Ogletree has dedicated his life to justice and equality,” said John F. Manning ’85, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of at Harvard Law School. “His teaching and mentorship prepared generations of students for leadership in the pursuit of those ends. We are grateful that he and his family have chosen to entrust our alma mater with his papers, which will shed important new light on the many ways he shaped our institution, our profession, and our world.”

The breadth of the Ogletree Collection reflects the many different facets of Ogletree’s illustrious professional career, from representing individual clients, to his scholarship and legal writing, to teaching and mentoring students. The collection comprises more than 500 boxes of materials created from 1989 to 2006, ranging from paper

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Civil Rights Lawyer Ben Crump: ‘The Federal Government Broke its Promise to Black Farmers’ | LISTEN

Posted on October 16, 2022October 16, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Ben Crump - Twitter — Ben Crump – Twitter

*Civil Rights attorney Benjamin Crump joined SiriusXM Urban View host Joe Madison and spoke about a new class action lawsuit against the federal government to support John Boyd of the National Black Farmers Association and all the socially disadvantaged farmers who didn’t receive the billions of dollars they were promised.

“This is just a travesty of justice. The federal government promised in the American Rescue Plant Act when they gave bailouts to everybody during the pandemic, that they would give the black farmers $5 billion. And they told the black farmers that we want you to maintain or expand your operations so you can help strengthen the American food supply during the Covid19 pandemic. And the black farmers naively trusted and relied on the federal government‘s promise. And then just like they did 150 years ago, the federal government broke its promise to black farmers, like they broke their promise to black soldiers who were promised 40 acres and a mule after they fought for the Union Army and helped preserve the United States of America. And so we refuse to let them be able to get away with this without fighting them in court and without having this class action lawsuit to make them not have these farmers face foreclosure. Joe Madison, these farmers are literally losing their farms to the United States Department of Agriculture. I mean, the same people who just made them this promise are now have their subsidiary financial institutions foreclosing on the black farmers, and the height of hypocrisy, Joe. The height of hypocrisy,” Crump told Madison.

Source: SiriusXM’s Joe Madison The Black Eagle on SiriusXM Urban View channel 126.

Benjamin Crump: “The Federal Government Broke Its Promise To Black Farmers” or listen BELOW

MORE NEWS ON EURWEB: Teenager

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New abortion protections, legal services coming to CT

Posted on October 14, 2022October 14, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

HARTFORD — A network of volunteer private attorneys will help provide free legal guidance to both in-state and non-residents seeking access to abortion and other reproductive services under Connecticut’s “safe harbor“ law, Attorney General William Tong announced on Tuesday.

Tong, in a news conference in the State Office Building with about 30 advocates and lawmakers, said last spring’s US Supreme Court decision overturning 50 years of national abortion rights has changed the legal landscape in many ways, some of which might not be known until time passes and elections are decided.

Promising to “build a firewall” against the nationwide conservative campaign to prohibit reproductive rights, Tong will also appoint a new special counsel for reproductive rights in his office’s Civil Rights Unit to safeguard abortion access and reproductive care in Connecticut and nationwide.

“This is about law enforcement,” Tong said. “Enforcing the law of the state of Connecticut, right? And we’re going to put muscle behind that law enforcement, making sure that patients and providers are protected. Today is about making sure what our priorities are.”

Safety, access, affordability and protecting patients from prosecution, civil suits and professional sanctions are the main goals, in addition to a shopping list of possible legislation for the next General Assembly, especially targeting the high mortality rate for Black women in Connecticut, as well as deceptive advertising for so-called crisis pregnancy centres, advocates said.

The Connecticut-based lawyers will join a New York State advice system already in place at 212-899-5567. “It is an army of lawyers,” Tong said, crediting New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Abused women who want to assure their personal privacy, students and foreign-born women elements of the state’s law and other women in a variety of circumstances were encouraged to use the hotline, which will supplement the

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Roanoke lawyer calls for renaming federal building after civil rights attorney

Posted on October 13, 2022October 13, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Attorney John Fishwick and Rev. Edward Burton campaign to rename the Poff federal building after civil rights lawyer Reuben E. Lawson during a news conference Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, in Roanoke.

Scott P. Yates

A prominent lawyer is calling for changing the name of Roanoke’s federal courthouse, which commemorates the late Richard H. Poff, a US Congressman who once supported segregation.

The building should be renamed in honor of Reuben E. Lawson, a civil rights attorney who fought for the very racial integration of schools that was opposed by Poff in the 1950s and 1960s, Roanoke attorney John Fishwick said.

“A federal courthouse is where our citizens go to vindicate their rights,” Fishwick said at a news conference Tuesday, “and it should be named after someone who reflected that principle.”

In a letter Monday to Southwest Virginia’s Congressional delegation — Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Republican Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith — Fishwick asked them to propose legislation to recognize “one of Roanoke’s undeservedly forgotten legal titans.”

Lawson was a Black attorney who filed the region’s first desegregation lawsuit in 1960, which led to a federal judge ordering Floyd County Public Schools to admit 13 students who had been excluded from the all-white student population, the letter stated.

Similar legal challenges followed in Roanoke and Lynchburg and the counties of Grayson, Pulaski and Roanoke. Together, the cases put an end to segregation in Southwest Virginia that was still carried out in the years following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1954.

“Though quiet and soft-spoken, Mr. Lawson worked tirelessly and passionately for social justice,” the letter stated.

Although a number of public schools and other buildings named after Confederate generals have

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Kevin Spacey Accuser Anthony Rapp Cross-Examined At Trial

Posted on October 12, 2022October 12, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

A lawyer for Kevin Spacey sought Tuesday to poke holes in the story of another actor who claims Spacey made a sexual advance on him when he was a teenager.

During an aggressive cross-examination at a civil trial in Manhattandefense attorney Jennifer Keller zeroed in on inconsistencies between Anthony Rapp’s account of how he first met Spacey in 1986 and that of an older friend who was there.

Rapp said he was 14 when Spacey invited him and the friend to a nightclub after meeting them backstage at a Broadway play starring Spacey. He tested they went home without incident immediately after the nightclub outing.

However, the friend — who was in his late teens at the time — has said in a deposition that the pair actually went to Spacey’s apartment and described Spacey trying to lure the friend into a sexual encounter.

Considering the friend’s deposition, “You knew you had a problem with your story, correct?” Keller asked.

“I don’t dispute his story. I just don’t remember it,” Rapp said.

According to Rapp, it was days later before he went to Spacey’s apartment for the first time for a party. He has tested that after the other guests left, Spacey forced himself on him by pinning him down on a bed — an allegation Spacey denies.

The cross-examination came during the second week of a trial stemming from the accusation Rapp first made publicly in 2017 before suing Spacey. It was among similar claims that largely shut down Spacey’s career with multiple allegations of inappropriate touching or sexual advances.

RELATED: What Happened To Robert Berchtold, The Accused Child Predator From ‘A Friend Of The Family’?

At the time, Spacey was starring in spacey-8ac38081b88edeedf89b85972c8f41c9″Netflix’s political thriller “House of Cards.” He’s also known for his role in

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The myths and reality of common and civil law – Harvard Law School

Posted on October 8, 2022October 8, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

What are the real differences between common and civil law systems? Probably not the ones lawyers typically think about, said Harvard Law School Professor Holger Spamann SJD ’09 last week. To commemorate his appointment as Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Spamann examined the myths and reality of common and civil law, the two most widely used legal systems in the world.

Those myths include the widespread idea that common law — rooted in England and also practiced in the United States — involves precedent, or deference to previously published judicial opinion, while civil law, practiced in much of Europe and elsewhere in the world, does not.

As a lighthearted way to show how reasonable but mistaken assumptions lead to myths, Spamann displayed a now-famous photo of England’s new monarch King Charles III sitting on a throne of gold. Adding that many who see it believe the photo is from the king’s coronation, Spamann said it had in fact been taken several months before Queen Elizabeth’s death. “The actual throne that he sat on [for coronation] looked more like a pompous living room chair. But people just imagine that there has to be a fancy throne, so they believe this. I would say that common and civil law myths arise the same way.”

He defined common and civil law as legal systems of, or influenced by, England and continental Europe respectively. The latter’s center of gravity moved over time from Italy to France and Germany. England began to centralize its courts by the late 11th century, but was never completely isolated from European influence. Likewise, European courts were influenced by England — and by extension precedent, said Spamann, noting: the frequent citing of the English case Hadley v. Baxendale (1854) in common law countries around the world, and their adopting

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California law school sued by namesake’s descendants over name change

Posted on October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

A group of alumni from the University of California Hastings College of the Law and descendants of its namesake, Serranus Hastings, filed a lawsuit against the state and the school Tuesday in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a bill that authorized changing the school’s name.

Hastings, a California Supreme Court Justice, founded the school in 1878, but some historians allege he was complicit in the killings of Native Americans.

UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, Calif.
(Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

On Sept. 30, Newsom, a Democrat, signed AB 1936, which was sponsored by Assemblymember James C. Ramos. The bill redesignates the University of California’s Hastings of the Law as the College of the Law, San Francisco.

The law also outlined several “restorative justice initiatives” for Round Valley Indian Tribes and Yuki people whose ancestors – according to Newsom’s office – “suffered mass killings and other atrocities funded and supported by college founder Serranus Hastings in the mid-19th century.”

AFTER 40 YEARS OF ENROLLING MEN, MISSISSIPPI UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN CONSIDERS NAME CHANGE

Tuesday’s lawsuit was brought by the Dhillon Law Group and Michael Yamamoto LLP, in conjunction with the Center for American Liberty on behalf of Hastings’ descendants and the UC Hastings Conservation Committee.

The lawsuit disputes AB 1936’s portrayal of Hastings, saying there is no direct evidence of him committing atrocities against Native Americans.

“Hastings, a lifelong Democrat, was a giant in California history, our first California Chief Justice, and like many founding figures, is the latest victim of activists rewriting history to fit a contemporary agenda, with scant factual basis, no due process, and the ends justifying the means,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, in a statement.

UC Hastings College of the Law

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