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Sacramento, CA (AP) -- The court-appointed receiver who oversees medical care in California's prisons is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to invoke emergency powers and borrow $7 billion. Court-appointed receiver Clark Kelso wants Schwarzenegger to bypass the state Legislature and issue bonds to build seven inmate health care centers around the state. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter Kelso sent Monday to Schwarzenegger's legal affairs office. The receiver's request comes after the state Senate blocked his borrowing twice last month. Kelso has been given broad authority by federal courts to fix the prison system's medical and mental health...

SAN FRANCISCO—A federal court referee is recommending that California's prison population be cut by nearly 40,000 inmates over the next four years. There is little agreement over how to accomplish that, leading a special judicial panel on Friday to grant more time for settlement talks. The three-judge panel says it will set a trial in November if the state, inmate advocacy groups, law enforcement organizations and others fail to agree on ways to solve prison crowding. They have 30 days to reach a settlement. The federal courts could order an immediate release of inmates or cap the prison population, actions...

Sorry to rain on everybody’s parade, but this isn’t a good thing. Of course, I have already explained why I believe that civil unions would be better for us than gay marriage. I have also explained why at this point I don’t want gay marriage at all. (For those of you who don’t want to click, I can sum it up: 1) no-fault divorce, 2) alimony and 3) Terri Schiavo.) Had California’s state legislature passed a law, I wouldn’t be complaining. I still wouldn’t be getting married, for the reasons I referred to above, but I’d have no objection to...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- Elizabeth Halverson is a judge. But the way courthouse staffers see it, she expects to be treated like a queen. Her former bailiff, for example, says Halverson made him feel like a "houseboy." He says the judge — who is obese and uses a motorized scooter to get around — made him put her shoes on her feet, massage her back, cover her with a blanket for naps and make sure her oxygen tank was filled. He says she asked him, "Do you want to worship me from near or afar?" Halverson also surrounded herself with...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Bush administration has violated legal deadlines for updating the nation's clean-air standards on carbon monoxide, a federal judge in San Francisco has ruled. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White told the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to follow a schedule that would allow a full scientific review, public comment and any proposed changes in the standard to take place by May 2011. The EPA had proposed a timetable that would extend through October 2012. Carbon monoxide, an odorless and invisible byproduct of incomplete combustion in auto exhaust, refinery fumes and other emissions of fossil fuels, is lethal...

New Orleans (AP) -- The Army Corps of Engineers can be held liable for flood damage caused by a "hurricane highway," a navigation channel that is believed to have funneled Hurricane Katrina's storm surge into the city, a federal judge ruled Friday. The Corps of Engineers had argued that it was immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system. The law says the federal government cannot be sued if something goes wrong with a flood control project such as a levee, reservoir or dam. Judge Stanwood Duval dismissed that argument, saying the Mississippi River-Gulf...

The U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down this week validating a lethal injection execution procedure in Kentucky is likely to jump-start executions in many states across the country but not in California. Our state uses the same three-drug protocol the court declared constitutional in a Kentucky case, but the legal flaws with California's death penalty procedure go beyond that one issue. In a detailed 2006 review of the state's death penalty procedures, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel called the state's "pervasive lack of professionalism" in carrying out executions "deeply disturbing." In calling for a temporary halt of the state's death...

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that water regulators failed to consider the effects of global warming and other environmental issues related to the decline of California salmon populations when they approved increased pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said a 2004 study prepared by federal regulators to support the increased water exports was scientifically inadequate. "There is no analysis of adverse effect on critical habitat," Wanger wrote about winter-run chinook salmon. The judge also ruled that there was a "total failure to address, adequately explain, and analyze the effects...

New York (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday upheld a city regulation requiring calories to be posted on the menu boards of some chain restaurants, calling the rule a reasonable approach to health officials' goal of reducing obesity. The judge turned back a challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association, a voice for the food service industry. "It seems reasonable to expect that some consumers will use the information disclosed ... to select lower calorie meals ... and these choices will lead to a lower incidence of obesity," U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell said. New York City's Department...

The federal government has failed to prepare an adequate plan to manage and protect the Merced River in Yosemite National Park, a federal appeals court ruled today. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision in 2006 that the National Park Service had not adequately addressed limits on public use of the 81 miles of the river that wind through the park. U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii blocked several construction projects after he issued his ruling, including repaving the heavily used Valley Loop Road and rebuilding some of the hotel rooms and campsites...

MIAMI, (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered a former Peruvian army officer to pay $37 million for his role in a 1985 massacre in Peru in which 69 civilians were slain, including elderly people and infants. U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled Tuesday in a lawsuit filed against former Maj. Telmo Hurtado by two women — Ochoa Lizarbe and Pulido Baldeon — who were 12 at the time and survived the attack. Jordan had previously found in the lawsuit that Hurtado was had committed torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hurtado, 46, is in federal custody in Miami...

Honolulu (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered the Navy to take additional precautions when conducting sonar exercises off Hawaii that environmentalists say can seriously injure or kill marine mammals. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Friday the Navy cannot conduct exercises within 12 nautical miles, or 13.8 miles, of the shoreline, where species that are particularly sensitive to sonar, such as the beaked whale, are found. Among other requirements, the Navy must look for marine mammals for one hour each day before using sonar, employ three lookouts exclusively to spot the animals during sonar use and stop sonar transmission...

Sacramento -- The former federal receiver hired to improve California's troubled prison health care system misspent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars before being fired last month, according to a state inspector general's report released Wednesday. Robert Sillen, who once threatened to "back up the Brink's truck" to the state's treasury to get the money needed to provide better inmate care, authorized $218,790 in overpayments to staff members for benefits such as health insurance and retirement that they already received, said the report, which found no evidence of fraud. In addition to millions spent on consultants and professional services, the...

Missoula, Mont. (AP) -- A Bush administration official apologized Tuesday to a federal judge in urging that he not hold the U.S. Forest Service's use of a fire retardant that environmentalists say kills fish and plants. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who oversees the Forest Service, acknowledged the agency was slow in preparing environmental studies related to the effects of the chemical firefighting tool dropped from airplanes. "There is no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball," Rey testified in court. "We're sorry." While Rey was contrite, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy was...

Judge delays setting trial in Clinton fraud caseBut accuser begins seeking sworn testimony from high-profile witnesses Posted: February 22, 2008 1:00 am Eastern © 2008 WorldNetDaily A judge in Los Angeles yesterday allowed Hollywood mogul Peter F. Paul to begin taking sworn testimony in his $17 million fraud suit against former President Bill Clinton, but a technicality delayed establishment of a trial date. California Superior Court Judge Aurelio N. Munoz ruled Paul's legal team can begin seeking depositions from a host of big names – including Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton – that allegedly were witnesses to an effort by...

San Francisco -- For the second time this week, a federal court found today that a Navy anti-submarine training program threatened to subject whales and other sea creatures to harmful blasts of sonar and ordered protective measures in several sensitive zones, including one near Monterey Bay. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Laporte of San Francisco applies to the Navy's use of low-frequency sonar in submarine detection exercises conducted in large areas of the world's oceans. She said Navy officials, who had agreed to restrictions after she issued a similar ruling in 2002, failed to take adequate precautions when seeking...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- A prosecutor urged an appeals court to order resentencing of a civil rights lawyer convicted of helping an imprisoned terrorist sheik communicate with his disciples because she received a "slap on the wrist." Lynne Stewart was sentenced to two years and four months in prison, escaping a maximum punishment of 30 years behind bars. Prosecutors have said Stewart and co-defendants helped spread blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman's call to kill those who did not subscribe to his extremist interpretation of Islamic law. The sheik, who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up five...

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson on Wednesday removed Robert Sillen as the federal receiver who oversees medical care for California's prison system. Sillen will be replaced by McGeorge School of Law professor J. Clark Kelso. In his seven-page order, Henderson said the receivership needs to move from what has been primarily "an investigative and evaluative phase" toward a system that "must ultimately be transitioned back to the state of California's control." Henderson said in his order that appointing a new receiver is more "appropriate" for the second phase, one that requires a "style of collaborative leadership."

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—A suburban village has been violating the Voting Rights Act by using an election system that leaves its rapidly growing Hispanic population without representation, a federal judge said Tuesday. The decision against Port Chester, on the Connecticut border 25 miles from New York City, is expected to force a revision of the village's at-large election system, in which all voters cast ballots for each of the six trustee positions that run the village government. The likely alternative is a district system, in which each district would elect one trustee. One district would be drawn around Hispanic neighborhoods to...

A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small delivery trucks. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his 2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs. Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the jobs based on their driving records, and failed...

NASHVILLE — A federal judge has issued a stay of execution for Paul Dennis Reid, a death row inmate facing multiple death sentences for a series of slayings at fast food restaurants. Reid, a Texas drifter who came to Nashville to be a country singer, was convicted of killing seven people in Nashville and Clarksville in 1997. U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell ruled late last week that the Reid execution should be delayed. Reid’s execution had been set for Jan. 3.

13-year-old initiated sex, judge says Article from: Herald Sun December 17, 2007 01:51pm A JUDGE has labelled a man's rape of a 13-year-old boy "adolescent experimentation" and said the teen and the perpetrator were "both victims". Judge Michael Kelly's comments come a month after a prosecutor accused him of making inappropriate and disrespectful statements about the sexual assault victim during a plea hearing. The Melbourne County Court was told that in March 2001 a 24-year-old man began a relationship with a 13-year-old boy.

PHOENIX -- Police have arrested a man who they say sexually assaulted a 4 year old girl at a playground at University Park. Suspect booked into 4th Avenue Jail Police say the girl was at the playground with her family near by. Several witnesses say they saw suspect William Speed grab the girl while she played on the jungle gym and begin sexually assaulting her. The girl screamed and her family had to fight Speed to get him off of the girl. The family and nearby witnesses restrained Speed until police arrived. Suspect William Speed is a Level 3 sex...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- A federal judge Wednesday rejected automakers' lawsuit against California, saying the state has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Ishii clears one of the hurdles in California's effort to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars, trucks and sports utility vehicles.

A Crittenden County Circuit Court judge has ordered a special grand jury to look into the shooting death of DeAuntae Farrow by a West Memphis police officer last summer. The order, signed late Wednesday afternoon by Judge Victor L. Hill, suggests that the grand jury could convene by Dec. 10. In explaining his reasons for issuing the order, Hill said the judicial system is concerned not only with being fair, but with the appearance that it is fair. Likewise, he wrote, there have some persons in authority “who have made it known that they have only disdain for the rights...

San Francisco (AP) -- An electronic privacy group challenging President Bush's domestic spying program scored a minor victory after a judge ordered the federal government to release information about lobbying efforts by telecommunications companies to protect them from prosecution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation in January 2006 filed a class-action suit against AT&T Inc., accusing the company of illegally making communications on its networks available to the National Security Agency without warrants. Congress is now considering changing the law to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that would protect them from such court challenges. "Any attempt for immunity is aimed at...

A wealthy Los Altos Hills businessman who has been in prison since 1986 for murdering his wife should be paroled, a state appeals court has ruled, rejecting arguments by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that the gravity of the case ought to keep the killer behind bars. John Dannenberg, 66, has repeatedly been denied parole since he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder in the May 1985 slaying of his wife, Linda. In 2005, after the state Supreme Court barred his release, the state parole board reversed course and decided that he could be freed. Schwarzenegger...

SACRAMENTO -- The federal receiver who controls California's inmate health care system is ordering salary increases for nearly 1,500 prison doctors and nurses. Robert Sillen says the raises are needed to fill vacancies in a medical system so bad that some inmates die of neglect or malpractice. He's raising doctors' salaries as much as 20 percent, to about $250,000 a year for many physicians. A federal judge gave Sillen authority to raise doctors' salaries as high as $300,000. It's the second increase this year. Sillen says the first bump, in March, didn't do enough to trim a nearly 40 percent...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A judge who lost a $54 million lawsuit against his dry cleaner over a pair of missing pants has lost his job, District of Columbia officials confirmed. Roy Pearson's term as an administrative law judge expired May 2 and the D.C. Commission on Selection and Tenure of Administrative Law Judges has voted not to reappoint him, Lisa Coleman, the city's general counsel, wrote Nov. 8 in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press. Pearson was one of about 30 judges who worked in the Office of Administrative Hearings, which handles disputes involving...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Navy to lessen the harm its high-power sonar does to whales and other marine life during exercises off the Southern California coast. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sent the matter to a trial judge in Los Angeles to figure out exactly how to fix the problem it says is apparent with the sonar. The three-judge panel said the sonars need to be fixed before the Navy's next planned exercise in January. The action was taken because the court said it's likely the Natural Resources Defense...

Lansing, Mich. (AP) -- The constitutional rights of more than 1,000 inmates serving life sentences in Michigan prisons have been violated ever since parole policies were toughened in the 1990s, a federal judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani said the cumulative effect of the parole changes violates the Constitution's ban on laws being applied retroactively. She released her decision this week but has yet to decide what her ruling means for 1,000 to 1,200 Michigan prisoners sentenced before 1992 to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Since the early 1990s, the Michigan Parole Board has been...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request by labor and civil liberties organizations to temporarily block the U.S. government from proceeding with a plan to crack down on businesses who may be employing illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security could not go ahead with a plan to send joint letters warning businesses they'll face penalties if they keep workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names. Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. "The...

New York (AP) -- A federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit alleging that Target Corp. is breaking California and federal law by failing to make its Web site usable for the blind. The plaintiffs fault Target for not adopting technology used by other companies to make Web sites accessible to the blind. The technology allows reading software to vocalize invisible code embedded in computer graphics and describe content on a Web page. Granting class-action status allows blind people throughout the country who have tried to access Target.com to become plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges violations of the...

Nashville, Tenn. (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee's procedure for lethal injections is cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger's ruling could halt an execution scheduled for next week.

Montpelier, Vt. (AP) -- Vermont and several other states scored a victory on Wednesday in their battle to get automakers to comply with rules aimed at reducing global warming. A federal judge ruled that states can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, rejecting automakers' claims that federal law pre-empts state rules and that technology can't be developed to meet them. "There is no question that the GHG (greenhouse gas) regulations present great challenges to automakers," Judge William Sessions III, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision. He added, "History suggests that...

LOS ANGELES—Siding with subsidized tenants, a federal judge ruled poor renters getting federal help are protected by Los Angeles rent control laws. U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins said in a tentative ruling Monday that the city's rules apply even though federal rules allow landlords to opt out of the so-called Section 8 program if they want to charge more money. The decision was in response to a Legal Aid Foundation lawsuit filed on behalf of 22 tenants of an Echo Park building whose owners include a University of California, Los Angeles, real estate professor. But the ruling, expected to...

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A death row inmate convicted of setting a fire that killed five children must be released or retried because his constitutional rights were violated when his confession was used at trial, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled 2-1 that William Garner didn't understand his right to silence when he told police he would waive his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He gave a taped statement to police, saying he set fire to a Cincinnati apartment with six children inside to destroy evidence of his burglary, according to court...

Alcoholics Anonymous, the renowned 12-step program that directs problem drinkers to seek help from a higher power, says it's not a religion and is open to nonbelievers. But it has enough religious overtones that a parolee can't be ordered to attend its meetings as a condition of staying out of prison, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. In fact, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the constitutional dividing line between church and state in such cases is so clear that a parole officer can be sued for damages for ordering a parolee to go through...

Could ruling to protect smelt drive foes to the table to agree on restoring the Delta? For years, anyone watching the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has known that a smack-down was looming over endangered smelt. These tiny fish, a bellwether for the ecosystem, have declined over the last decade while water exports from the Delta have been rising.The Endangered Species Act gives judges wide latitude in curtailing government operations that prompt the extinction of a species. And while the smelt and other Delta fish appear to face a variety of threats -- including invasive species, water pollution and loss of habitat...

LAS VEGAS, (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled that Nevada can shut off water needed for bore hole drilling at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. In a strongly worded order focusing on federal "credibility and good faith," U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas said the Department of Energy could not ignore state limitations and continue using water for drilling test holes near the repository site. "This entire 'crisis' is self-imposed and self-created," Hunt said in his 24-page order, dated Friday but distributed among the parties on Tuesday. "The only argument the DOE makes is that...

Environmentalists still hoped for more as judge orders cutbacks to protect fish; rationing may be considered next year -- FRESNO -- California's water supply suffered a historic blow Friday when a federal judge ordered a series of cutbacks and other measures meant to protect a tiny Delta fish from going extinct. The order is expected to force water agencies up and down the state to consider water rationing next year and could force San Joaquin Valley farmers to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres, water officials said. The momentous decision did not go as far as environmentalists hoped nor as...

The Bush administration has violated a 2004 congressional deadline for presenting the latest scientific research about global warming to lawmakers and the public and must submit its report by next spring, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Federal officials have "unlawfully withheld action they are required to take," preparing a new scientific assessment by November 2004 and a research plan by July 2006, said U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland. "Congress has imposed clear-cut, unambiguous deadlines for compliance." A 1990 federal law requires the government to produce a scientific report every four years on climate change and its effects...

NASHVILLE — A state commission has rejected an effort to strip former Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison of his certification as a law enforcement officer, but a lawyer says the decision will be challenged in court. Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission voted last Friday to dismiss a complaint filed against Hutchison and “rescinded the decertification” imposed temporarily by a judge earlier, said Brian Grisham, executive director of the panel. Grisham said today the action means that, as far as the POST Commission is concerned, the matter has been put to rest. But Knoxville attorney Herbert S. Moncier, who...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nigerian villagers can go to trial in San Francisco in a lawsuit that seeks to hold Chevron Corp. responsible for military attacks that killed and wounded protesters at oil company facilities in 1998 and 1999, a federal judge has ruled. In a series of decisions Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston narrowed the lawsuit against Chevron but said a jury could consider the gist of the villagers' claims -- that the oil giant summoned troops to the protests, directed their actions and should be held accountable for the injuries and deaths of peaceful demonstrators. "This is a...

Grenada County chancellor had overstepped his boundaries -- The Mississippi Supreme Court was correct when it vacated a judge's order on Friday that banned schools in several counties from holding outdoor activities during certain hours because of extreme heat. Five school districts had asked the high court to overturn the order that would have restricted activities outside schools from 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. There's no questioning that Chancery Court Judge Mitchell Lundy has his heart in the right place. But he was severely overstepping his authority - and acting a bit like Big Brother - in deciding he knew...

The governing body for high school athletics in Mississippi asked the state Supreme Court Friday to block a chancellor’s order banning outdoor activities because of the heat. The Mississippi High School Activities Association filed a request with the high court in response to Chancellor Mitchell Lundy’s order Thursday blocking activities between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. until the record high temperatures ease. The order blocked, among other activities, outdoor football practice in a six-county area, including DeSoto County, as teams prepare for the start of the prep season the end of this month. In asking the court to issue either...

NASHVILLE - A teenage gang member wanted in the slaying of a Nashville market owner has been granted refugee status by a Canadian judge, delaying efforts to have him returned to Tennessee to face charges. Nasser Mohammed Muhsin, 16, told the Canadian court he needs refugee status because he might be hurt or killed by rival gangs if he is sent back to the U.S. Nashville police suspect Muhsin fired the shot that killed Ebadolla Ghorbani during a November robbery at the Omid Market. Two other suspects are in custody. A juvenile court arrest warrant charges Muhsin with criminal homicide,...

In a move with wide-ranging implications, a North Mississippi judge Thursday banned outdoor school activities in DeSoto and five other counties in his district because of the searing heat. The order by Chancellor Mitchell Lundy of Grenada County -- a decision that a legal expert called unusual -- halted outdoor football practices as schools gear up for the start of the prep season the end of this month. Also affected until the heat relents are volleyball and band practice, recesses for elementary school students and outdoor activities for community college students. "It is our duty to protect the minors from...

ROCKVILLE, Md. — The prosecutor in the case of a Liberian native charged with repeatedly raping and molesting a 7-year-old girl said Monday that he is filing an appeal of a controversial judge's ruling that dismissed all charges because an interpreter who spoke the suspect's rare West African dialect could not be found.Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy called the ruling last Tuesday by Judge Katherine Savage "improper," adding that his office has "requested that an appeal be taken to reverse the court's order." Savage ruled on July 17 that Mahamu Kanneh, a Liberian who received asylum in the U.S....

A 7-year-old girl said she had been raped and repeatedly molested over the course of a year. Police in Montgomery County, acting on information from a relative, soon arrested a Liberian immigrant living in Gaithersburg. They marshaled witnesses and DNA evidence to prepare for trial. What was missing -- for much of the nearly three years that followed -- was an interpreter fluent in the suspect's native language. A judge recently dropped the charges, not because she found that Mahamu Kanneh had been wrongly accused but because repeated delays in the case had, in her view, violated his right to...