Novalawcity

They Don't Shoot Horses Anymore

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Earl Wesley Berry.  Last Saturday, Eight Belles, the filly who fractured both her front ankles in the Kentucky Derby, was euthanized at the track.  What is the common denominator here? 

The Mississippi Death Row inmate's execution was stayed pending the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of Kentucky's form of lethal injection, the so-called "three drug cocktail."  Kentucky Death Row inmates are challenging the cocktail on the grounds that it violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  The filly, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens suggested at a conference of the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, died more humanely than do human beings who are injected with the lethal cocktail, because she did not receive one of the drugs found in the cocktail. 

Mildred Loving has died

Mildred Loving, a plaintiff in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia that overturned the last segregation laws, died on May 2 at age 68.  From the New York Times: 

By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”

Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”  

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

For those who haven't heard their story before, it is well worth clicking through to read.

 

State Claims Copyright in Statutes' Arrangement and Subject-matter

The Citizen Media law Project has a nice post considering the State of Oregon's assertions of copyright over the state code. citmedialaw

Trump: “I have a Ph.D. in legal fees. I know when fees are fair and when they are not.”

Donald Trump's comments on a spat with his lawyers over fees made news recently. More.

Are most felony pro se defendants ill-served by the decision to self-represent?

From the SSRN Abstract: "Somewhat surprisingly, the evidence establishes that pro se felony defendants in state court do just as well as represented felony defendants, and the vast majority of pro se felony defendants - nearly 80% - displayed no signs of mental illness." Article

Innocence Week @ NSU Law

NSU Law is marking Innocence Week in several ways. (If you're local, you've probably noticed the flyers featuring the 215 and counting exonerated around the Law Center.)

Last night, Alan Crotzer, who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for 24 years, 6 months, 13 days and four hours, addressed the NSU Law community.  If you missed the event or want to read about it, check out the Miami Herald article.  You can also catch an excerpt from Crotzer's talk at Local 10, where it was the lead story on last night's local news.

The Florida Senate is currently considering a bill that would provide Crotzer and others like him with compensation, including college tuition credits.  If you'd like to voice your support for the bill, find your senator here.

Tax Rebates

The USA.gov blog details the amount taxpayers can expect under the new Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Article

Law Firms more 'Cuddly?'

The NYT reports that Biglaw firms are becoming better places to work recently due to employment policy changes. Article

Is Your City a Sanctuary City?

Sanctuary cities instruct municipal employees to not report the presence of undocumented persons to the federal government. Miami is one such city. See the list.

The evolution of the presumption of death

Earlier this week, millionaire adventurer  Steve Fossett's wife filed a petition in the Cook County Circuit Court to have her husband declared dead.  Fossett went missing after taking off on a solo flight in Nevada about 12 weeks ago.

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, with some help from lawyers and legal scholars, has posted an interesting article about the complex legal issues involved in having a missing person declared dead, and how they are evolving:

The line of presumed death isn’t written into [Illinois] laws as it is in some other states, in Social Security regulations and in the widely used Uniform Probate Code (which sets the line at 5 years), but it appears in numerous court rulings in Illinois, including, most recently, a 1982 opinion from the Illinois Supreme Court.

“The presumption of death after the unexplained absence of seven years developed after 1800,” wrote law professor Edward Sentell in an extensive 2004 article. . . .

Sentell’s article, which is included in a webliography of related links posed below, points out that some legal experts have been blasting the seven-year presumption as “arbitrary, unpractical, anachronistic, and obstructive” for more than 100 years.

Seven years does seem like a rather long time to wait given the trail of electronic records that living people tend to leave these days, and given how easy it’s become for us to communicate instantly over great distances. Mysterious disappearances now become ominous in only a matter of hours.