Free Republic

Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision says independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary. The court upheld a lower court's ruling against a driver who challenged a speeding conviction that had been based on testimony from police...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered “sexually dangerous” after their prison terms are complete. The high court reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of considered “sexually dangerous.” “The statute is a ’necessary and proper’ means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned by who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of...

Richard Goldstone, author of the notorious Goldstone report, did not become a South African judge in the post-Apartheid Mandela Era, as The New York Times and other media have erroneously reported. He accepted a judgeship during the worst days of Apartheid and helped legitimate one of the most racist regimes in the world by granting the imprimatur of the rule of law to some of the most undemocratic and discriminatory decrees. Goldstone was–quite literally–a hanging judge. He imposed and affirmed death sentences for more than two dozen blacks under circumstances where whites would almost certainly have escaped the noose. And...

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) - A foster father who previously faced 85 counts of criminal sexual penetration against a minor has been arrested on six counts of the same crime after a different alleged victim videotaped 1 of the incidents. Forty-5-year-old Todd Mortensen confessed to the six counts, which reportedly occurred between March 22 and March 30 in his home, where the 12-year-old alleged victim lived as a foster child. Mortensen was arrested...and booked into the San Juan County Adult Detention Center on six charges of second-degree criminal sexual contact of a minor younger than the age 13. SNIP Mortensen is...

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge in Chicago has refused to issue a subpoena for President Barack Obama to testify at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's political corruption trial.

“Convinced that they own the public sidewalk” In blow to Planned Parenthood, judge acquits San Mateo pro-life activist of contempt Following an April 16 hearing, San Mateo Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Lee found longtime pro-life advocate Ross Foti not guilty of 21 counts of contempt, handing a defeat to Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, which for years has been trying to banish sidewalk counselors from in front of its San Mateo facility, Life Legal Defense Foundation reports.

After the joy of a wedding and the adoption of a baby came arguments that couldn't be resolved, leading Angelique Naylor to file for divorce. That left her fighting both the woman she married in Massachusetts and the state of Texas, which says a union granted in a state where same-sex marriage is legal can't be dissolved with a divorce in a state where it's not. A judge in Austin granted the divorce, but Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is appealing the decision. He also is appealing a divorce granted to a gay couple in Dallas, saying protecting the "traditional...

An Oregon jury found the Boy Scouts of America and the local scout chapter negligent today in a landmark case that accused the iconic organization of covering up alleged sexual abuse of several of its boy scouts for years. The Boy Scouts of America face charges of sexual abuse by scout leaders.The nine-member jury ordered the organization to pay $1.4 million in damages, and will now move into a punitive phase that could result in the Boy Scouts of America paying a penalty that could reach $25 million. That decision is not expected for weeks. ~ Skip ~ In the...

Justice Stevens turned out to be one of those Republican appointees to the Court who “grew” during his tenure. That was nowhere more evident than in cases challenging the legality of racial preferences. Consider that in the landmark Bakke case (1978), Stevens wrote an opinion joined by three other justices finding that a medical school admissions quota violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here is how he began that opinion: Section 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, provides: "No person in the United States shall, on the...

A judge in Travis County declined Wednesday to consider Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's request to intervene in the county's first same-sex divorce case, letting stand the judge's February decision to grant a divorce to two women who had been married in another state. Abbott's deputies had argued in court filings that Angelique Naylor, 39, and Sabina Daly, 42, may not be legally granted a divorce because Texas law defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Naylor and Daly were married in 2004 in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal. They returned to their home in Austin after...

President Obama's judicial nominees are getting more dangerous with each White House announcement. If you don't believe us, consider one judge's opinion that the "sexual sadism" of a multiple rapist-murderer was "clearly a mitigating factor" that argued against executing the murderer and perhaps even against convicting him in the first place. Or that a type of Megan's Law sex-offender registry should be overturned because it "stigmatizes nondangerous registrants." Even a child-porn convict should serve a sentence less than half as long as official guidelines suggest if his mental and emotional condition is fragile. U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny of...

Matthew Vadum NewsRealIf you thought you sent representatives and senators to Washington, D.C., to exercise the constitutionally mandated power of the purse — you’re wrong. Silly you. You wasted all that time in civics class learning a whole bunch of outdated claptrap about separation of powers and the lawmaking process for nothing. The spending power belongs to federal judges now, regardless of what that quaint little document called the U.S. Constitution says. That’s what ACORN’s favorite federal judge, Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York ruled Wednesday. In December Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, helped ACORN out by...

FAIRMONT, W.Va. (Associated Press) -- Prosecutors in West Virginia have dropped a misdemeanor charge that accused an FBI security guard of spying on girls as they tried on prom gowns at a Fairmont mall. A Marion County magistrate convicted Charles Brian Hommema of invasion of privacy in December.

ANN ARBOR — A Michigan man sent to prison for 15 years is getting a new trial after the judge failed to do a routine procedure — ask the jury to take an oath. Timothy Becktel was sentenced in 2008 for assault with intent to murder. But his appellate lawyer successfully argued that the verdict should be thrown out because the jury didn't swear to return an honest decision based on law and evidence.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Employees at the U.S. liberal grass-roots group ACORN who were caught on video giving tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute have been cleared of criminal wrongdoing, New York prosecutors said on Monday. The organization has been reeling since a YouTube video was disseminated last September showing ACORN workers giving advice on how to flout the law to two conservative activists who posed as a pimp and a prostitute. The U.S. Congress then voted by wide margins to prohibit the federal government from funding ACORN, and the U.S. Census Bureau ended...

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on? From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser. We may now have a clue as...

Forget about same sex marriage, the State of Texas is trying to block same sex divorce. Attorney General Greg Abbott is stepping in to urge a judge in Travis County to reject the divorce petition of a San Antonio woman who married her female partner in Massachusetts, where same sex marriage is legal, and now want to divorce in Texas. "A divorce is an ending or a termination of a valid legal marriage," Abbott said. "In this case, there was no valid legal marriage recognized by the state of Texas." The issue of same sex divorce is on the cutting...

...Abbott is trying to halt the divorce of two women in Austin on grounds their Massachusetts marriage is not recognized in Texas. A Travis County state district judge on Feb. 10 granted a divorce in court to Sabina Daly, 41, of San Antonio, and Angelique Naylor, 39, of Austin. Abbott's aides went to court the following day to block the divorce before the written decree was entered. “A divorce is an ending or a termination of a valid legal marriage,” Abbott said Tuesday. “In this instance there was no valid legal marriage recognized by the state of Texas. Texas can't...

By Peter J. Smith SAN FRANCISCO, February 9, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In what he describes as “an open secret,” a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle says that the federal judge presiding over the case against California's Proposition 8 identifies as a homosexual. The revelation now raises questions over whether Chief Justice Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for California's Northern District should recuse himself in the federal trial against Prop. 8, California’s ban on homosexual “marriage.” Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross write: “Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say...

The lede from an article out Sunday in the SF Chronicle reads as follows: The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay. Interesting. So, what to make of this fact? According to the article, folks aren’t making much of it. Andy Pugno, general counsel for the group that sponsored the Prop. 8 campaign, rebuffed claims that his group might bring it up if Walker ultimately rules against them. “We are not going to...