Husband Found Guilty of Killing Wife After 2nd Trial: Quincy Norton, 36, whose murder conviction was overturned in 2008 on the grounds that his defense attorney was incompetent, was found guilty yesterday in a retrial of the case in San Mateo County, California (south of SF). Norton was convicted of first-degree murder and a knife enhancement in the stabbing of his 31-year-old wife Tamika Norton. The judge who overturned his 2008 conviction was convinced that Norton's attorney in the first trial deprived him of "potentially meritorious defenses" including retesting a knife for DNA evidence that could have implicated someone else. Norton will face 26 years to life in prison. Steve Wagstaffe, the chief deputy district attorney says, "He richly deserves to spend the rest of his life locked up in a cage for the evilness of his murdering the mother of his children." San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Henry Lee has more on the story here.
Washington Inmate Voting Case: Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, reports on the Ninth Circuit decision upholding a Washington law to prohibit felons from voting, "even if the ban disproportionately harms minorities." See prior post here. If the court chose not to uphold Washington's law disenfranchising felons, it could have invalidated laws in the eight other states in the circuit, including California, if courts found that a state's system of arresting and prosecuting suspects was racially biased. But, the 11-judge appeals court panel did uphold the Washington law and concluded that federal civil rights laws do not apply to a state's inmate voting ban. The minority inmates would have to prove that a state's law or justice system was biased against them. Attorney Ralph Kasarda of the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, which filed arguments supporting the Washington law, said the ruling means "states don't have to color-code their criminal justice systems.... [S]tates would have to monitor their criminal justice systems to ensure that the arrests and convictions were racially balanced," if unintentional racial bias was enough to invalidate the inmate voting ban.
Fort Hood Shooter Refuses to Participate in Sanity Review: CNN reporters, Larry Shaughnessy and Charley Keyes, report that former Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people last year at Fort Hood, Texas, refused to participate in a psychiatric evaluation yesterday. The request for a sanity review came a week before Hasan's Article 32 hearing next week, an important pre-trial procedure in which the first public testimony is given in the case. Hasan's lawyer, John Galligan, believes this psychic evaluation is an Army attempt to "distract" him as he prepares for next week's hearing and has instructed his client not to talk to anyone connected with the sanity review.
Washington Inmate Voting Case: Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, reports on the Ninth Circuit decision upholding a Washington law to prohibit felons from voting, "even if the ban disproportionately harms minorities." See prior post here. If the court chose not to uphold Washington's law disenfranchising felons, it could have invalidated laws in the eight other states in the circuit, including California, if courts found that a state's system of arresting and prosecuting suspects was racially biased. But, the 11-judge appeals court panel did uphold the Washington law and concluded that federal civil rights laws do not apply to a state's inmate voting ban. The minority inmates would have to prove that a state's law or justice system was biased against them. Attorney Ralph Kasarda of the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, which filed arguments supporting the Washington law, said the ruling means "states don't have to color-code their criminal justice systems.... [S]tates would have to monitor their criminal justice systems to ensure that the arrests and convictions were racially balanced," if unintentional racial bias was enough to invalidate the inmate voting ban.
Fort Hood Shooter Refuses to Participate in Sanity Review: CNN reporters, Larry Shaughnessy and Charley Keyes, report that former Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people last year at Fort Hood, Texas, refused to participate in a psychiatric evaluation yesterday. The request for a sanity review came a week before Hasan's Article 32 hearing next week, an important pre-trial procedure in which the first public testimony is given in the case. Hasan's lawyer, John Galligan, believes this psychic evaluation is an Army attempt to "distract" him as he prepares for next week's hearing and has instructed his client not to talk to anyone connected with the sanity review.
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