Appeal Fails Twice-Hit DUI Suspect

ST. LOUIS -- A man who authorities say drunkenly wrecked his pickup truck and was sprawled injured on a road before being twice run over by another intoxicated driver isn't having much luck suing two law enforcers he claims failed to protect him.

The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a lower court's ruling to throw out Michael Dodd's lawsuit against Missouri Highway Patrol Trooper Steven Jones and Lawrence County sheriff's deputy Mike Thorn, affirming that it lacked merit.

By witness accounts, according to the 8th Circuit's ruling, Dodd "had way more than enough to drink" and "was pretty drunk" when he fell off a bar stool at the Route 66 Tavern in southwestern Missouri's Lawrence County early Dec. 29, 2002, just moments before the bar's workers tossed him out for breaking a beer mug.

Soon after Dodd drove away, the appellate court wrote, three other patrons of the tavern happened upon Dodd's truck partly in a ditch along a county road, with Dodd sprawled half-conscious on the pavement. Two passers-by tended to Dodd and called emergency personnel, covering him with cloth to keep him warm.

Jones and Thorn responded within minutes, parking with their headlights on and emergency lights flashing. Fearing that Dodd may have a spinal injury, they kept him there as Jones tried to read Dodd's blood-alcohol content on a portable breath-testing device.

Minutes later, when another pickup truck approached, Jones waved his arms and flashlight to warn that driver about the crash site. But the motorist, with a blood-alcohol content authorities say later tested at twice the state's legal threshold for drunkenness, hit Dodd and then that victim's truck, according to the 8th Circuit's ruling.

Jones and Thorn, with weapons drawn, ordered the motorist to stop, but the driver shifted his truck into reverse and ran over Dodd again, stopping only when Jones rapped on the driver's-side window, the 8th Circuit found.

That driver was arrested for careless and imprudent driving, though the status of those charges was not clear Tuesday.

Before Dodd was rushed to the hospital, Jones again tried to assess Dodd's blood-alcohol level and pressed the device close to the unresponsive man's lips. Testing Dodd's normal exhalation, Jones said he got "plenty of air to get a reading" well above .08 -- the state's legal limit of drunkenness -- and placed Dodd under arrest for driving while intoxicated.

At Jones' request, a paramedic took a blood sample from Dodd to be tested for alcohol and drugs.

Dodd, 40, of Billings, Mo., was charged with being a persistent drunken-driver, careless and imprudent driving, and driving with a revoked licenses. Online court records show those charges remain unresolved. He has no listed home telephone number and could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

In first suing Jones and Thorn, Dodd alleged that the officers failed to protect him from the other motorist by not parking their vehicles or setting out road flares in the direction that that man approached. Dodd also maintained that the extraction of his blood sample was an unconstitutional search and seizure.

In his lawsuit, the 8th Circuit found, Dodd contended that Thorn and Jones "placed him in a worse position than what prevailed before they arrived, and that he was thus subjected to a "state-created danger," with the officers' emergency lights perhaps distracting the driver who ultimately ran over him.

The 8th Circuit called that "too speculative," ultimately finding that "the officers plainly did not act with a purpose to harm Dodd."

Thorn, still a Lawrence County deputy, declined to discuss the matter Tuesday, saying he had not yet seen the ruling. A message left with Jones at his workplace was not immediately returned.

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Marine Corps' Iraq killing appeal heard in Calif.

Published October 13, 2010

| Associated Press

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. –  The Marine Corps has asked an appeals court to reinstate the conviction of a Camp Pendleton Marine over the killing of an unarmed Iraqi.

Attorneys argued before the military's highest court, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C.

Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III of Plymouth, Mass., spent fours years in a military prison after being convicted of killing a retired Iraqi policeman in 2006. Authorities say the man was dragged from his home in Anbar province and shot by Marines who then framed him as an insurgent.

Hutchins' conviction was overturned this year on grounds that he didn't get a fair trial.

He's now stationed at Pendleton.

His attorney, Capt. Babu Kaza, says the case against his client is without merit.

Six other Marines and a Navy corpsman were convicted or pleaded guilty in the killing.

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Gov't won't appeal decision to ban witness in NY

NEW YORK –  The U.S. government announced Sunday it would prosecute the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to face a civilian trial without its star witness because appealing a judge's ruling excluding him could cause significant delay and inconvenience other witnesses and victims.

Besides, the government said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, there was enough evidence without the star witness to convict Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani of conspiring in 1998 to blow up two U.S. embassies in Africa, killing 224 people, including a dozen Americans.

The decision by the government not to appeal clears the way for the trial to resume Tuesday, when opening statements are expected to begin after a jury is chosen from a pool of about 65 potential jurors in Manhattan.

In the letter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said the government disagreed with the judge's decision and would have appealed it under different circumstances. But he said many trial witnesses had planned to come to New York based on the long-scheduled date of the trial and some might even be unwilling or unable to return if the trial faced a significant delay.

He said many victims have already arrived in New York after a long wait to see Ghailani face trial after having traveled significant distances.

"An appeal at this juncture would obviously cause a delay — a delay of uncertain, and perhaps significant, length," the letter said. "Weighing all of the circumstances, the government does not wish to delay the trial in order to take an appeal."

The judge had handed the government a significant setback days earlier when he ruled that the star witness, Hussein Abebe, a former cab driver from Tanzania, could not testify that Ghailani bought explosives from him. The judge said the government learned about Abebe when Ghailani underwent a coercive interrogation at a secret CIA-run camp overseas.

"The court has not reached this conclusion lightly," the judge wrote in his decision. "It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction."

During that hearing, defense lawyer Peter Quijano tried to show that Abebe felt coerced to testify because he feared law enforcement, but Abebe insisted that was not so.

Another lawyer for Ghailani, Steve Zissou, said the government's decision not to appeal was "a significant victory for the Constitution."

"As we saw during his testimony, Mr. Abebe was hardly a credible witness," Zissou said.

Ghailani has been accused by the government of being a bomb maker, document forger and aide to Osama bin Laden. He has pleaded not guilty and has denied knowing that TNT and oxygen tanks he delivered would be used to make a bomb.

There was little controversy when Ghailani was brought to New York for trial in 2009, but the subject of where to try detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, became heated after Attorney General Eric Holder announced last November that professed Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others would be tried blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. Holder later said he was reconsidering the decision.

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Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this story.

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Israeli court rejects Nobel laureate's appeal

Published October 01, 2010

| Associated Press

JERUSALEM –  An Israeli court on Friday rejected an Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate's appeal against her deportation orders over entering Israel while being banned from the country for trying to reach Gaza on a blockade-busting vessel in June.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire was detained at an airport lockup earlier this week for violating the conditions of her ban imposed in June, when she was aboard a Gaza-bound ship trying to breach the blockade.

At the time, Maguire was told she couldn't return for 10 years except with special approval.

The district court rejected her appeal but gave her 48 hours to allow time for a Supreme Court appeal.

Maguire, 66, is an outspoken champion of Palestinian statehood. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work with Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Israel has banned other pro-Palestinian activists from entering, including Jewish-American linguist Noam Chomsky in May. The government later said that was a mistake.

In June, Maguire tried to reach Gaza aboard the Rachel Corrie vessel that attempted to break Israel's three-year naval blockade of Gaza. After capturing that ship, Israel detained and deported her and other activists on board.

That ship's takeover followed a deadly Israeli raid in May of another Gaza-bound ship — part of a Turkish flotilla — that sparked international condemnation of Israel after its commandos killed nine Turkish activists, one of them a dual Turkish-American citizen. Both sides claimed self-defense.

Israel has since eased the embargo on the Palestinian coastal strip, run by the militant Hamas, but has kept the naval blockade in place because of concerns that Hamas will smuggle in weapons.

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Court hears appeal in 'West Memphis Three' case

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. –  Justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court sharply questioned the state attorney general's office Thursday, asking what damage could be done if a judge examined evidence that allegedly exonerates an inmate sentenced to death for killing three Cub Scouts in 1993.

"What harm is there in allowing (inmate Damien Echols) to present all evidence?" Special Justice Jeff Priebe asked senior assistant attorney general David Raupp.

Raupp responded: "The harm is to the criminal justice system's interest in finality and the work that gets done in evaluating whether justice can be served."

Echols, 35, has been on Arkansas' death row since he was 20 years old, sentenced to death for the 1993 killings of 8-year-olds Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. He's maintained his innocence since his arrest and argues that he would be acquitted if retried on the charges.

The state Supreme Court upheld Echols' conviction in 1996, and Echols filed a new appeal after the court granted him permission to test DNA evidence from the crime scene, where the boys were found beaten, nude and hog-tied.

Thursday's oral arguments drew a crowd of more than 150 people who lined up outside the Supreme Court hours before the hearing began. One of the first in line was John Mark Byers, the stepfather of victim Christopher Byers.

He said that since Echols' trial in 1994, he's become "100 percent" convinced that the wrong man is behind bars.

"The evidence points to his innocence," Byers said.

A key part of Echols' appeal is analysis of DNA evidence that wasn't tested at the time of his trial. According to a DNA report filed with his appeal, none of the genetic material tested from the crime scene matched Echols or Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, the two other men convicted of murder in the case who are known as the West Memphis Three.

"I personally don't believe the three could have gone out there and opened a Twinkie and not leave any DNA," Byers said. "The facts don't fit the evidence."

The mother of victim Steve Branch has also said publicly that she thinks Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley are innocent. Michael Moore's parents could not be reached for comment Thursday, but they have repeatedly declined to talk about the case with reporters.

Justices asked several questions during the hourlong oral arguments, focusing primarily on what would happen if they sent the case back to a lower court for another hearing to determine whether Echols deserves a new trial. Such a move is short of the full retrial Echols has requested, but would be a small victory for his defense.

The state argues that Echols is merely trying to re-argue the case that he already lost before a jury.

"You can't bring in evidence that is just further reweighing of evidence," Raupp said.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel issued a statement after the proceedings, saying his office used "solid precedent" to argue against a new trial for Echols.

"Our justice system affords safeguards to protect the rights of all," McDaniel said. "That includes not only defendants, but also, in this case, the three innocent little boys who were viciously murdered in 1993."

Echols' attorney, Dennis Riordan, argued that it's critical for the Supreme Court to allow Echols to introduce evidence that could exonerate him.

"We believe that there will sometime have to be an order for a new trial," Riordan told the justices.

Echols has lost an appeal before Circuit Court Judge David Burnett, but if the Supreme Court orders another hearing, it will likely be before a new judge. Burnett, who also presided over Echols' murder trial in 1994, is running unopposed for the state Senate in November and cannot serve as both a senator and a judge.

The case has drawn interest far beyond Arkansas. Last month, a rally in Little Rock to support Echols' legal fund featured Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder, actor Johnny Depp and Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines and drew more than 2,000 people.

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