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| Updated: 5/7/08 |
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Next update: 5/14/08
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News Roundup Quiet Virginia Wife Ended Interracial Marriage Ban Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down similar laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Milford, Va. The Loving v. Virginia decision overturned long-standing legal and social prohibitions against miscegenation in the United States. Celebrated at the time, the landmark case sunk to obscurity until a 1996 made-for-television movie and a 2004 book revived interest in how the young, small-town black and white couple changed history. A modest homemaker, Loving never thought she had done anything extraordinary. "It wasn't my doing," Loving told the Associated Press in a rare interview a year ago. "It was God's work." Today, according to the Census Bureau, there are 4.3 million interracial couples in the nation. That wasn't true in 1958, when then-17-year-old Mildred Jeter and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in the District. Pretty and slender, she was known by her nickname, "Bean," and she was already pregnant with the first of their three children. Loving later said she didn't realize that it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, although her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said. Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., between Richmond and Spotsylvania, to set up their home, someone called the law. Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958 and told them the District's marriage certificate was no good in Virginia. He took them to jail and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years. WASHINGTON POST | NY TIMES
States divided on approach to polygamous sect: Law officers in Arizona and Utah say their method of confronting the FLDS must differ from that of Texas. It was a showdown, of sorts, over how far states should go to keep tabs on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, the group known to endorse multiple wives for men and motherhood for underage girls. In a public spat, officials from Arizona and Utah squared off last week against a US senator who suggested that the two states, home to FLDS communities, should follow the more interventionist approach of Texas in cracking down on the breakaway Mormon sect. At the end of it all, the wrangling may well result in federal involvement in investigating the FLDS, which numbers more than 10,000 and has compounds in several Western states, Canada, and Mexico. But it also underscores why Arizona and Utah have moved with caution in dealing with the FLDS, compared with Texas' decision last month to take temporary custody of all the children living at the group's Yearning for Zion ranch in the wake of abuse complaints. The dispute began April 28 with a radio interview with Sen. Harry Reid (D) of Nevada, which drew an angry letter from the Arizona and Utah attorneys general. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Why We Need a Shield Law Attorney General Michael Mukasey is wrong when he says we do not need a federal media shield law. Mukasey recently argued in an op-ed that there is no need for Congress to provide a qualified, evidentiary privilege for journalists. As evidence, he cited a few of the many important news stories that, even in the absence of a shield law, were brought to light because of sources who provided information to journalists under a promise of confidentiality. Pending media shield legislation would impede the investigation of crimes and threats to national security, he argued. As the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I strongly disagree with him. I championed Mukasey's confirmation as attorney general, and I certainly believe that we must protect national security and preserve effective law enforcement. But a media shield law would not primarily be protection for journalists; it would be protection for the public and for our form of government. The importance of a free press is so woven into the fabric of our history that Americans often take it for granted. But when we observe fledgling democracies around the world, Americans can see just how essential a free media are to democracy -- and how easily they can be chilled. If we are to have a free press, it is necessary to protect the relationship between journalists and trusted sources to whom journalists have promised confidentiality. For this reason, every state but Wyoming has established some form of reporters' privilege. WASHINGTON POST commentary by Sen. Arlen Specter Groups planning parades or protests at the Democratic National Convention filed a lawsuit in Denver on Friday charging that the Secret Service and the City of Denver are threatening free speech — not because of tight security rules, but by the very lack of them. The suit, filed in Federal District Court, says that delays in establishing legal parade routes, and unanswered questions about security arrangements around the convention center, are undermining efforts to plan for events when Democrats gather here from Aug. 25 to 28. Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which is representing 12 groups in the lawsuit, said they had no choice but to turn to the court. With just four months until the convention, the groups want a judge to speed the scheduling and the issuing of rules governing activities outside the Pepsi Center. At the Democratic convention in Boston in 2004, First Amendment challenges could not be addressed by judges, Mr. Silverstein said, because security measures were announced too late. NY TIMES N.Y. Appeals Court Revives Hearst Heir's $20 Million Fraud Suit Against Spouse, Attorney A $20 million fraud and legal malpractice action initiated by John Randolph Hearst Jr. against his wife and their attorney has been reinstated by a New York state appellate court. Mr. Hearst has accused his wife of taking advantage of his ill health by transferring more than $20 million of his property into her name, leaving him access to only a relatively small sum and effectively disinheriting his daughter and grandchildren. Mr. Hearst also claims the couple's attorney aided and abetted the fraud. NY LAW JOURNAL
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of the Supreme Court Georgia Man Becomes First Inmate Executed Since Supreme Court Decision on Lethal Injections A Georgia man who killed his girlfriend was executed Tuesday, the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections. The roughly three dozen states around the country that use lethal injection held off on carrying out any executions for more than seven months while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of the three-drug cocktail that's used in the procedure. It marked the longest pause in U.S. executions in a quarter century. AP The Death Penalty Returns As states put their machinery of death into overdrive in the next few months, it’s time for the nation to rethink its commitment to capital punishment. NY TIMES editorial Lawyers Question Proposed Rules Governing Foreign Investment in U.S. Treasury Department officials on Friday listened to Washington attorneys rattle off a raft of concerns about the Bush administration's plans for new rules governing foreign acquisitions of U.S. assets. The changes would address procedures for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the inter-agency panel that examines U.S.-foreign deals for national security threats. A session was held to hear comments on all aspects of Treasury's proposed changes to the CFIUS process, but most focused on how they would affect investments by sovereign wealth funds, the investment arms of foreign governments. THE DEAL top Lawyers for Guantánamo Inmates Accuse U.S. of Eavesdropping The assertions are the most specific to date that officials may be violating legal principles that have generally kept government agents from eavesdropping on lawyers. NY TIMES House Panel Backs a Subpoena for Cheney’s Chief of Staff A House panel investigating the Bush administration’s approval for harsh interrogation methods voted Tuesday to issue a subpoena to David S. Addington. NY TIMES Justice System For Detainees Is Moving At a Crawl: No Sept. 11 Trials Likely Before Bush Leaves Office, Officials Say At the end of a tattered, sunbaked runway dotted with large green tents here is a building aptly called the Expeditionary Legal Complex Courtroom, surrounded by coils of concertina wire, where the most notorious alleged terrorists in U.S. custody are supposed to face charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Nearly seven years later, however, not one of the approximately 775 terrorism suspects who have been held on this island has faced a jury trial inside the new complex, and U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of the Sept. 11 suspects will before the Bush administration ends. Though men such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, are expected to be arraigned in coming months -- appearing publicly for the first time after years of secret detention and harsh interrogations -- officials say it could be a year or longer before worldwide audiences will see even the first piece of evidence or testimony against them. "I think it's a near-impossibility that these cases will be in court before the end of the administration," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, who has observed numerous court hearings on the island. "Some of the detainees haven't even seen their lawyers yet, there's incredibly complicated issues about access to evidence and discovery, and as we've seen with every single case to date, it's incredibly hard to move through a system that lacks established rules and precedent," she said. "Every little detail ends up being contested, because it's an entirely new system of justice." That new system, set up by Congress's Military Commissions Act of 2006, so far has been entangled by numerous motions that challenge its fairness and constitutionality. Military officers presiding over the cases have had to make critical decisions on the fly, including some appealed to another new court created by the same legislation. WASHINGTON POST
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