Category Archive for : ‘COURT DECISIONS’

Newsday/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher

The Supreme Court said yesterday it won’t consider reviving a federal law intended toprotect children from explicit material on the Internet.  The Child Online Protection Act waspassed in 1998 but never took effect because lower federal courts struck it down asunconstitutional.  The American Civil Liberties Union fought the law, arguing it wouldcriminalize constitutionally protected speech on the Internet.  The law would have barredWeb sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet.  Acknowledgingthat most material on the Internet deserves First Amendment protection, the executive director

New York Times/Adam Liptak

Lawyers for the State of Louisiana asked the United State Supreme Court on Monday toreconsider its decision last month striking down laws that made child rape a capital offense. The lawyers said the court’s decision overlooked two crucial legal developments: a 2006 federal lawand a 2007 executive order making child rape a capital crime under military law.

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A divided Supreme Court ruled yesterday that is is unconstitutional to execute someone whonrapes a child, issuing a broad decision that reserves the death penalty for murderers and those whoncommit crimes against the state. 

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(Washington)

Patrick Kennedy, 43, raped an 8 year old girl and now the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that he may be executed for the rape.  Both sides say the sentence could expand a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held the death penalty for rape violated the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.  The high court said then that its ruling applied only to adult victims.  Louisiana law allows the death penalty for the aggravated rape of someone less than 12 years old.  Kennedy was convicted in 2003 of

New York State’s highest court yesterday rejected convicted sex offender Todd North’s attempt to avoid being placed on a public state registry.  The Court of Appeals decision after North, of Jamestown, argued that he committed his crime before the applicable state law was adopted and that the federal charge of which he was convicted didn’t equal the state charge upon which mandatory registration is based.  He argued that those loopholes exempted him from registering under the state’s version of Megan’s Law.  North pleaded guilty in 2004 to possession of child

Marcus Dixon was an 18 year old high school football player with a 3.96 grade-point average and a scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University when he was arrested. He was convicted of aggravated child molestation and statutory rape for having consensual sex with a fellow student. The girl was only 15 at the time. Attorneys for Dixon told the Georgia Supreme Court in January that the teen’s automatic 10 year sentence amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Prosecutors insisted the mandatory prison term was exactly what state law intended for Dixon.