Seminole County Bail Bonds – Supreme Court 4-4 Rulings Absent Garland Leave a Legal Muddle

Source     :  US News
By            :  Alicia Bannon
Category :  Seminole County Bail Bonds, Bail Bondsman in Sanford

Supreme Court 4-4 Rulings Absent Garland Leave a Legal Muddle

The legal world got a glimpse this week at what happens when the Supreme Court is short-staffed. The high court split 4-4 on whether public employees can be required to pay union fees to support the collective bargaining activities of labor unions they choose not to belong to – an issue that made it to the Supreme Court after the justices previously raised questions about the constitutionality of such fees. The split decision means the lower court ruling upholding the fees stands with no new guidance for lower courts, and lingering uncertainty for public sector unions and employees alike about their rights. It was the second 4-4 Supreme Court ruling in as many weeks. As the Senate showdown continues over Merrick Garland’s nomination, these split rulings show how a vacancy can prevent the court from doing its job. They highlight why Senate Republicans should give fair consideration to President Barack Obama’s nominee, as the Senate has consistently done throughout history – even in election years. The Supreme Court’s job is to evaluate cases and come up with national legal standards, often related to hotly contested issues. One of its roles is as a tie-breaker. The United States has several circuit courts covering different states across the country. Often, one circuit court will decide an issue one way, and another will decide it the opposite way. Cases involving the Affordable Care Act and marriage equality are two recent examples. The Supreme Court resolves these splits, providing uniformity and certainty in our often-muddled legal system.

The Supreme Court also on occasion revises or overturns one of its previous decisions, as it is being asked to do this term in connection with affirmative action. Unless and until the Supreme Court revisits a previous decision, that ruling binds all other courts in the country even if they disagree with its reasoning. The recent 4-4 rulings show exactly what’s at stake when this system breaks down. The union fees case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was expected to be a blockbuster. Two years earlier, a majority of justices signed an opinion suggesting the court should reconsider a prior ruling upholding mandatory union fees. Friedrichs presented an opportunity for the court to either set a new standard or reaffirm its previous decision. Instead, a one-sentence opinion declared the court “equally divided” in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. The lower court ruling stands, but the same legal doubts that put the case before the Supreme Court in the first place remain, creating uncertainty about how to interpret and apply existing law. The other 4-4 case, Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore, addressed whether spouses can be held as guarantors for bank loans. It made fewer headlines, but was also decided in a single sentence. Because various federal and state courts had resolved the legal issue differently, spouses were being treated differently under the same set of laws, depending on the state. The Supreme Court was expected to create a single rule. Instead, lenders and loan seekers face a legal patchwork across the country.

If the Senate continues to stall Garland’s nomination, more and more cases could be left undecided, creating confusing and conflicting legal standards nationwide. In the coming months, those include hot-button topics like immigration and abortion. (The threat of another 4-4 split may also explain an unusual order issued Tuesday in a case challenging the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, seeking additional briefing and input on a compromise position crafted by the court.) If the Senate waits until 2017 to consider a nominee, then the Supreme Court’s next term would face similar divisions. The Framers of the Constitution created three branches of government – the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary – and outlined clear roles and responsibilities for each. All three are equally essential to a functioning democracy. The Framers also created a nomination process for the Supreme Court, which says the president selects a nominee, and the Senate provides its “advice and consent.”
With so much at stake, it’s time for that process to work as intended. Obama fulfilled his duty in putting forward a nominee for the Supreme Court. Now it is the Senate’s turn to offer advice and consent, by providing Garland with a hearing and a vote. A strong majority of Americans agree. A recent CNN poll, for example, found that 64 percent of adults want Republican leadership to hold hearings for Garland. The Supreme Court is essential to our democracy. It’s time for the Senate to do its job, so the Supreme Court can do its job and interpret the laws of the United States.

Read more: usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-03-30/supreme-court-4-4-rulings-absent-garland-leave-a-legal-muddle

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Apple remains in dark on how FBI hacked iPhone without help

Source     :  cumberlink
By            :  TAMI ABDOLLAH
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

Apple remains in dark on how FBI hacked iPhone without help

The FBI’s announcement that it mysteriously hacked into an iPhone is a public setback for Apple Inc., as consumers suddenly discover they can’t keep their most personal information safe. Meanwhile, Apple remains in the dark about how to restore the security of its flagship product. The government said it was able to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a mass shooting in California, but it didn’t say how. That puzzled Apple software engineers — and outside experts — about how the FBI broke the digital locks on the phone without Apple’s help. It also complicated Apple’s job repairing flaws that jeopardize its software.

The Justice Department’s announcement that it was dropping a legal fight to compel Apple to help it access the phone also took away any obvious legal avenues Apple might have used to learn how the FBI did it. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym vacated her Feb. 16 order, which compelled Apple to help the FBI hack their phone, on Tuesday. The Justice Department declined through a spokeswoman to comment Tuesday. A few clues have emerged. A senior law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the FBI managed to defeat an Apple security feature that threatened to delete the phone’s contents if the FBI failed to enter the correct passcode combination after 10 tries. That allowed the government to repeatedly and continuously test passcodes in what’s known as a brute-force attack until the right code is entered and the phone is unlocked.

It wasn’t clear how the FBI dealt with a related Apple security feature that introduces increasing time delays between guesses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the technique publicly. FBI Director James Comey has said with those features removed, the FBI could break into the phone in 26 minutes. The FBI hacked into the iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook, who died with his wife in a gun battle with police after they killed 14 people in December in San Bernardino. The iPhone, issued to Farook by his employer, the county health department, was found in a vehicle the day after the shooting.

The FBI is reviewing information from the iPhone, and it is unclear whether anything useful can be found. Apple said in a statement Monday that the legal case to force its cooperation “should never have been brought,” and it promised to increase the security of its products. CEO Tim Cook has said the Cupertino-based company is constantly trying to improve security for its users. The FBI’s announcement — even without revealing precise details — that it had hacked the iPhone was at odds with the government’s firm recommendations for nearly two decades that security researchers always work cooperatively and confidentially with software manufacturers before revealing that a product might be susceptible to hackers. The aim is to ensure that American consumers stay as safe online as possible and prevent premature disclosures that might damage a U.S. company or the economy. As far back as 2002, the Homeland Security Department ran a working group that included leading industry technology industry executives to advise the president on how to keep confidential discoveries by independent researchers that a company’s software could be hacked until it was already fixed. Even now, the Commerce Department has been trying to fine-tune those rules. The next meeting of a conference on the subject is April 8 in Chicago and it’s unclear how the FBI’s behavior in the current case might influence the government’s fragile relationship with technology companies or researchers.

The industry’s rules are not legally binding, but the government’s top intelligence agency said in 2014 that such vulnerabilities should be reported to companies. “When federal agencies discover a new vulnerability in commercial and open source software — a so-called ‘zero day’ vulnerability because the developers of the vulnerable software have had zero days to fix it — it is in the national interest to responsibly disclose the vulnerability rather than to hold it for an investigative or intelligence purpose,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement in April 2014. The statement recommended generally divulging such flaws to manufacturers “unless there is a clear national security or law enforcement need.” Last week a team from Johns Hopkins University said they had found a security bug in Apple’s iMessage service that would allow hackers under certain circumstances to decrypt some text messages. The team reported its findings to Apple in November and published an academic paper after Apple fixed it.

“That’s the way the research community handles the situation. And that’s appropriate,” said Susan Landau, professor of cybersecurity policy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She said it was acceptable for the government to find a way to unlock the phone but said it should reveal its method to Apple. Mobile phones are frequently used to improve cybersecurity, for example, as a place to send a backup code to access a website or authenticate a user. The chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, said keeping details secret about a flaw affecting millions of iPhone users “is exactly opposite the disclosure practices of the security research community. The FBI and Apple have a common goal here: to keep people safe and secure. This is the FBI prioritizing an investigation over the interests of hundreds of millions of people worldwide.”

Read more: cumberlink.com/news/science/us-hacks-iphone-ends-legal-battle-but-questions-linger/article_c5e017bb-0e51-59a5-ad1d-7160aaf2b025.html

Bail Bond Sanford – Supreme Court Skeptical on a Speedy Trial Argument

Source     :  New York Times
By             :  ADAM LIPTAK
Category :  Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

Supreme Court Skeptical on a Speedy Trial Argument

Brandon T. Betterman pleaded guilty to jumping bail in the spring of 2012. He spent the next 14 months in a Montana jail waiting to hear what his punishment would be. He complained to the judge, saying the delay had put him on an “emotional roller coaster due to the anxiety and depression caused by the uncertainty.” In the summer of 2013, the judge finally sentenced him to seven years in prison, with four years suspended. On Monday, Mr. Betterman’s lawyer tried to convince a skeptical Supreme Court that the delay had violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of the right to a speedy trial. The Supreme Court has never said whether that right applies to the sentencing proceedings that follow convictions. The answer matters, Justice Elena Kagan said on Monday, because the vast majority of criminal prosecutions end with guilty pleas.

“In most cases these days,” she said, “most of the actual adjudication of contested issues goes on in sentencing rather than at the trial stage, given that we don’t have very many trials anymore.” But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said there would be problems in extending the right from trials, which adjudicate guilt, to sentencings, which determine punishment. “All of our speedy trial decisions say there’s only one remedy, and that is ‘case over,’” Justice Ginsburg said. “Dismissal is the only appropriate remedy.” Mr. Betterman’s lawyer, Fred A. Rowley Jr., said he was not asking for an outright dismissal of the charges against his client. “There’s two possible outcomes at the guilt stage: guilt or innocence,” he said. “At sentencing, the situation is quite different. There’s greater opportunity for tailoring.”

An appropriate remedy for the 14-month delay in sentencing, Mr. Rowley said, “would be to reduce Mr. Betterman’s sentence by the period of delay.” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not see the logic. “I don’t know why reducing the sentence by the length of the unconstitutional delay, the supposedly unconstitutional delay, undoes the damage that’s been done by the delay,” he said. Justice Alito also quoted the pertinent constitutional text, which guarantees “the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The reference to a jury, he suggested, meant that the right applies only to the adjudication of guilt by a jury, rather than the sentence imposed by a judge.
The Montana solicitor general, Dale Schowengerdt, said there was good reason to treat trials differently from sentencings. “The Speedy Trial Clause,” he said, “does not include sentencing delay because its purpose is to protect a presumptively innocent defendant from the harms associated with a criminal charge.”

After conviction, he said, the calculus changes. “For example, there can be no anxiety over public accusation because the accusation has been confirmed,” Mr. Schowengerdt said. “At the moment of conviction, a defendant’s liberty is justly deprived.” Ginger D. Anders, a lawyer for the federal government, argued in support of Montana. But she said that a different approach might be required in death-penalty cases, where, she said, “there are some respects in which you treat the penalty phase as an extension of the trial.” Several justices said it was possible that sentencing delays may violate a different constitutional right, that of due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. But Justice Kagan was skeptical. “It seems a very odd place to park this right and this remedy,” she said of the Due Process Clause. “It seems much more natural that you would do it under the Speedy Trial Clause on the view that the trial has to do with both the adjudication of guilt and the determination of the proper sentence.” Mr. Betterman had pressed only a speedy trial claim in the case, Betterman v. Montana, No. 14-1457.

Read more: nytimes.com/2016/03/29/us/politics/supreme-court-skeptical-on-a-speedy-trial-argument.html

Sanford Bail Bond – How a Seventh-Day Adventist and peyote led to Supreme Court fights over contraception

Source      : Dailyk OS
By             : Susan Grigsby
Category  : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

How a Seventh-Day Adventist and peyote led to Supreme Court fights over contraception

In 1957, Adele Sherbert became a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church while she worked for a textile mill in South Carolina. The mill changed its work week from five days to six, extending it into Saturdays in 1959. Her religious faith held that working on a Sabbath was sinful and her refusal to work on Saturdays led to her termination. South Carolina denied her unemployment compensation because she would not accept employment that required her to work on the Sabbath. She sued the state under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled against her and an appeal was made to the Supreme Court.

In 1963, in Sherbert v. Verner, the Warren Court found that the denial of unemployment benefits placed an unconstitutional burden on Ms. Sherbert’s free exercise of her religion, and that the state of South Carolina had not shown that there was a compelling state interest in the enforcement of the eligibility requirements that justified the infringement of her religious rights. It reversed the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling. From 1963 until the late 1980s, the Sherbert Test, as it came to be known, was applied to cases involving the free exercise of religious beliefs. The test involved three related questions:

1. Did the government place an undue burden on an individual’s free exercise of religion?

If so:

2. Was there a compelling state interest that justified the burden?

3. Was the law the least restrictive method of achieving the state’s interest?

This test was confirmed in 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the free exercise of a parent’s religious belief (in this case Amish) trumped the state’s requirement of compulsory education beyond the eighth grade. By the late 1980s, the composition of the Supreme Court had become more conservative, and the decisions regarding the free exercise of religion began to reflect that as the Sherbert test was slowly whittled away. In 1982, the U.S. Forest Service decided it wanted to build a road and open to timber mining a part of the Six Rivers National Forest that was considered to be sacred land by members of the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa Nations.

Read more: dailykos.com/story/2016/3/27/1505538/-How-a-Seventh-Day-Adventist-and-peyote-led-to-Supreme-Court-fights-over-contraception

Bondsman in Seminole County – USF payoffs to departing athletic officials far exceeded legal limits

Source     : The Tamba Tribune
By            : Joey Johnston
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

USF payoffs to departing athletic officials far exceeded legal limits

The University of South Florida violated state law when its athletic department paid severance compensation to a retiring athletic director and a fired football assistant coach that exceeded the legal limit by $626,000, according to a report by Florida’s auditor general. The report also said USF has further violated state law with the contracts for its current athletic director, football coach and coaches for men’s and women’s basketball. Should those officials and coaches be fired without cause, the amount of their agreed-upon severance was not capped to the legal amount. According to Florida law, government entities such as public universities can offer severance pay of no more than 20 weeks of salary, including benefits. In its response, USF said it was simply acting within the accepted practices of college sports.

Schools routinely offer coaching contracts that have a salary, plus additional compensation (usually termed as media and public-appearance responsibilities), although with sizable buyout provisions that can prevent the coach from jumping to another job. Conversely, the coach is protected with the school offering buyout compensation, usually commiserate to their remaining salary, if they are fired for poor performance before the contract expires. “The contractual provisions … reflect the market for individuals in intercollegiate athletics, which is relatively small and where the impact of a termination without cause tends to create damages that are difficult to quantify, such as reputational loss and reductions in future hiring prospects and earning potential,’’ USF chief financial officer Nick Trivunovich wrote in his response to the audit. Sherrill Norman, the auditor general, reiterated that USF’s payments were to terminated employees and fell outside state regulations. USF said its athletic director, Doug Woolard, “retired’’ in early 2014. Woolard was paid $610,000 in 2014, which was $100,000 more than his annual salary and $415,000 more than the legal limit. Woolard was paid by the school until 2015.

Meanwhile, Paul Wulff, who was fired after just one season as USF football’s offensive coordinator, received $326,437 in severance, which was $211,000 more than the legal limit. USF has recently undergone a costly era of firing high-profile coaches. In a four-year span from 2010-14, USF fired two head football coaches (Jim Leavitt, after an independent investigation concluded that he struck a player in the locker room, and Skip Holtz, who concluded a 3-9 season just five months after receiving a contract extension) and a men’s basketball coach (Stan Heath, after two losing seasons following an NCAA Tournament bid where his team barely missed the Sweet 16). The legal settlement and contract buyouts for those three departures? Nearly $7 million.

USF has said that money came from private sources, such as private donations to the athletic department through the USF Foundation, not public funds. In 2012, when Woolard awarded Holtz with a three-year contract extension (after a 5-7 season), he explained that Holtz was being pursued by other schools and it was necessary to lock him up at USF. Five months later, Holtz was fired. According to the audit, current athletic director Mark Harlan, football coach Willie Taggart, men’s basketball coach Orlando Antigua and women’s basketball coach Jose Fernandez have contracts that call for more compensation than the legal limit of severance should they be fired.

Read more:  tbo.com/sports/colleges/usf-bulls/usf-payoffs-to-departing-athletic-officials-far-exceeded-legal-limits-20160324/

Seminole County Bail Bonds – Supreme Court steps into Apple v. Samsung fray

Source     :  C Net
By             :  Shara Tibken
Category :   Seminole County Bail Bonds, Bail Bondsman in Sanford

Supreme Court steps into Apple v. Samsung fray

Apple’s years-long fight with Samsung Electronics over design patents will make its way to the US Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court on Monday agreed to review the case, the first time it has looked at a design patent case since the 1800s. Samsung filed a request with the Supreme Court in December to re-examine the case after losing in court to Apple, which resulted in Samsung’s requirement to pay Apple $548 million.  Apple shot back in February, calling the case “legally unexceptional” and asking the Supreme Court not to “prolong” the battle against Samsung. Apple also argued that the case didn’t present a question important enough to require resolution at the top of the US judicial system. “We welcome the court’s decision to hear our case,” Samsung said in a statement Monday. “The court’s review of this case can lead to a fair interpretation of patent law that will support creativity and reward innovation.”

The Supreme Court’s involvement may put the entire Apple v. Samsung legal wrangling on hold. The damages retrial was scheduled to begin on March 28 in San Jose, California, but Samsung filed an emergency motion to stay that trial in light of the high court’s decision to review the case. “Absent a stay, there is a serious risk that a fourth trial would be necessary because the Supreme Court’s decision on design-patent damages could significantly alter the scope of the upcoming retrial, as well as the jury instructions to be given at that trial,” Samsung’s filing said. “And though trial is only a week away, a stay would still have a very real practical effect, as it would avoid potentially duplicative and wasteful proceedings and ensure that the Court, the parties, and the jurors do not needlessly expend time and resources on burdensome trial and post-trial proceedings that may well be upset by the Supreme Court’s decision.” Apple declined to comment. But the company’s attorneys late Monday filed a response to Samsung’s motion, saying “moving forward with proceedings in this case would promote the orderly course of justice.” Apple also sought to argue how much time and work it has put into preparing for the trial. And it noted the upcoming trial is expected to take about one week. “Granting Samsung’s motion to stay proceedings now would forfeit the substantial time and resources that the court and the parties have poured into preparing for the upcoming trial and hearing on supplemental damages,” Apple’s filing said. “A stay could result in a delay of a year or more, and would necessitate a second, equally costly outlay of resources when the stay is lifted — all of which will be for naught if the Supreme Court affirms the Federal Circuit’s ruling applying the long-settled law of design patent damages.” A decision by the Supreme Court could have a ripple effect across the technology industry and ultimately impact the gadgets you buy because it could finally define the value of design work. For that reason, the case has drawn the attention of a wide number of legal experts, nonprofit groups and technology companies. Together, they filed six amicus, or “friend of the court,” briefs in support of Samsung, urging the Supreme Court to consider the case.

Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest players, including Google and Facebook, argued in the amicus briefs that the lower-court ruling as it stands could have a “devastating impact” on the introduction of new products due to a heightened fear of legal challenges. Apple has said all along that it was doing what was necessary to defend its intellectual property and the value of its blockbuster iPhone franchise.  The last time the Supreme Court looked at a suit involving design patents was in the 1800s.

Those cases involved a spoon handle, carpet, saddle and rug. Since that time, a few things have changed, such as the introduction of electronic devices from the likes of Apple and Samsung. Samsung wants the Supreme Court to give guidance on what is covered by design patents, which protect the way an item is used and how it works and also include what damages can be collected. The original Apple v. Samsung trial in 2012 pitted a pair of the world’s largest tech companies against each other. The case captivated Silicon Valley and the tech industry because it exposed the inner workings of two notoriously secretive companies. It was just one of many trials around the world as the rivals sparred both in the marketplace and in the courtroom. At issue were design patents for a black, rectangular, round-cornered front face; a similar rectangular round-cornered front face plus the surrounding rim, known as the bezel; and a colrful grid of 16 icons.

Read more: cnet.com/news/apple-vs-samsung-legal-patent-battle-supreme-court-steps-into-fray/

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Accessibility to sensitive cell data at legal crossroads

Source     :  Daily Gazette
By             :  Ann E. Marimow/The Washington Post
Category :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

Accessibility to sensitive cell data at legal crossroads

When high-powered rifle shots shattered a Florida judge’s living-room window and glass door, federal agents narrowed the list of suspects by pulling their cellphone records. After two California college students were fatally shot in a car parked close to campus, cellphone data put the suspects near the crime scene at the time of the shooting. Investigators in Maryland pulled seven months of phone records to track the movements of two men later convicted in armed robberies around Baltimore. Law enforcement officials have long relied on location details gleaned from cellphone towers as a powerful tool for tracing steps of suspects, particularly in the early stages of investigations. But civil liberties groups and privacy advocates are increasingly challenging the practice. They are concerned that police and federal agents can too easily tap vast caches of information about people’s movements through devices most Americans carry in their pockets – trackings that could show how often someone goes to a doctor’s office, to a casino or to church. Legislators on Capitol Hill have proposed updates to federal statutes, but no standardized rules exist for scooping up location data. Instead, local and federal investigators rely on a patchwork of state laws and inconsistent court rulings.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday will be the latest front in the legal debate, in the case that involves the Baltimore robberies. The issue before a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Maryland and Virginia, is whether investigators need a search warrant before they can track suspects’ long-term movements through their cellphones. A three-judge panel of that court, based in Richmond, ruled in August that accessing the location information without a warrant for an “extended period” is unconstitutional because it allows law enforcement to trace a person’s comings and goings across public and private spaces. But two other federal appellate courts – in Florida and New Orleans – concluded that warrants are not necessary. If the full 4th Circuit upholds its panel’s 2-to-1 decision, there would be a clear split with the other federal appeals courts. That type of divide often attracts the attention of the Supreme Court, which has already expressed concern about the effect of long-term surveillance by law enforcement on individual privacy. “There is a sense that judges and others have that electronic evidence [collection] presents a risk to privacy that other forms of electronic evidence don’t. That anxiety is a thread through these court decisions,” said former federal prosecutor Jason M. Weinstein, who oversaw cybercrime and organized-crime enforcement in the Justice Department’s criminal division.

Texting, calling and checking email or the weather from a cellphone generally involves connecting with the closest communications tower. Wireless providers log and retain records showing which tower a phone used at the beginning and end of every call, and increasingly, for texts and data connections. In the Baltimore case being heard Wednesday by as many as 16 judges on the court, police obtained 221 days of data from the wireless provider of robbery suspect Aaron Graham. The 30,000 location points generated for his phone enabled authorities to map his whereabouts before and after two of six robberies and to corroborate evidence during a 2012 trial. Graham and co-conspirator Eric Jordan were sentenced to decades in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has signed on in support of the pair’s appeal, took the records analysis even further and showed that authorities also could have connected the dots to place Graham at the office of his pregnant wife’s obstetrician. “The more of this data you have, the more you are able to peer into the patterns of somebody’s life,” said Nathan Wessler, an ACLU lawyer who wrote a brief in support of the defendants that was joined by other groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology. “We’re talking private locations and private information. We want the police to have to jump through a few hoops,” Wessler said. “That’s what protects us.”
The debate in court this week is over how high to set the hurdle.

Until recently, law enforcement officials had little trouble obtaining the cell-tower records with a court order, which requires them to provide less rigorous information than they would need to get a search warrant. The distinction is a vital one to law enforcement. A court order clears the way to the cell-tower records that early in an investigation are the building blocks needed to reach the gold standard of probable cause required for more-intrusive searches. Without that early access through court orders, former prosecutors say, it will be more difficult to zero in on suspects and rule out others. “There’s no question there will be crimes that are not solved,” said Weinstein, who also prosecuted violent crimes in Baltimore. “This is a stand the government has to make.” In a series of recent Supreme Court decisions, the court signaled that digital devices are different when it comes to Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure because of the vast amounts of personal information stored on phones and tablets. As a result, Justice Department policy now requires a warrant in most cases before agents install GPS-tracking devices on vehicles. Investigators generally must also obtain a warrant to operate cellphone-data collectors, called cell-site simulators or Stingrays, that are facing legal challenges, including in the nation’s capital. The department generally distinguishes between real-time, pinpoint surveillance and the type of historical business records obtained in the Maryland armed-robberies case. The more precise the information and intrusive the search, the stronger the privacy interests and the higher the legal standard, according to Richard W. Downing, acting deputy assistant attorney general, who testified this month before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Law enforcement officials say the cellphone records in the Baltimore case are no different from landline telephone records or banking transactions that authorities have long been able to obtain without a warrant because the documents are business or “third party” records.

“When the government obtains historical cell-site records, it is not monitoring ongoing events; instead it is obtaining information concerning past events that was previously collected by a third party,” according to Maryland prosecutors whose argument won support from the dissenting judge on the initial panel.

Read more: dailygazette.com/news/2016/mar/22/accessibility-sensitive-cell-data-legal-crossroads/

Bail Bond Sanford – Drinks makers consider legal action against sugar tax

Source     : The Guardian
By            : Graham Ruddick
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

Drinks makers consider legal action against sugar tax

Soft drink makers are considering taking legal action against the government over its controversial sugar tax as George Osborne’s budget shows further signs of unwinding. Suing the government is one option that companies are considering as they await more details on the tax, which will come into force in 2018 and cost £1bn to implement, almost double the amount that it is expected to raise. The cost of the sugar tax has been revealed in documents published by the Office for Budget Responsibility alongside the budget. The extra cost will come from a predicted rise in accrued interest that the government will have to pay on debt that is linked to the rate of inflation. The new tax will add 24p a litre to soft drinks with the highest sugar content, a cost that could be passed on to shoppers through higher prices, meaning inflation would rise.

The chancellor has predicted the tax will raise £520m in its first year, far less than the cost of introducing the levy. Gavin Partington, director general of the British Soft Drinks Association, said: “This just reaffirms our view that this tax is ill-considered. The evidence does not suggest it will be effective and taxpayers will be left paying a heavy price for it.” The announcement of the sugar tax led to sharp falls in the share prices of major drinks companies, such as Britvic, the maker of Robinson, and AG Barr, the maker of Irn-Bru. The leading companies are now considering how to respond to the tax, with legal action against the government one option. The soft drink makers could sue the government through European courts on the basis that other types of food and drink – such as fruit juice and milkshakes – are not included. Similar taxes in Scandinavia have been successfully challenged.

Partington added: “At this stage all options are on the table. We need clarification about how this tax is going to work, exactly what’s excluded and what’s not. Nothing can be ruled out at this stage.” Coca-Cola also refused to rule out legal action. A Coca-Cola Great Britain spokesperson said: “We need to know more about the levy and how the government plans to implement it. Once this is clear to us, we’ll decide on what steps to take as a business and how best to continue the work we have done to help people consume less sugar and calories from our drinks.” However, the government defended the tax, claiming the chancellor was putting the next generation first, and that the soft drink makers had two years to cut the sugar content in their products. A HM Treasury spokesperson said: “He introduced a new levy on the soft drinks industry to pay for a doubling of dedicated sport funding for every primary school in the country, a huge expansion of breakfast clubs to ensure that every child gets the best start to the day, and new funding for a longer school day. “The chancellor also made clear that this was a policy aimed at driving meaningful change. The new levy will not be introduced until 2018, giving companies plenty of time to change product mix and reduce sugar content.”

Read more: theguardian.com/business/2016/mar/20/drinks-makers-consider-legal-action-against-sugar-tax-budget

Sanford Bail Bond – New York’s Salt-Shaker Warning Survives Legal Challenge

Source     : Bloomberg
By            : Chris Dolmetsch
Category : Sanford Bail Bond , Bail Bond Sanford

New York’s Salt-Shaker Warning Survives Legal Challenge

A warning symbol for salty items at chain restaurants will continue to pepper menus throughout New York City after a state judge denied a trade group’s bid to block a rule that requires the label. The city became the first municipality to require restaurant chains to post high-sodium warnings, forcing eateries with 15 or more locations nationwide to place a triangular salt-shaker icon beside items with at least 2,300 milligrams of sodium. Justice Eileen Rakower said during a hearing Wednesday in Manhattan that the rule doesn’t prohibit restaurants from offering high-sodium foods but merely provides information to consumers about items that exceed the recommended daily salt limit. “Some people just love salty foods, and they’re going to go ahead and eat those foods regardless of whether they have a salt icon next to them,” Rakower said. “It’s not a ban. It’s information. It’s a warning.” S. Preston Ricardo, an attorney for the National Restaurant Association, which challenged the rule, said the group plans to appeal.

Questioning Authority

Ricardo told Rakower the issue isn’t whether high levels of sodium lead to hypertension and heart disease but whether the city’s Board of Health had the authority to enact the rule. Allowing the salt labels would enable the city to issue similar warnings for other “lifestyle choices” that might have negative health effects, such as watching television for extended periods of time or sitting too long while working, Ricardo said. “It would basically open up the floodgates,” Ricardo said. “The sodium mandate is nothing like the board has ever done.” The Board of Health acted on its own with no guidance from legislators and makes decisions based on “political and economic aspirations,” Ricardo said. The rule is more likely to confuse consumers and push them toward restaurants that aren’t part of a chain and whose menus don’t have a salt-shaker symbol, which Ricardo likened to a warning symbol for dangerous materials such as poisons or biohazards. “It’s way too overbroad and it advises people of things that may not apply to them,” he said.

Teaspoon’s Worth

The threshold of 2,300 milligrams of sodium, about a teaspoon’s worth, is the recommended daily limit for adults in the U.S. High sodium levels can lead to high blood pressure and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, New York City’s Health Department said, citing U.S. dietary guidelines and the Institute of Medicine studies. One in three New York City deaths is due to heart disease, the department said. The Washington-based restaurant group, which represents more than 500,000 businesses, sued the city two days after the mandate took effect in December, saying the Board of Health had exceeded its authority and opening yet another front in the industry’s battle against increasing government regulation. The requirement was crafted by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration and continues the efforts of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, to improve public health through government mandates, such as banning trans fats, requiring calorie counts on menus and limiting the size of sugary sodas.

Soda Fight

While the trans-fat bans and calorie counts survived similar legal challenges, the state’s highest court blocked the soda measure. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, had asked restaurants and food makers to voluntarily reduce the amount of salt in their menu items. Mark Muschenheim, an attorney for the city, told Rakower that consumers frequently underestimate the amount of sodium in their meals because the levels can vary widely among individual menu items. The rule doesn’t limit the amount of sodium in foods or dictate its sale, he said. Several chains have already started posting the labels on their menus, said Thomas Merrill, another lawyer for the city. “This tells me that when I go in, if I buy that item, I’m going be getting a whole day’s worth of sodium simply by buying that Parmesan sub,” Merrill said. “This is a warning. It doesn’t deal with personal autonomy.”

Better Decisions

After the ruling, de Blasio said on Twitter that too many New Yorkers are at risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke due to high sodium intake and that the icon will help them make better decisions about their diets, which would lead to longer lives. “If your meal has so much sodium that it merits a salt shaker on the menu, then — for the sake of your health — order something else,” said the mayor, a Democrat. The city won’t start fining chains that don’t comply with the requirement until next month. Violators could face as much as a $200 fine for each infraction.

Read more: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-24/new-york-s-salt-shaker-warning-survives-legal-challenge

Bondsman in Seminole County – Missouri Supreme Court upholds HIV-risk law

Source     : Bend Bulletin
By            : Molly Hennessy-Fiske
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford, Bondsman in Seminole County

Missouri Supreme Court upholds HIV-risk law

Requiring people who are HIV-positive to inform their sexual partners about their disease does not violate constitutional protections of free speech or privacy, the Missouri Supreme Court wrote in a unanimous opinion released Tuesday. The ruling arose from the case of a woman sentenced to seven years in prison for not telling a man she was HIV-positive before having sex with him.

The woman appealed her conviction on the grounds that the law, which also applies to needle-sharing and blood donation, forces her to violate her own privacy through unconstitutionally compelled speech, according to court documents. But Judge Mary Russell wrote that the matter at hand — exposing someone to a disease without their knowledge or consent — is behavior, not speech. Any regulation of speech is incidental to the law, she wrote, and people would not be compelled to disclose anything about themselves unless they want to do something that could endanger someone else. The court also rejected the claim that the law intruded into a realm of private action, which was the argument used when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas’ sodomy laws. Unlike that case, Russell wrote, this law outlaws sexual conduct that is potentially harmful and not truly consensual, since a victim lacks the knowledge to consent to HIV exposure.  In 1998, the Missouri Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the law that argued the results of an HIV test were privileged medical information and should not be admissible as evidence.

The case is State v. S.F., SC94923.

• The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of a Kansas man convicted of killing three relatives in Missouri. The court rejected appeals for Robert Blurton, who sought to have his convictions and sentence overturned. Blurton, of Garnett, Kansas, was sentenced to death in June 2013 for the deaths of his aunt and uncle, Donnie and Sharon Luetjen and the couple’s 15-year-old granddaughter, Taron Luetjen. Prosecutors said Blurton killed his victims in June 2009 at the couple’s Cole Camp home during a robbery. Blurton’s attorneys argued the trial judge made errors in allowing certain testimony and evidence, not instructing the jury on a possible second-degree murder conviction and not declaring a mistrial because some crime scene photographs were inadvertently displayed before the verdict. The case is State v. Blurton, SC93648.

• The Supreme Court ruled an Oklahoma man should get a second trial in a 2012 homicide in Joplin. The court vacated the second-degree murder conviction of Daniel Hartman for the July 2012 death of 23-year-old Jacob Wages. The court ruled the trial judge should not have excluded testimony during the penalty phase from a witness who claimed another defendant confessed to killing Wages. The court said the witness’ testimony should have been considered reliable and could have exonerated Hartman. Three co-defendants testified at Hartman’s trial that he shot Wages. The defendants mistakenly thought Wages had drugs and cash. Hartman, a member of a Hoover Street Crips gang in Tulsa, Oklahoma, testified during his sentencing that he was innocent and had never been to Wages’ home.

Read more: http://molawyersmedia.com/2016/03/16/missouri-supreme-court-upholds-hiv-risk-law-2/#ixzz438rGyjta