Ryan J. Reilly
Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — A police officer can’t pull you over and arrest you just because you gave him the finger, a federal appeals court declared Thursday.

In a 14-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the “ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity.”

John Swartz and his wife Judy Mayton-Swartz had sued two police officers who arrested Swartz in May 2006 after he flipped off an officer who was using a radar device at an intersection in St. Johnsville, N.Y. Swartz was later charged with a violation of New York’s disorderly conduct statute, but the charges were dismissed on speedy trial grounds.

A federal judge in the Northern District of New York granted summary judgement to the officers in July 2011, but the Court of Appeals on Thursday erased that decision and ordered the lower court to take up the case again.

Richard Insogna, the officer who stopped Swartz and his wife when they arrived at their destination, claimed he pulled the couple over because he believed Swartz was “trying to get my attention for some reason.” The appeals court didn’t buy that explanation, ruling that the “nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult deprives such an interpretation of reasonableness.”

By Adam Brandolph
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

A stiff drink will lead to stiffer fines for underage Pennsylvanians caught imbibing after Christmas Eve.

A state law that goes into effect on Dec. 25 increases the maximum fine for first offenses to $500 from $300 and subsequent offenses to $1,000 from $500. Gov. Tom Corbett signed the bill into law in November.

“The more obstacles or barriers there are for the use of a substance, generally the less use there will be,” said Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Moon, which treats people for alcoholism and other substance abuse. “Any time you increase penalties, it has an impact on use.”
The legislation intends to deter underage drinking around college and university campuses, said state Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Read the rest of this entry »

August 3, 2011

By Michael Murray
Collegian Staff Writer

A new state law that shields underage drinkers from prosecution when calling for medical attention for a sick friend will take effect on Sept. 5.

The law, which was officially signed by Gov. Tom Corbett on July 7, is intended to encourage young people to do the right thing for a sick friend should a dangerous situation arise, Sean Moll said, legislative assistant for Sen. John Rafferty who sponsored the bill.

“There is no doubt that this law is going to save lives,” Moll said. “Only time will tell how many.”

Moll said young people often try to do the right thing for their friends by putting them to bed while they are dangerously intoxicated. The safer decision in an emergency like this, he said, is to call medical authorities.

Linda LaSalle, associate director for educational services at University Health Services, said the new law will help young people feel more comfortable calling for help in a alcohol related emergency.

“It will support students to make the right decision, and that’s what is important,” LaSalle said.

The law, often referred to as the Good Samaritan Law, does specify a few provisions that help to ensure it will protect callers with the intention of helping the sick individual, rather than those only seeking protection for themselves.

According to the new law, the caller must have reasonable belief that he is the first one to make the call for the sick individual. Next, the caller must provide the authorities with his or her real full name. Finally, the caller must stay with the sick individual until the authorities arrive. If these provisions are met, the caller will not be prosecuted for underage possession or consumption of alcohol.

LaSalle said students should always take action to get their friends help, even if they are only slightly worried for their friend’s health. With this law, she said, students will be able to put their friend’s safety ahead of the fear of getting in trouble.

“It’s always more important to save a friend’s life,” LaSalle said.

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times
September 26, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.

Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court.

“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”

One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.

Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts. Read the rest of this entry »

July 05, 2011 1:51 PM
by Adam Smeltz

State College Area School District officials have formally agreed to end the district’s ban on same-gender domestic-partner benefits, according to a legal agreement signed and filed Tuesday.

The agreement marks a partial settlement of the federal complaint filed against the school district in May. Two plaintiffs — district employee Kerry Wiessmann and her partner, Beth G. Resko — argued through their lawyers that district’s employee-benefits policy was discriminatory.

Specifically, their complaint targeted the district rule that kept school workers’ same-sex domestic partners from qualifying for the same health benefits made available for opposite-sex gender partners. That restriction violated Wiessmann and Resko’s First and Fourteenth Amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution, along with local and state equal-rights provisions, according to their complaint.

Under the agreement finalized Tuesday, school officials have committed to eliminate the same-gender-partner restriction effective immediately. They’ve also agreed to make health benefits available to same-sex domestic partners “on the same terms as SCASD makes these benefits available to the spouses of married employees.”

Further, the agreement notes that the district will adopt, by Aug. 1, new anti-discrimination policies that add clear protections for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

The changes were agreed to by a majority of the State College Area school board, according to a news release shared by local attorney Andrew Shubin.

Shubin, who worked with the American Civil Liberties in representing Wiessmann and Resko, said the agreement achieves all of the policy changes the plaintiffs sought.

“It provides for equitable treatment of gay and lesbian staff, and it requires the district to adopt anti-harassment and employment policies that include protections for gay and lesbian staff and students,” Shubin said. Read the rest of this entry »

June 24, 2011
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes. Read the rest of this entry »

June 18, 2011
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — Driving across the flatlands of Illinois with Barack Obama during the Senate race of 2004, Kevin Thompson sometimes found himself tutoring the candidate on gay rights.

Mr. Thompson, then a traveling aide, recalls long conversations about topics like the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that sparked the gay rights movement, gay adoption — Mr. Obama once volunteered that Mr. Thompson and his partner would make “great parents,” Mr. Thompson recalled — and same-sex marriage, which Mr. Obama has in the past opposed.

Mr. Thompson, an Obama supporter, is skeptical about that. “To this day,” he said, “I don’t think Barack Obama has any issue with two people of the same gender getting married.”

Now President Obama says his views on same-sex marriage are “evolving,” and as he runs for re-election he is seeking support from gay donors who want to know where he stands.

This week, he will headline a $1,250-a-plate “Gala with the Gay Community” in Manhattan, his first such event as president; on June 29, he will host a Gay Pride reception at the White House. He is doing so at time when the New York Legislature is considering whether to make same-sex marriage legal — a vote that the president will no doubt be asked about while in New York. Read the rest of this entry »

Tue Jun 14, 2011
Reuters

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA – A federal appeals court here has ruled in favor of two school students who were disciplined in different districts for creating what lawyers called parodies of their principals on the MySpace social network site.

“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit made clear … that schools cannot punish students for out-of-school speech that does not create a substantial and material disruption inside the school,” said the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the students.

“I think the message is louder for school officials than it is for the kids,” ACLU lawyer Witold Walczak, the organization’s Pennsylvania legal director, said Tuesday.

And that message, he said, is that the authority of school officials is less for conduct outside the school than it is for conduct inside.

Terry Snyder, mother of one of the students who was referred to in the legal papers as only “JS,” said she disciplined her daughter for her behavior while she was a student in the Blue Mountain School District, in central Pennsylvania north of Reading. Read the rest of this entry »

June 21, 2011
By Peter Hall, OF THE MORNING CALL
Easton Area students will be free to wear bracelets proclaiming “I ♥ Boobies!” while school officials appeal a ruling that the breast cancer awareness slogan is protected under the First Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin on Tuesday refused to lift a preliminary injunction that prevents school officials from enforcing a ban on the popular rubber bracelets. In April, she sided with two middle school girls who were threatened with discipline for wearing the bracelets, finding the slogan is not vulgar or likely to cause a disturbance.

Easton Area School District officials last month asked McLaughlin to lift her injunction while the district’s appeal before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending. They claimed the injunction leaves the district with no guidance on how to revise its dress code for the 2011-12 school year and threatens administrators’ ability to maintain order in the schools.