Judicial Reports: LexPress: Hang 'em High Court

By Lily Henning

Posted 11-17-06

How the Court of Appeals new capital punishment dynamic might change, why Eliot's spitting less fire, and a rememberance of Michele Maxian.  

 

EXECUTION STYLE
A look at the unsettled question of the state's death penalty in the New York Sun. There is a lone death sentence appeal on the New York Court of Appeals docket next year, and Joseph Goldstein reports that when the court decides the appeal “the judges may show little allegiance to the court's landmark 2004 decision striking down the death penalty.” Retirements and new appointments on the bench — not to mention prosecutors itching to overturn the 2004 decision ruling that a key component of the state’s death penalty was unconstitutional — could indicate a potential shift on the court in favor of capital punishment. Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer will soon choose a replacement for retiring Judge Albert Rosenblatt, who is considered a swing vote on the death penalty. Newcomer Eugene Pigott, Jr., is considered a “wild card.”

SPITZER SPITTING LESS FIRE
As the Governor-elect and the outgoing attorney general, Eliot Spitzer might be expected to have something to say about state Controller Alan Hevesi. But Spitzer hasn’t been his brash self on this score. Political expedience seems to have trumped the crusader — at least for now. The Daily News reports that Spitzer “may lean” toward asking the state Senate to remove Hevesi, who had a government-paid staffer act as a chauffeur to his ill wife. Publicly, Spitzer has said the matter lies in Gov. Pataki’s hands. (The state AG’s office is probing the matter, but Spitzer isn’t participating.)

IN MEMORIAM
The defense lawyer who won criminal defendants the right to be arraigned within 24 hours after being arrested died yesterday of cancer at 55. The New York Law Journal notes that Michele Maxian became a “household word” in the criminal defense community after the 1991 case, People ex rel. Maxian, on behalf of Roundtree v. Brown — in which the New York Court of Appeals ruled that judges were empowered to release prisoners held more than 24 hours without being arraigned, unless there was an adequate reason for the delay. Maxian spent her entire career at the Legal Aid Society.

SOLDIER SENTENCED
The soldier convicted of conspiring to rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and kill her and her family was sentenced to 90 years in prison yesterday in a military court in Kentucky. One of four soldiers accused in the March 12 rape and killings, Spc. James Barker pleaded guilty this week and agreed to testify against the others to avoid the death penalty. Barker told the judge that in Iraq he became “angry and mean. I loved my friends, my fellow soldiers and my leaders, but I began to hate everyone else in Iraq.” Another soldier, who was discharged from the Army before the crime was exposed, faces the death penalty in civilian court, the AP reports via The New York Times.

Posted by Dirk on November 17, 2006 10:22 AM to Judicial Reports