High court will hear appeal over termination fees
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court will consider whether satellite provider DirecTV can cut off a class action lawsuit and force customers suing over early termination fees into private arbitration hearings instead.
The justices agreed Monday to hear an appeal from DirecTV, which says its customer agreements do not allow customers to band together to sue the company. The company argues that customers must use arbitration to resolve their claims one by one.
A California state appeals court ruled against the DirecTV last year, saying that state law forbids agreements that waive customer's rights to bring a class action. The state Supreme Court affirmed.
DirecTV argues that California law is pre-empted by the Federal Arbitration Act, which favors such agreements.
Justices will hear arguments this fall in the case, DirecTV v. Imbruglia, 14-462.
Court won't hear case of wrongly convicted men
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from two former Louisiana inmates who were wrongly convicted of murder and wanted to sue prosecutors for damages after spending 28 years in prison.
The justices Monday let stand a federal appeals court ruling that said Earl Truvia and Gregory Bright couldn't hold the New Orleans district attorney's office liable for the conduct of prosecutors who violated their constitutional rights.
Truvia and Bright were convicted of murder in 1976, but exonerated in 2002 after a judge ruled prosecutors withheld key evidence.
A federal district court threw out their damage claims, saying they failed to show the district attorney's office had a policy or custom of withholding evidence. An appeals court affirmed.
The men claimed there was enough evidence of a pattern of violations.
Man on death row since 1984 loses high court appeal
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court turned away an appeal Monday from a convicted killer who has spent more than 30 years on death row in the state of Texas.
The justices rejected the appeal from Lester Bower of Arlington, Texas. Bower is facing execution next Feb. 10 for the fatal shootings of four people at an airplane hangar on a North Texas ranch in 1983.
Bower's appeal raised several issues, including his claim that other people were responsible for the deaths. He also contends that executing him now after he has been held for so long on death row would be unconstitutionally cruel.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have thrown out Bower's death sentence because jurors didn't get to consider evidence that might have persuaded them to impose something other than a death sentence.
"I recognize that we do not often intervene only to correct a case-specific legal error. But the error here is glaring, and its consequence may well be death," Breyer wrote in a dissent that Ginsburg and Sotomayor joined.
Bower long has maintained his innocence in the October 1983 shooting. The bodies were discovered at the hangar on the ranch, where one of the victims stored his ultralight plane. Parts of the missing aircraft were later found in Bower's garage in Arlington.
Bower, then 36, initially lied to authorities about being at the hangar, but he later recanted. But he insisted that when he left, the men at the ranch were alive.
Prosecutors built a circumstantial case against Bower, a college graduate and father of two daughters who worked as a chemical salesman. Investigators alleged that he killed the men while stealing the plane and connected Bower to the case after finding he had made three phone calls to the plane's owner on his company credit card.
Bower is among the longest-serving Texas death row inmates because his case has slowly moved through the state and federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case in April 2008, and Bower was set to die three months later, but a judge in Grayson County withdrew the execution date to allow for DNA testing.
Five years after his trial, a woman implicated four other men in the case, saying the shootings were the result of a drug deal gone bad. Then at the 2012 hearing, Bower's attorneys produced witnesses who said other men were responsible for the four slayings. Prosecutors challenged the information.
Justices to review sentences for young convicts
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is adding a new case to decide whether its 3-year-old ruling throwing out mandatory life in prison without parole for juveniles should apply to older cases.
The court was scheduled to hear arguments in a case from Louisiana in late March, but the state released inmate George Toca after 30 years in prison.
The justices on Monday said they would consider a new Louisiana case involving a man who has been held since 1963 for killing a sheriff's deputy in Baton Rouge.
Henry Montgomery was a 17-year-old 10th grader who was playing hooky from school when he shot Deputy Charles Hurt at a park near the city's airport. The officer and his partner were looking to round up truants.
The case will be argued in the fall.
In 2012, the justices ruled that judges and juries must take account of age when sentencing people who were younger than 18 at the time of even the most brutal crimes.
Courts around the country have differed on whether prison inmates whose cases are closed can take advantage of the high court ruling and seek parole or new sentencing hearings.
The Supreme Court has handed down a series of rulings that hold juveniles less responsible than adults when their sentences are considered. The latest case involves how the court's views about juvenile sentences mesh with another line of cases that deal with when major court decisions should apply retroactively to older cases.
The case is Montgomery v. Louisiana, 14-280.
Published: Tue, Mar 24, 2015
