High Court nixes review of ex-LA Sheriff Lee Baca's case
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is likely headed to prison after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review his corruption case, a newspaper reported.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year rejected Baca's request to reconsider an earlier ruling upholding his conviction and three-year prison sentence. The lower court previously ruled that Baca received a fair trial.
The Supreme Court denied Baca's request to reopen his case for review, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Baca, 77, stepped down as sheriff in 2014 amid an FBI investigation into abuses at the nation's largest jail system. A jury convicted him in 2017 of obstructing the investigation and lying to prosecutors. His lawyer unsuccessfully argued on appeal that the jury should have been told of Baca's Alzheimer's disease diagnosis in 2016.
"The Supreme Court missed an opportunity to right the significant legal wrongs that occurred in Sheriff Baca's case," his attorney, Nathan Hochman, said in a statement Monday.
In the filing, Baca's attorneys had asked the justices to consider two issues, according to the newspaper. The first was whether the trial court had properly instructed the jury about the obstruction of justice counts.
They also asked the justices to review the trial court's use of an anonymous jury, in which the jurors' identities were unknown even to Baca and attorneys. The 9th Circuit had ruled that the district court's decision to impanel an anonymous jury was reasonable because of the highly publicized nature of the case and Baca's position as a former high-ranking law enforcement officer.
Baca has remained free while his appeals were pending. The Supreme Court's decision clears the way for U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson, who sentenced Baca, to set a date when he must begin serving his sentence.
High Court denies appeal of Oklahoma death row inmate
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has denied the appeal of an Oklahoma death row inmate who was convicted of killing his common-law wife.
The Oklahoman first reported that the high court's ruling on Monday that denied without comment the appeal of Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 64.
Cuesta-Rodriguez was convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting in 2003 of Olimpia Cardina Fisher at the south Oklahoma City home they shared.
A federal public defender representing Cuesta-Rodriguez did not immediately return a phone call for comment Tuesday.
Cuesta-Rodriguez had argued that Oklahoma law requiring indigent defendants in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties be represented by the counties' public defenders office denied him effective assistance of counsel on his first appeal.
He also argued that during closing arguments, prosecutors improperly described how the jury should consider mitigating circumstances in the case.
The court's rejection of the appeal makes Cuesta-Rodriguez eligible to be scheduled for execution, although Oklahoma has not put an inmate to death since executions were halted in 2015 following a series of bungled lethal injections.
Colorado appeal of excessive business fine case fails
DENVER (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by Colorado to close what it calls a loophole that allows businesses to avoid some regulatory sanctions by, in part, saying they're too poor to pay penalties.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said Monday's decision could hurt the state's ability to ensure businesses are following regulations and laws. He said under the Supreme Court's decision not to consider the case, businesses will continue to have a "huge loophole, or even incentive," to ignore Colorado's rules for corporate conduct.
"This is, from a regulatory standpoint, a big deal," he told The Colorado Sun. "It is going to hamstring the ability a range of regulatory requirements on companies."
The case stems from a Colorado Department of Labor dispute with Dami Hospitality, which owns the small Star Motel in northeast Denver. The agency fined Dami $425,000 for letting its workers' compensation insurance coverage lapse for nearly 1,700 days through July 2014.
Dami appealed the fine, arguing, in part, that because the business lacked the funds to pay the penalty, the sanction violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Eighth Amendment says "excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed."
The case ended up in the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled in Dami's favor, despite argument from state lawyers that the Eighth Amendment applies only to individuals, and that a company's ability to pay a penalty should not be weighed as part of excessive fine considerations.
Colorado then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Daniel Goodwin, an attorney who represented Dami in the case, said Dami's owner, Soon Pak, had no idea the workers' compensation insurance had lapsed and that no one was adversely affected as a result. Pak is a Korean immigrant in her 70s who speaks little English and has difficulty understanding technical and legal concepts, her legal team argued.
Pak's lawyers say she obtained workers' compensation insurance once she realized it had lapsed and sought to resolve the matter, offering the state $3,500 to clear up the penalty. Pak said her annual payroll, at the time the fine was leveled, was $50,000.
"That's absolutely ridiculous," Goodwin said of the $425,000 fine against Pak. "There is no one, other than a major corporation, that could pay a fine of such an amount. An offer of paying a reasonable fine has been made numerous times to the department and they have rejected that."
Weiser is worried about the ripple effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's action. He said they could be far reaching, including to the state's lawsuit against opioid make Purdue Pharma.
Weiser thinks that business owners will take money out of their companies to avoid paying regulatory fines.
"You create a clear incentive for companies to strip money out of corporations," he said. "This would be hugely problematic for a range of regulator systems - whether it's health and safety or taxation - where we've relied on fines for bad behavior."
He added: "Fines should be what they should be to serve the regulatory purpose, and you shouldn't seek to undermine the regulatory purpose based on who the corporation is."
Goodwin called Weiser's argument "fallacious."
"If the state is trying to take away a business," Goodwin said, "that is not reasonable."
Published: Thu, Jan 16, 2020
