Court Roundup

Washington
Senate confirms more Trump judges
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has put more judges on the circuit courts this far into his first two years than other administrations had, thanks to Senate Republicans.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed two more of Trump’s nominees, bringing to 26 the number of new appellate judges that have been approved this session of Congress.

The judges confirmed Thursday — U.S. District Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. and U.S. Attorney’s Office Deputy Chief Jay Richardson — will fill seats on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in South Carolina.

A Trump-nominated judge now holds one out every seven seats on the circuit courts, according to the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Republicans have made a priority of confirming judges in their fight to hold the Senate majority ahead of the fall midterm election. Democrats have stalled many of Trump’s picks.

Conservatives have long taken an interest in the judiciary. McConnell leads a narrowly divided Senate, 51-49, which makes it difficult to pass legislation. But he has seized on the chance to reshape the courts in the Trump era. Judges can be confirmed with a simple majority of senators.

Some Democrats have complained that Trump and Republicans are stacking the courts with some of the more conservative jurists in the nation. They point to cases when nominees were pushed forward for confirmation without backing from a nominee’s home-state senators. Other court picks from Trump are getting bipartisan support.

Democrats had changed the rules several years ago, when they had control, to allow judicial nominees to be confirmed with a majority vote.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., praised the Trump nominees from his state Thursday in a floor speech ahead of the vote.

He called Quattelbaum “one of the most capable lawyers I’ve ever met.” And he called Richardson, who successfully prosecuted Dylann Roof in the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in South Carolina, “one of the great legal minds of our time.”

Both judges were overwhelmingly approved by the Senate.


Kentucky
Robber’s victim helped convict him; now he gets new sentence
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Justice is supposed to be blind. But it can sometimes be oblivious.

The Kentucky Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing trial for a man serving time for robbery because one of his previous victims unknowingly was on the jury that convicted him.

In 2006, Johnnie Ray Douglas was about to go on trial for stealing thousands of dollars from several check advance business in Louisville and leaving one employee handcuffed to a pipe.

A prospective juror told the judge he had been the victim of an armed robbery in 1985 while working as a bank teller. The man promised he could still be fair in the trial, adding with a laugh the only consequence from his ordeal was it made him avoid a career in retail banking. Still, Douglas’ attorney thought it best to strike the man from the jury. But he made a mistake and struck the wrong person.

The jury convicted Douglas on one count of robbery and two counts of kidnapping. Prosecutors then asked the jury to label Douglas a “persistent felony offender,” a designation that would allow for a longer prison sentence. They showed the jury evidence of Douglas’ past crimes, including a 1985 indictment for armed robbery. The juror — identified only as juror 151651 — read the indictment and saw his name listed as the victim. It “refreshed his recollection” and he suddenly remembered Douglas.

It appears the juror did not tell the judge right away. The jury decided Douglas was a persistent felony offender and recommended a 35-year sentence. Afterward, the juror told the judge what happened. The judge told Douglas and his lawyers, who decided not to ask for a new trial. Instead, they decided to ask the appellate courts to overturn the conviction.

They lost. The Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the robbery conviction in 2007. But in 2009, Douglas tried again. He got new lawyers, who filed a lawsuit alleging Douglas’ previous lawyers were ineffective because they did not question the juror enough and they did not ask for a new trial once they discovered the juror’s connection to their client.

Thursday, 12 years after his original conviction, the high court justices partially agreed with Douglas. They did not overturn his robbery conviction, but they said he must get a new sentencing trial.

“Prejudice could not be presumed from the juror’s presence on the jury (during the guilt phase of the trial) because no one knew of his bias toward Douglas ... including the juror himself,” Justice Bill Cunningham wrote for the court.

But once the juror realized who Douglas was, “prejudice could be presumed.”

“Those proceedings were fundamentally unfair,” Cunningham wrote.


Virginia
State AG asks high court to hear appeal on sniper sentencing
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s attorney general has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the state’s appeal of a ruling granting new sentencing hearings for the man serving life terms for the sniper shootings that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region when he was a teenager.

Attorney General Mark Herring filed a petition Friday asking the high court to review a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In June, the appeals court ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo should be resentenced in Virginia under U.S. Supreme Court rulings that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional.

Herring argues that Malvo’s sentence already complies with those rulings.

Malvo was 17 when he and John Allen Muhammad fatally shot 10 people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington.

Muhammad was executed. Malvo was sentenced to multiple life terms, including four in Virginia.