USLegal Reporter

A three judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of appeals on Wednesday overturned a 35-year old Texas law which banned the sale of sex toys. The court ruled the law violated privacy protections under the 14th Amendment.

In reaching its decision, the panel wrote, “This case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of of consensual private intimate conduct.” 

Alabama, Virginia, and Mississippi are the only remaining states still on the books with a similar law to Texas.

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5540395.html

The Nebraska Supreme Court held Friday that the use of the electric chair constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the state’s constitution. The court found that prisoners may retain enough consciousness to suffer from the high voltage electric current during the electrocution process.

The case before the court involved an appeal by Raymond Mata, Jr. of his death sentence for a 1999 murder. The court stayed Mata’s execution as it had earlier the execution of Carey Dean Moore following a request by a state senator to review the constitutionality of electrocution by electric chair.

Nebraska was the only state that allowed execution by electric chair as its only method of execution.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/02/nebraska-supreme-court-rules-electric.php

U.S. District Judge Neil Wake Thursday upheld the Legal Arizona’s Workers Act, a law that forbids an employer from hiring an employee whom the employer knows to be an illegal immigrant. The new law, which was first enacted last year and became effective January 1, 2008, requires employers to use the E-verify system, a federal database, to verify the legal status of individuals before hiring. The legislation allows for the suspension or revocation of an employer’s license if he or she violates the law.

The court rejected a lawsuit by business groups that claimed the law is unconsitutional as only the federal government, not the state, can regulate immigration. According to the court, federal pre-emption applies to civil or criminal penalties other than licensing laws. The court previously dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by civil rights groups on the basis that the law had not yet gone into effect. Representatives of the 15 county attorneys earlier agreed not to prosecute employers who violate the law prior to March 1, 2008 until the case could be heard.

Source: http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/224165; http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/02/federal-judge-upholds-arizona.php

The United States Supreme Court today declined to review a lawsuit over a Bible monument. The monument, which featured a King James version of the Bible, was displayed outside the Harris County Courthouse in Houston. Kay Slanley sued to have the moment removed because she said it offended her. She also claimed it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Earlier this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Stanley and ordered that the monument must be revoved. The Court also order Harris County to pay Stanley’s legal fees. 

The monument, which had been on display since 1956, was removed during recent renovations to the courthouse.

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5329279.html

Following the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision Thursday, which reversed a district court order to stay the lethal injection execution of Mark Dean Schwab pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Baze v. Rees, the U.S. Supreme Court, also on Thursday, stayed the execution of Schwab, pursuant to his filing a writ of certiorari, shortly before he was scheduled to be executed.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/11/us-supreme-court-stays-execution-of.php

The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed the RESTORE Act of 2007, but its version did not include the controversial provision providing immunity to telecommunication companies that participated in government domestic surveillance. The legislation, if approved by the U.S. Senate, will take the place of the Protect America Act in increasing court oversight of government surveillance procedures.

Civil lawsuits have been filed on the basis that the monitoring of communications without court approval resulted in privacy law violations. President Bush has stated his intent to veto any legislation that does not immunize telecommunication companies from such litigation.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/11/us-house-approves-surveillance-bill.php

The Florida Supreme Court unanimously held Thursday that its lethal injection procedures, including more recently implemented safeguards, do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The Florida Attorney General stated that the state plans on moving forward with the execution of Mark Dean Schwab, scheduled for November 15, 2007.

Schwab, who was convicted of a 1991 rape and murder, claimed that the chemicals used in lethal injection methods can cause excruciating pain and that new evidence shows he personally suffers from a brain impediment. The argument regarding pain caused by lethal injection chemicals is identical to the claim in the Kentucky case that is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/11/florida-supreme-court-upholds-state.php

The U.S. Supreme Court late Tuesday granted Earl Wesley Berry’s stay of execution pending the Court’s decision on granting certiorari. Berry was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection for the murder of a woman he kidnapped in 1987.

The stay adds to the list of three other stays granted by the Supreme Court after its decision to review the constitutionality of the lethal injection methods in a Kentucky case.

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Anti-Capital Punishment Death Penalty Information Center claims that a de facto moratorium on executions by lethal injection is now in place.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/10/supreme-court-blocks-mississippi-lethal.php

A federal appeals court Wednesday stayed the lethal injection of Daniel L. Siebert, whose execution was scheduled for Thursday for several murders in 1986. Following the refusal by the federal district court in Alabama to stay his exectuion, Siebert appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Siebert, who suffers from pancreatic cancer, claimed that the drugs used for lethal injection could negatively interact with his cancer medications to cause unnecessary pain and suffering.

The state argued that Sibert could be executed using a modified procedure, but the modifications did not involve any change to the chemicals or to the sequence in which they are administered. The federal appeals court held that the changes to the protocol were ‘minor’ and stated that the execution shold be postponed until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of lethal injection.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/10/federal-appeals-court-stays-alabama.php

Pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a Kentucky case regarding the constitutionality of the three drug cocktail used in lethal injection executions and in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to stay an execution in Virginia upon a constitutional challenge to lethal injection, the Georgia Supreme Court last Thursday granted a stay to Jack Alderman, who was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Friday for the murder of his wife in 1974.

Monday of this week, the Georgia Supreme Court again halted an execution scheduled for Tuesday of Curtis Osborne, who was convicted of double murder in 2001.

Source: http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=607&docId=l:l:689311086&topicId=12755&source=undefined&start=2&topics=single