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Teen guilty of murdering Georgia baby in stroller
Headline Legal News |
2013/09/03 20:24
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An 18-year-old man was convicted of murder in the shooting of a baby who was riding in a stroller alongside his mom in a town in coastal Georgia.
Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding De'Marquise Elkins guilty in the March 21 killing of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in Brunswick. The man's mother, Karimah Elkins, was on trial alongside him and was found guilty of tampering with evidence but acquitted of lying to police.
De'Marquise Elkins' attorney asked for bond for his client while they appealed, which a judge denied.
Prosecutors said Elkins killed Antonio in an attempted robbery. The baby's mother, Sherry West, also was shot.
Another teen, 15-year-old Dominique Lang, is also charged with murder in the case and is set to be tried later.
Sherry West testified during the two-week trial that she was walking home from the post office with 13-month-old Antonio Santiago in a stroller on the morning of March 21. She said a gunman demanding her purse shot her baby in the face after she told him she had no money. |
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Italian court insists Berlusconi devised tax fraud
Legal Business |
2013/08/29 09:33
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Italy's supreme court is defending its decision earlier this month to uphold the tax fraud conviction of Silvio Berlusconi, saying the evidence was clear that the former premier devised a tax fraud scheme for the acquisition of film rights for his media empire.
The Court of Cassation released on Thursday a written document explaining its Aug. 1 decision, which upheld a Milan appellate court ruling that Berlusconi was guilty. The Cassation judges also upheld a four-year prison term and a ban on public office, although it ordered another court to establish the length of the ban.
The center-right leader says he's the victim of magistrates he contends sympathize with the left. His lawyers will be scrutinizing the 208-page document to try to bolster their claims that Berlusconi's rights were violated.
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Calif. tax lawyer convicted of taking client money
Headline Legal News |
2013/08/26 11:14
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Federal prosecutors say a 73-year-old Northern California tax attorney has been convicted of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from clients for his own expenses including personal trainers and travel.
A U.S. attorney's statement says Stanford Law School graduate Orion Douglas Memmott of Willows was found guilty Wednesday of tax evasion and subscribing to a false tax document after a five-day bench trial in October.
The statement says Memmott took money from investors and law firm clients including one woman who was left destitute and homeless after he depleted her medical trust.
Prosecutors say Memmott concealed the embezzled money through nominee accounts and false statements to investors, clients, and the Internal Revenue Service. |
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Ala. courts seek $8.5 million to avoid layoffs
Headline Legal News |
2013/08/21 13:57
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When the state government's new budget year begins on Oct. 1, Chief Justice Roy Moore says he will need assurances that the courts are going to get an extra $8.5 million in state funding or he will have to lay off 150 employees.
The governor and a legislative budget chairman say it's going to be hard to come up with that much money.
Gov. Robert Bentley said he has sympathy for the court system, but the state General Fund is tight. "I don't see $8.5 million being awarded. We'll have to see what's available," he said.
The state's $1.7 billion General Fund for the new fiscal year starting Oct. 1 is 0.4 percent larger than the current year's budget.
The budget will increase the court system's appropriation from $102.8 million this fiscal year to $108.4 million for the new year. That $5.6 million increase is second only to the $16.7 million increase given to the prison system. But Moore, who oversees the state court system, said $8.5 million more was needed to maintain court services at their current level.
To help the court system, the budget includes what legislators call a "first-priority conditional appropriation" of $8.5 million. The budget allows the governor to release extra funding to some state programs if tax collections exceed expectations. The budget requires that if the governor wants to release any extra funding, the court system has to get its $8.5 million first before any other program gets a penny extra. |
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NY man pleads guilty in Paula Deen extortion case
Headline Legal News |
2013/08/19 14:23
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A New York man pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to trying to extort $200,000 from Paula Deen by threatening to reveal damaging information about the embattled celebrity cook if she didn't pay him to stay quiet.
"I had, I guess, some bad judgment," 62-year-old Thomas George Paculis told a U.S. District Court judge in Savannah.
"I do take responsibility for what I have done."Paculis, of Newfield, acknowledged sending emails to Deen's attorney offering to trade his silence for cash in June. It came a few days after documents became public that revealed the former Food Network star had said under oath that she used racial slurs in the past.
As Deen's culinary empire began to crumble, Paculis claimed he could reveal things that would bring her "financial hardship and even ruin," according to one email that invited Deen's lawyer to "make me an offer I can't refuse."
Neither Paculis nor federal authorities have revealed what sort of dirt the defendant claimed he could dish up regarding Deen or if he truly had any at all. He owned a restaurant in Savannah in the 1990s, but Deen told the FBI she didn't recognize his name or his face. |
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