Anthony trial delayed over legal issue

Orlando (CNN) -- What had been planned as an extended weekend work day in the Casey Anthony murder trial abruptly ended Saturday morning as the judge overseeing the case ordered a recess over the sudden emergence of what one analyst said must be a major issue.

"Obviously it's big, and obviously it's troublesome and obviously it's something that can't be disclosed," HLN legal analyst Linda Kenney Baden said.

Judge Belvin Perry emerged from his chambers Saturday morning after nearly an hour of discussions with attorneys both in and out of the courtroom to announce the day's planned testimony would be canceled.

He said only that the delay was due to a legal issue unrelated to complaints prosecutors raised first thing Saturday morning about expected testimony from Kenneth Furton, a chemistry expert the defense had planned to call Saturday.

Anthony's lawyers are trying to discredit the prosecution theory that the Orlando woman rendered her 2-year-old daughter Caylee unconscious with chloroform, duct-taped her mouth and nose and stored the body in her trunk for a few days before dumping it in the woods. Anthony, 25, is charged with seven counts, including first-degree murder.

The defense says Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and that Anthony and her father panicked and covered it up.

In what has become a familiar strain during the trial, prosecutor Jeff Ashton complained to Perry that defense attorneys didn't disclose Furton's plans to testify about things that weren't contained in his initial report provided to prosecutors or mentioned in his formal interview with them.

Perry has previously admonished Baez for failing to disclose planned testimony to prosecutors, going so far as to say he will consider contempt proceedings against him once the trial is over.

Furton was to testify about explanations for vile odors and the presence of chloroform in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car, where prosecutors claim Anthony stored the body of 2-year-old Casey Anthony before dumping the remains in a wooded field.

Chloroform can be given off by a decomposing body, and one prosecution expert described the levels of the substance in the trunk of Anthony's white Pontiac Sunfire as "shockingly high." Several witnesses also testified for the state about odors that they said smelled like the unmistakable scent of human decomposition.

Furton did not provide specific alternative explanations for the presence of odors or chloroform in his initial report or in his interview with prosecutors, Ashton complained.

"Once again we are in the position of experts having supplemented their opinions without notifying the state," Ashton said.

Defense attorney Jose Baez disagreed, saying nothing in Furton's planned testimony differed from his previous opinions.

"Mr. Ashton can continue to make these allegations and make these allegations and then suddenly they become true in his world," Baez said. "But I do not believe they are true."

Perry indicated that he would not allow Furton to testify on Saturday, but didn't rule on the controversy before ordering the trial to recess until 8:30 a.m. Monday morning. But he did hint at his frustration.

"You would think this would have grown old by now but I guess some things never change," he said.

Saturday marked the end of the fifth week of testimony in the trial, which began with opening statements on May 24.

Perry lengthened Saturday's work day from the usual half-day in an effort to speed the trial's conclusion. He originally told jurors, who are being housed in an Orlando hotel shielded from media coverage of the trial, that the trial could last six to eight weeks.

On Friday -- before Saturday's delay -- Baez said he expected the defense to rest on Wednesday or possibly Thursday. That would leave room for a rebuttal case from the prosecution and closing statements before the Independence Day holiday.

It is unclear how Saturday's delay will affect those plans.

Anthony could face the death penalty if convicted of the most serious charge, first degree murder. The charges against her also include misleading authorities and aggravated child abuse.

Caylee was not reported missing to police until July 15, 2008, when Anthony's mother, Cindy Anthony, tracked down her daughter and demanded answers regarding Caylee's whereabouts. Prosecution witnesses described Anthony's behavior in the month after Caylee was last seen as nonchalant, testifying how she spent time with her boyfriend, went shopping and to nightclubs.

Baez said in his opening statement that Anthony behaved as she did because years of sexual abuse by her father and had conditioned her to conceal the truth and hide her pain.

George Anthony has denied the claims that he abused his daughter or helped conceal his granddaughter's death.

CNN's Michael Christian contributed to this report.

var cnnOmniPartner="TV-Nancy Grace"Watch Nancy Grace Monday through Sunday starting at 8 p.m. ET on HLN. For the latest from Nancy Grace click here.

CNN

TiVo results jump thanks to legal settlement (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – TiVo Inc (TIVO.O), which makes digital video recorders, reported a quarterly profit, reversing a year ago loss, thanks to the blockbuster patent settlement it reached with Dish Network Corp (DISH.O) and EchoStar Corp (SATS.O).

TiVo posted a profit of $139 million, or $1.04 a share, compared with a loss of $14.2 million, or 13 cents a share, in the same period a year ago, it said on Tuesday.

The stronger results came as revenue fell 25 percent to $45.8 million in its fiscal first quarter and are largely a reflection of a $175.7 million gain from the settlement.

The agreement with Dish and EchoStar, both controlled by Charlie Ergen, called for an initial payment to TiVo of $300 million, with another $200 million to be paid in six equal annual installments between 2012 and 2017.

(Reporting by Paul Thomasch; editing by Andre Grenon)

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

British footballer takes legal action on Twitter (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – A British footballer is taking legal action to force Twitter to give the details of users who broke a gagging order granting him anonymity over an alleged affair, his lawyers have said.

The married player had earlier obtained an order from a judge banning publication of his identity over an alleged sexual relationship with a female contestant on the reality television show Big Brother.

"An application has been made to obtain limited information concerning the unlawful use of Twitter by a small number of individuals who may have breached a court order," his law firm, Schillings, said in a statement on Friday.

The player is not identified in the court documents.

A spokesman for US-based Twitter said: "We?re not able to comment."

Earlier this month a Twitter user published the names of several British celebrities who have allegedly obtained anonymised injunctions or so-called super-injunctions which prevent even the mention of the order itself.

A long-awaited judicial report on Friday said that the gagging orders should only be granted where strictly necessary and that media who may be silenced by such bans should also be informed beforehand.

But senior judge David Neuberger also urged lawmakers to think twice before using their right of unrestricted freedom of speech in parliament to undermine them.

On Thursday, a member of the House of Lords revealed that Fred Goodwin, the former boss of the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland, had won an injunction banning publication of details of an alleged affair with a colleague.

The High Court subsequently quashed the anonymity order that had been protecting him.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

The killing of bin Laden: Was it legal?

(CNN) -- Was the killing of Osama bin Laden legal under international law?

The administration says yes, absolutely. Experts are unsure.

Attorney General Eric Holder told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound was lawful "as an act of national self-defense."

"He was the head of al Qaeda, an organization that had conducted the attacks of September the 11th," Holder said. "It's lawful to target an enemy commander in the field."

New details on bin Laden's death

The raid on Obama's compound "was conducted in a manner fully consistent with the laws of war," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. Carney declined to offer specifics, but said "there is simply no question that this operation was lawful. ... (Bin Laden) had continued to plot attacks against the United States."

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had all issued orders to kill or capture the al Qaeda leader.

Bin Laden raid was years in the making

"The authority (during the raid) was to kill bin Laden," CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday during an interview with PBS. "Obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered, and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him."

A number of experts have said the question of actual legality may come down to bin Laden's response at the moment U.S. Navy SEALs burst into his room.

"If a person has his hands in the air, you're not supposed to kill him," said Steven Groves, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

U.S. officials have revised their account of what happened during the assault on the compound in Pakistan. Bin Laden was not armed during the 40-minute raid, they now say, but he put up resistance to U.S. forces.

The al Qaeda leader was moving at the time he was initially shot, according to a U.S. official who has seen military reports of the incident. The official declined to describe the movements more specifically.

Asked if bin Laden tried to grab a weapon or physically attack a commando, the official would say only that "he didn't hold up his hands and surrender."

Officials earlier claimed that bin Laden was an active participant in the firefight that erupted, implying that he was armed and gave the SEALs little choice but to shoot him.

Behind the scenes of the bin Laden raid

Groves, citing the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, said that, based on the most recent White House account, "there is nothing to indicate anything illegal happened."

Bin Laden, considered a combatant by virtue of his position as head of al Qaeda, needed to immediately make clear a desire to surrender, if that was his decision, in order to avoid being shot. That apparently didn't happen, Groves said.

"The United States offered bin Laden the possibility to surrender, but he refused," Martin Scheinin, the United Nations' special rapporteur for human rights, said Tuesday. "Bin Laden would have avoided destruction if he had raised a white flag."

Geoffrey Robertson, a human rights lawyer who has defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange among others, made clear that international law requires any killing to be done in self-defense.

If members of the SEAL team "reasonably (believed there was) a risk to themselves, then the killing was justified," Robertson asserted. But given the changing White House account of the raid, "there needs to be an inquiry," he said.

Cherif Bassiouni, head of DePaul University's International Human Rights Law Institute and a former U.N. war crimes investigator, said that the "killing of any individual sought by law enforcement in the course of a lawful arrest is always a question of facts. Did the person resist? Did the person have a deadly weapon? Were the arresting officers in fear of their lives? These are all pertinent questions."

Bassiouni stressed that any "extrajudicial execution of an unarmed person is in violation of international law."

"It is necessary for the Navy to conduct an internal investigation into the appropriateness of the use of armed force," Bassiouni said. "However, it is also important not to make the Navy SEALs be the scapegoats for (any) secret orders which the public is unaware of to simply kill bin Laden no matter what."

Was the incursion of U.S. forces into Pakistani territory without the clear permission of Islamabad legal?

Bin Laden was an indicted international criminal who had evaded all attempts to apprehend him, Robertson said. As a consequence, the operation was legal, he asserted.

Groves argued the use of the SEALs does "present complications," though he noted that there has been a "kind of a wink and a nod game (the U.S. government has) been playing with the Pakistanis for years" in terms of predator drone strikes and other attacks against Islamic extremists on Pakistani soil.

Bassiouni argued that "the mission to capture was legal, even though there are some questions under international law about one state sending its forces into another state to kidnap a person wanted for trial."

The issue first arose in the early 1960s, Bassiouni noted, when notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped by Israeli agents in Argentina and subsequently brought to Israel for trial.

Half a century later, that issue remains a matter of sharp dispute.

CNN's Richard Greene and Barbara Starr contributed to this report

CNN Top Stories

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Obama Campaign Reportedly Amasses Big Legal Fees

FoxNews.com

Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet

President Obama's campaign committee has been racking up big bills for legal fees since his historic election, according to a new report.

The committee paid nearly three times more in legal fees in the two years since his election than in the two years prior, according to a CQ MoneyLine study of Federal Election Commission records.

The report shows that Obama for America spent $2.8 million on lawyers’ costs for corrected FEC filings and other activities in the time since he was elected in 2008, Roll Call reported.

Obama supporters note that the expenses for John McCain were also higher after his campaign than before. And the reason for the inflated costs had as much to do with Obama’s running the most expensive campaign in history as with the many, many legal challenges from Republican groups

View the Original article