Court upholds gay judge's ruling on Proposition 8

Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling on California's Proposition 8 was upheld in a ruling Tuesday.Proposition 8 supporters who filed motion say they will appealCourt upholds former Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in California caseWalker ruled the law unconstitutional and later revealed he was gayProp. 8 supporters' motion said Walker "plainly had an interest" in the ruling's outcome

(CNN) -- A federal judge who ruled against a ban on same-sex marriage in California and later revealed that he is gay showed no evidence he was prejudiced in the case, according to a ruling Tuesday.

U.S. District Court Judge James Ware upheld former colleague's Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling on California's Proposition 8. Questions had been raised about Walker's ability to impartially decide the controversial question of same-sex marriage.

"It is not reasonable to presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law, solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings," Ware ruled.

Ware, based in San Francisco, backed the original ruling by Walker that the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in the state was unconstitutional. The new order keeps the issue on track to an expected Supreme Court challenge, perhaps by next year.

On April 6, several weeks after retiring, Walker ended months of speculation by publicly disclosing "that he is gay and that he has been in a committed relationship for more than 10 years," according to a motion filed by Proposition 8 backers, who said they would appeal Ware's ruling.

The previous August, Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violated the Constitution's equal protection clause.

"Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," Walker wrote in his 136-page opinion.

The motion said Walker should have either recused himself from the case or disclosed his sexual orientation "so that the parties could consider and decide, before the case proceeded further, whether to request his recusal."

Walker told reporters in April he didn't think it was appropriate for any judge's sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin or gender to stop them from presiding over a case, according to a Reuters report.

The motion argued that if Walker and his partner ever wanted -- or thought they might want -- to marry, he "plainly had an 'interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding,' " it said, citing federal law regarding disqualification of judges.

"Only if Chief Judge Walker had unequivocally disavowed any interest in marrying his partner could the parties and the public be confident that he did not have a direct personal interest in the outcome of the case," the motion said.

Same-sex marriage advocates decried the motion.

"Supporters of Proposition 8 are grasping at straws because they don't like the outcome," Michael Cole-Schwartz of the Human Rights Campaign said in April. "If their real intent was to 'protect marriage,' they should argue that a straight, married judge be disqualified since he would conceivably have an interest in protecting his own marriage. The argument is simply ridiculous on its face."

Judge Ware wrote that the presumption that "all people in same-sex relationships think alike" is unreasonable.

"The presumption that Judge Walker, by virtue of being in a same-sex relationship, had a desire to be married that rendered him incapable of making an impartial decision, is as warrantless as the presumption that a female judge is incapable of being impartial in a case in which women seek legal relief," Ware said. "On the contrary: it is reasonable to presume that a female judge or a judge in a same-sex relationship is capable of rising above any personal predisposition and deciding such a case on the merits."

Equality California, which argues for civil rights protection, hailed the ruling, saying it "reaches far beyond the LGBT community and is a cause for elation."

Protectmarriage.com said it disagreed with Ware's decision.

"Our legal team will appeal that decision and continue our tireless efforts to defend the will of the people of California to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman," attorney Charles J. Cooper said.

In New York, meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a bill Tuesday that would legalize same-sex marriage, effectively delivering on a promise he has made since taking office in January.

The Marriage Equality Act would grant same-sex couples equal rights to marry "as well as hundreds of rights, benefits and protections that are currently limited to married couples of the opposite sex," according to a news release from Cuomo's office.

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CNN's Ashley Hayes and Augie Martin contributed to this report.

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Russian court upholds Khodorkovsky conviction (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian appeals court upheld a multi-billion-dollar theft and money laundering conviction against jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Tuesday and reduced his 14-year prison sentence by one year.

The court rejected an appeal by Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, against his December 30 conviction in a trial seen by his supporters as a test of President Dmitry Medvedev's promises to improve the rule of law.

Khodorkovsky, 47, and his business partner Platon Lebedev, were initially convicted of fraud and tax evasion in a separate trial in 2005.

The court "imposes on Khodorkovsky and Lebedev punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of 13 years," Judge Olga Arochkina said after the one-day hearing of their appeals.

The Moscow City Court ruling means former Yukos oil company chief Khodorkovsky, who fell foul of the Kremlin during Vladimir Putin's presidency and has been jailed since 2003, will remain in prison well into 2016.

One of Khodorkovsky's lawyers, Karina Moskalenko, called the one-year reduction of the sentence "cosmetic" while Amnesty International declared Khodorkovsky and Lebedev "prisoners of conscience."

Khodorkovsky, wearing a black shirt and watching from a glass-walled cage in the courtroom, smiled to his relatives as the judge read out the court's decision. Supporters outside the courtroom protested, calling the decision a "disgrace."

Khodorkovsky's lawyer Vadim Klyugvant said they would appeal against the decision "at all Russian and international levels available to us by law," making an apparent reference to the European Court of Human Rights.

In December, the trial judge who convicted Khodorkovsky sentenced him to serve a total of 14 years in prison, counting from his initial arrest at a Siberian airport in October 2003.

Government critics describe the prosecution of Khodorkovsky as part of a Kremlin campaign to tighten state control over oil revenues and punish the tycoon for perceived challenges to Putin, president from 2000-2008 and now prime minister.

"We have become witnesses to yet another act of shameless, selective and illegal political massacre, which has already been going on for eight years and is directed at targets outside of the realm of justice," said defense lawyer Yuri Shmidt.

STOLEN OIL

Khodorkovsky's lawyers protested last year after Putin, speaking on a nationally televised question and answer session responded to a question about the former magnate saying, "a thief must sit in jail."

Western governments have condemned the December verdict, saying it raised questions about Russia's commitment to the rule of law.

U.S. officials and prominent members of the Russian elite have warned the second conviction could discourage new investment in the country.

An aide to trial judge Viktor Danilkin, who declared Khodorkovsky guilty last year, stepped down in March after she said the verdict had been dictated from above.

Khodorkovsky is charged with stealing billions of dollars of oil from Yukos subsidiaries through price mechanisms and laundering some of the money.

"The prosecution is obviously absurd, because all our oil was given to the state company Transneft. No oil has disappeared either physically or on paper," said Khodorkovsky to the court.

Yukos produced more crude than OPEC-member Qatar at the height of its success.

Critics of the trial say the verdict and sentence were designed to keep the politically ambitious former businessman from challenging a favored candidate in next year's presidential election.

Both Putin, whose first term as president was defined by Khodorkovsky's earlier trial, and Medvedev whom Putin steered into office in 2008 have said they may run in next year's poll.

(Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by Maria Golovnina)

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Uruguay's Congress upholds military amnesty (AP)

By RAUL O. GARCES, Associated Press Raul O. Garces, Associated Press – 31 mins ago

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – A proposal to overturn an amnesty for officials from Uruguay's former dictatorship fell one vote short in the country's Congress on Friday after a bitter debate that reopened divisions from the 1973-1985 military government.

The ruling center-left Broad Front party had pushed to overturn the amnesty for soldiers, but one of its congressmen abstained, leaving it one vote short of a majority in the 99-seat legislature.

Hundreds of leftist activists ringed the Congress building to demand an end to the amnesty which had protected soldiers from prosecution for kidnappings, killings and other abuses committed by the dictatorship.

Veterans groups, meanwhile, were rankled by the fact that the measure would have left intact a similar amnesty for Marxist guerrillas who fought both the dictatorship and the elected civilian governments that preceded it.

The amnesties were meant to help Uruguayans reconcile after a long period of conflict, and before the vote, Mujica, himself a former rebel, raised questions about how the military might respond. He warned that scrapping the amnesty would create "political dangers that may be impossible to overcome."

The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the amnesty was unconstitutional and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled this year that Uruguay must remove roadblocks to prosecuting crimes against humanity.

Human rights groups argue the official amnesty allows government crimes to go unpunished, and Broad Front members say that the government's "dirty war" continued long after the Tupamaro guerrillas had been defeated.

The issue has divided this small country of 3.5 million people almost down the middle.

Uruguay's Senate approved the measure to annul the amnesty by a single vote in April. Two popular plebiscites to overturn the amnesty failed to win majorities, but by thin margins. Forty-six percent voted to overturn the amnesty in 1989 and and 48 percent voted for the measure in 2009.

A peace commission found in 2003 that the dictatorship killed 175 leftist political activists, 26 of them in clandestine torture centers.

But the Tupamaros also committed killings, kidnappings, robberies and other attacks after taking up arms in 1963 against democratically elected governments. They were defeated a decade later.

Leftist activists on Friday commemorated those who died under the dictatorship. The day marks the anniversary of the 1976 murder of two Uruguayan congressmen who were killed while in exile in Argentina after a military government seized power there and cooperated with the soldiers running Uruguay in attacking leftists.

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Supreme Court Upholds Arizona School Vouchers

AP

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of an Arizona school voucher program that critics say improperly directs taxpayer funds to religious schools.

Monday's 5-4 ruling expands long-standing court precedents that citizens don't have standing to legally challenge taxes they don't like simply because they're taxpayers. 

The minority on the court maintained that since the case involved claims of a violation of religious freedoms, that the Arizona plaintiffs didn't need to demonstrate a specific personal injury.

The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the court's more conservative members, preserves Arizona's school voucher program that is funded by tax credits offered to state taxpayers. Most of the students who use the voucher money attend religious schools.

Opponents of the Arizona system filed a lawsuit claiming the $500 tax credit, available to all individual taxpayers, designed to help pay for private education violates the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing any religion in the United States. The high court in 1968 said taxpayers didn't need to show that they had been personally harmed when lodging an Establishment Clause claim.

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