QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It should never have occurred.”
Rafael Moure-Eraso, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which found that a fertilizer-plant explosion that killed 15 people last year in West, Texas, could have been prevented Article, this page
Suit fights Georgia’s gay-marriage ban
ATLANTA - A gay-rights group filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging Georgia’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit on behalf of seven people and seeks class-action status. They are suing the state registrar, a clerk of the Gwinnett County Probate Court and a Fulton County Probate Court judge in their official capacities.
“The history of the United States has been defined by the ability of each succeeding generation to recognize that social, economic, political, religious, and historical norms do not define our unalienable rights,” the lawsuit says. “[I] n time, the American ideal of equality and liberty demanded that our government move past cultural and majority oppressions, however long-standing, in order to secure and fulfill the individual rights of all citizens.”
Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage in 2004. Gay-rights groups filed lawsuits in state court challenging the wording of the ballot question, but the state Supreme Court ultimately ruled the vote was valid in 2006.
Top Arizona court tosses ‘pot’ DUI case
PHOENIX - The presence of nonimpairing marijuana compounds in a person’s body isn’t a justification for authorities to prosecute under Arizona’s driving-under-the-influence laws, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The ruling overturned a state Court of Appeals decision last year that upheld the right of authorities to prosecute “pot” smokers for DUI even when there is no evidence of impairment.
The Arizona Supreme Court opinion noted that while state statute makes it illegal for a driver to be impaired by marijuana use, the presence of a nonpsychoactive compound does not constitute impairment under the law.
The opinion focuses on two chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests - one that causes impairment and one that stays in the system for weeks but doesn’t cause impairment.
The ruling arises from the case of an Arizona man who was stopped by police for speeding and making unsafe lane changes. The man later acknowledged having smoked marijuana the night before, and a blood test revealed marijuana compounds in his system but not the form that causes impairment, according to court records.
Defense must get details on CIA captivity
FORT MEADE, Md. - Prosecutors must turn over never-revealed details about the time a Guantanamo Bay detainee spent in secret CIA prisons after his arrest in connection with the deadly attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a military judge’s order released Tuesday.
The five-page order was a victory for defense lawyers representing Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors, injured 42 others and tore a hole into the side of the guided-missile destroyer based in Norfolk, Va.
Al-Nashiri, who was born in Saudi Arabia, has been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006, after being held in a series of secret CIA prisons.
A CIA inspector general’s report said al-Nashiri, considered to have once been one of the most senior leaders in al-Qaida, was waterboarded under rules approved by the George W. Bush administration, although many of them have been repudiated as torture.
Ohio coach sentenced in party-rape case
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - A volunteer football coach whose house was the scene of an underage drinking party that preceded the rape of a girl by two high school football players in 2012 pleaded no contest to two charges on Tuesday, the Ohio attorney general’s office said.
Matt Belardine entered no contest pleas in Jefferson County court to one count of making a false statement and one count of enabling underage drinking. Charges of obstructing official business and contributing to the delinquency of a child were dismissed.
Special Judge Patricia Ann Cosgrove sentenced Belardine to 10 days in jail, one year of supervision and 40 hours of community service. She also fined him $1,000.
Belardine was one of six people charged last year by a grand jury investigating whether other laws were broken in the case of the 16-year-old West Virginia girl who was raped after an alcohol-fueled house party in August 2012.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/23/2014