Word: legally
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Insanity is its own manifesto. To a criminal trial lawyer, the term has several meanings and definitions. "Competent" to stand trial is actually a low-threshold legal matter. One merely has to be able to understand the nature and consequences of the charges and be able to assist in one's defense. It is obvious that Kaczynski should qualify on both counts. But his lawyers argue that the nature of his illness prevents him from accepting--and thus cooperating with--a mental-illness defense, and that, they argue, should make him incompetent to stand trial. As for defending himself, only...
Though he denies that the IRS is being used against Jones, Bennett wouldn't mind a review of the tax-exempt status of the Rutherford Institute, the conservative religious-liberty group paying part of her legal expenses. In an attempt to prove that Rutherford is pursuing nothing more than a political attack against the President, last month Bennett subpoenaed its financial records. He's also charging that donations to the separate Paula Jones Legal Fund are being diverted to pay for her hair care, jewelry and clothing. Institute leaders call the subpoena an attempt to harass them for defending Jones...
...didn't the D.A.'s office share Babin's seemingly indecisive original statement with the defense? Berry says the prosecution had no legal obligation to share the statement. But Bryan Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., says prosecutors do, in fact, have a legal obligation to share with the defense exculpatory evidence--and in capital cases mitigating evidence, as well. Says Stevenson: "The obligation of the prosecution is to accomplish justice, not just get a conviction...
...Paroles or Governor George W. Bush, who must concur for a sentence to be commuted, will block her execution. Bush, a law-and-order Republican facing a re-election campaign this year, would seem to gain little politically by such a move. Moreover, there simply are not the requisite legal questions or doubts about her guilt that might prompt commutation. Pardon has never been given to anyone in Texas based on religious conversion...
...should you be panicked? Because humans are next. "It would almost certainly be possible to produce human bodies without a forebrain," Princeton biologist Lee Silver told the London Sunday Times. "These human bodies without any semblance of consciousness would not be considered persons, and thus it would be perfectly legal to keep them 'alive' as a future source of organs...