Word: verdicts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Convinced that his action was justified, Gilbert refused to plea-bargain and left his fate in the hands of a ten-woman, two-man Broward County jury. No one was more surprised than he when it returned after four hours of deliberation with a first- degree murder verdict. "I still don't feel like I committed a crime," Gilbert said afterward. "This just shows that the laws have to be changed...
...evidence against the officers originally was heard by a military court, which deliberated for nine months before declaring last October that it was unable to reach a verdict. Alfonsin, under pressure from human rights groups to keep a promise that he would make the military account for the crimes, handed the case to the civil courts. It was a decision criticized by the military, including Alfonsin's own first Chief of Staff, retired General Jorge Arguindegui, who declared that the trial would be "a Nuremberg in reverse" because the "victors" in the war against subversion would be judged...
...Bulow was convicted in 1982 on two counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But last April, after his newly retained defense attorney, the high-powered Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, filed a brief claiming wrongful conviction, the Rhode Island Supreme Court threw out the verdict on technical grounds. The justices ruled that the contents of Von Bulow's "little black bag," found by his stepson Alexander von Auersperg and containing a used syringe with traces of insulin, were illegally analyzed by state authorities...
...believe that Judge [Pierre N.] Leval--who incidentally runs a first class courtroom--should ever have permitted [the Westmoreland] case to go trial. He as much as acknowledged that himself after Westmoreland withdrew his suit by saying, "Perhaps this is a verdict best left to history...
...ruling appeared to follow Illinois legal precedent in cases where witnesses recant their testimony after a conviction. Such retractions are generally viewed with suspicion, and the convictions stand. Said Thomas Royce, a prominent Chicago criminal-defense lawyer: "Recanting testimony is not (in itself) sufficient to impeach a jury's verdict. It basically falls on deaf ears...