Nation in brief: Group to sue over Arizona law
Phoenix – A Latino clergy group said Wednesday it will file the first lawsuit challenging Arizona’s tough new law targeting illegal immigration.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders plans to file the suit today in federal court in Phoenix.
A draft copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press shows the group will ask a judge to issue an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law.
The group plans to argue that federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders and that Arizona’s law violates due-process rights by allowing pretrial detention of suspected illegal immigrants.
DNA clears man in 1988 murder
Rochester, N.Y. – A former truck driver who spent nearly 19 years behind bars for a 1988 slaying he didn’t commit walked free Wednesday after DNA testing exonerated him and instead pointed to a man who strangled a 4-year-old girl in 1994.
“I made it! Patience is a virtue,” exulted Frank Sterling, 46, who was convicted of murder based on a recanted confession and drew 25 years to life in prison.
State Judge Thomas Van Strydonck vacated the 1992 conviction after Monroe County prosecutors agreed with lawyers for the Innocence Project that DNA evidence obtained from the victim’s clothing excluded Sterling as the killer.
Few protest Ayers speech
Laramie, Wyo. – Security was heightened as William Ayers delivered a speech on education reform at the University of Wyoming on Wednesday, but only a handful of demonstrators showed up to protest the 1960s radical after a federal judge forced the university to host him.
Roughly 1,100 people went through bag and coat searches to enter the event at a campus gym. About 10 protesters gathered outside the gym’s entrance, carrying American flags and denouncing Ayers for his anti-war activities in the Vietnam era.
Ayers, now a University of Illinois-Chicago professor, focused in his talk on conventional ways to improve educational access for all groups of people, stressing that the urban poor were still too often shortchanged when it came to opportunities for education.