In brief: Supreme Court backs arrest of protester
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court opted for safety and security over free speech Monday, ruling Secret Service agents cannot be sued for arresting a Colorado man who confronted former Vice President Dick Cheney on the street in 2006 and said his “policies on Iraq are disgusting.”
The right to free speech does not protect citizens from a “retaliatory arrest,” the justices said, if police or federal agents have probable cause to take them into custody. In the Cheney case, a judge said the agents had reason to arrest Steven Howards, the protester, because he had either touched or bumped the vice president.
Monday’s decision was unanimous, although Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer would have limited the holding to Secret Service agents rather than law enforcement generally. Justice Elena Kagan sat out the case.
Man receives longest insider trading sentence
NEWARK, N.J. – A former attorney who admitted feeding privileged information to two confederates over the course of a 17-year insider stock trading scheme was sentenced Monday to 12 years in prison, the longest sentence ever handed out for insider trading, and the trader who reaped more than $20 million in profits from the tips received a nine-year sentence, authorities said.
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said former attorney Matthew Kluger’s sentence is the longest handed out for that crime. The scheme was carried out from 1994 to 2011 and is believed to be the longest ever uncovered by law enforcement, though the crimes charged dated only to 2005.
‘Pathological liar’ juror forces new fraud trial
NEW YORK – A federal judge on Monday ordered a new trial for three of four people convicted in the largest tax fraud prosecution in U.S. history, saying a “pathological liar” who served as a juror had corrupted the trial.
U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said the juror had spoiled a three-month trial that included 41 witnesses and 1,300 exhibits and produced 22 million documents and 9,200 pages of trial transcript. He noted that the courts disbursed $110,569 for attendance and mileage fees and jury meals during the trial.
At trial, a prosecutor said the defendants created tax shelters that benefited some of the “most well-heeled, richest investors in the world,” including the late sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt, trust fund recipients, investors, a grandson of the late industrialist Armand Hammer and a man who was one of the earliest investors in Microsoft Corp.
The trial ended a year ago with convictions of two prominent lawyers – Paul M. Daugerdas, of Wilmette, Ill., and Donna M. Guerin, of Elmhurst, Ill. – along with Denis M. Field, of Naples, Fla., the former chief executive officer of the accounting firm BDO Seidman and former head of its national tax practice.
David Parse, an Elmhurst, Ill., lawyer who also was convicted, will not get a new trial because his lawyers knew that the juror had lied about her background before the end of the trial but failed to inform the judge in time to replace her, the judge said.