Federal Appeals Court

A lawyer for John Joseph Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher imprisoned for raping a student decades ago, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier argument that he should be set free. In a 21-page petition, Merzbacher's attorney H. Mark Stichel asks the high court to resolve several legal questions, including whether a defendant's claim that he would have taken a plea deal if offered, even while proclaiming his innocence, demonstrates a "reasonable probability" that he would have followed through.

A lawyer for John Joseph Merzbacher, a former Catholic school teacher imprisoned for raping a student decades ago, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier argument that he should be set free. In a 21-page petition, Merzbacher's attorney H. Mark Stichel asks the high court to resolve several legal questions, including whether a defendant's claim that he would have taken a plea deal if offered, even while proclaiming his innocence, demonstrates a "reasonable probability" that he would have followed through.

A federal appeals court upheld yesterday a decision by a Baltimore U.S. District Court judge that authorities acted properly in denying a firearms license for a Fells Point gun shop last year. Anthony and Larry DiMartino, father and son, had appealed a Jan. 2 decision by Judge J. Frederick Motz dismissing their petition for review of the licensing denial by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for the Baltimore Gunsmith store on South Broadway. The DiMartinos contended that the judge erred because issues of fact remained over their alleged violations of federal firearms laws and the son's involvement.

A federal appeals court has granted a new hearing in a case challenging whether Baltimore can require faith-based pregnancy counseling centers to post signs saying they don't offer abortion or birth control advice and services. The decision filed Wednesday allows a rehearing before the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., voiding a decision made in June by a panel of three judges from the same court. The panel had voted 2-1 to uphold a lower court's opinion that the ordinance to require signs was unconstitutional, violating the free-speech rights of the pregnancy centers.

Paul C. Weick,97, a retired federal appeals court judge, died May 22 in Stow, Ohio. Judge Weick, of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a dissent when the court denied a request that an appeal arising from the Kent State University shootings in 1970 be heard by all of the circuit judges.Fadhel al-Jamali,94, a former Iraqi prime minister who signed the United Nations charter in 1945 and was sentenced to death for collaborating with the West, died in exile Saturday in Tunisia.The Rev. William Cunningham,67, who fought to build harmony after Detroit's 1967 race riots, died Monday of cancer in Detroit.

A federal appeals court has rejected Worcester County's petition to rehear a lawsuit challenging the county's voting method.The rejection by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in dTC Richmond, Va., reported yesterday, leaves in the county commissioners' laps what to do next about a lower court's order that they change how countians elect commissioners to give more equitable treatment to black candidates.Commissioners said yesterday they will consider what to do at their next meeting Oct. 25."

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court has ruled that employees in the executive branch of government may accept payment for writing articles and giving speeches unrelated to their work, striking down a ban on such payments as a violation of the First Amendment.The court said the ban, included in a 1989 ethics law, imposed excessive limits on the free-speech rights of such employees. Judge Stephen F. Williams of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the ban was "unduly overinclusive" because it applied to speaking or writing about topics unrelated to an employee's job.The Ethics Reform Act of 1989 declared that a federal employee "may not receive any honorarium," defined as "a payment of money or any thing of value for an appearance, speech or article."

WASHINGTON -- The high-stakes constitutional battle over HTC California's Proposition 209, a statewide ban on affirmative action, reached the Supreme Court yesterday as opponents asked that its enforcement be halted.Fearing the resegregation of many state and local government programs that have been opened to women and minorities, civil rights groups and San Francisco argued that the ban "will result in upheaval at all levels of local and state government." The measure might even end school desegregation, they told the court.

WASHINGTON -- The highly charged question of what strings the government can attach to the use of federal money reached the Supreme Court again yesterday, this time in the context of legal services for the poor. The court agreed to decide whether Congress violated the First Amendment when it restricted the kinds of arguments that lawyers supported by the Legal Services Corp. can make on behalf of clients seeking welfare benefits. Under the restriction, the lawyers can help clients who are seeking to receive or restore specific welfare benefits but may not become involved in "an effort to amend or otherwise challenge existing law."

WASHINGTON -- Pennsylvania state attorneys are paving the way for an election-year showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court on the volatile abortion issue.Without waiting the permitted three months to appeal a ruling that struck down part of its new anti-abortion law, Pennsylvania Attorney General Ernie Preate sent appeal papers to the court yesterday and urged the justices to rule on the case during this term."

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding a lower court's ruling that California's Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage, was unconstitutional is surely a good outcome and an advance for equality. Already backers of same-sex marriage in Maryland, including Gov.Martin O'Malley, are expressing optimism that it will provide a boost to their efforts here. But the 2-1 opinion is so narrowly drawn that, even if it is upheld by theU.S. Supreme Court in an inevitable appeal, it may have little bearing on the situation in Maryland and elsewhere.

The federal appellate court that covers Maryland has for years been considered one of the more right-leaning in the nation, finding that women can be banned from a military institute, that the FDA can't regulate tobacco and that confessions count even when suspects haven't been read their rights, among other conservative opinions. But the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals now appears to have taken a left turn. Last week, the court sided with a criminal suspect over police for the fourth time since March on a Fourth Amendment case claiming that improper searches violated the defendant's rights.

Maryland is right to move ahead with plans for establishing a state health-insurance exchange, despite uncertainty over the ultimate outcome of pending court challenges to the federal health-care reform law. Even if the Supreme Court were eventually to find that all or parts of the federal law violated the Constitution - such as the individual mandate requiring everyone to buy private insurance - a vigorous state exchange would still make quality care...

Opponents of a large supermarket at a proposed Turf Valley shopping center in Ellicott City lost another court challenge in their two-year effort to revive a petition drive that sought to put the project's zoning approval on a Howard County election ballot. The 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., upheld Monday an earlier U.S. District Court dismissal of a constitutional argument brought by Paul Kendall. The appeals court ruled there are no federal constitutional issues involved in the case.

— The Supreme Court set an apparent blueprint Monday for upholding recently enacted health care changes and its national mandate that all Americans have insurance, saying Congress has a "broad authority" to pass laws that are "rationally related" to carrying out its constitutional aims. The Constitution not only gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, the justices said, but also the authority to enact all laws that are "necessary and proper" to carrying out this authority.

The murder and carjacking convictions against Leeander Jerome Blake, who helped steal a Jeep Cherokee from an Annapolis man killed during the crime, will stand, a federal appeals court ruled last week. Blake, who was 17 at the time of the 2002 carjacking, avoided prosecution at the state level by successfully arguing that police illegally interrogated him. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on the state's appeal, federal prosecutors took up the case, indicting Blake in 2006 on murder, carjacking and gun charges.

A federal appeals court has reversed the decision of a Baltimore judge and reinstated a $5 million defamation lawsuit against Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy for saying a woman procured prostitutes for Democratic politicians.Ida Maxwell Wells is a private figure and therefore is entitled to a trial on her claim that Liddy's remarks damaged her reputation, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.The decision reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who said last year that Wells was an involuntary public figure.

Here is an edited excerpt of an editorial from the Boston Globe, which was published Wednesday.The Supreme Court should back President Clinton's call to protect the Miranda rights of suspects. To some eyes, Miranda is an escape hatch for criminals.But this spin ignores a distinguished history. In 1966 the Supreme Court, in Miranda vs. Arizona, pointed to case law that has repeatedly endorsed the right, embodied in the Fifth Amendment, of individuals not to incriminate themselves.In 1968 Congress passed a law that muddied the issue.

Maryland's U.S. District Court judges already handle an average of 250 cases apiece, and the caseload is about to get heavier, with the U.S. Senate expected soon to confirm Andre Davis to a new position on the region's federal appeals court. With one judge's seat already vacant, that would leave eight full-time judges out of 10 possible positions on one of the country's busiest courts. The shortage could hold up case processing and put a greater strain on already-strapped judges, who oversee complicated cases involving everything from antitrust issues to witness murders and gang activity.

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday in a fractured 5-4 decision. But a second, overlapping 5-4 majority of the court, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.