The exonerated 

1/4/13

By Dan Brillman 

Is access to DNA evidence too restricted? The New York Times reports on the case of Joseph Buffey, a West Virginia man who was convicted of raping an 83-year-old woman in the course of a 2001 burglary. Buffey admitted to the rape in court the next year, and soon after he began a 70-year sentence.

But Buffey's lawyers say new DNA tests, which took the state 18 months to conduct, exonerate their client. Their client's case is proof that laws are needed to remove DNA databases from the grip of prosecutors and law enforcement: The data, they argue, also should be made available to defense lawyers who could use it to prove their client's innocence. What's more, opening the database to both sides could potentially lead prosecutors to the real criminals, defense lawyers say. Currently, only nine states allow defense teams access to the FBI's national DNA database, known as Codis.

"Science doesn't belong to the government, but they act like it does," Steven Benjamin of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers told the Times. "Unless the defense is given access to this information, the playing field remains uneven in criminal justice."

The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that there is no constitutional right to DNA testing.

Ban the bottle 

1/4/13

By Ted Botha 

Concord, Massachusetts, where Henry Thoreau was once jailed for refusing to pay a poll tax, has become the first town in the country to ban the sale of bottled water, says UPI. Not all bottled water -- at least not yet -- but anything of one liter or less. The bylaw, which came into effect this week, is designed to reduce waste and introduce more environmentally friendly practices, says UPI.

The battle against the water bottle got its start in 2010, after local resident and octogenarian Jean Hill learned about the so-called Pacific garbage patch, "a vortex of plastic and other debris floating between California and Hawaii, thought to be twice the size of Texas," according to The New York Times. Hill had found her mission: "I'm going to work until I drop on this," she said at the time.

Instead of appealing to federal agencies for help, Hill asked her "affluent, erudite town to take a bolder step" and lobbied for a local ban. "The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us," Hill told voters at a town meeting in 2010. "We're trashing our planet, all because of greed." Voters at the meeting approved the measure, according to the Concord Journal, but because of incorrect paperwork and then insufficient votes the following year, it wasn't approved by the Massachusetts attorney general until Sept. 5, 2012.

But there's only so much a law can do. As the Boston Globe reports, bottled water addicts may just take their business to nearby towns, where they legally can get their fix.

What's in a name? 

1/4/13

By Caitlin Tremblay 

Fifteen years ago a woman in Iceland named her new baby girl Blaer, which means "light breeze" in Icelandic. Now that girl is suing the Icelandic state for the right to use the name her mother gave her, reports the Associated Press.

The girl, who is currently known in an official capacity as Stulka, which means "girl," is challenging Iceland's official rules about what children can be named. Iceland is one of a handful of countries to have a Personal Name Register, which lists 1,712 male and 1,853 female names that fit the country's alphabet, grammar and punctuation.

The girl's mother, Bjork Eidadottir, claims she wasn't made aware that the name Blaer wasn't on the list and was only told by a priest after her daughter had already been baptized. She also said she knew another Blaer whose name was accepted in 1973.

In Iceland, first names are most important, and, as the AP reports, phone books are listed by first name and surnames are a combination of the parents' first names.

When Eidadottir filed to have Blaer accepted as her daughter's given name, the panel turned her down. Now they're suing for the right to use it. This is the first time somone has challenged a decision by the names panel in court. If the decision doesn't go its way on Jan. 25,it plans to appeal to Iceland's Supreme Court.

Doctors, no 

1/4/13

By Dan Brillman 

CURES is a massive California database created for doctors and pharmacists to check if patients are getting drugs from more than one provider and for law enforcement to track down rogue physicians who are overprescribing. The only problem: CURES sits practically idle, reports the Los Angeles Times, in the fourth of a series on prescription drug abuse in California.

The Times tells the story of Bob Pack, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose two children were killed in 2003 by a driver high on prescription drugs. Pack set out to improve CURES, designing technological upgrades to the database to allow doctors to view a patient's drug history and for police to monitor both patients and doctors.

When Jerry Brown was still attorney general of California, he expressed interest in the project, but once he became governor, Brown cut funding from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement due to the state's financial crisis.

Now the chief of staff for current AG Kamala Harris says that CURES is on "life support" because of lack of funding. Indeed, the enterprise has been whittled down to one full-time staffer and struggles to run on $400,000 a year in fees collected from the medical community.

Summary Judgments for January 3

Summary Judgments for January 2 

Summary Judgments for December 31 

Follow us on Twitter @ReutersLegal | Like us on Facebook