Evidence rap remanded; but judge in Benlate case says DuPont and lawyers may have acted illegally

Article Abstract:

The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has ruled that a trial court should not have imposed $115 mil in sanctions against E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. for not disclosing key evidence in a 1993 trial on its fungicide Benlate without affording the corporation constitutional procedural protections. The court ruled, however, for a reopening of the 1993 case because it found that du Pont could have committed criminal acts. In the 1993 case nursery growers sued du Pont for contaminating their crops with a du Pont herbicide.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Herbicides, DD, Benlate (Fungicide)

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Flip-flop on life sentence: after intense lobbying from prosecutors, Georgia's high court reverses itself

Article Abstract:

Georgia's Supreme Court reversed itself two weeks after overturning a mandatory drug sentencing law that defense lawyers say is applied unfairly to black defendants. Prosecutors, who decide when to apply the sentencing law, sought life imprisonment for only 1 of 167 eligible white defendants but 202 of the 1017 eligible blacks from Jan 1, 1990, through July 1994. State prosecutors lobbied vigorously after the Court's first decision on Mar 17, 1995, and Justice Hugh Thompson did not explain his switched vote.

Laws, regulations and rules, Narcotics, Control of, Narcotics control, Mandatory sentences, Determinate sentences

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Trial lawyer's racial bias is basis for death appeal; Ga. death case is one of the longest-standing in nation

Article Abstract:

Wilburn Wiley Dobbs has spent 22 years on Georgia's death row, and lawyers have now filed an ineffective assistance-of-counsel challenge for him in federal court. They contend that his original lawyer, J. Donald Bennett, was a racist who rendered such deficient legal help that the reliability of the sentence must be doubted. Dobbs's case may be the first in which racial bias has been used to support an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim

Right to counsel, Capital punishment, Dobbs, Wilburn Wiley

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