UNBIASED - AZ Supreme Court Upholds 1913 Abortion Ban, Parents of Michigan School Shooter Sentenced, NAIA Bans Transgender Women from Sports, Norfolk Southern $600M Settlement, and More.

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

1. Donald Trump's Requests to Postpone Hush Money Trial Denied (0:35)2. Parents of Michigan High School Shooter Sentenced to Jail (4:47)3. Arizona Supreme Court Upholds 1913 Abortion Ban as Enforceable (9:17)4. Supreme Court Rejects Stay of Execution for Death Row Inmate Setting Stage for Tonight's Execution (13:41)5. Norfolk Southern Agrees to $600M Train Derailment Settlement (13:58)6. NAIA Bans Transgender Women from Women's Sports (14:44)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is April 9th, and this is your daily news rundown. If you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever podcast platform you listen, share the show with your friends, and if you are watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to this channel. All of those things really help support my show, and I very much appreciate them. Without further ado, let's jump

right in to today's stories. In an update to yesterday's episode, Donald Trump's appeals to delay his upcoming hush money trial have been denied. One of those appeals was denied last night. The other was denied today. So let's talk about it. There were two appeals here. One was to lift the gag order that was recently imposed on him by Judge Merchan. And the second was to postpone the upcoming trial, which is actually set to start jury selection on Monday due to prejudicial pre-trial publicity. And essentially that request said while he decides whether, while he being Trump, while Trump decides whether to request a venue change due to the unlikelihood that he'll get an impartial jury in Manhattan, he would like the trial to be

postponed. And when I initially reported on these appeals yesterday, the story was very much in its early stages, so we didn't have much information, but we have a little more now, so I do want to dive a little bit deeper. One of those appeals, as I said, was to the appellate court asking for a postponement of the upcoming trial due to prejudicial pretrial publicity. Basically, the argument there was that an impartial jury likely could not be selected in Manhattan right now, which is where the trial will take place due to the prejudicial pretrial publicity, and that that trial should be postponed because every defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial jury of their peers under the Constitution. But last night, the appellate justice denied the request. It was a simple one-line ruling, no explanation. Now, the state of New York had said that any prejudicial pretrial

publicity was all Trump's fault. And consequently, Trump can't have his cake and eat it too. He can't stoke the controversy over the trial and then ask that the trial be postponed because he can't get an impartial jury. On top of that, though, Judge Merchan, who, as I said, is the judge presiding over this case, had recently noted in an unrelated ruling that any request for a trial delay at this point is too late in the game and therefore untimely under court rules and must be denied. So although the appellate justice didn't elaborate on her ruling, on her denial, those things likely played a big part in it. The second appeal dealt with the lower court's ruling on Trump's gag order.

And this is, so this, this one's a little bit different because the appeal was filed by way of a lawsuit against Judge Merchan. In some instances, certain rulings can't be appealed. So in some states like New York, there's sort of this workaround where you can file a lawsuit against the judge under state law and essentially challenge a ruling that you feel went outside the judge's authority. And this is something that Trump did in his civil fraud case as well. And in the civil fraud case, his request was denied. And in that

ruling, the appellate court wrote that this particular remedy under state law is an extraordinary one. And the ruling said it is, quote, only appropriate if there exists a substantial claim of an absence of jurisdiction or an act in excess of jurisdiction, end quote. So based off that ruling and the precedent cited to in that ruling, even though the civil fraud case is a different case than the hush money case, it's likely that the requested relief in this hush money case will also be denied based on the same rationale. But as part of that gag order appeal, Trump had asked that the upcoming trial be delayed to allow time for the full panel of appellate court judges to hear arguments and make a decision as to whether to uphold, lift,

or modify the gag order. But today, a judge rejected that delay request. So what that means is that a panel of appellate judges will still consider the constitutionality of the gag order but in the meantime there's no need to to delay that trial so briefs on both sides of the gag order issue will have to be submitted by april 29th and the appellate court will issue a ruling on the gag order at some point thereafter but in the meantime the trial will still go forward with jury selection on Monday. The second story is that the parents of Ethan Crumbly, the student who carried out the shooting at a Michigan high school in 2021, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in jail today with a credit for 858 days that they have already served.

Ethan Crumbly was 15 years old when he carried out the shooting. He's currently serving a life without parole sentence. And actually, he was the first minor to receive a life without parole sentence following a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that said sentencing a child to life without parole is excessive under the Eighth Amendment, except in the case of a rare offender. And Ethan Crumbly, of course, was deemed to be a rare offender. Earlier this year, though, Ethan's parents were both found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for Ethan's shooting. And this was the first time in the history of the United States that a jury convicted the parents of a shooter with manslaughter. And here

is why they did. Manslaughter is different than murder and involuntary manslaughter is different than voluntary manslaughter. So we're going to do a quick, really quick law school lesson to sort of illustrate the differences and it'll all make sense why they were ultimately convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Typically, murder requires intent to kill. Manslaughter doesn't. But in Michigan and, you know, other states as well, murder and voluntary manslaughter require intent. However, voluntary manslaughter is a heat of the moment, passionate crime, whereas murder

is deliberate. So let's pose a couple of hypotheticals. So you walk into your house, you see your spouse is having an affair right there in front of you, and you kill them. That's voluntary manslaughter. You acted out of passion. But if you had any sort of cooling off period, it becomes murder. So let's say your spouse leaves town on a work trip. They accidentally left their laptop behind. You start snooping and you find texts or emails with someone else. You find out they're having an affair. Your spouse returns home the next day from their work trip and you kill them.

That's murder. You had time to cool off and you killed them anyway. Now, involuntary manslaughter, which is what the shooter's parents were charged with, is completely different in that it does not require an intent to kill. It just requires a degree of criminal negligence. the victims through grossly negligent actions, or the parents breached their duty as parents to exercise reasonable care to control their child, and that led to the death of the victims. Given the evidence, which was that the parents knew their son was struggling mentally, their son had asked for mental help, the parents ignored it, the father bought the son a gun. A few days later, after buying that gun, the parents were called into school because Ethan had drawn a picture of a gun and a person who had

been shot. But even then, his parents decided to leave him in school that day rather than take him home. Neither parent mentioned his mental issues at the meeting with the school, and neither parent mentioned that they had just recently bought him a gun, nor did they decide to take that gun away and store it somewhere where Ethan wasn't able to access it. Given all of that, along with other evidence and testimony at the trials, the jury ultimately found that the prosecution had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ethan's parents' actions rose to that level where they were guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Again, doesn't require an intent to kill. Ahead of the sentencing, prosecutors had asked that each parent be sentenced to 10 to 15 years, whereas the attorney for the father asked for 28 months with a credit for time served, as well as the maximum period of supervision.

And the mother's attorney suggested 29 to 57 months with credit for time served. Obviously, the judge went with the prosecutor's request of 10 to 15 years in accordance with sentencing guidelines. But in sentencing the parents, the judge said, quote, opportunity knocked over and over again, louder and louder, and was ignored. No one answered, and these two people should have, and sure didn't, end quote. Arizona's Supreme Court upheld an old state law today banning all abortions except when it's necessary to save the woman's life. The case is called Planned Parenthood of Arizona v. Mays, Mays being the last name of the state's

attorney general, and here is the history of the case. Back in 1913, Arizona enacted a law that said it's a crime to administer an abortion at any gestational age unless it's necessary to save the life of the mother. Fast forward 60 years. In 1973, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld this law in a challenge. But then, just a few months later, Roe v. Wade was decided. What that meant is that total abortion bans were no longer enforceable, including in Arizona. But keep in mind, this 1913 law was never officially repealed. It just simply wasn't enforceable consistent with Roe. In fact, just a few years after Roe was decided, the Arizona legislature actually recodified the text of the 1913 law despite its unenforceability. Then, just a few years ago, shortly before the 2022 dobbs decision which overturned roe

various states were sort of prepping for what would happen if roe was overturned and the governor of arizona signed a law allowing abortions up until or through 15 weeks gestation but the law specifically did not go as far as to repeal the 1913 ban or create a right to abortion. So what this meant is that if Roe was overturned, the argument could be made that the 1913 law could once again become enforceable. So Roe gets overturned, and now there's a dispute as to which state law is in effect. Planned Parenthood, of course, argues that the more recent 15-week ban effectively repealed the older 1913 ban, whereas the opposition argued that the 1913 ban was never officially repealed and could in fact be enforced. So the question for the court was this, did the Arizona legislature repeal the 1913 law when enacting the 2022 15-week ban. And here's what

the state Supreme Court said. The 2022 15-week ban was predicated entirely on the existence of the federal constitutional right to abortion set forth in Roe. Since then, the right has been overturned. Absent that abortion right, and because the 2022 law expressly did not repeal the earlier 1913 law, and because there is no provision in federal or state law prohibiting enforcement of the 1913 law, that 1913 law is now enforceable. Now, there is a 14-day stay on the law, meaning that Planned Parenthood has 14 days to appeal this to the Supreme Court. But because the Supreme Court has already left this issue to the states, my guess is they will not get involved here. So in situations like this, really the only recourse

for a party like Planned Parenthood is to do something like Ohio just did, as well as Florida just paved the way for the same thing. And that is to put a ballot measure on the ballot in November. So in other words, states can put the issue on their ballots and ask voters to decide whether the right to abortion should be enshrined in the state constitution. In fact, just last week, a group called Arizona for Abortion Access announced that it had received enough signatures for a ballot measure this coming November. However, here's an interesting component of this whole case. Arizona's Attorney General, who was the one sued by Planned Parenthood, Chris Mays, doesn't even support

the 1913 ban. The only reason that Mays was sued by Planned Parenthood in this case was strictly for formality purposes because Mays' office is the one that enforces state laws. But Mays came out after today's decision and said she won't be prosecuting any woman or doctor under this law. So what that means, what you need to know is that in 14 days, yes, the state of Arizona can start criminalizing abortion procedures no matter the gestational age, of course, unless it's necessary to save the mother's life. However, the state of Arizona won't be prosecuting under this law so long as

Mays is the attorney general. So that's what you need to know about that. In other news, the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for death row inmate Brian Dorsey today, which paves the way for his execution tonight. So assuming all of that goes to plan, there's no hiccups between now and then, I will be covering that execution on tomorrow's episode. Norfolk Southern agreed to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from last year's train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio for $600 million. As we've talked about before, settlements have to be approved by the judge before they take effect. But if approved, the settlement will resolve all claims within a

20-mile radius from the derailment, as well as all personal injury claims within a 10-mile radius from the derailment. And according to a statement, individuals and businesses that are involved in this lawsuit and will ultimately receive compensation, they can use their share of the compensation for whatever they see fit. So maybe that's health care needs, property restoration, business loss compensation, whatever it is, it's up to their discretion what they use their share for. The final story is actually a story from yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to cover it on yesterday's episode because the news broke later in the day.

But the NAIA, or the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, banned transgender women from competing in women's sports. So the NAIA, for those who maybe aren't familiar with it, it's a smaller organization like the NCAA, but much, much smaller. So to give you an idea, there are currently 83,000 athletes belonging to the NAIA, whereas more than 500,000 athletes belong to the NCAA. So the new NAIA policy was just released yesterday following a 20 to 0 vote by the association's council of presidents and it specifies that all eligible NAIA student athletes can participate in NAIA sponsored male sports but when it comes to female sports only NAIA student athletes whose biological sex is female can participate the The policy says that a student- athlete who has begun masculinizing hormone therapy can only participate in activities that

are internal to the institution, those being workouts, practices, team activities, things like that. That those individuals cannot participate in external competition unless that competition is not a countable contest as defined by the NAIA. And I do have that policy, of course, linked for you, along with all of the other sources I used for this episode, and you can find that in the episode description. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I will talk to you tomorrow.