High Court

The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Casey County judge who ruled four years ago that a woman who abuses drugs while pregnant can’t be charged with a crime under Kentucky law. The high court voted 5-2 to overturn a Court of Appeals decision that reversed Casey Circuit Judge James G. Weddle’s 2006 ruling in the case of Ina Cochran. Cochran was indicted for first-degree wanton endangerment after giving birth to a baby that tested positive for cocaine the day after she was born at Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center.

Dear Editor, Perhaps someone should inform Herb Brock that the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of the state to give money to private or church colleges. The vote was 5-4 in favor. The chief justice said in writing for the majority in 2002, "No reasonable observer would think a neutral program of private choice where state aid reaches religious schools solely as a result of the numerous independent decision of that school carries with the imprimatur of government endorsement.

A technicality in a blood alcohol test procedure was enough for the Kentucky Supreme Court to overturn a 24-year murder sentence for Melissa Helton and bring the case back to Jessamine County. Helton was convicted of murder in February 2008 for the deaths of Emily Ann Preston, 10, Caleb Hildenbrandt, 11, Nicholas Helton, 12, and Lori Latham, 40, who were riding in Helton's minivan after a swimming trip to a local creek when Helton lost control of the vehicle on Watts Mill Road and crashed into a tree.

HARRODSBURG - It's been five years since the Ten Commandments and eight other documents were posted just inside the front door of the Mercer County Courthouse and the person who is responsible for their postings said he thinks legal arguments likely are over. Carroll Rousey, the man who donated and posted the 10 frames containing what he and others call nine historic documents and include the Ten Commandments, said Tuesday he believes the legal wrangling over the appropriateness of the display has come to an end. The Boyle County resident started his crusade by placing framed copies of just the Ten Commandments in businesses in both Boyle and Mercer counties after attending a rally to get prayer and the Ten Commandments back in public schools.

Jerry C. Hunn will receive his second trial in the 2001 shooting death of Ralph Coulter Jr. beginning April 25 in Boyle Circuit Court. Hunn was convicted by a Boyle Circuit jury in 2003 of murdering Coulter and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The state Supreme Court reversed that verdict late last year, however, and granted a new trial. The high court ruled that Circuit Judge Darren Peckler erred in allowing two prospective jurors to remain in the pool after they revealed they had had professional relationships with prosecutors in the case, including one who sat on the jury that convicted Hunn.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has overturned a Court of Appeals decision in the case of Papa John's, International, Inc. v. McCoy, upholding arguments made by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in an amicus brief filed on behalf of Kentucky businesses. Central to the case was whether a franchisor can be held liable for the actions of a franchisee's employee over whom it has no control of hiring or managing. The Court of Appeals took what the Supreme Court called a "mixed bag" of legal theories in finding that a franchisor could be liable, but in its decision overturning the Court of Appeals ruling, the Supreme Court recognized that it had to "take a more precise approach given the ubiquity of the franchise method of doing business in Kentucky.

Kentucky leads the nation in the efficiency of its court system, Fayette Circuit Court Judge Mary Noble told the Winchester Kiwanis Club Wednesday afternoon.Noble, a candidate for associate justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, spoke to the group about the court system and explained about each of the courts and their function. Elected to the bench in 1992, Noble has presided over more than 14,000 cases. She earned bachelor's degrees in English and sociology in 1971 and a master's degree in 1975 from Austin Peay State University, and received her law degree from the University of Kentucky in 1981.

So who gets to say, You can't say - or show - that, and make it stick? Well, the First Amendment provides that the government cannot easily control what we say or otherwise express in public, even when the speech is ill-tempered, rude or embarrassing to some. But that protection - applied by courts and legislatures since 1791 - grew up on village greens and in town-hall meetings, on street corners and in printed pages, in conversations across the fence and debates across the nation.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter's free-press legacy may well center more on what he said off the bench than on his role in significant decisions in cases ranging from confidential sources to sidewalk news racks. Souter announced last month that he would retire. Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been nominated as his replacement, and Senate confirmation hearings begin July 13. In March 1996, Souter was testifying before a U.S. House committee when he responded to a question about opening court proceedings to greater public view.

President Woodrow Wilson's nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916 provoked rather agitated responses from some quarters. Calling the nomination "utterly indefensible and outrageous" and the nominee "a radical of the radicals," the Los Angeles Times wrote in a Jan. 30 editorial, "A shout of rejoicing over his appointment has gone up from every dynamiter and hell-raiser in the land. His nomination is an obvious appeal by the President for the political support of the Socialists, Gompersites, law-defying labor unions bosses, corporation baiters, wreckers of business and all the discontented and dangerous elements of the population.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Casey County judge who ruled four years ago that a woman who abuses drugs while pregnant can’t be charged with a crime under Kentucky law. The high court voted 5-2 to overturn a Court of Appeals decision that reversed Casey Circuit Judge James G. Weddle’s 2006 ruling in the case of Ina Cochran. Cochran was indicted for first-degree wanton endangerment after giving birth to a baby that tested positive for cocaine the day after she was born at Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center.

A technicality in a blood alcohol test procedure was enough for the Kentucky Supreme Court to overturn a 24-year murder sentence for Melissa Helton and bring the case back to Jessamine County. Helton was convicted of murder in February 2008 for the deaths of Emily Ann Preston, 10, Caleb Hildenbrandt, 11, Nicholas Helton, 12, and Lori Latham, 40, who were riding in Helton's minivan after a swimming trip to a local creek when Helton lost control of the vehicle on Watts Mill Road and crashed into a tree.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter's free-press legacy may well center more on what he said off the bench than on his role in significant decisions in cases ranging from confidential sources to sidewalk news racks. Souter announced last month that he would retire. Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been nominated as his replacement, and Senate confirmation hearings begin July 13. In March 1996, Souter was testifying before a U.S. House committee when he responded to a question about opening court proceedings to greater public view.

So who gets to say, You can't say - or show - that, and make it stick? Well, the First Amendment provides that the government cannot easily control what we say or otherwise express in public, even when the speech is ill-tempered, rude or embarrassing to some. But that protection - applied by courts and legislatures since 1791 - grew up on village greens and in town-hall meetings, on street corners and in printed pages, in conversations across the fence and debates across the nation.

The case involving state funding for a new pharmacy school at the University of the Cumberlands has reached the Kentucky Supreme Court. The state Court of Appeals Dec. 18 granted Cumberland's appeal of a decision handed down last March that prohibited the Baptist-affiliated university from receiving $10 million in state funds to construct a pharmacy school building at the Williamsburg campus. Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Roger Crittenden ruled that the funding and an additional $2 million appropriated for scholarships violated the state constitution as "a direct payment to a non-public religious school for educational purposes.

The Kentucky Supreme Court has overturned a Court of Appeals decision in the case of Papa John's, International, Inc. v. McCoy, upholding arguments made by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in an amicus brief filed on behalf of Kentucky businesses. Central to the case was whether a franchisor can be held liable for the actions of a franchisee's employee over whom it has no control of hiring or managing. The Court of Appeals took what the Supreme Court called a "mixed bag" of legal theories in finding that a franchisor could be liable, but in its decision overturning the Court of Appeals ruling, the Supreme Court recognized that it had to "take a more precise approach given the ubiquity of the franchise method of doing business in Kentucky.

In what many observers believe to be the most momentous court case for generations, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to finally determine the parameters of the Second Amendment in a case styled Parker v. District of Columbia. The outcome may turn more on the individual justices' approach to interpreting the Constitution than the actual facts which gave rise to the litigation. At issue is the District's strict gun control laws. Several plaintiffs, including Dick Heller, a special police officer charged with protecting the Federal Judicial Center, filed suit seeking to prohibit the District from enforcing laws which preclude an individual citizen from possessing a pistol within his own home and which required that registered long guns be kept disassembled and unloaded in the home.

HARRODSBURG - It's been five years since the Ten Commandments and eight other documents were posted just inside the front door of the Mercer County Courthouse and the person who is responsible for their postings said he thinks legal arguments likely are over. Carroll Rousey, the man who donated and posted the 10 frames containing what he and others call nine historic documents and include the Ten Commandments, said Tuesday he believes the legal wrangling over the appropriateness of the display has come to an end. The Boyle County resident started his crusade by placing framed copies of just the Ten Commandments in businesses in both Boyle and Mercer counties after attending a rally to get prayer and the Ten Commandments back in public schools.

Kentucky leads the nation in the efficiency of its court system, Fayette Circuit Court Judge Mary Noble told the Winchester Kiwanis Club Wednesday afternoon.Noble, a candidate for associate justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, spoke to the group about the court system and explained about each of the courts and their function. Elected to the bench in 1992, Noble has presided over more than 14,000 cases. She earned bachelor's degrees in English and sociology in 1971 and a master's degree in 1975 from Austin Peay State University, and received her law degree from the University of Kentucky in 1981.

Dear Editor, Perhaps someone should inform Herb Brock that the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of the state to give money to private or church colleges. The vote was 5-4 in favor. The chief justice said in writing for the majority in 2002, "No reasonable observer would think a neutral program of private choice where state aid reaches religious schools solely as a result of the numerous independent decision of that school carries with the imprimatur of government endorsement.