On May 29, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Brown v Yost, 24-3354, that is protective of the ability of people to use the initiative process in Ohio. The Ohio law does not permit a statewide initiative to circulate until the proponents collect 1,000 signatures and submit their proposed initiative and a summary to the Attorney General. If the Attorney General agrees that the summary is fair, he or she then send it on the Ohio Ballot Board, which then sends it on to the Secretary of State. Only then can the group start to collect the signatures. This year 413,000 signatures are needed, and the due date is July 3.
The group that filed the lawsuit has been trying to get started since last year, but the Attorney General has rejected their proposed summary six times. The Sixth Circuit ordered the Attorney General to send the paperwork to the Ohio Ballot Board, a process that should be quick and should let the group finally start to get its signatures. The measure would abolish qualified immunity for police officers. The decision was 2-1. Here is the Opinion. It is by Judge Karen Nelson Moore, a Clinton appointee, and is also signed by Judge Andre Mathis, a Biden appointee. The dissent is by Judge John K. Bush, a Trump appointee.
Okay, as much as I like Ohio and how it is conservative, why were they not allowed to get signatures for, what? Ballot access? Am I reading that right?
Appeals court rejects argument that Democratic-lean of DC’s jury pool makes it unfit for January 6 cases
Tierney Sneed, CNN
Tue, May 28, 2024 at 2:39 PM EDT
A federal appeals court, including two Donald Trump appointees, ruled Tuesday that the Democratic-lean of Washington, DC’s, population does not make its jury pool too biased to try a January 6 Capitol rioter case.
Thomas Webster, a former New York Police Department officer who was found guilty in 2022 of assaulting a police officer during the riot, had challenged his conviction on that and other grounds. His legal arguments echoed public comments about the partisan bent of DC from Trump and his allies about the criminal case the former president faces in the nation’s capital for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The DC US Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion written by Barack Obama-appointed Judge Patricia Millett and joined by Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both Trump appointees, rejected the version of the argument put forward by Webster.
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https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/5B0C69B2DB59634985258B2B005274B8/$file/22-3064-2056407.pdf
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“Webster asserts that the District overwhelmingly voted for President Biden and historically votes for Democratic candidates. … That may be,” Millett wrote. “But the political inclinations of a populace writ large say nothing about an individual’s ability to serve impartially in adjudicating the criminal conduct of an individual.”
She pointed to the prosecution of aides to President Richard Nixon for their role in the Watergate cover-up, and wrote that the appeals court “held that District juries could impartially adjudicate other criminal cases arising out of political matters, including Watergate.”
Her opinion also brushed off polling data Webster had offered about the sentiments that the district jury’s pool have about the Capitol attack. The survey of 400 people registered to vote in DC found that they had a “decidedly negative impression of individuals arrested in conjunction with the activities of January 6, 2021.”
The DC Circuit said that “Webster’s focus on the jury pool’s opinion of January 6th and its perpetrators misses the point.”
“We expect jurors to view significant criminal events in their hometown with an unapproving eye, whether it is the January 6th attack on the Capitol, a murder, or an armed robbery spree,” Millett wrote. “Generalized disapproval of criminal conduct — even the specific conduct at issue in a defendant’s case — says nothing about a juror’s ability to be impartial in deciding whether a particular individual committed a crime or not.”
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ANY CRIMES BY LP CONV FOLKS WHILE IN DC ???
UNSAFE TO BE A NON-COMMIE DONKEY IN DC ???
@Thecommander Jeff
Ballot access for a single ballot initiative even, in this case that of abolishing police officers’ immunity from being held responsible for their crimes, not ballot access for a candidate or party.
But I wouldn’t call Ohio conservative. It seems more like a swing-state where the GOP is dominated by RINOs.
They used to be a swing state, but that was a while ago. They are now strongly right leaning. RINO domination of GOP is also increasingly in the past. Vance, Moreno etc