The Supreme Court said Wednesday it has rejected lower and high court decisions to hold a retrial for a 92-year-old woman who served 10 years in prison over the 1979 murder of her former brother-in-law in Kagoshima Prefecture.

All five Supreme Court judges made the unanimous decision on Tuesday to dismiss the retrial of Ayako Haraguchi after the district court granted the retrial request and the high court upheld the decision.

It is the first time since 1975 that the top court has rejected a retrial decision made by a district court and upheld by a high court.

Both the Kagoshima District Court and the Miyazaki branch of the Fukuoka High Court had agreed to a retrial in June 2017 and March 2018, respectively. Prosecutors appealed both decisions.

The defense submitted a forensic report that said there was a high chance that the death of her former brother-in-law, Kunio Nakamura, 42, was caused by an accident. Confessions by her relatives were not credible as they may have been influenced by investigative authorities, they said.

However, the Supreme Court said the previous testimonies were trustworthy, while the new evidence supporting an accidental death had no probative value as the forensics experts had not personally seen the body.

“This is not acceptable,” head defense lawyer Masami Mori said at a news conference Wednesday after the verdict. “I feel regret and am at a loss for words whenever I think about proving her innocence while she is alive.”

The 92-year-old has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Haraguchi was arrested in October 1979 along with three other family members, including her husband at the time, on suspicion of strangling Nakamura with a towel and abandoning his body in a cattle barn beside his home in the town of Osaki earlier that month.

In 1980, the district court found Haraguchi guilty of killing Nakamura on the grounds that her sister-in-law said Haraguchi proposed the murder to her husband, suggesting she had been unhappy about Nakamura’s conduct. Her sentence was finalized in 1981.

Her husband was sentenced to eight years in prison. Haraguchi later divorced him and he died in 1993. The Supreme Court also rejected Tuesday a request for his retrial submitted by a relative.

Haraguchi filed a request for her retrial in 1995 and again in 2010, but both were subsequently rejected. This was her third attempt. </s> Jurors have started their deliberations in the rape retrial of footballer Ched Evans.

The 27-year-old Wales international is accused of raping a teenager at a Premier lnn near Rhyl in North Wales in the early hours of May 30 2011.

Chesterfield striker Evans walked into the £92 room where fellow footballer Clayton McDonald was having sex with the woman.

Evans claims Mr McDonald asked the woman whether he could join in, to which she looked up at him and replied: "Yes."

He insists he had consensual sex with the woman before getting up and leaving via a fire exit door after realising he was cheating on his girlfriend.

Prosecutors allege the complainant was too drunk to consent to sex and awoke hours later confused and alone in the room.

During his retrial, Evans told Cardiff Crown Court the woman was no drunker than him or Mr McDonald.

High Court Judge Mrs Justice Nicola Davies told the jury of seven men and five women that the issue of consent was central to the case.

She said Evans should be found guilty if he did not reasonably believe the complainant, who cannot be named, was consenting.

However, she told the jury that drunken consent was still consent - and if the jury believe that was the case than Evans is not guilty.

"Your decision must be made calmly, objectively and without emotion," she said.

"You are not here to judge the morals of any person in this case and this includes the complainant and the defendant.

"You are to try this case on the evidence you hear in this court in this trial and nothing else."

Jurors have been told that Mr McDonald was acquitted of raping the woman during a trial at Caernarfon Crown Court in 2012.

Evans was convicted of the charge at that trial. His conviction was later quashed by the Court of Appeal.
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His retrial began at Cardiff Crown Court on October 4.

The court heard Evans had been on a night out in Rhyl, his hometown with friends including Mr McDonald.

Before hitting the town, Evans paid £92 for a room at the Premier Inn for Mr McDonald, whom he had first met when the pair played for Manchester City's youth team.

The complainant was also out that night, consuming a large glass of wine, four double vodka and lemonades and a shot of sambuca.

She was seen on CCTV staggering outside a nightclub named Zu Bar, as well as falling over in The Godfather kebab shop.

After leaving the kebab shop, the woman got into a taxi with Mr McDonald and went back to the Premier Inn.

During the journey Mr McDonald texted Evans: "I've got a bird."

Evans later arrived at the hotel in a taxi, along with his younger brother and a friend, and obtained a key for the room after telling the night receptionist that his friend no longer needed it.

The St Asaph-born player claimed he had turned up at the hotel primarily to inform Mr McDonald that one of their group had been arrested.

However, he said he had been "childish" to walk into the hotel room when suspecting that Mr McDonald may be having sex.

Evans's younger brother, Ryan Roberts, and a friend watched through the window of the room, using a mobile phone light to see inside and film.

Mr McDonald later left the hotel via the main entrance, with Evans following minutes later through the fire exit door.

Both men then walked to Evans's family home and stayed there. They were arrested the following day.

Giving evidence, Evans told the jury: "I wouldn't have sex with anyone that wasn't consenting."

At the time of the alleged rape, Evans was in a relationship with Natasha Massey. They are still together, plan to marry and have a nine-month-old son. </s> (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court left intact the insider-trading conviction of former SAC Capital Advisors LP portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, rejecting an appeal that could have undercut efforts to clean up Wall Street.

The justices, without comment Monday, let stand a federal appeals court decision that upheld Martoma’s 2014 conviction for using tips to make $275 million for SAC on trades in two pharmaceutical stocks. Martoma is serving a nine-year sentence in a Miami prison following the largest insider-trading case ever brought against an individual.

White-collar crime experts said the ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals widened the category of people who can be prosecuted, covering traders who get an inside tip as a gift from an acquaintance or business associate.

Martoma told the Supreme Court the ruling eviscerated the decades-old requirement for proof that the person providing the tip received some sort of personal benefit in return.

“It now suffices for the government to prove that the insider intended to benefit the tippee/outsider,” Martoma argued in his appeal. “That test focuses on the wrong question and radically dilutes the government’s burden.”

Martoma had spurned government requests that he cooperate in its investigation of SAC and its billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen.

SAC pleaded guilty in 2013 and paid a record $1.8 billion fine to resolve U.S. claims over insider trading. It changed its name to Point72 Asset Management LP and agreed to manage only Cohen’s money.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2016 that people can be sent to prison even when the insider who provided the tip wasn’t trying to make money. That case involved an investment banker who gave information to his brother.

In Martoma’s case, the 2nd Circuit said it didn’t matter how close the relationship was between the two people, as long as the tipper had an “intent to benefit” the recipient.

The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal without a hearing, saying Martoma’s conviction didn’t depend on the “intent to benefit” standard.

The government said Martoma got confidential information about a clinical trial on an experimental Alzheimer’s drug from a doctor to whom the trader had previously paid more than $70,000 in consulting fees.

Martoma’s “corrupt quid pro quo arrangement fell within the heartland” of prohibitions in the federal securities laws, the administration argued.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Ros Krasny </s> (JTA) — A former grocery store clerk convicted of the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Etan Patz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Pedro Hernandez, 56, of New Jersey, was sentenced Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Hernandez, who was found guilty in February after two trials, was given the maximum allowable sentence. He will not be eligible for parole for at least 25 years.

He did not look at Etan’s parents, Stan and Julie Patz, who were in the courtroom as he received his sentence, The Associated Press reported. Hernandez did not speak to the court.

“Pedro Hernandez, after all these years, we finally know what dark secret you had locked in your heart. I will never forgive you,” Stan Patz said in court before the sentencing, according to the AP. “The god you pray to will never forgive you. You are the monster in your own nightmares.”

Etan, who was Jewish, was one of the first missing children to be featured on the side of milk cartons. He disappeared in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop two blocks from his home in the downtown SoHo section of New York for the first time by himself. Hernandez, then 18, worked nearby at a grocery store.

Hernandez was arrested based on a tip from a brother-in-law. He confessed in 2012 to having strangled Etan in the basement of the grocery store after luring him there with a soda, then putting the boy’s body in a box, which he left in an alley.

Hernandez’s defense attorneys said at the trial that Hernandez is mentally ill and the confessions were coerced. He also reportedly has a very low IQ.

Jose Ramos, a convicted pedophile, was declared responsible for Etan’s death in a 2004 civil case.

At the first trial of Hernandez, the defense argued that the evidence pointed to Ramos, not Hernandez. In 2004, Justice Barbara Kapnick declared Ramos liable by default after he declined to answer questions about the murder. He was questioned while serving time for raping young boys in Pennsylvania. </s> Robert Xie found guilty of murdering five members of extended family

Sydney man Robert Xie has been found guilty of murdering five members of his extended family, including his two young nephews.

After three years of court hearings, including four separate trials, a Supreme Court jury found Xie bludgeoned his five victims to death inside their North Epping home in July 2009.

The jury came to a majority decision after earlier indicating to the court that it had been unable to reach a unanimous decision.

Xie stood up in the dock and rejected the verdict as the jury left the courtroom.

"I did not murder the Lin family," he said. "I am innocent."

Min and Lily Lin's sons Henry, 12, and Terry, 9, were also killed.

Min Lin was the brother of Xie's wife, Kathy Lin.

The couple was put under electronic surveillance for six months before Xie was arrested in May 2011.

More to come. </s> SYDNEY: A former surgeon was found guilty of murdering five members of a Chinese-Australian family, including two children here. Robert Xie, 53, was charged with killing his Chinese-born brother-in-law Norman Lin, Lin’s wife Lily, their sons Henry, 12, and Terry, 9, and Lily’s sister Irene. Their bodies were found in their northwestern Sydney home in July 2009. The long-running case saw Xie—an ear, nose and throat surgeon in China before moving to Australia in 2002—face four murder trials. Two were aborted, one ended in a hung jury and the most recent retrial lasted six months.Xie was found guilty by the majority of a New South Wales Supreme Court jury, and will be sentenced on February 10, a court official told AFP. </s> Spanish media report that the brother-in-law of Spain's King Felipe VI is already in prison to begin serving a sentence of nearly six years for fraud and tax evasion

MADRID (AP) — The brother-in-law of Spain’s King Felipe VI has begun serving a nearly six-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, Spanish prison authorities said Monday.

An official with the Interior Ministry’s prison management division said Inaki Urdangarin arrived Monday morning at a prison near Avila, about 100 kilometers north of Madrid. The official spoke anonymously, in line with ministry rules.

Urdangarin, a 50-year-old former Olympic handball medal winner married to the king’s sister, Cristina, is the closest person to the ruling Bourbon family to be imprisoned.

He was convicted to five years and 10 months in prison for embezzling about 6 million euros ($7 million) by exploiting his position in the royal family to obtain public contracts.

Cristina was fined 136,950 euros ($158,600) as a beneficiary of her husband’s crimes.

The corruption scandal helped erode the image of the Spanish royal family and prompted the abdication in 2014 of Juan Carlos I, who ceded the throne to Felipe.

Urdangarin had been given five days to voluntarily turn himself in to begin serving his sentence after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal earlier this month.

The ministry official described the Brieva prison chosen by Urdangarin as a small facility with less than 100 inmates, most of them women.

The prison has a small module for men, but authorities could choose to send him elsewhere for security or internal organization reasons, the official said.

Spain’s Royal House has said that it respects judicial decisions and King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia have not publicly commented on the result of the appeal.

The royal couple is on an official visit to the United States. On Monday they are scheduled to meet entrepreneurs and students in San Antonio, Texas, before traveling to Washington D.C. for a meeting Tuesday with President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump. </s> A young woman from El Salvador who was suspected of having an abortion has been cleared of murder during a retrial.

Cheers of support greeted a suspected rape victim Evelyn Hernández when a Salvadoran judge acquitted her after having a stillborn child in April 2016.

The 21-year-old had already served 33 months of a 30-year prison sentence when her conviction was overturned in February for lack of evidence and a new trial was ordered.

Hernandez was raped by a gang member and said she was unaware of her pregnancy until just shortly before she gave birth.

The case has attracted international attention to El Salvador’s strict abortion laws.

"It was hard to be inside (prison) all that time, knowing I was accused of something I was innocent of, and I also ask for all those young women still inside, that they be released soon, " said Evelyn Beatriz Hernández, on receiving the verdict.

The retrial was a first for such a case in the Central American nation, where prosecutors have aggressively pursued legal cases against women who have had miscarriages or other obstetric emergencies, accusing them of murder.

"We cannot allow this to continue happening," said activist, Morena Herrera.

"We have to change the law, we have to change the enforcement of the law, and we have to obtain the freedom of the 16 women who are still in jail."

El Salvador has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. Abortion is illegal in all circumstances.

Some 147 Salvadoran women have been sentenced to up to 40 years in prison in such cases between 2000 and 2014, according to the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, a local rights group. </s> LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska carried out its first execution in more than two decades on Tuesday with a drug combination never tried before, including the first use of the powerful opioid fentanyl in a lethal injection.

Carey Dean Moore, 60, was pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m. Moore had been sentenced to death for killing two cab drivers in Omaha in 1979. He was the first inmate to be lethally injected in Nebraska, which last carried out an execution in 1997, using the electric chair.

Witnesses said that there appeared to be no complications in the execution process, which also was the first time a state used four drugs in combination.

At one point while on the gurney, Moore turned his head and mouthed several words to his family, including “I love you.”

In his final written statement, Moore admitted: “I am guilty.” But he said there are others on Nebraska’s death row who he believes are innocent and he said they should be released.

“How might you feel if your loved one was innocent and on death row?” Moore asked.

Moore’s execution comes a little more than three years after Nebraska lawmakers abolished the death penalty, only to have it reinstated the following year through a citizen ballot drive partially financed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts. The governor, a wealthy former businessman, has said he was fulfilling the wishes of voters in the conservative state.

The Nebraska drug protocol called for an initial IV dose of diazepam, commonly known as Valium, to render the inmate unconscious, followed by the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, then cisatracurium besylate to induce paralysis and stop the inmate from breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart. After each injection, prison officials sent saline through the IV to flush out any residue and ensure all the drugs had entered the inmate’s system.

Diazepam and cisatracurium also had never been used in executions before.

According to prosecutors, Moore was 21 when he fatally shot Reuel Van Ness during a robbery with his younger brother, and used the money to buy drugs and pornography. Moore fatally shot Maynard Helgeland by himself five days later, saying he wanted to prove he could take a man’s life by himself. Moore was arrested a week later. He was charged and convicted of first-degree murder, while his 14-year-old brother was convicted of second-degree murder.

In his statement, Moore also apologized to his brother, who was with him during the 1979 robbery and murder of Van Ness.

“I should (have) led him in the right way to go instead of bringing him down, way down,” Moore said of his brother.

Moore had faced execution dates set by the Nebraska Supreme Court seven times since he was convicted, but each was delayed because of legal challenges and questions over whether previous lethal injection drugs were purchased legally. For some relatives of Moore’s victims, that was far too long — and they hope his name and crimes will finally vanish from headlines.

“We’re sick of hearing about Carey Dean Moore,” Steve Helgeland, one of Maynard Helgeland’s three children, said ahead of the execution.

Helgeland said the numerous delays in executing Moore had left him ambivalent about whether his father’s killer dies by lethal injection or spends the rest of his life in prison. Helgeland said he plans to be present at the prison for the execution to honor his father’s memory, but that he won’t witness it.

“There was a point in my life when I probably would have pulled the switch myself, but 39 years has a way of dissipating your anger,” he said.

A Germany-based drugmaker tried to halt the execution last week, filing a lawsuit that alleged the state had illegally procured at least one of the company’s drugs. The company, Fresenius Kabi, argued that allowing the execution to go forward would harm its reputation and business relationships.

But a federal judge sided with state attorneys , who argued that the public’s interest in carrying out a lawful execution outweighed the company’s concerns. The judge also noted that Moore had stopped fighting the state’s efforts to execute him.

A federal appeals court upheld that ruling Monday, and Fresenius Kabi decided not to take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of Japan rejects retrial for a 92-year-old woman, Ayako Haraguchi, who had already served 10 years in prison for the 1979 murder of her former brother-in-law.