September 3, 2010

Fakhry Law Firm

The Law Office of Emrah Artukmac, Esq., P.C. announces its strategic alliance with the Lebanese based international law firm, Fakhry Law Firm.

The Fakhry Law Firm, with offices in Lebanon and Qatar, has over four decades of experience in the MENA region providing a diverse range of legal services to its regional and international clients.

The synergy will augment both firms’ capabilities to provide innovative solutions tailored to the needs of their respective clients.

July 29, 2010

Arizona Immigration Law

In April 2010, Arizona adopted the nation's toughest law on illegal immigration, provoking a nationwide debate and a Justice Department lawsuit. One day before the law was to take effect, a federal judge blocked the state from enforcing its most controversial provisions, including sections that called for officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws and that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times.

The law, known locally as SB1070, was aimed at discouraging illegal immigrants from entering or remaining in the state. It coincided with economic anxiety and followed a number of high-profile crimes attributed to illegal immigrants and smuggling, though federal data suggest that crime is falling in Arizona, as it is nationally, despite a surge of immigration.

Although the federal ruling is not final, it seems likely to halt, at least temporarily, an expanding movement by states to combat illegal immigration by making it a state crime to be an immigrant without legal documents and by imposing new requirements on state and local police officers to enforce immigration immigration law.

June 28, 2010

Supreme Court Extends Gun Rights

The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said that the right to self-defense protected by the Second Amendment is fundamental to the American conception of ordered liberty. Like other provisions of the Bill of Rights that set out such fundamental protections, he said, the Second Amendment must be applied to limit not only federal power but also that of state and local governments.

June 1, 2010

Mere Silence Doesn’t Invoke Miranda

Criminal suspects seeking to protect their right to remain silent must speak up to invoke it, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, refining the court’s landmark 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that split along familiar ideological lines, did not disturb Miranda’s requirement that suspects be told they have the right to remain silent. But he said courts need not suppress statements made by defendants who received such warnings, did not expressly waive their rights and spoke only after remaining silent through hours of interrogation.

“A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to the police,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

March 31, 2010

Court Requires Warning About Deportation Risk

The Supreme Court ruled that lawyers for people thinking of pleading guilty to a crime must advise their clients who are not citizens about the possibility that they will be deported.

The question in the case, Padilla v. Kentucky, No. 08-651, was whether bad legal advice about a collateral consequence of a guilty plea could amount to ineffective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the answer was yes. Where the relevant immigration law is “succinct and straightforward,” he said, the defense lawyer must explain the consequences of a guilty plea. Otherwise, the lawyer “need do no more than advise a noncitizen client that pending criminal charges may carry a risk of adverse immigration consequences.”

February 8, 2010

Lawyers Back Creating New Immigration Courts

Responding to pleas from immigration judges and lawyers who say the nation’s immigration courts are faltering under a crushing caseload, the American Bar Association called for Congress to scrap the current system and create a new, independent court for immigration cases.

Behind the seemingly arcane proposal was a portrait of the nation’s immigration courts besieged with new cases arising from an intensified federal crackdown on illegal immigration, and challenged by critics who doubt the courts’ impartiality.

In the recently adopted proposal, the bar association argued that immigration courts should be removed from the Department of Justice and set up as independent courts, still within the executive branch, under terms in Article I of the Constitution. The highest judges would be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. The courts’ decisions would still be appealed to the federal appeals courts.

January 30, 2010

Site for Terror Trial Isn’t Its Only Obstacle

For a president who campaigned on a promise to close Guantánamo, and who just misseda self-imposed one-year deadline to get the job done, the meltdown of a potential Manhattan 9/11 trial is the latest measure of the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance.

Mr. Obama last week restated his commitment to criminal 9/11 trials, and the Justice Department is looking at alternative sites, including some on military bases or at prison complexes. Federal venue rules provide for wide leeway in choosing a location, requiring only “a plausible connection” between the crime and the district, said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at American University.

The most experienced terrorism prosecutors are in New York’s Southern District, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and six counties north of the city. The next most experienced are in the Eastern District of Virginia, outside Washington, which also meets the jurisdictional requirements. There are numerous military installations in both districts, though most lack adequate facilities to host a trial.

January 19, 2010

Supreme Court Rules on Trial Conduct in Georgia

In Presley v. Georgia, No. 09-5270, the Supreme Court decided two open issues concerning closed courtrooms. The trial judge had ejected an uncle of the defendant during jury selection, saying her courtroom was too small to accommodate both potential jurors and the public.

The defendant, Eric Presley, was convicted of trafficking in cocaine. He appealed, saying his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial had been violated. In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that the press and the public have a First Amendment right of access to jury selection; in Mr. Presley’s case, the court extended that right to criminal defendants under the Sixth Amendment.

The court also resolved whether a defendant seeking to open a courtroom must present alternatives to the trial judge. The Supreme Court said no. Whether trial judges are given a menu of options or not, the majority opinion said, they “are obligated to take every reasonable measure to accommodate public attendance at criminal trials.”

August 3, 2009

Firm Stance on Illegal Immigrants Remains Policy

After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.