Monthly Archives: June 2021

In a major victory for property owners facing state and local land use regulation, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled 6-3 that a California regulation granting union organizers the right to access private property is a per se physical taking requiring the payment of just compensation under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 2021 WL 2557070 (U.S. June 23, 2021). Cedar Point represents another expansion by the Roberts Court of property owner rights under the Takings Clause and opens the door further to legal challenges to government mandates allowing access to private property.

Cedar Point began with a federal lawsuit under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments by two California growers challenging a decades-old state regulation granting labor organizations access to an agricultural employers property for up to three hours per day, 120 days per year, for labor organizing purposes. The lead plaintiff, a grower, challenged the regulation after union organizers entered the companys property without notice, causing some workers to join in a protest and others to leave the job site. Plaintiffs alleged that the regulation created an easement on their properties that amounted to a per se physical taking, requiring just compensation under the Constitution.

The trial court rejected the growers argument that the regulation was a per se physical taking because it did not allow the public to access their property in a permanent and continuous manner for whatever reason. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, explaining that the Penn Central analysis for regulatory, not physical, takings was appropriate, and holding that because the growers did not contend that the regulation deprived them of all economically beneficial use of their property, per se treatment was inappropriate and the takings claim was invalid. 923 F.3d 524 (2019).

Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts held that the Ninth Circuit erred when it applied Penn Central because the appellate courts decision was incorrectly focused on the fact that the government action was a regulation. Rather, the essential question is whether the government has physically taken property for itself or someone else by whatever means or has instead restricted a property owners ability to use his own property. The Court reasoned that because a physical appropriation of property had occurred regardless of whether it was a result of a state regulation Penn Central has no place.

The Court also rejected the Ninth Circuits holding that the regulation did not constitute a per se taking because it only granted temporary access to the union organizers. The Court held that this position is insupportable as a matter of precedent and common sense, citing several Supreme Court precedents that established temporary takings as physical takings requiring compensation.

The three dissenting justices argued that the California regulation falls within the scope of Penn Central and voiced concerns about the potential for the Courts decision to require compensation for government access for health and safety inspections and similar activities. The majority opinion dismissed those concerns, noting that such access is typically required as a condition of a permit, license, or registration.

The Cedar Point Nursery decision broadens the reach of the law of per se physical takings, a typically more straightforward and plaintiff-friendly form of takings claim than regulatory takings. Coupled with the Supreme Courts 2019 decision in Knick v. Scott Township, 139 S.Ct. 2162, that expanded access to the federal courts for takings claims, property owners and businesses now have more tools to negotiate, limit, and where necessary, litigate in federal court state and local mandates that involve intrusion on land. Per se takings that require compensation may well extend beyond easements created by regulation, such as the requirement at issue in Cedar Point.

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Supreme Court Finds Fifth Amendment Taking in State Regulation Granting Access to Private Property - JD Supra

Lucas Wall posted this photo of himself on social media at his mothers home in The Villages after an interview with a TV station.

A Villagers son stranded in Floridas Friendliest Hometown wants a judge yanked from his case in a legal fight over a mask mandate for air travelers.

Lucas Wall, who has been staying with his mother in The Villages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had been hoping to travel again. He was prevented from doing so earlier this month at the Orlando International Airport because he refused to wear a mask due to an anxiety issue. Since he was prevented from boarding a Southwest Airlines flight to Fort Lauderdale, Wall has filed a flurry of legal motions in federal court, in a bid to be able to fly without wearing a mask.

The Washington D.C. resident on Friday filed a motion to disqualify Magistrate Judge Daniel Irick from his case.

Wall wants Irick removed for bias shown against me and violation of my Fifth Amendment right to due process.

Wall has attempted to bolster his case with numerous media appearances, including on Fox News. He is also riding the wave of Americans growing frustration with the air travel mask mandate at a time when the nation is seeing an explosion in travel as the July 4 holiday nears.

Wall has indicated his need for a legal remedy is urgent as his latest travel itinerary nears.

He has a flight booked for Thursday to Germany to see his brother and his wife. He said a ruling is required in the matter no later than Wednesday.

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Villager's son wants judge yanked from case in legal fight over mask mandate - Villages-News

By JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

The dispute over whether Roman Catholics who facilitate abortions should be permitted to receive the Blessed Sacrament appears to be coming to a head as President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a public Roman Catholic and public abettor of abortion, continues to attend Mass regularly and receive.

The Church has condemned abortion as being among the gravest of sins. To Catholics, the baby in the womb is a distinct human being who enjoys the right to live, and the Blessed Sacrament is not a symbol; it is substance. It is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and there are necessary preconditions to its reception.

Can a person who facilitates killing a class of innocent human beings worthily receive the Blessed Sacrament? In a word: No. Here is the backstory.

There is no ambiguity in the Churchs teaching about abortion. It is the gravest of evils. All humans have the right to live from conception to natural death. It is a core teaching of the Church: Thou shalt not kill.

Also core among the Churchs teachings is that Catholics have a duty to inform their consciences of what the Church teaches, to exercise their informed reason in distinguishing right from wrong and to conform their acts to core Church teachings. A properly formed conscience will conclude that it is always wrong intentionally to kill an innocent human life. I doubt that Biden disagrees with these principles. If he does, he is in the wrong church.

The stumbling block for Biden and other Catholic supporters of abortion is whether or not the baby in the womb is a person. If the baby is a person, then all abortion is homicide. The Fifth Amendment protects the life, liberty and property of all persons, and the 14th Amendment requires the states to do so on an equal basis. Thus, if the baby is a person, the states cannot outlaw and prosecute only postnatal killings; they must outlaw and prosecute prenatal killings as well.

We know the baby in the womb is a person because she or he has human parents and possesses from conception all the genomic material needed to be viable. Through guardians, the baby can inherit, litigate and own property.

The reception of the Blessed Sacrament is limited to Roman Catholics who are not in a state of grave sin. The sin is facilitating abortions, not politically supporting those who favor them. Here is where Biden would have a sound point when he argues that this is a private matter if he were just private citizen Joe, voting for folks who support abortion. Then, his conscience and his beliefs would be mostly a private matter between him and his confessor.

But he is not private citizen Joe. He is the president of the United States who exercises his authority under unjust laws to facilitate and pay for abortions, and that is a grave sin.

What is a grave sin? It is a grievous act of weakness or defiance done with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. All three aspects of sinfulness gravity, reflection, consent must be present for the sinner to have culpability. There is no dispute but that abortion is a grievous matter. Unless Bidens exercise of his presidential powers is not done with sufficient reflection and full consent of his will, he is likely culpable for the sin of abetting the killing of innocent human life.

On the other hand, if he firmly believes that the baby in a womb is not a person, that somehow abortion does not kill an innocent human life, that Jesus in Marys womb was not God and that Mary could morally have killed Him, then he should leave the Catholic Church. For if he stays, at the least, he is culpable for having a gravely and substantially malformed conscience one that embraces heresy.

Even the arguments of the preeminent modern Catholic defender of the primacy of conscience, St. John Henry Newman, would not help Biden. Newman was a 19th-century British academic and Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism and rose to the College of Cardinals. At his beatification, Pope Benedict XVI summarized Newmans teaching on conscience as not a path of self-asserting subjectivity, but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opened up to him.

The key word here is gradually. This is so because ones conscience Bidens, yours and mine discerns more as ones intellect learns more.

Stated differently, no one knows how Biden discerns right from wrong, and could change his mind, but Biden himself. If his conscience tells him that the baby in the womb is not a person as un-Catholic and irrational as that is his aiding abortion is still gravely sinful, but he may not be culpable.

Now back to Bidens public dispute with the American Catholic hierarchy. It is profoundly the duty of the bishops to safeguard and protect the sacraments. Traditionally, priests trust the recipient of the Blessed Sacrament not to be in a state of grave sin at the time of the reception.

But one who directly and publicly employs the assets of government to kill babies and then receives the Blessed Sacrament nevertheless if uncorrected by the hierarchy will cause grave scandal. As Bidens reception of the Sacrament and his facilitation of abortion are public, his admonition should be public as well.

A retired bishop friend of mine recently put it this way: Do you think it was right for the Catholic hierarchy in Germany to remain silent and permit priests to give the Blessed Sacrament to SS officers whose regime was slaughtering the Jewish people because unjust laws permitted them to do so? The answer is obvious because Catholics who help to kill innocents are Catholic in their own minds only.

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Biden and the Sacrament | News, Sports, Jobs - Gloversville Leader-Herald

More than 30 years ago, based only on the statements of two witnesses who either recanted or failed to appear in court, Curtis Crosland was convicted of the 1984 murder of South Philadelphia store owner Il Man Heo and sentenced to life in prison.

On Thursday, Crosland, 60 a father of five and grandfather of 32 was released from the State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Montgomery County. So many loved ones crowded onto his sisters narrow block in the citys Cobbs Creek section, screaming and hugging, that traffic ground to a halt.

I just came home after 34 years. Ive been exonerated, Crosland apologized to one driver. She responded, Praise God!

Crosland is the 21st person exonerated with support from District Attorney Larry Krasners Conviction Integrity Unit, which concluded that investigators had illegally concealed troubling information about the witnesses who accused Crosland and evidence pointing to another suspect.

U.S. District Judge Anita Brody this week ordered Crosland released or retried, and the DA formally dropped the charges. In her order, Brody affirmed the CIUs efforts, saying the DAs first responsibility is to justice: The responsibility of doing justice does not disappear once a conviction is achieved. In some circumstances, the duty to seek truth can and should extend to cases long closed.

The victims family also welcomed Croslands release, said Charles Heo, 50, who recalled translating the trial prosecutors explanations into Korean for his mother when he was just a teenager: He said, We got the guy. We believed him.

He and his sister Song, 52, described their father, known in the community as Tony, as a revered, lighthearted, generous, and gregarious figure who took care of his neighbors, often carrying over more than $1,000 in I owe yous from those who couldnt afford to pay. He was shot during a gunpoint robbery of his H&B Grocery Store by a masked perpetrator who knew to call him by his first name.

Despite his loss, Heo said he was grateful to see Croslands family reunited. There was an injustice in this case, he said, and the ripple effects caused untold damage through our familys lives, through the Crosland familys lives.

READ MORE: Phillys murder exonerations raise questions about decades of homicide investigations

In court filings, the CIU made clear Croslands case involved not only apparent misconduct but also a compelling innocence claim.

To me, its a case that has all the telltale signs of a wrongful conviction, CIU supervisor Patricia Cummings said. You have a case that was cold. Then you have snitches involved wanting something in their case, and then the historical lack of understanding and appreciation of [disclosure requirements].

According to legal filings, the case was built on lies by informants police knew were tainted long before Croslands arrest.

One man, Rodney Everett, was facing a parole violation when he agreed to provide information in multiple murder cases even testifying in two preliminary hearings on the same day.

The DAs search of the police file yielded extensive undisclosed documents, including a failed polygraph test, a statement from Everetts wife that he had identified a different perpetrator, and an undated letter from Everett to a homicide detective, seeking help in exchange for information.

The other informant, Delores Tilghman, had previously given a false statement in a different murder case, prosecutors say.

In interviews Thursday, both witnesses said they felt coerced into giving false statements.

It was just very brutal. They threaten you. They will use your family and they will tell you what they will do to your family, taking your kids, said Everett, who testified at Croslands preliminary hearing but said he repeatedly tried to recant. When you tell the truth, they dont care. Theyll accept the lies, but they wont accept the truth.

Everett refused to testify at Croslands trial, invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, but his earlier statement was read into the record. After Croslands conviction was overturned, Everett was granted immunity to testify at the second trial but recanted on the stand.

Yet Crosland was convicted again by a second jury.

READ MORE: The battle in Philly DAs Office: Conviction Integrity Unit report shows rocky path to reform

As for Tilghman, she said detectives came to her home and woke her up, threatening to arrest her if she didnt testify.

It was him or me, she said. They were threatening me with putting me in jail. ... They can make that happen. I seen them make his life disappear with one witness.

She said shed long regretted her role in the case and was glad to learn of Croslands release.

Over the years, Crosland has presented a growing collection of evidence to support his innocence: three eyewitnesses to the robbery and murder who said he was not the killer, and eventually another witness willing to identify the alternative suspect. He filed nine post-conviction relief petitions in state court and four federal habeas petitions before he was finally cleared by evidence that was contained in Philadelphia police and prosecutors files all along.

Some of that information was sealed in connection with grand jury investigations, but Cummings said that doesnt excuse the nondisclosure.

The exculpatory information was technically in the hands of prosecutors, she said, and should have been provided.

Crosland represented himself for decades as lawyers botched his case, abandoned his claims, or filed letters with court saying his case had no merit. After the Federal Community Defender Office was appointed, they gained support from the CIU.

When he saw the evidence that had been hidden in the case last year, he said, it made me very emotional. It was mind-blowing that all that could be hidden, to convict an innocent man. It was painful. It was difficult to even share with my family some of the things I learned that happened to me.

But on Thursday night, home with his sons and wearing street clothes for the first time in 34 years, he and his family said it felt like divine intervention.

Risheen Crosland, 36, of West Oak Lane, was just 2 when his father was arrested. His oldest brother, Curtis Jr., became the father figure at age 6.

I was told when I was 16 that he would always belong to the state of Pennsylvania, Risheen Crosland said. I tried everything I could to get my father out. Then when nothing else worked, it seemed like God just showed me what he could really do.

Engaged to his childhood sweetheart Jackie Gray, Crosland said his goal now is to get a decent job, spend time with his family, and use his hard-earned legal knowledge to help the other family of innocent men he left behind in prison.

Then, more calls and FaceTime visits came in, from even more friends and relatives whod just heard the news. Crosland had decided to keep his homecoming a secret, after so many decades of hopes raised and then dashed.

You never know whats going to happen, he said. For years, Ive been saying, Im coming and Its gonna happen, and it didnt happen. I didnt want them to feel torn down.

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A Philly man was cleared of murder after 34 years by evidence that was in the police file all along - The Philadelphia Inquirer