Updated: On Friday, attorney and philanthropist Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. was wired $21.5 million of a $26.5 million pledge he made to the law school at the University of Alabama, after its board of trustees voted in favor of giving him a refund, following his call for a boycott of the state after it passed a new law that effectively outlaws abortions.
An Alabama inmate who sought to die by nitrogen hypoxia was executed by lethal injection Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court once again rejected a stay request.
Updated: On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union vowed to challenge Alabama’s abortion ban that was signed into law the same day by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says “there is nothing of substance” to four colleagues’ allegations of unfairness last month in the U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of a stay request. Thomas concurred Monday in the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case of Alabama inmate Christopher Lee Price. His opinion…
The U.S. Supreme Court has lifted a stay that blocked the execution of an Alabama man who sought to die by nitrogen hypoxia. The action prompted a dissent by the court’s liberals, who criticized the “middle of the night” decision that didn’t allow for discussion Friday morning.
Understaffed and overcrowded men’s prisons in Alabama fail to protect prisoners from prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse and violence and fail to provide safe and sanitary conditions, according to a Department of Justice report. There is reasonable cause to think the conditions in men’s prisons in the state violate the Eighth Amendment…
The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, has fired one of its co-founders, 82-year-old Morris Dees, a legendary civil rights activist. Richard Cohen, president of the SPLC, announced Dees’ ouster.
The Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of an inmate with dementia if he is unable to form a rational understanding of the reasons for his death sentence, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
Updated: The U.S. Supreme Court granted a request on Thursday night by the Alabama Office of the Attorney General to let it proceed with the execution of a Muslim inmate who won a stay Wednesday after he claimed that the prison violated his religious rights by refusing to allow his…
Public schools could provide a new legal battleground on religion in public venues as more states pass laws authorizing the posting of “In God We Trust” in public schools. Seven states passed laws this year requiring or permitting schools and other public buildings to post “In God We Trust, the…
Burr & Forman has announced it will acquire the South Carolina-based McNair Law Firm, a move that will swell its ranks to more than 350 lawyers. Burr & Forman, based in Birmingham, Alabama, will have 19 offices in eight states when the merger is complete on Jan. 1, report the…
Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over an Alabama judge’s failure to preserve an original recording of his disputed jury instruction in a capital case. Sotomayor said she agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to deny certiorari in the case of Tawuan Townes because…
A former partner at Balch & Bingham has been sentenced to five years in prison for a scheme to bribe an Alabama state legislator to oppose expansion of a site designated for an environmental cleanup. U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon sentenced lawyer Joel Gilbert, 46, on Tuesday, report AL.com, WBRC…
Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr., a Florida attorney and developer, has agreed to donate $26.5 million to the University of Alabama School of Law over the next four years. The donation is the largest in the university’s history and includes naming rights, the Herald-Tribune reports. The school will be known as…
The last few years have been good for former prisoners hoping to regain the ability to vote. In New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued pardons in May to nearly 25,000 parolees in order to restore their voting rights. In Virginia, in an ongoing effort to get more people to…
