“Michael Bryant Jr.,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said from the Supreme Court bench Monday, “is a man given to abusing women.”
A member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana, Bryant has a record of more than 100 tribal court misdemeanor convictions, at least five of them for domestic assault. So the Supreme Court was unanimous Monday in upholding Bryant’s habitual offender convictions for which he received a sentence of nearly four years in prison.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had thrown out Bryant’s conviction. It said Bryant’s previous convictions that made him eligible for the enhanced sentencing were constitutionally infirm, because he had not been represented by counsel. Counsel would have been required by the Sixth Amendment, that court reasoned, if those charges were in state and federal courts instead of tribal courts.
Ginsburg said the Sixth Amendment right to counsel guarantees indigent criminal defendants a lawyer in any case in which a prison sentence is imposed. But she said the Supreme Court has long held that the Bill of Rights does not govern tribal court proceedings. Instead, the Indian Civil Rights Act does, and it requires appointed counsel only when a tribal court sentence exceeds one year. Bryant’s previous convictions carried sentences of less than that, Ginsburg wrote.
MANILA, Philippines – Philippine officials confirmed Tuesday that Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded a Canadian man, the second Canadian hostage to be killed in two months after their demands for a large ransom were not met.
The hostage, Robert Hall, was abducted from a marina last September along with another Canadian, a Norwegian and a Filipino. The other Canadian, former mining executive John Ridsdel, was beheaded in April.
A militant video obtained by Philippine police officials and seen by The Associated Press showed Hall in an orange shirt and kneeling in front of a black Islamic State-style flag before he was killed in a jungle area.
An Abu Sayyaf deadline for the payment of a large ransom lapsed Monday and police later found a severed head of a Caucasian man outside a Roman Catholic cathedral in Sulu province’s main Jolo town.
The White House and a group of universities, companies and nonprofits announced new steps Monday to reduce the wait time for an organ transplant, including a $160 million Pentagon program to develop ways to repair and replace cells and tissue.
The moves include two new research efforts to increase the number of transplants in the United States by nearly 2,000 a year. More than 30 transplant centers have agreed to share information on kidney transplants for patients who are difficult to match.
Nearly 31,000 organs were transplanted in the United States last year, but the sizable gap between demand and supply generally widens every year, leaving tens of thousands of people on waiting lists. An average of 22 people die daily while waiting for transplants. Almost 60 percent of transplanted organs in the United States are kidneys, and the vast majority of people on waiting lists need that organ.
Associated Press & Washington Post
