Category Archives: Broadcast

Stuart’s Broadcast Transcripts.

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NewsHour: Supreme Court Action: Mandatory Drug Testing – January 14, 1997

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The case before the Supreme Court comes from Georgia. It concerns drug testing and political candidates. We get a briefing on today’s arguments from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Thanks for being with us, Stuart.

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Nice to be here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What are the facts in this case?

STUART TAYLOR: The Georgia state legislature in 1990 prompted in part by the federal indictment of Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges, passed a new law that required anyone who wanted to run for election for any high office in the state of Georgia, governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, commissioner of agriculture, state legislature, including judges from the Supreme Court on down had to pass a drug test first, specifically they had to submit a certificate showing that they are going to a state-approved laboratory, a doctor’s office, given a urine specimen, passed the test within 30 days of filing for the election. Two Libertarian candidates for state office in the 1994 election sued, claiming that this drug testing law violated their rights, their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizures, and their First Amendment rights of free speech. And the lower courts projected that claim, the Court of Appeals by a two to one vote. The candidates approved to the appeal to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will now decide whether it’s constitutional.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In the lower court cases the state of Georgia acknowledged that there was no evidence that people running for office had particular drug problems, right? So that’s not an issue here.

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NewsHour: Stuart Taylor on a Supreme Court Case – January 8, 1997

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let’s get one thing clear. This is about–the Supreme Court heard these cases that are about a doctor giving a patient, who is an adult, competent person, medication to take their own lives, right? This is not about a doctor administering an injection to somebody who’s wasting away?

STUART TAYLOR: That’s exactly what it’s about. And a patient–the lower courts held it would–this right would only apply if the patient was terminally ill and mentally competent, and that the patient would administer the medication him or herself. This case, it relates to large issues of other kinds, but strictly speaking, that’s what it’s about.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. We just heard about the case in Washington State. Tell us about the New York case.

STUART TAYLOR: In the New York case it was rather similar–three doctors who want to be able to help their patients end their lives with dignity and with less pain. And three patients who were terminally ill and wanted that kind of help and who have all died since the litigation began sued to strike down a New York law that bars anyone from assisting in a suicide, anyone including a physician. All 50 states have laws like this, unless one accepts Oregon, which recently repealed it by referendum, but that’s tied up in litigation. In any event, that case went up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and they struck down the law in a three-nothing vote, but by a different rationale, a substantially different rationale than the 9th Circuit and the case we just heard about.

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NewsHour: Supreme Court On Predators – December 10, 1996

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JIM LEHRER: We go first tonight to the Supreme Court argument on sexual predators. The case comes from Kansas, where five-time convicted child molester LeRoy Hendricks remains behind bars even though he has completed his criminal sentences. He was found to be mentally abnormal and dangerous. Under the Kansas Sexually Violent Predators Act, that’s enough to prevent his release. He’s challenging the constitutionality of the legislation. NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, legal correspondent for The American Lawyer and Legal Times, covered the hearing today. Stuart, welcome. First, how does this Kansas law actually work?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: It states that after a convicted sex offender, sexual predator, finishes his term, or as he’s about to finish his term, the prosecutor can go to the court and say this man is still dangerous, he’s got a mental abnormality that makes him a continuing threat to commit sexually violent acts, in particular to children in this case, and we want him locked up indefinitely, as long as he’s dangerous. And he has a right to a jury trial, and if a jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s got a mental abnormality, not to be confused, by the way, with a mental illness in the traditional sense, and that he’s likely to continue molesting children or committing sexually violent acts because of it, he can be confined in a "mental institution" for so long as that remains the case, or until he can come in and prove that he’s no longer ill or dangerous.

JIM LEHRER: Do there have to be repeat offenses, or can this happen after just one?

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NewsHour: A Look At Several High Court Cases – December 4, 1996

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SPENCER MICHELS: Nine years ago, former immigration officer Robert Park lobbied the Arizona legislature to pass a bill mandating that official government business be done in English only. The bill failed, but Park and his group, Arizonans for Official English, qualified an initiative for the 1988 ballot, an amendment to the state constitution. It passed by less than 1 percent of the vote.

SPOKESMAN: (talking to gentleman) You have to be able to lift up to 50 pounds.

SPENCER MICHELS: According to Park, the measure was designed not to stop the speaking of Spanish in government offices like this job center, but rather to make sure government actions, laws, decrees, and documents be written only in English. It also declared English the official language of Arizona, a policy now embraced by 22 other states.

ROBERT PARK, Arizonans for Official English: All it requires is that anything that’s binding on the state, any law, regulation, ordinance, whatever the case may be, must be in the English language to be enforceable.

SPENCER MICHELS: Park says he worked to pass the measure because he was disturbed that high levels of immigration put pressure on the government for bilingual ballots, education, and routine business.

ROBERT PARK: Official bilingualism. It’s dangerous. It’s not what we need in this country. We’ve got enough problems with ethnic groups and other people. All we have to do is look to our neighbors to the North in Canada and see what divisions are created by official bilingualism, where you have two official languages. It’s tearing the country apart.

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NewsHour: Brady Bill Tested in Supreme Court. – December 3, 1996

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BETTY ANN BOWSER: In 1981, when a lone gunman attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, his press secretary, James Brady, was also seriously wounded. The fallout from that shooting and from several other widely publicized shooting incidents brought calls for federal legislation that would require criminal background checks on people who want to buy handguns. After much legislative controversy, a bill named after Brady was signed into law in November of 1993.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It will be step one in taking our streets back, taking our children back, reclaiming our families, and our future.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Under the Brady Bill, states could refuse to sell handguns to anyone indicted or convicted of a felony, and to those who had ever had a restraining order placed against them. The work of checking those backgrounds was given to state and local chief law enforcement officers. They were required to review the forms within five days, destroy applications of those declared eligible, and inform in writing those who were denied. But at the Graham County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack said he was too busy to do those jobs.

SHERIFF RICHARD MACK, Graham County, Arizona: We have gun problems here, gang problems here. Am I supposed to know those problems so I can check a criminal background check on someone who’s never committed a wrong in their life? Can’t do it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Sheriff Mack organized a gun rally to raise money to sue the federal government. He said the requirements were an infringement on states’ rights, a violation of the 10th amendment, which reserves to the states those powers not specifically given to the federal government in the Constitution.

SHERIFF RICHARD MACK: We cannot allow our constitutional rights to be trampled on like our federal government seems to be trampling on them.

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NewsHour: Supreme Court – Abortion – October 16, 1996

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now more on this case and other action at the court this week from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Thanks for coming, Stuart. Tell us about the arguments in the court today about this case.

American Lawyer: They were very lively arguments today. The issue before the court focused on the so-called 15-foot floating buffer zone. The, the protesters did not appeal the order that said they can’t block people, grab people, shove people. They were saying, we ought to have a right to go up to people and speak to them, hand them literature and so forth, and this 15-foot zone prevents us from doing that. Uh, the all–eight of the nine justices were jumping in during the arguments on one side or the other, and there are about three on each side, you can tell, and about three in the middle arguing back and forth with each other, using the justices as props. And it was an exceptionally lively argument that way, a difficult one to call. I mean, in, in this case the court is fine-tuning a precedent it already laid down a couple of years ago in terms of it’s fairly clear that they can do–that the courts can do something to prevent protesters from unduly harassing women who want to go into the clinics. It’s also fairly clear they–they don’t–the courts don’t have carte blanche just to say you’ve got to stay 300 feet away, and the court is trying to decide in this case, you know, where to draw the line.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Does it make a difference that this is a case about an abortion clinic, if it were a heart clinic or something else, would it make a difference, do you think?

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NewsHour: New Supreme Court Session – October 7, 1996

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CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It’s the first Monday in October, and that means the beginning of a new term for the U.S. Supreme Court. On the docket are a wide spectrum of cases ranging from physician-assisted suicide to sexual harassment. We get a preview now of the term ahead from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the American Lawyer and Legal Times. Stuart, it’s nice to see you again after a summer’s respite. How would you characterize the court docket for the coming term? STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: It’s a very full docket with a great range of very important cases, but I think the ones that tower above the others, the ones that will maybe ten years from now really look like seminal cases are the two physician-assisted suicide cases from the states of Washington and New York in which lower courts struck down laws that bar doctors from helping patients hasten death when the patients are suffering.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mm-hmm. And so what are they considering here?

MR. TAYLOR: Uh, the issue for the Supreme Court is whether there’s a constitutional right for a patient who is terminally ill, who is competent, and who wants to hasten death because the patient’s in pain or otherwise suffering, for that patient to ask his doctor to give him or her a lethal injection, for example, and for the doctor to go ahead and do it, because the problem, as perceived by those who support this, is that it’s illegal almost everywhere for doctors to do that, and has been since time immemorial. The Hippocratic Oath bars it.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the constitutional principle that’s being–that is at issue here–

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NewsHour: Supreme Court Rulings – June 28, 1996

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It was a busy day at the court. We get more on today’s rulings from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent with the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times." Welcome, Stuart.

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Nice to be here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We have four cases to deal with in three broad areas. Let’s start with cable TV and indecency. What did the court rule?

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NewsHour: Supreme Court Decision on Women at VMI – June 26, 1996

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MARGARET WARNER: Tonight we examine two of the day’s high court rulings. The first involves the all-male Virginia Military Institute. On a seven to one decision, the court ruled that the state of Virginia may no longer exclude women from admission to VMI. We get more on that from NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, correspondent for the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times." Welcome, Stuart. What was the basic–what was the basis for the court’s ruling in this case?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: The court ruled that it violates the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment for VMI–for the state of Virginia, I should say, to deny to women what it called the unique and extraordinary benefits that men get from attending Virginia Military Institute, a 150-year-old institution with a unique prestigious role in Virginia life.

MS. WARNER: And what was the majority’s reasoning in coming to this, the majority opinion written by, I gather, Justice Ginsberg?

MR. TAYLOR: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who was a crusader for equal rights for women before she came on the court, basically reasoned that women should have all the opportunities men do in Virginia and elsewhere unless there’s what she called an exceedingly persuasive justification why they should not. She reviewed all the justifications Virginia had advanced for keeping VMI all male and rejected them. In particular, she said there are some women who could benefit from a VMI type education, which is sort of a boot camp style approach to education. Even if there aren’t many, there are some, and they should have that opportunity. She also rejected the state’s argument that it would destroy the boot camp style approach VMI uses to admit women.

MS. WARNER: And so VMI, of course, had tried to start a separate program for women at a nearby women’s college. What did the court say about that?

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NewsHour: Supreme Court on Double Jeopardy – June 24, 1996

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CHARLES ARLT, Defendant: They took everything we had. We didn’t hide a dime, every transaction was done by the law.

JAMES WREN, Defendant: The government took vehicles, automobiles, and they took aircraft, they took–

MR. KAYE: After the men were indicted on criminal charges, the government filed a civil forfeiture suit in order to confiscate their property. Wren’s lawyer, Shawn Perez, says the government punished the men twice for the same crime. That was double jeopardy, says Perez, a violation of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

SHAWN PEREZ, Lawyer: I see nothing wrong with punishing a person once, and the Constitution says, yes, we can punish you once, but we cannot punish you twice for the same offense in two separate proceedings. Arlt and Wren were punished twice by the forfeiture of their property. After they had already been prosecuted and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, the government came back and said, we’re taking everything you own–resulted in a second punishment.