Nation Glance
collect from the ubiquitous cellphone towers that allow people to make and receive calls, and transmit data. The information has become an important tool in criminal investigations.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by the court’s four liberals, said cellphone location information “is detailed, encyclopedic and effortlessly compiled.” Roberts wrote that “an individual maintains a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of his physical movements” as they are captured by cellphone towers.
Roberts said the court’s decision is limited to cellphone tracking information and does not affect other business records, including those held by banks. He also wrote that police still can respond to an emergency and obtain records without a warrant.
But the dissenting conservative justices, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, cast doubt on Roberts’ claim that the decision was limited. Each wrote a dissenting opinion and Kennedy said in his that the court’s “new and uncharted course will inhibit law enforcement” and “keep defendants and judges guessing for years to come.”
Nearly 400 people used California assisted death law in 2017
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California health officials reported Friday that 374 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in 2017, the first full year after a law made the option legal.
The California Department of Public Health said 577 people received aid-indying drugs last year, but not everyone used them. The law allows adults to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs if a doctor has determined they have six months or less to live. They can self-administer the drugs.
Of the 374 who died, about 90 percent were more than 60 years old, about 95 percent were insured and about 83 percent were receiving hospice or similar care. The median age was 74.
The figures are more than double those from the first six months after the law went into effect June 9, 2016. In those early months 191 people received life-ending drugs, while 111 people took them and died.
Nevada man faces Arizona terror charge after bridge blockade
LAS VEGAS — A Nevada man has been indicted in Arizona on terrorism and other felony charges after his arrest last week in a large vehicle that blocked traffic on a Colorado River bridge on the main highway between Phoenix and Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas ReviewJournal reports that 30-year-old Matthew Phillip Wright was indicted Thursday by a grand jury in Kingman, Arizona.
Wright was being held Friday at a jail in Kingman pending appointment of a public defender to his case and his arraignment July 5 in Mohave County Superior Court.
Traffic on U.S. 93 was stopped for about 90 minutes June 15 after a vehicle that authorities described as a homemade armored car or tactical vehicle parked on the Mike O’CallaghanPat Tillman Memorial Bridge near Hoover Dam.