US Supreme Court rejects lawsuit to overturn presidential election results
Washington, Dec 12: The US Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas, along with 17 other States, and backed by President Donald Trump seeking to overturn the results of the presidential elections in several key battleground States won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden who now is the president-elect.
Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognisable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot, the Supreme Court said in a brief unsigned order on Thursday, delivering a devastating blow to the efforts of Trump to challenge and overturn the election results decisively won by Biden.
Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they believed the court was required to hear the case but expressed no position on Texas' claim. As many as 126 Republican Congressmen had also backed the lawsuit.
Biden not only bagged the most popular votes in the presidential electoral history of the United States, his tally in the electoral college was also more than 300 out of the 538 votes. The halfway mark is 270. The election results are scheduled to be formally certified next week.
Trump and his campaign team have been making unsubstantiated allegations of massive voter fraud and electoral malpractice. State election officials and mainstream media say they have not found any such evidence.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his lawsuit has alleged that four battle ground States -- Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- had violated their own state laws, and thus the US Constitution. The lawsuit urged the court to bar these four states from casting their electoral votes for President-elect Biden and as such shift the selection of electors to the States' legislatures.
Trump had said he expected to prevail in the Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania, in its response to the lawsuit, alleged that Texas wanted the justices to disregard the Constitution, not interpret it. It said Texas' filings attempted to construct a surreal alternate reality.
Texas's effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated, said the response filed by the State of Pennsylvania.
Reacting to the development, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said, The Court has rightly dismissed out of hand the extreme, unlawful and undemocratic GOP lawsuit to overturn the will of millions of American voters.
She said the Republican Members that signed the lawsuit brought dishonor to the House.
Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions.
The pandemic is raging, with nearly 300,000 having died and tens of millions having lost jobs. Strong, unified action is needed to crush the virus, and Republicans must once and for all end their election subversion immediately, Pelosi said in a statement.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the Supreme Court's decision should put an end to Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the presidential election that he lost.
The results are clear, there was no widespread fraud, and Joe Biden is the next President of the United States, he said.
The 126 House Republicans who signed on in support of this case should be ashamed of themselves for putting their own political interests before the interests of our nation, the Constitution, and our democratic principles, Hoyer said.
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said this concept of one state trying to challenge the election systems of other states is fully at odds with our democratic process.
The highest court in the land rightfully put an end to a lawsuit that constituted a desperate attempt to discount ballots cast by millions of American voters. Any other outcome would have signaled the death of core principles that lie at the heart of American democracy, he said.
Clarke said, This sends a strong signal that it's time for President Trump and his allies to shut down remaining cases clogging the courts.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Delhi court sentences Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia, associate to life imprisonment
New Delhi (PTI): A Delhi court has sentenced Haryana gangster Vikas Gulia and his associate to life imprisonment under MCOCA provisions, but refused the death penalty saying the offences did not fall under the category of 'rarest of the rare cases'.
Additional Sessions Judge Vandana Jain sentenced Gulia and Dhirpal alias Kana to rigorous imprisonment for life under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
In an order dated December 13, the judge said, "Death sentence can only be awarded in 'rarest of the rare cases' wherein the murder is committed in an extremely inhumane, barbarous, grotesque or dastardly manner as to arouse umbrage of the community at large."
The judge said that on weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, it could be concluded that the present case did not fall under the category, and so, the death penalty could not be imposed upon the convicts.
"Thus, both the convicts are sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs 3 lakh each, for committing the offence under Section 3 of MCOCA," she said.
The public prosecutor, seeking the death penalty for both the accused, submitted that they were involved in several unlawful activities while they were on bail in other cases.
He argued that the accused had shown no respect for the law and acted without any fear of legal consequences, and therefore did not deserve any leniency from the court.
The court noted that both convicts were involved in offences of murder, attempt to murder, extortion, robbery, house trespass, and criminal intimidation. Besides, they had misused the liberty of interim bail granted to them by absconding.
It said, "The terror of the convicts was such that it created fear psychosis in the mind of the general public, and they lost complete faith in the law enforcement agencies and chose to accede to the illegal demands of convicts. Despite suffering losses, they could not gather the courage to depose against them."
The court noted that Gulia was involved in at least 18 criminal cases, while Dhirpal had links to 10 serious offences.
It underlined that MCOCA had been enacted "keeping in view the fact that organised crime had come up as a serious threat to society, as it knew no territorial boundaries and is fuelled by illegal wealth generated by committing the offence of extortion, contract killings, kidnapping for ransom, collection of protection money, murder, etc."
Both accused persons had been convicted on December 10 in a case registered at Najafgarh police station. The police filed a chargesheet under Section 3 (punishment for organised crime) and 4 (punishment for possessing unaccountable wealth on behalf of member of organised crime syndicate) of MCOCA.
