New York City
GOP convention arrests bring lawsuit
Saying the city had created its "own little Guantanamo on the Hudson" during the Republican National Convention, a lawyer Monday filed a lawsuit on behalf of nearly 2,000 people arrested at demonstrations.
The federal lawsuit claims protesters and bystanders alike were rounded up in mass arrests without cause; were kept without access to their lawyers or families at an old bus depot used as a temporary detention center; and were exposed for days to cruel and inhuman conditions.
The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages.
"All that was missing were the orange jumpsuits," lawyer Jonathan C. Moore said. "Under the guise of terrorism and the fear of terrorism, we are all losing our rights."
Kate O'Brien Ahlers, a city law office spokeswoman, had no immediate comment; the office had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit.
Among bystanders arrested were a 15-year-old diabetic girl on her way to a movie and a former vice president of Morgan Stanley who was riding her bicycle. Eight anarchists from Lawrence, Kan., were also detained.
Los Angeles
Cardinal to be deposed in clergy abuse cases
Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, will be deposed today in clergy sex abuse lawsuits that date to his time in three Northern California dioceses, according to a source close to the litigation.
Lawyers for alleged abuse victims are expected to question Mahony all day at an undisclosed location in Los Angeles.
Mahony will be questioned about his handling of former Stockton priest Oliver Francis O'Grady, who pleaded guilty to child molestation in 1993. Mahony was bishop in Stockton from 1980 to 1985, during part of O'Grady's tenure there.
After a 1998 trial in which Mahony testified, a jury awarded $30 million to two young brothers who alleged molestation by O'Grady. The award was later reduced to $7.5 million in a settlement with the diocese.
O'Grady served seven years of a 14-year sentence and was deported to his native Ireland in 2000.
Mahony will also be questioned about alleged abuse by other priests in the dioceses of Fresno, Monterey and Stockton, where he served before becoming archbishop of Los Angeles in 1985.
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