An East Tennessee woman convicted of child neglect in her teenage daughter's cancer death is asking the state Supreme Court to declare that she is innocent because she relied on prayer to heal the girl. Jacqueline Crank was sentenced to unsupervised probation after her 15-year-old daughter died of Ewing's Sarcoma in 2002. State law makes it a crime to fail to provide medical care to children, but there is an exception for those who rely on prayer alone for healing. However, the Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act applies only to faith healing performed by an accredited practitioner of a recognized church or religious denomination. The court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case in Knoxville today. Knoxnews has more.

Nine losing candidates from the August election are contesting results in a Shelby County Chancery Court lawsuit, the Memphis Daily News reports. The lawsuit was filed Sept. 2 by Criminal Court candidates Kenya Brooks, Alicia Howard and Mozella Ross; General Sessions Court candidates Kim Sims and J. Nathan Toney; District Attorney candidate Joe Brown; Juvenile Court clerk candidate Henri Brooks; Criminal Court clerk candidate Wanda Halbert; and Doris Deberry-Bradshaw, who ran in a state House Democratic primary. The lawsuit — originally filed in General Sessions Court — seeks “a vote recount and/or the setting aside of the election results as they are individually affected and a declaration declaring them to have won the election.” The action also seeks an open inspection of records from the election, including computer records.

Sharon Lee, the new Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice, said there will be no partisan politics involved when the court selects a new state attorney general, Gavel Grab reports. “I think the voters rejected partisan politics in our judiciary with the election,” Justice Lee said this week, according to a blog of the Knoxville News Sentinel. ”And they certainly will not have any place in the selection of the attorney general, or how we do the rest of our jobs.” The court will conduct public interviews of eight candidates Monday.

After 28 years as 12th Judicial District Court judge, Buddy Perry stepped down from the bench, the Herald Chronicle reports. Opting not to seek re-election, Perry is being replaced? by Justin C. Angel, a Republican who defeated Democrat Steve Blount in the Franklin County general election on Aug. 7. Perry, a Winchester native and a Democrat, was first elected in May 1986 as a 12th Judicial District candidate? with no Republican opposition. Perry said he plans to return to school and is venturing ?back into private practice in a new area of law now that his term is expired

The Monroe County Commission voted 8-1 Tuesday morning to purchase land for a new jail. The county’s need for a new jail may have been given an extra impetus after newly-elected 10th Judicial District Attorney General Steve Crump announced it would be the policy of his office for a first-time parole violator to receive a 30-day sentence, while a second-time parole offender would have to serve their entire sentence. County officials also said last week they had been told by two state officials the county would have to show progress or risk losing its jail certification this month. The county will buy 20 acres on New Highway 68 just down from Warren Street in Madisonville for of $450,000. Estimates on how much it will cost to build a jail have varied anywhere from $15 million to $30 million, The Advocate and Democrat reports.

Six counties in Tennessee have been chosen to take part in a pilot project that gives drug court judges access to information in the Controlled Substance Monitoring Database to help ensure the success of program participants, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports. Cocke, Grainger, Hamilton, Jefferson, Sevier and Sullivan counties were selected to represent rural, semi-urban and urban areas. “This program is designed to give judges more tools in their tool box to assist those persons who suffer from addiction and who are in drug court treatment programs,” said Sen. Doug Overbey, R-Maryville, a co-sponsor of the legislation allowing the program. If successful, the legislation sponsors believe the pilot program could be extended statewide.

Newly elected General Sessions Judge Melissa Blackburn has fired two Davidson County Mental Health Court employees, the Tennessean reports. Two weeks ago Blackburn asked all court employees to resign and reapply for their jobs. Two of the five were told Tuesday that they would not be rehired. 

Halliburton's agreement to pay more than $1 billion to settle numerous claims involving the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill could be a way for the company and victims of the spill to avoid years of costly litigation, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports from the Associated Press. A federal judge still has to approve the settlement and rule on the extent to which parties, including Halliburton, were negligent in the deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. Those rulings could affect plaintiffs' decisions on whether to participate in the settlement, which was announced Tuesday. 

U.S. Supreme Court justices are increasingly citing in their opinions facts contained within friend-of-the-court briefs — a perilous trend, law professor Allison Orr Larson from the College of William and Mary says in a recent New York Times article. Some amicus briefs are careful and valuable, citing peer-reviewed studies and noting contrary evidence, while others cite more questionable materials. Some “studies” presented in amicus briefs were paid for or conducted by the group that submitted the brief and published only on the Internet. Others seem to have been created for the purpose of influencing the court. Over the five terms from 2008 to 2013, the court’s opinions cited factual assertions from amicus briefs 124 times, Larsen found. The trend is at odds with the ordinary role of appellate courts, which are not supposed to be in the business of determining facts. That is the job of the trial court, where evidence is submitted, sifted and subjected to the adversary process, the article notes.

The Tennessee Supreme Court today upheld a 30-day suspension for Nashville attorney William Caldwell Hancock for his conduct in a bankruptcy case, which included sending an email to the judge calling him “a bully and clown.” In 2011, a BPR hearing panel found that Hancock had violated five Rules of Professional Conduct and suspended his law license. Justice Cornelia A. Clark concurred with the court's decision to uphold the suspension, but wrote in a seperate opinion that the the record contained "substantial ... evidence" that Hancock sent an email disparaging the judge to a third party, which would be a sanctionable offense. Chief Justice Gary R. Wade disagreed with a portion of the Court’s decision, concluding in a separate opinion that Hancock’s misbehavior, although offensive, did not disrupt or interfere with the proceedings in the bankruptcy court because the email was sent more than nine months after the bankruptcy judge issued his ruling. The Administrative Office of the Courts has more.