Third Judicial District Circuit Court Judge Kindall T. Lawson will retire effective June 1, the Administrative Office of the Courts has announced. Lawson has been on the bench since 1996, after serving Hawkins County as General Sessions judge from 1974 to 1993. The 3rd Judicial District serves Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, and Hawkins counties.

According to a report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, black men on average are given sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those served by white men for similar crimes. The ABA Journal reports that the findings show the racial divide in sentencing has widened since the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in U.S. v. Booker, which struck down a 1984 law requiring judges to impose sentences within the sentencing guidelines. The study showed black men are also 25 percent less likely to receive a sentence below the sentencing guidelines. 

The Supreme Court ruled today that police do not have to extensively document and log the work of drug-sniffing dogs to be able to use the results of their work in court. Knoxnews reports Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a unanimous court stating that courts should apply the same tests to dog sniffs they do when they look at other issues of whether police have probable cause to take an action. The court’s ruling overturns a decision by the Florida Supreme Court in a case involving Aldo, a drug-sniffing dog used by the Liberty County sheriff’s department.

Thursday's Law Tech Un-conference will give Tennessee lawyers free access to a full slate of programs, materials, networking and more. There will even be a drawing for a free iPad4 to go along with free food and refreshments all day long. Visit TennBarU for more details.

The Supreme Court will hear a case challenging campaign finance laws that limit how much an individual can give to political campaigns, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reports. Shaun McCutcheon of Alabama and the Republican National Committee are arguing that it is unconstitutional to stop a donor from giving more than $46,200 to political candidates and $70,800 to political committees and PACs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington DC upheld the limits, but the high court decided to review the decision.

Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Seely Jr. outlined his opposition to a proposed judicial redistricting plan in a letter to state lawmakers. Seely wrote that the plan to pull three counties from the 1st Judicial District into its own region could cost the state more than $700,000 a year and destroy a system that does not need fixing. “It may well be that some districts need to be changed, but the 1st Judicial District has worked fine as it is for the 28 years that I have been a circuit judge and it is certainly going to cost the state quite a bit yearly to separate our district,” Seeley said in the letter, which he povided to the Johnson City Press.

Existing Tennessee law requires judges of all the state’s court to be attorneys, but legislation proposed by Rep. Barbara Ward Cooper, D-Memphis, and Sen. Ophelia Ford, D-Memphis, would change that. The bill would repeal the requirement and allow for non-attorney judges, Gavel to Gavel reports.

Martin Ernest Simmons died Feb. 12 at the age of 73 after a long battle with cancer. A Mississippi native, Simmons earned a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University where he held leadership roles in a number of student organizations, including ROTC. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia and served two years in the military before joining the legal department of Life & Casualty Insurance Company in Nashville. Simmons later was a founding partner of the Dearborn & Ewing law firm and helped form the Nashville office of Frost Brown Todd LLC in 2001. Visitation was held Saturday, with funeral services following. The family has asked that memorials be made to Nashville Symphony Association, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Ingram Cancer Center, St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Franklin or Alive Hospice.

In the ongoing national debate on curbing school violence, the Mississippi House is moving strongly to the side of arming school staff. This week it passed legislation giving school boards the authority to arm an unlimited number of authorized school personnel. An amendment to require psychological evaluations for those designated to carry weapons failed. The Memphis Business Journal has the story.

Tennessee will not participate in a partnership with the federal government to establish a health care exchange, Knoxnews reports. In a letter to U.S. Health and Human Resources Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Haslam said the partnership model does not address his concerns over what he called misguided federal policies, aggressive timelines and a lack of flexibility for  states. He noted he had the same complains when he rejected a state-based exchange in December.