Justice Sonia Sotomayor — joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan — dissented.
The case facilities on Terence Andrus, who, in 2008, at 20 years previous, unsuccessfully tried a carjacking whereas below the affect of PCP-laced marijuana. He fired a number of pictures, killing the automotive proprietor, Avelino Diaz, and a bystander, Kim-Phuong Vu Bui. He was charged with capital homicide and later sentenced to dying.
New attorneys for Andrus stated that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to research or current mitigating proof, together with the truth that Andrus’ childhood was marked by neglect and that he grew up surrounded by violence and abuse. His mom, for instance, had Andrus, her second of 5 youngsters, when she was 15. She offered medicine — in view of her youngsters — and engaged in prostitution.
The Supreme Courtroom had beforehand, in 2020, reversed the Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals’ affirmance of Andrus’ dying sentence and despatched the case again all the way down to the court docket to additional evaluate claims of ineffective counsel. The Texas court docket — with out listening to oral argument — as soon as once more dominated in opposition to Andrus, prompting the case to journey again as much as the US Supreme Courtroom.
In her prolonged, 25-page dissent, Sotomayor stated that “Andrus’ case cries out for intervention, and it’s notably very important that this Courtroom act when needed to guard in opposition to defiance of its precedents.”
Andrus, Sotomayor famous, can nonetheless pursue an enchantment of his case by way of a federal habeas evaluate, however the Supreme Courtroom’s “refusal” to grant the case now was “lamentable.”
She stated the Texas court docket “erred in its evaluation of prejudice as to each unpresented mitigating proof and unexplored proof rebutting the State’s case in aggravation.”
Noting the mitigating proof round Andrus’ background and psychological well being, she stated the Texas court docket “improperly failed to think about or analyze any of Andrus’ mitigating proof past its rejection of this Courtroom’s conclusions.”
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In a dig at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sotomayor quoted from an opinion he had written when he was a decide on DC’s federal appellate court docket to criticize how Texas, in its filings with the Supreme Courtroom, and the way the decrease court docket in Texas, was “attacking” the Supreme Courtroom precedent quite than accepting it.
“On the contrary, ‘it’s important’ that courts ‘comply with each the phrases and the music of Supreme Courtroom opinions’ on problems with federal regulation,” Sotomayor wrote.
Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, just hours after the White House unveiled what it said was $600bn worth of defence, artificial intelligence and other deals with the kingdom.
The US president lauded the kingdom and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as he began the first leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf.
“He’s an incredible man, I’ve known him a long time now. There’s nobody like him,” Trump said to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the guests were Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and dozens of other US executives.
The US-Saudi relationship had been a “bedrock” of security and prosperity, Trump said. He added: “Today, we reaffirm the bond and take the next steps to make our relationship closer, stronger, more powerful than ever before . . . And it will remain that way.”
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In a press release before Trump’s speech, the White House had hailed “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn commitment to invest in the US” and “economic ties that will endure for generations to come”.
Prince Mohammed said the two countries would work over the coming months to increase the total to $1tn.
“We are working on partnership opportunities with the US worth $600bn, including agreements of more than $300bn announced today during this forum,” the crown prince said.
The deals unveiled by the White House included a commitment by Saudi Arabia’s new state-owned AI company, Humain, to build AI infrastructure in the kingdom using several “hundred thousands” of Nvidia’s most advanced chips over the next five years.
That would make it one of the biggest AI chip orders by a state company, underlining the scale of Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to position Saudi Arabia as a global AI hub and boosting Nvidia’s desire to build “sovereign AI” infrastructure around the world.
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The first phase of Humain’s investment would involve deploying 18,000 of Nvidia’s latest “Blackwell” servers, the chipmaker said. Based on the price of a single Nvidia graphics processing unit, estimated at $30,000-$40,000, the Saudi investment would run into multiple billions of dollars.
AMD, one of Nvidia’s main competitors in the AI chip market, is also co-investing up to $10bn with Humain to deploy its own infrastructure in the country. Amazon made a similar $5bn commitment covering data centre infrastructure.
Nvidia shares rose 5.6 per cent on Tuesday, while AMD’s gained 4 per cent. Amazon was 1.3 per cent higher.
Jimmy Goodrich, senior adviser for technology analysis to the Rand Corporation think-tank, said the “massive scale” of the Middle East AI announcements would “undoubtedly eat into future US data centre growth”.
“Instead of offshoring the future economic revolution to the Middle East, a better approach would be to channel Gulf state money into American re-industrialisation and energy dominance,” Goodrich said.
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The White House also cited on Tuesday what it said was a “nearly $142bn” agreement to provide Riyadh “with state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and services from over a dozen US defence firms”.
It added this would include air force and space capabilities, missile defence, maritime and border security, land forces modernisation and upgrades to communication systems.
The US also referred to plans by Saudi Arabian DataVolt to invest $20bn in AI data centres and energy infrastructure in the US.
Trump is looking to secure deals and investment pledges worth more than $1tn on his trip to the Gulf, which will also include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The traditional US allies are among the biggest buyers of American weapons, boast sovereign wealth funds that collectively manage in excess of $3tn and have all stated their ambitions to invest heavily in AI.
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Many of the US’s most powerful tech executives were also in Riyadh, including Musk, Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman as Saudi Arabia hosted a glitzy investment forum. Top financiers including Blackstone’s Schwarzman, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser also attended.
US tech companies have been increasingly looking to the Gulf, which manages some of the world’s largest and most active sovereign wealth funds, to raise capital and lure investments.
The Trump administration last week scrapped a Biden-era rule under which Saudi Arabia, along with dozens of other countries including India and Singapore, would have faced limitations on their purchases of the most powerful US-designed AI chips.
Riyadh launched Humain, which will be chaired by Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Investment Fund, the $940bn sovereign wealth fund, to steer its strategy and investments in the sector on Monday, the day before Trump arrived.
Just days after Trump’s inauguration in January, Prince Mohammed committed Saudi Arabia to investing $600bn in the US over the next four years — the same amount that was announced on Tuesday.
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The UAE followed up with a similar gesture in March, pledging to invest $1.4tn over the next 10 years. It is also seeking to establish itself as a leading AI hub and has taken a strategic decision to invest in US tech.
Analysts question how the Gulf states will be able to deploy such a vast scale of capital in the timeframes announced, particularly Saudi Arabia as it grapples with lower oil prices, a widening budget deficit and the scale of its own domestic projects.
Additional reporting by Michael Acton in San Francisco
Prosecutors’ star witness, Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura, took the stand on Tuesday in the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial, accusing the rapper of controlling her life and coercing her into “humiliating” sex acts.
Mr Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Family and friends have come to court in large numbers to support Mr Combs, whose legal team has not yet questioned Ms Ventura.
Ms Ventura, who is pregnant, told prosecutors about the alleged physical and emotional abuse she endured at the hands of the rapper during so-called “freak-offs”, or sexual encounters the couple had with male escorts.
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Here are some of the most notable parts of her first five hours of testimony.
Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.
Ms Ventura fell ‘in love’ with Mr Combs
Prosecutors began by questioning Ms Ventura – one of their two central witnesses in the case – about her 11-year, on-and-off relationship with Mr Combs.
Now 38 and pregnant in her third trimester with her third child, Ms Ventura met Mr Combs when she was a 19-year-old aspiring singer and he was 37. Mr Combs’ record label would later sign Ms Ventura as an artist, and shortly after, their romantic relationship began.
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Their relationship progressed over a series of several trips. At the time, she testified, she felt like they were in a monogamous relationship, though she knows now that he had other girlfriends.
She said she “fell in love” with the “larger than life entrepreneur and musician”. But it was not long before she noticed another side to him, she said.
REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
Mr Combs wanted to ‘control’ every part of her life, Ms Ventura says
Mr Combs wanted to “control” her life, Ms Ventura said. She said he paid for her home, her cars, her phone and other technology that he would sometimes take away to “punish” her.
“Control was everything, from the way that I looked … to what I was working on,” Ms Ventura said.
Eventually, she claimed, the control turned violent. Mr Combs would “bash on my head, knock me over, drag me and kick me” frequently, Ms Ventura testified, sometimes through tears.
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She alleged that she was left with swollen lips, black eyes and knots on her forehead.
Ms Ventura felt ‘humiliated’ by ‘freak-offs’
Prosecutors spent hours on Tuesday asking Ms Ventura about so-called “freak-offs”.
Ms Ventura told the court how Mr Combs introduced her to the sexual events during the first year of their relationship: They would hire a male escort or stripper to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched.
Ms Ventura told the court that she first tried the encounters to make Mr Combs “happy”. But she said they humiliated her, and sometimes lasted three to four days.
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“I felt pretty horrible about myself,” she told the court, wiping away tears. “It made me feel worthless.”
Ms Ventura told the court she never wanted to have sex with anyone but Mr Combs, and claimed she would take myriad drugs – marijuana, ecstasy and ketamine – to help her perform to Mr Combs’ satisfaction, but also to “disassociate”.
The drugs were “a way to not feel it for what it really was”, she said, “having sex with a stranger I didn’t really want to be having sex with”.
Mr Combs flew male escorts in for freak-offs, court hears
As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura about the “freak-offs”, she told the court of how Mr Combs would direct her to find male escorts, strippers or dancers to have sex with while he watched.
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She alleged that Mr Combs would pay the men anywhere from $1,500 to $6,000 in cash, depending on their performance.
They found the men through stripper companies and sites like Craigslist. Some of their photos were displayed to the jurors, including Daniel Phillip, who finished his testimony earlier on Tuesday.
Ms Ventura and Mr Combs had the enounters in cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Ibiza, Spain, Ms Ventura testified.
Sometimes, men would be flown in during vacations, she alleged, and Mr Combs would direct her to ask staff to pay for and arrange their travel, calling them new employees.
Among other charges, prosecutors are trying to prove that Mr Combs engaged in sex trafficking – human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation – and transportation to engage in prostitution.
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Mr Combs ‘directed’, Ms Ventura says
As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura for graphic details, one key element emerged: Ms Ventura claimed that Mr Combs controlled every part of the encounters.
He chose the outfits she wore – down to the extremely high heels she kept on for hours – as well as the sexual acts that transpired and the lighting, Ms Ventura told jurors.
“If Sean wanted something to happen, that was what was going to happen,” she said. “I couldn’t say no.”
Sometimes, Ms Ventura said, she would take the lead on which male escorts to hire because Mr Combs was “very busy”, but she only did so at his direction, she said.
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She said freak-offs had a very specific “pattern” of sexual acts each time.
“He was controlling the whole situation,” she alleged. “He was directing it.”
At times, Ms Ventura said, she tried to tell Mr Combs that she felt “horrible”. But when he dismissed her concerns, she said, she relented, worried he would get angry or question their relationship.
Ms Ventura is expected to continue her testimony on Wednesday, when she could also face cross-examination.
Each weekend for the past few months, Mike Ignatowski has gone to one of two Tesla dealerships in Austin, Texas, to protest Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and the most famous transplant to the state’s most left-leaning city.
Not too long ago, Mr. Ignatowski, a 67-year-old computer engineer, was an admirer of Mr. Musk — before Mr. Musk aligned himself with President Trump. Now Mr. Ignatowski waves a “Fire Elon” sign during the protests, even as he conceded he’s not quite mad enough to part with the blue Model 3 Tesla that he bought “before we knew Elon was crazy,” as his bumper sticker attests.
That’s how it goes in Texas’ capital, where Mr. Musk’s sharp rightward shift has been received with a mix of anger and hair-pulling agony. Austin’s conflicted feelings reflect both the billionaire entrepreneur’s economic influence on the city and the city’s broader transformation from a medium-sized college town arranged around the State Capitol to a tech-fueled metropolis with a glass-and-steel skyline and a changing image.
Tie-dyed T-shirts still urge residents to “Keep Austin Weird,” mostly in hotels and tourist shops. But a different kind of counterculture has taken root amid an influx of decidedly right-of-center figures (including Mr. Musk), self-described freethinkers (like the podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman), and conservative entrepreneurs (like Joe Lonsdale). Already in town was Austin’s resident conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his far-right Infowars. There’s even a new, contrarian institution of higher learning looking to compete with the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Austin.
Weird, perhaps, but not in the way of the old bumper-sticker mantra.
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“If you say ‘Keep Austin Weird’ to somebody under the age of 40, they would think of that as an antique-y slogan, like Ye Old Shoppe,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas. “It doesn’t have any resonance for their lived experience of Austin.”
The city’s transformation followed a deliberate, decades-long project to attract technology companies to its rolling hills.
“I’m one who thinks it has changed for the better,” said Gary Farmer, who helped attract new businesses as the founding chairman of Opportunity Texas, an economic development group. “The culinary arts, the performing arts, the visual arts, the music scene — it’s all better.”
At the same time, housing prices have skyrocketed, and the population — already the whitest among big cities in Texas — has shed some of its diversity.
In 2023, more people moved out of Austin’s Travis County than moved in, and the share of Hispanic residents in Austin declined even as across all of Texas, the Hispanic population has grown to become a plurality. Black families have also been leaving Austin, said Lila Valencia, the city’s demographer.
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The biggest increase in new residents has been among households making more than $200,000 a year, which grew by 70 percent from 2019 to 2023, Ms. Valencia said. The share of households making below $100,000 a year declined.
Austin now has about 100 accredited private schools, more than double the 39 it had two decades ago. Enrollment in the city’s public schools has been falling.
For years, locals resisted development, to no avail.
“They were building a lot of freeways in Houston and Dallas, and Austin turned away that money,” said Tyson Tuttle, the former chief executive of Silicon Labs, who moved to Austin in 1992. “They were saying, if we don’t build it, they won’t come. And they came anyway.”
Many in Austin’s new elite have chafed at the progressive policies in city and county government over issues such as homelessness and policing. Last year, some of them, including Mr. Musk, backed a primary challenger to the local Democratic district attorney, José Garza. In a companywide email, Mr. Musk encouraged Tesla employees to vote in support of the challenger.
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Mr. Garza won the primary by a two-to-one margin.
“If an asteroid fell from the sky and hit a Democratic candidate for office in Travis County and killed that person, that person’s corpse would still beat a live Republican,” said Evan Smith, a former leader of the Texas Tribune, an Austin-based nonprofit news site.
Still, the city’s demographic transformation has led many to lament its fading identity as a place of street buskers and a cross-dressing, homeless mayoral candidate. The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper, even sells a shirt that reads “R.I.P. Old Austin.”
Earlier this year, passers-by stopped to listen to an impromptu street performance on Congress Street, like old times, except the guitarist was the Trump-friendly Ted Nugent, and his appearance had been organized by hard-right Republicans.
Almost as common are complaints about the complainers.
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“I’m not one of those naysayers about Austin who say it was all better in the old days,” said Terry Lickona, who for 50 years has produced “Austin City Limits,” a public television showcase for local and national musicians. He added, “Austin has always attracted outsized characters,” including Willie Nelson and Michael Dell, the computer maker.
The struggles at Tesla, where profits have dropped sharply since Mr. Musk began closely aligning himself with Mr. Trump, could directly affect the city. At the same time, Austin is set to be the proving ground for his next big venture: self-driving Tesla taxis, which Mr. Musk promised for June.
Mr. Musk did not respond to an interview request.
“Having Tesla here is a huge benefit to the city,” said Mr. Tuttle, who has recently founded an artificial intelligence startup. “I wish that Elon would come home and focus on his business.”
The arrival of Mr. Musk and Tesla five years ago was a key moment for the city, punctuating a yearslong transformation that was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people, including celebrities and dissatisfied Californians whose politics were shifting amid the lockdowns, sought out the relative openness of Texas.
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“It’s, like, most of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff,” Mr. Rogan said during a 2021 interview with Mr. Adler, months after moving there.
The result has been a slight moderation of the city’s politics and tensions over Mr. Musk between those who hate his actions in Washington and those who love his role as a technology entrepreneur.
The city “attracts people that are on all sides of issues,” said Joshua Baer, the founder of the Capital Factory, which helps finance and nurture technology startups. “My world is generally Elon fans and supporters.”
On a recent evening, more than two dozen Austinites convened in a church meeting room adorned with colorful messages of inclusivity for a gathering of Resist Austin, which organizes protests against Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump at Tesla dealerships.
“Our mission is lawful nonviolent resistance of authoritarians,” Ian Crowl, an organizer, said to the group, which included retirees, tech workers and graduate students. “If you want to throw a rock at a Tesla,” he added, “that’s not what we’re doing here.”
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Such tensions have been on the mind of Tesla drivers in Austin as well. Vikki Goodwin, a Democratic state representative, said she tries to be “invisible” when driving around in hers. When a car rammed into her at a stop light recently, she worried it might have been intentional.
“Oh my God,” Ms. Goodwin said she thought, “is it anger that caused him to drive into my car?”
The driver, in fact, was using his wife’s gas-powered car, Ms. Goodwin said he told her, and he assumed it would slow down quickly when he took his foot off the gas pedal — like his Tesla does.
