Free Republic

KNOXVILLE - A Knox County jury this afternoon sentenced convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson to death by lethal injection for the January 2007 murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The jury of five women and seven men deliberated about four hours before returning its decision to a packed courtroom. “The punishment is death,” the jury foreman said.

KNOXVILLE - A Knox County jury this afternoon sentenced convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson to death by lethal injection for the January 2007 murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. The jury of five women and seven men deliberated about four hours before returning its decision to a packed courtroom. “The punishment is death,” the jury foreman said. The victims' families gasped at the verdict, but Davidson showed no reaction. Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner admonished those in the courtroom to control any outburst. “The murder was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel,” the foreman said, reading from the verdict form....

A Knox County jury delivered the death sentence this afternoon to the ringleader in the torture slayings of a young Knoxville couple following a carjacking. The same panel of seven men and five women who convicted Lemaricus Davidson, 28, in the 2007 attack on University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, decided his fate. Davidson was found guilty of more than 30 counts, including felony murder and premeditated murder of each victim. The jury had a choice of a life sentence mandating a minimum of 51 years in prison, life without parole with no...

For more than two hours on a dark Saturday night, as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was allegedly gang raped and beaten outside a high school homecoming dance, authorities said. As hundreds of students gathered in the school gym, outside in a dimly lit alley where the victim was allegedly raped, police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed. "As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN. The witnesses failed to report...

(Video of pregnant girls) All those young ladies are moms or moms-to-be at Paul Robeson High School. It's not a school for young mothers, it's a neighborhood school. And all of the pregnancies have happened, despite prevention talk. If you want to know why, the people closest to the situation say there's no simple explanation. Chicago Public Schools says it does not track the overall number of teen moms in the district. But Robeson Principal Gerald Morrow knows the count at his school in Englewood: 115 young ladies who are expecting. To put it in perspective, their school pictures would...

Scuffles erupted as several thousand Detroit residents jockeyed, pushed and shoved Wednesday to get free money being offered to only 3,500 of the city's recently or soon to be homeless. (Oct. 7)

IT'S A RIOT: Young members of anarchist groups hold violent demonstrations during Friday's G-20 finance meetings in Pittsburgh. Politics: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi berated town hall and tea party protesters this month, tearfully warning they'd incite violence. Well, there's been violence all right, at Pittsburgh's G-20. But it wasn't the tea partiers.It takes gall to characterize ordinary Americans, freely exercising their rights of speech and assembly in civic forums, as "mobs" while ignoring a pack of leftist thugs now smashing a U.S. city. But that's what Pelosi did, directing her righteous tocsin to the Norman Rockwell-like gatherings of Americans...

Three Essex teenagers were charged Friday with first-degree murder in the strangulation last week of a 25-year-old man in a wheelchair. Baltimore County police identified the three suspects as Keon Torone Samuels, 18, of the 700 block of Walnut Grove Road; Andrew Minh Nguyen, 18, of the 1300 block of Kelly Case Lane; and Marlon Geovany Montes, 19, of the 1300 block of Elsing Road. The victim, Marin Jonathan Lendosky George, was found dead Sept. 18 in his Essex apartment by a maintenance man. Homicide detectives said he had been targeted by the three suspects and murdered in the course...

BELLEVILLE -- Two Belleville West High School students were charged under the juvenile code today with felony counts of aggravated battery stemming from the violent beating of a 17-year-old student on a school bus earlier this week. VIDEO OF BEATING The incident grabbed national headlines and incited a heated debate about race when police said the incident, involving a white victim and black assailants, may have been racially motivated. They later recanted that claim. The two teenagers—who are 14 and 15 years-old—were charged as juveniles because they are under the age of 17. Illinois law shields the disclosure of their...

Feral Youths: How A Generation of Violent, Illiterate Young Men Are Living Outside The Boundaries Of Civilised Society By HARRIET SERGEANT 19th September 2009 The first time I saw Tuggy Tug, he was standing on a street corner in Brixton with half-a-dozen other 15-year- old boys. They were scowling at anyone who walked past Every now and then, they shrugged up their hoodies to make themselves look more threatening. 'Everyone who bumps into us says sorry,' boasted Tuggy Tug. [Pics in URL] His tracksuit was so big that he seemed lost inside it. Under his black hoodie, he wore a...

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Four men were arrested and a fifth is being sought in connection with the campus gang rape of an 18-year-old female Hofstra University student. The four suspects — only one of whom is a student at the school — were arrested on Long Island, N.Y., on Monday; a fifth is still at large. ... Police say 19-year-old Jesus Ortiz and 21-year-old Rondell Bedward, both of the Bronx, were arraigned on rape charges Monday. The other two, 19-year-old Stalin Felipe, of the Bronx, and 20-year-old Kevin Taveras, of Brentwood, are to be arraigned Tuesday in Hempstead. Police didn't...

BELLEVILLE -- A Belleville police spokesman now says an incident where a white student was beaten by teen black assailants on a bus “may not be racially motivated.” “It was premature on my part,” said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax. “It was my personal and emotional comment after only seeing the video briefly.” Sax said police interviewed the 17-year-old Belleville West High student. However, he said he was unaware of what the student told police. Some of the students on the bus yesterday during the incident cheered the beating, the video shows. Sax said a formal statement would be made...

Pages 317-325: ‘‘(C) PROHIBITION ON EXPANSION OF FA22 CILITY CAPACITY.—Except as provided in para23 graph (2), the number of operating rooms, pro24 cedure rooms, or beds of the hospital at any 25 time on or after the date of the enactment of VerDate Nov 24 2008 12:51 Jul 14, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00317 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6201 C:\TEMP\AAHCA0~1.XML HOLCPC July 14, 2009 (12:51 p.m.) F:\P11\NHI\TRICOMM\AAHCA09_001.XML f:\VHLC\071409\071409.140.xml (444390|2) 318 1 this subsection are no greater than the number 2 of operating rooms, procedure rooms, or beds, 3 respectively, as of such date. 4 ‘‘(D) ENSURING BONA FIDE OWNERSHIP...

On Page 425 of Obama’s health care bill, the Federal Government will require EVERYONE who is on Social Security to undergo a counseling session every 5 years with the objective being that they will explain to them just how to end their own life earlier. Yes...They are going to push SUICIDE to cut medicare spending!!! And no, I am NOT SH—ing YOU! So those of you who voted for Obama have now put your own parents in dire straights...Congratulations! Also, planned denial of medical care for seniors. Click the source for audio.

Anwar, 15, can't read or write, but says he's good at tunnel work. He needs a new job as Israeli planes bombed his workplace, one of hundreds of smuggling tunnels on Gaza's border with Egypt. His rough voice and tough looks belie his young age, but his small, wiry body is what makes him a perfect candidate for the job. And, like thousands of other children in the impoverished and war-shattered Gaza Strip, his family badly needs the money. The job is comparatively lucrative, with children getting up to 30 dollars for a 12-hour shift. "I have six brothers. I'm...

An NAACP official has demanded the governor of Pennsylvania call out the National Guard, suspend civil liberties and impose martial law to deal with a recent wave of shootings. Stanley Lawson, president of the Harrisburg Chapter of the NAACP, urged Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell deploy the National Guard for at least one month and enforce a curfew after more than a dozen shootings rocked the city, according to the Patriot News. Many of the shots were fired during daylight hours, and one man was killed at a busy intersection in the middle of the afternoon June 24. "The Guard is...

LAREDO, Tex. — When he was finally caught, Rosalio Reta told detectives here that he had felt a thrill each time he killed. It was like being Superman or James Bond, he said. “I like what I do,” he told the police in a videotaped confession. “I don’t deny it.” ... The young men all paid a heavy price. Jesus Gonzalez III was beaten and knifed to death in a Mexican jail at 23. Mr. Reta, now 19, and his boyhood friend, Gabriel Cardona, 22, are serving what amounts to life sentences in prisons in the United States. Other young...

The law finally caught up with an alleged gang member who police say held down his 7-year-old son while a fellow gang-banger tattooed the boy's belly with the group's insignia. Police say 26-year-old Enrique Gonzales held down his 7-year-old son while another gang member tattoed the group's insignia on his belly. Fresno cops arrested Enrique Gonzalez, 26, at hotel in the Sierra foothills and booked him for investigation of mayhem, child abuse, false imprisonment, battery, participating in a criminal street gang and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, Police Chief Jerry Dyer said. Gonzales, a member of...

It took seven hours and 40 minutes. Following an evening-long deliberation Friday, a Schuylkill County jury reached its verdict in the trial of two Shenandoah teens charged in the beating death of Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala, 25. Watch reaction videoBrandon J. Piekarsky, 17, of Shenandoah Heights, was found guilty of one count of simple assault and acquitted of all other charges in-cluding third-degree murder and aggravated assault. Derrick M. Donchak, 19, was found guilty of one count of simple assault. He was also found guilty of three counts of corruption of minors and three counts of furnishing alcohol to minors....

Does anyone remember the white couple that got abducted, raped, and killed by the three African American guys somewhere in the south? I think they found some of the couple's body parts in a garbage can at one of the alleged criminal's house. Does anyone have any follow up info or a link?

London suffering from shocking rise in rare 'Victorian' diseasesJoe Murphy, Political Editor 15.04.09   London is in the grip of a startling rise in diseases associated with Victorian times, figures disclose today.Rare infectious illnesses including typhoid, whooping cough and scarlet fever have soared by 166 per cent in the past two years.Infection rates in the capital are markedly higher than the national averages, warned Justine Greening, the shadow minister for London who assembled the figures.They include a staggering 214 per cent increase in cases of mumps - up from 125 in 2007 to 393 last year. The disease is...

A group of young men severely beat a Kent man late Tuesday at the Federal Way Transit Center after he told one of them to lower his voice, police said Wednesday. The Kent man, 32, was waiting for a bus about 11 p.m. when he asked a loud youth to quiet down, police said. In response, several males in their teens or early 20s walked up to the man and one hit him in the face. The two began to fight and others in the group joined in. After the Kent man was knocked to the ground, the attackers ran...

They arrived to party but didn't see enough girls, so they demanded their money back. Then, the gunfire started. An Eden Prairie teen has been charged in a shooting at a Lakeville trailer home Sunday that injured four partygoers, and two men have been charged with helping him conceal a semiautomatic pistol as they drove him away. The shooting allegedly took place after the gunman and his friends were refused a refund on their entry fee at a house party, which they had left because of the lack of women. The Dakota County attorney's office Wednesday charged Mohamed Yusef Hussein,...

LOS ANGELES (CBS) ― The University of Southern California Wednesday announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a driver who struck and killed one freshman student and seriously injured another. The Los Angeles County Council is offering a $75,000 reward and the Board of Supervisors will contribute $10,000, which totals $135,000. Adrianna Bachan, 19, and Marcus Garfinkle, also 19, were in a crosswalk on Jefferson Boulevard at Hoover Street about 3 a.m. Sunday when a car heading east on Jefferson ran a red light and struck them, according to police. Bachan, a freshman from...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Saying traditional census outreach will not be enough, Hispanic groups on Wednesday urged the Obama administration to follow through now on its pledge to pass immigration reform or risk an undercount of millions of people. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Univision Inc., the League of United Latin American Citizens and SEIU announced a grassroots campaign that would supplement Census Bureau efforts to reach the traditionally hard to count Hispanic community.

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) - Montgomery County police say 16 people were arrested after a fight broke out during a concert held to promote nonviolence and to remember a Silver Spring teen killed last year. The free Stop the Violence youth concert was held Saturday night on Ellsworth Street in downtown Silver Spring in memory of 14-year-old Montgomery Blair High School student Tai Lam, who was shot to death in November. Police say fighting broke out near the stage toward the end of the concert and at least one person resisted arrest. Police say 16 adults and juveniles were arrested...

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2009 – Insurgents in Afghanistan employ intimidation and barbaric acts in attempts to cow Afghan civilians to submit to their will or stay nonaligned in the struggle for the country, a senior U.S. military officer posted in Afghanistan said today. For example, insurgents routinely place threatening letters onto the exteriors of schools and government buildings during the night, Army Col. John P. Johnson, commander of Combined Task Force Currahee, told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference. Johnson’s task force, centered on the 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, from Fort...

HYANNIS, Mass. -- Police have accused a 13-year-old of masterminding the slaying of his 16-year-old half brother so he could take over a drug operation they are alleged to have inherited from their father. Jordan Mendes was found shot, stabbed 27 times and dumped into a pit, where his body was torched. District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said Mendes was a "significant drug dealer." Authorities said Mykel Mendes, a seventh-grader, was jealous of the money his half brother was making selling OxyContin and cocaine and wanted to take over. A 13-year-old friend and a 20-year-old cousin also are charged with murder.

The Global Business Center in the Hi-Lake Shopping Center has 42 stores. The 20,000-square foot center has a little bit of everything, from home decorations to clothes. The mall is not just for Somalis, but it does have some items that you might not find at other stores. There is also a beauty shop, but it is not like others. It caters mostly to Muslim women. "In our culture we can't show our hair, so if we have a lot of privacy, other beauty salons, we wont have that privacy," said shopper Asha Abdulla. There are only about a handful...

A Saudi judge has ordered a woman should be jailed for a year and receive 100 lashes after she was gang-raped, it was claimed last night. The 23-year-old woman, who became pregnant after her ordeal, was reportedly assaulted after accepting a lift from a man. He took her to a house to the east of the city of Jeddah where she was attacked by him and four of his friends throughout the night. She later discovered she was pregnant and made a desperate attempt to get an abortion at the King Fahd Hospital for Armed Forces. According to the Saudi...

GALVESTON, Texas – A slain toddler tried to stop her mother and stepfather from beating her to death by reaching out to her mother and saying, "I love you," a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday. The pleas from 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers didn't stop her mother, Kimberly Trenor, from continuing to brutalize her, assistant district attorney Kayla Allen said in her opening statement at Trenor's murder trial.

The wobbly video shows a group of adults mulling inside Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in Susquehanna Twp. Suddenly it pans left and captures a fight breaking out. The 22-second clip, uploaded Sunday to YouTube, is the latest example of what police describe as a disturbing and bizarre crime trend: escalating violence among adults at a place designed for children's birthday parties. Susquehanna Township police have been called to the restaurant on Union Deposit Road 12 times in the past year for reports of disorderly conduct, assault and theft. Those calls have resulted in 13 arrests, including six women -- five...

Mark of protest: Hundreds of shoes seen on the road along the Whitehall as police guard the entrance to Downing Street in London on Saturday. LONDON: Shoes were flung at Downing Street on Saturday by angry protesters calling for more active British intervention to bring an end to Israeli bombardment of Gaza. There were scuffles and angry exchanges as the police tried to control the crowd. An estimated 10,000 people, including a number of high-profile political figures and celebrities, marched through central London raising slogans against Israeli attacks and carrying placards saying “End the siege of Gaza” and “Freedom for...

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed. On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

<p>That's what 14-year-old Raylene Jaramillo's mother says may have led to the death of her daughter early Saturday.</p> <p>The point-blank shooting of the former Valley High freshman occurred during an underage drinking party at a house in the South Valley where police have been called more than a dozen times before, Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said Monday.</p>

In her Jerusalem Post column, Caroline Glick mentions a piece of news we haven’t seen reported elsewhere: Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed. On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari’a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion. Hamas’s endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad.

Text of report in English by independent, non-governmental Palestinian Ma'an News Agency website ["Misfired Palestinian Projectiles Kill Two, Injure Ten Gazans" - Ma'an headline] Bethlehem -Ma'an -Two young girls are dead and four others were injured after a "mysterious explosion," thought to be a misfired projectile, rocked a house in the Al-A'tatrah area of northern Gaza on Friday [26 December] medical sources said.

As I observed the immediate aftermath of the shoe throwing incident in Baghdad, I noted that the most striking effect occurred among the Western public, and particularly within the United States. Commentators and regular citizens were asking themselves again, seven years later, “why do they hate us?” missing one more time the fact that this particular violent expression, far from being a unique emotional reaction by one individual, is part of a war of ideas; it is a continuous organized confrontation over the future of the region. In short, this was another form of Jihadism, one I am coining now...

Fears are growing that this lawless area, bordering Kenya and Ethiopia, could become a stronghold for terrorists with possible links to al-Qaeda. Somalia's weak official government, the 14th in the last 17 years, depends entirely on the presence of Ethiopian troops, who are deployed in and around the capital, Mogadishu. They invaded in December 2006, mounting an American-supported operation which overthrew an earlier Islamist regime, styling itself the Islamic Courts Union. But Ethiopia has pledged to withdraw its troops at the end of December. When they leave, the official government is likely to fall - or be forced to evacuate...

Iranians join Bush shoe protest By Martin Vennard BBC News Dozens of Iranians in the country's capital Tehran have held their own shoe-throwing rally in protest at US President George W Bush. They were showing support for the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at the American leader in Baghdad. The protesters waved their shoes in the air before throwing them at posters featuring caricatures of Mr Bush. The journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, is due to go on trial in Iraq, accused of assaulting a foreign head of state. 'Cruelty' The demonstration took place near Tehran university as people headed to...

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty. The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

he television pictures of an Iraqi journalist hurling shoes at President George W. Bush standing alongside the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a Baghdad press conference have ricocheted across the world to the hysterical applause of many members of the Arab-Muslim audience and their usual supporters. Hurling shoes at someone, we are told, is the worst insult in Arab culture. A few years ago the world witnessed when Baghdad was liberated by American soldiers and Saddam Hussein's statue in the centre of the city was pulled down. A cheering crowd of Iraqis gathered to kick and slap the broken...

Turkish company sees boom in sales of 'George W. Bush attack shoes' Agence France-Presse December 19, 2008 10:41pm THE Turkish shoe company making the brand of footwear used by an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush has seen a surge in orders. Ramazan Baydan, owner of the shoe factory in Istanbul of the same name, told DPA that he had received orders in the past week for some 300,000 pairs of the model that was thrown at the US president. "Someone even came from America seeking distribution rights," Baydan said. The entrepreneur wants to...

Arabs hail shoe attack as Bush's farewell gift by Salam Faraj Salam Faraj 14 mins ago BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president. Colleagues of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he "detested America" and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the war on his country. "Throwing the shoes at Bush...

When asked why they shot patrons of the Delray Beach Dunkin' Donuts who were lying on the ground during a robbery last week, one of the men arrested said he "just wanted to up the body count," according to Broward Sherrif Sgt. Neal Glassman, a robbery detective. Glassman said James Herard, 19, told him he had no soul and could shoot him and another detective and it wouldn't mean anything. "It was sport," said Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti at a news conference this afternoon. "These are just cold-blooded thugs who enjoyed doing this." Three men, who claim affiliations to the...

Juan Mesa, 28, and Alejandro Moreno, 39, Both Had Criminal Records PALM DESERT Both men who died on "Black Friday" in a shootout inside the Toys "R" Us store on Highway 111 at Fred Waring Drive had criminal records, and one of them is believed to have been a gang member, authorities said Wednesday. Juan Meza, 28, of Cathedral City, had a tattoo that read "VMV," which indicates that he was a member an Indio-area gang called Varrio Mecca Vineyards, Riverside County District Attorney's Office spokesman Michael Jeandron said. Alejandro Moreno, 39, of Desert Hot Springs, was also killed in...

Hundreds of shoppers smashed through windows at a Long Island Wal-Mart early Friday morning, killing one store employee in the stampede. News' reader Nakea Augustine caught the chaotic scene on her cell phone, check out the photos. http://www.nydailynews.com/money/galleries/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures/walmart_stampede_captured_in_pictures.html

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said. The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

I don't think there is any precedent in our history for the shameful manner in which the Left has treated Sarah Palin. Left-winger Andrew Sullivan gleefully posted a particularly disgusting example of the phenomenon today; it's a YouTube video titled "Red, White and MILF." Watch it only if you have a strong stomach. If you don't know what "MILF" means--I'm sure most of our readers don't--Google it. I can remember when Sullivan was a respected journalist, not a gutter smear merchant and borderline pornographer. His descent exemplifies the Left's decline in recent years to a baboon-like level of discourse. The...

The diet of prehistoric Neanderthals living in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar included seals and dolphins, showing once again that the hominids had skills rivaling those modern humans living then, according to a new study. The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub.