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Court of the Judiciary abolished, new board created NASHVILLE — After years of sometimes heated argument, the House sent to the governor Monday night compromise legislation that puts into place a new system for disciplining judges for misdeeds on the bench. Final approval came on an 88-5 House vote without any debate. The Senate had approved SB2671 unanimously earlier. Though the votes came with virtually no discussion, the debate over the past three years has included repeated charges that the present Court of the Judiciary ignored judicial misdeeds and operated in unwarranted secrecy. Former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard...

KNOXVILLE — A Tennessee judge was so addicted to prescription drugs during his final two years on the bench, he was having sex and buying pills during courtroom breaks, at times purchasing from convicts he had previously sentenced, an investigation found. His behavior has called into question many of the cases he presided over, including one of Knoxville's most notorious murders. Many people didn't realize Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner had a problem until he stepped down from the bench and pleaded guilty in March 2011 to a single count of official misconduct. It would be another eight months before...

We all know how much Barack Obama likes calling people up to apologize or feign empathy with them after some tragedy. He called Sandra Fluke after the big, bad Rush Limbaugh called her mean names on his nationally syndicated radio show. Obama then called the family of Trayvon Martin this past week, several weeks after the young 17-year old African-American youth was shot and killed by a Hispanic man, George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Of course, Zimmerman claims he was being attacked and an eyewitness apparently is verifying that story. Oddly enough, about the same time of the Trayvon Martin...

new black panther party (nbpp) offers $10,000 for the murder of Zimmerman.

Former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner is now under federal probe, officials confirmed Friday. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which spearheaded an investigation of the disgraced judge for violations of state law, is continuing its probe. This time, however, agents are working at the direction of federal prosecutors, spokeswoman Kristin Helm said. "The case remains open and ongoing, and TBI agents are continuing to investigate Baumgartner," Helm said in an email. "Specifically, we are looking at possible federal violations with the U.S. Attorney's Office." David Jennings, a supervisor with the Knoxville U.S. Attorney's Office, said he could "neither...

It's official. Death is no longer a possible fate for three of four defendants in the January 20007 torture slayings of a Knox County couple. Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price has filed notice of an intention to seek the death penalty as punishment in the deaths of Channon Christian, 21, and boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, only against alleged ringleader Lemaricus Davidson. Price this month notified attorneys for Davidson's brother, Letalvis Cobbins, and Cobbins' friend, George Thomas, that he will push for a fate in their cases no more than life without possibility of parole. Because Cobbins' girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman,...

KNOXVILLE — A judge said today he has no authority to make public the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's file on former judge Richard Baumgartner. "This court has no authority whatsoever to decide on its own, 'I'm going to let the public see this file,'" Special Judge John Kerry Blackwood said at a specially-called hearing in Knox County Criminal Court. Blackwood said the portions of the file not made public contain phone records and recorded conversations in which Baumgartner discusses sex with two women and makes "crude remarks" about people. "What you're not going to find (in the TBI file) is...

As more details of ex-Judge Richard Baumgartner's behavior while in the grip of prescription drug addition come to light, more disturbing questions arise. The public needs answers. A News Sentinel investigative report published one week ago revealed the disgraced Criminal Court judge allegedly shook down court employees for painkillers and intimidated a court security officer into becoming one of his pill suppliers, and that the Knox County Sheriff's Office had at least three chances to uncover his misdeeds. Baumgartner's fall has thrown the criminal justice system in Knox County into disarray. The four defendants in the gruesome Christian/Newsom killings will...

Court of secrecy: How Richard Baumgartner, a drug-addicted judge, stayed on the bench despite warningsIt was a Thursday night in January 2010 when the phone rang at the Andersonville home of then-Knox County Sheriff's Office courtroom security officer Meredith Driskell. "He said, 'I'm coming to get those pills.' He told me to put them in a brown paper bag. I told him no ... but he told me I was going to," she recalled when contacted by the News Sentinel. "So, I put them in a brown paper bag and handed it to him, my husband, who hadn't been in...

One judge lied for her, had sex with her and shared painkillers with her. Another sent her to prison Wednesday. Knox County Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz ordered Deena Castleman, 37, to serve six years for a slew of convictions, including aggravated burglary, theft, DUI and possession of prescription painkillers. Castleman racked up all those charges while engaged in a relationship with former Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner that included sex and both pill-procuring for him and pill-using with him, according to portions of a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe made public earlier this month. At least one of...

The Knox County Criminal Court Clerk today released 155 pages of the TBI’s investigative report of former judge Richard Baumgartner. The redacted version outlines in more detail information that Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood used Thursday to award new trials to the convicted killers of University of Tennessee student Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, in January 2007.

KNOXVILLE — A special judge today granted new trials for four defendants in the 2007 torture-slaying cases, agreeing with lawyers that presiding Judge Richard Baumgartner's conduct led to fundamental structural flaws in the prosecutions. Jon Kerry Blackwood, his voice at times rising to a shout, said Baumgartner was obviously intoxicated in 2009 and 2010 while Lemaricus Davidson, Letalvis Cobbins, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman were being prosecuted.

The four pieces of human filth who brutally raped and murdered a young Knoxville couple are all getting new trials, thanks to the drug-addicted judge who presided over the cases. Former judge Richard Baumgartner bought extensively from the convicts in his own drug court. He considered himself above the law but finally got caught. Because he was high much of the time he was presiding over the trials, the families of the victims get to hear yet again how their children were savagely beaten, raped and mutilated before finally being killed.

<p>BODY: She was a CIA case officer working in Europe covertly, holding herself out as the representative of a Texas foundation that was interested in world economics.</p> <p>Unlike most CIA case officers overseas who work out of U.S. embassies and purport to be diplomats, she was operating under what CIA calls "nonofficial cover" (NOC).</p>

<p>PARIS &#8212; A media ruckus has erupted in France over claims that a government minister was paid as a contact by a CIA spy before being persuaded by the French secret service to pass false information to the Americans.</p> <p>"Carnets Intimes de la DST," a book on the French secret service to be published this week, says Henri Plagnol, now secretary of state for civil service reform, passed information to the United States in the 1990s when Washington was investigating France's position in world trade talks.</p>

An extreme sports fanatic said today he felt “great” after he became the first man to cross the English Channel in an unpowered flight. Felix Baumgartner jumped from a plane about 30,000ft above Dover shortly after 5am and glided 22 miles across the Channel in a 10-minute flight wearing a specially-adapted suit with a wing-like carbon fibre fin attached to his back. In freezing air temperatures, the 34-year-old Austrian began the flight at a speed of about 220 miles per hour before slowing to around 135 miles an hour. Baumgartner made a crunching parachute landing at Cap Blanc-Nez, near...