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Four men are charged in connection with the double murder of a young Knoxville couple who was carjacked on a date. A Knoxville police spokesman says all four suspects are being held on federal charges related to the deaths of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23. However, none of the four have been charged with the killings. click to enlarge All four men were arrested Thursday. They are: Lemaricus Davidson, 25, Eric DeWayne Boyd, Letalvis Cobbins, 24, and George Thomas. Lemaricus Davidson was in federal court in Knoxville Friday morning. He faces three charges in connection with the murders...

NASHVILLE -- Spurred by violent crime in Memphis and elsewhere, Tennessee legislators have filed several bills to expand the legal rights of people to use deadly force when threatened by would-be attackers. One would specifically allow people in motor vehicles to kill or "cause serious bodily injury" to attackers -- both inside or outside the vehicle -- who they believe are threatening to murder, rape, kidnap, rob or carjack the car's occupants. That bill was filed Rep. Ulysses Jones and Sen. Reginald Tate, both Memphis Democrats. "I've heard a lot of support for this. It's time to give citizens the...

February 1, 2007KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Four suspects, including a woman arrested in Kentucky Wednesday night, are now facing murder, rape and kidnapping charges in the double slaying of a young Knoxville couple.But the location of the carjacking that began the series of charges in the investigation and why it happened is still being kept quiet.The suspects were indicted Thursday in Knox County, separate from the federal charges some of the men already face relating to the carjacking. The rape charges involve both murder victims, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.Lemaricus Davidson faces 46 counts including felony murder, premeditated murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape and theft.Letalvis Cobbins faces 46 counts including...

Investigators believe Channon Christian was held hostage and raped repeatedly for several days before being killed, a federal marshal said today. The news came on the same day that authorities captured three men sought for questioning in her death and that of her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom. Authorities believe she and Newsom were abducted after a weekend carjacking in North Knoxville that ultimately led to both their deaths, said Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Rich Knighten of the Western District of Kentucky. "They did some really nasty things to this lady," Knighten said. Newsom was shot and his body burned, Knighten said....

It may seem like ancient history now, but it was only a year ago that we were first subjected to the media circus that was the so-called and now-dropped Duke Rape Case. For months thereafter, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the television or radio without learning some new tidbit about the accused lacrosse players, even as their accuser remained shrouded in mystery. Today we know there was no rape and now not even a case at all, but even in those early days it was apparent enough that there were glaring problems with the accuser’s story...

LONG BEACH – Angering one victim's family, a judge yesterday sentenced four black youths to probation with 60 days of home detention in the racially motivated Halloween beatings of three white women. The sentences by Juvenile Court Judge Gibson Lee touched off another series of bitter words in a case that seems to spark outrage at every step. For the past few months, it has tested the harmony of this coastal city of 475,000, which touts its diversity. “The juvenile system is a joke,” said Barbara Schneider, as her 19-year-old daughter, Laura, sobbed on her shoulder. Her comments outside court...

The parents of the 10 black youths on trial for allegedly battering three white women on Halloween spoke out for the first time at a community forum and said prosecutors had failed to prove their case. About 100 people gathered Saturday at the California Recreation Community Center in Long Beach, just days before the defense was to finish its closing arguments. Some of the parents said their children were good students or athletes with promising futures and had no criminal records. They assailed what they called a rush to judgment. "They've been presumed guilty," said Allene Seymore, the mother of...

Los Angeles County prosecutors today filed hate crimes charges against eight black teenagers accused of beating up three white women on Halloween night in a case that has startled and divided Long Beach. Authorities said they took the action after concluding that the teens attacked and beat the women in the upscale Bixby Knolls area because they were white. The case has been the subject of a wrenching public dialogue over the last few weeks in the racially diverse city of 460,000, with civil rights groups like the NAACP condemning the teenagers' alleged actions and the city holding a public...

For a week, the killings of Richard “R.D.” and Jessie M. “Tiny” Shepard of Marshall have been described using words such as “violent,” “brutal” and “heinous.” But a probable cause statement filed in Saline County Associate Circuit Court over the weekend in conjunction with the arrests of three suspects takes the shocking nature of the crime to a new level - alleging the murders were planned in advance by a 16-year-old juvenile in cooperation with the two suspects named over the weekend, Spencer Tromont Anderson, 18, and Lyndale Devor Henderson, 17; that the trio, all from Marshall, planned who would...

FEATURE-Sex tourism thriving in U.S. Bible Belt Tue 4 Apr 2006 8:01 AM ET By Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman ATLANTA, April 4 (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door. A "john" could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport. None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage...

White Supremacist Wants To Bankrupt N.Y. TownPOSTED: 6:22 pm EST November 19, 2005 KINGSTON, N.Y. -- A white supremacist radio talk-show host said he wants to bankrupt the city of Kingston, N.Y. Hal Turner organized a rally Saturday that drew about 50 supporters, 100 counter demonstrators -- and as many as 200 police officers. Turner invited the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups to help protest recent attacks on white students by black students at Kingston High School. Police have said the attacks were not motivated by race. Turner figures the city would have to pay $100,000 in overtime for...

Ed Dept. eyes chargekids bullied, 1 beaten Students victims of race hate, mom sez  Lisa Brown moved from Oklahoma so that her two sons, Sloan (l.) and J.T. and her daughter Robbie could experience diversity in Brooklyn. City education officials are investigating the claims of a pair of boys from Oklahoma who moved to Brooklyn to experience diversity, and instead say they got schooled in racism and violence. Mom Lisa Brown, 33, told the Daily News she relocated her family from their small Oklahoma town so her husband, a Brooklyn native and social worker, could more easily find work...

On December 5, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau asked Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Tejada to vacate the convictions of five men in the 1989 Central Park Jogger attack, as well as for attacks on other victims the same night. Defendants Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise have all completed their prison sentences. On December 19, Tejada granted Morgenthau his wish. The men were convicted variously of rape, sexual assault, attempted murder, and riot in the first degree. They were part of a group of as many as forty predominantly black teenagers (the others were...