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Brian D. Kelly didn't think he was doing anything illegal when he used his videocamera to record a Carlisle police officer during a traffic stop. Making movies is one of his hobbies, he said, and the stop was just another interesting event to film. Now he's worried about going to prison or being burdened with a criminal record. Kelly, 18, of Carlisle, was arrested on a felony wiretapping charge, with a penalty of up to 7 years in state prison. His camera and film were seized by police during the May 24 stop, he said, and he spent 26 hours...

STRATFORD, Conn. -- An off-duty New Haven police officer shot and critically wounded his 18-year-old daughter, apparently mistaking her for an intruder after she sneaked out of their Stratford home and re-entered through the basement. Eric Scott, 41, on the New Haven force for nine years, has not been charged in the Tuesday shooting. "Mr. Scott was under the impression his daughter had gone to bed for the night," Stratford Capt. Thomas Rodia said. "He did not expect his daughter to be outside or down in the basement." Investigators said Tasha Scott left her home late Monday to meet a...

She is 71 years old, a great-grandmother - hardly the type of person you would expect to see in Bronx Criminal Court to answer charges of buying two dime bags of pot. Yet at the appointed time today, Barbara Jackson will make her way to the courthouse, a colorectal cancer survivor ready to plead her case. "I smoke it to live," the feisty granny told the Daily News. "I don't think I should have been arrested." Jackson said she started smoking the green, leafy drug eight years ago - a year after being diagnosed with cancer - to restore her...

JEFFERSON CITY — First, the state said you must make a special trip to the pharmacy counter to buy certain cold medicines. That was to curb production of methamphetamine. Now, a St. Louis legislator wants you to do the same thing to buy an even more common household item — baking soda — because it's used to make crack cocaine.

A lawyer defending a man on a drug charge is now facing a drug charge of his own -- after he allegedly tried to buy methamphetamine from his own client. Last week, Alan Mark Singer, 52, pleaded not guilty in King County Superior Court to two counts of violating the Controlled Substances Act. Reached at his Tukwila office Tuesday, Singer declined to comment other than to say, "We're all innocent until proven guilty." The investigation into Singer began in mid-December when a man facing a drug charge called King County sheriff's deputies to tell them that his lawyer, Singer, had...

ATLANTA, GA -- 11Alive News has obtained the tape of a 911 call that seems to lend credibility to an informant’s claims he was asked to lie about the shooting death of an elderly woman in northwest Atlanta. A day after narcotics officers served a search warrant at the home of Kathryn Johnston, and she was shot and killed, a man named Alexis White called 911 with some disturbing claims. 911: “How can I help you…” White: “Yes, I have two undercover officers chasing me. One of their names is Detective--“ 911: “Okay, sir, are they chasing you now?” White:...

SEATTLE -- Non-tribal casinos have already lost tens of millions of dollars because of Washington’s new indoor smoking ban. A new financial study, conducted by our own KIRO Team 7 Investigators, discovers taxpayers could loose millions as well.

SEATTLE - We all know the Census is taken every 10 years. The Constitution requires a count of the people in order to figure out how to apportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The next one will be in 2010. So what is this American Community Survey people are getting? It says it's from the U.S. Census Bureau, and it asks some very personal questions. When were you born? Are you single or married? Do you have children or grandchildren? Are you a citizen of the United States? Do you or anyone living with you receive...

Just after dawn on a May morning in 2004, Jessica Carothers, awakened by shouting outside her front door, stumbled out of bed. Her boyfriend had left for work a few minutes before, and Carothers' 4-year-old son was sound asleep. The noise grew louder. Carothers, still groggy, crept into the narrow front hall just as federal marshals kicked in her door. "Down on the ground!" they shouted, shining flashlights into her face and barking questions: Where was her boyfriend? Did she know what he was involved in? Carothers was stunned. Alejandro Villafana-Vilchis had been living with her only two months. She...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- An American researcher believes he has solved the mystery of how one of the most important human forerunners died nearly 2 million years ago: An eagle killed the 3 1/2-year-old ape-man known as the Taung child. The discovery suggests small human ancestors known as hominids had to survive being hunted not only by large predators on the ground but by fearsome raptors that swooped from the sky, said Lee Berger, a senior paleoanthropologist at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand. "These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the...

Those who believe in the adage "when it rains, it pours" might take the tale of the plaintiffs in Kelo v. New London as a cue to buy two of every animal and a load of wood from Home Depot. The U.S. Supreme Court recently found that the city's original seizure of private property was constitutional under the principal of eminent domain, and now New London is claiming that the affected homeowners were living on city land for the duration of the lawsuit and owe back rent. It's a new definition of chutzpah: Confiscate land and charge back rent for...

SEATTLE - A man apparently woken from a drunken stupor by Pierce County sheriff's deputies, repeatedly zapped with a stun gun and finally chewed by a police dog - all in front of a production crew from the TV show "Cops" - has sued the county and the officers, alleging brutality. The deputies, accompanied by a K-9 officer from the Tacoma Police Department, were looking for an armed suspect in a car break-in when they came upon Aaron Otto Hansen, 34, of Roy, early on July 10, 2004. Hansen, who did not commit the crime, was passed out drunk in...

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn't think she deserved. So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts. "Probably the worst thing that ever happened to me," Brooks said, in describing that morning during her criminal trial last week on charges of refusing to obey an officer and resisting arrest. She was found guilty of the...

Nancy McLeod of West Richland knew she had snakes in her back yard, but she had no idea one of them was a biped. The 2-foot-long reptile, which McLeod believes is a rattler, was discovered Thursday morning on her Red Mountain Road property as a friend was helping her burn tumbleweeds. Pedro Osorio, 46, said he shoved a pitchfork into a tumbleweed, lifted it and saw the snake on the ground. After placing the weed onto the fire, he forked the snake and tossed it into the flames also. Osorio said he noticed the strange little appendages on the charred...

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. appeals court yesterday reinstated five lawsuits against Motorola Inc., Nokia and about two dozen other mobile-phone companies over claims that radiation emitted from cell phones poses a health risk. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the suits weren't trumped by federal law and sent four of the cases back to state courts. The suits say that cell-phone companies failed to warn of the risks of diseases such as cancer from use of the devices. The cases, the first class-action suits brought against the entire cell-phone industry, demanded that the phone companies provide every user...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A teacher faces a fine of up to $1,000 and 90 days in jail because she propped open her classroom door with a rubber doorstop. Assistant Fire Marshal Charles Vanatter issued the state fire code violation citation and confiscated the doorstop during a visit to Mountain View Elementary and Middle School in Union on Nov. 9. A court date has not been set. State Fire Marshal Sterling Lewis Jr. said the corridor wall that contains the door is a smoke partition and the door must be able to close if there is a fire to hinder the...

YAKIMA, Wash. -- That whaddyacallit that's growing on Mount St. Helens - what DO you call it? Even Shakespeare himself might have trouble figuring out what's in a name. It's been called the "blister," "wart," "thing" and "lobe" since it appeared last month in the crater of the reanimated Mount St. Helens volcano. One researcher referred to it as "an uplift," before most everyone in the know agreed it must be a dome. Naming the dome - now about the size of an aircraft carrier - could be another matter altogether. In one meeting, a scientist threw out a suggestion:...

PUYALLUP - "Let them have their 30-minutes of dressing goofy and having candy," said Silas Macon on the grounds of Puyallup's Maplewood Elementary School Wednesday afternoon. He'd just learned the grade school tradition of a party and parade in costume during the last half-hour of class before Halloween night won't happen this year in the Puyallup School District for his two daughters. The superintendent has cancelled all Halloween activities. A letter sent home to parents Wednesday states there will be no observance of Halloween in the entire school district. "We really want to make sure we're using all of our...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The parents of a teenager who died after falling from the rim of the Crooked River Gorge have filed a $9.5 million lawsuit against those who attempted to save him. The suit, filed at U.S. District Court in Portland, claims that Elijah Keller of Redmond did not receive proper medical care from the rescue crew. Keller, 15, was with friends when he fell more than 20 feet on June 18, 2001. News reports at the time said Keller landed on a slender ledge of rock and was also hit in the head with a rock. Crooked...