Free Republic

According to BBC news, the legal team behind Phil Spector is appealing his murder conviction, citing judicial error and prosecutorial misconduct. The 148-page appeal claims Spector — who pleaded not guilty to the murder of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 — did not receive a fair trial, since prosecutors used testimony from five acquaintances to damage the producer’s image. (The women claimed Spector held them at gunpoint in different incidents dating back to the 1970s.) The brief also claims the trial’s judge allowed lawyers to insist that Spector “had a history and propensity of violence against women and thus should...

No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue. With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was...

The family of Chris Privett wept in court Monday. So did the family of his killer, Gerald Davison. But the 17-year-old simply smirked in court and offered a halfhearted apology for shooting the Palo Verde High School student in February 2008. "I dont know how to apologize for for taking your son's life away," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "Sorry ain't going to cut it but that's all i can tell y'all. Sorry."

The killer of a Pittsburg police officer said in court Friday that he was fine with being sentenced to death but had no interest in hearing from the slain man's family, telling a judge, "Let me get on my way." "I'm not asking for sympathy," Alexander Hamilton, 20, said in a Martinez courtroom before formally being sentenced to die for killing Officer Larry Lasater after robbing a bank in 2005. "I got the death penalty. I ain't got no problem with that." But he told Judge Laurel Brady of Contra Costa County Superior Court that he didn't see any point...

HARTFORD, Conn. - Two men with long rap sheets were on parole when they broke into a doctor’s home, strangled his wife and killed the couple’s two daughters in a fire they set to cover their tracks, authorities said... Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, of Cheshire, and Steven Hayes, 44, of Winsted...arraigned Tuesday on charges of assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, arson, larceny and risk of injury to children. Bail was set at $15 million each, which Judge Christina G. Dunnell said was warranted because of the men’s criminal histories. State officials are re-examining their policies after learning two convicted burglars...

A Canadian teen accused of murdering her family told a hushed courtroom she stabbed her eight-year-old brother, but her much older boyfriend slit the child's throat, said reports Wednesday. The girl, who cannot be identified under Canadian law, told a jury in little more than a whisper that her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, had killed her parents and then ordered her to stab the little boy, said the daily Globe and Mail. "He yells at me, 'Stab him, just stab him! Slit his throat!"' she testified. "I said, 'I can't, I can't,' and he said, 'You have to. I did...

A second Los Angeles judge threw out the murder charge against a suspended USC student accused of killing her newborn child on Tuesday. Holly Ashcraft, a 22-year-old architecture major who has stood trial for two years, still faces a June 27 hearing for one charge of child abuse. Ashcraft was arrested in October 2005 after a newborn was found in a Dumpster behind the 29th Street Cafe. DNA evidence proved it was her son. Prosecuting Deputy District Attorney Franco Barrata had cited a coroner's conclusion that the baby was born alive, but defense attorney Mark Geragos had repeatedly challenged that...

DOBIE, Wis., Nov. 27 - The two gatherings, less than 200 miles apart, seemed to be separated by whole worlds. In this isolated village deep in the pine and cedar woods of the Upper Midwest, mourners trudged through falling snow on Friday to Our Lady of Lourdes Church to remember one of six hunters, all locals, killed near here a week ago. To the southwest, across the state line in Minnesota, thousands of Hmong immigrants streamed into a downtown St. Paul auditorium for three days of New Year's festivities with papaya salad, traditional courtship games and young women in dresses...

HUNTSVILLE -- Convicted killer James Allridge was executed Thursday night for the 1985 slaying of a store clerk in Fort Worth during a robbery. < snip > His work attracted the attention of actress and death penalty opponent Susan Sarandon, who visited Allridge last month.