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Neighbors are in shock after a shooting rampage in Chicago's Marquette Park neighborhood left a woman and three children dead overnight. Two others were hospitalized. Chicago Police picked up the suspect on foot without incident a few miles away at 59th Street and Racine Avenue. A weapon was recovered from a car nearby. Family members said the suspect was visiting from Madison, Wis. The big question is what made him open fire on his whole family. "He just went crazy. He shot everybody in the house," said Ella Smith, an aunt of one of the victims. She says while her...

Why don't we start a letter writing campaign to the court to encourage them to give solid, real sentences to these monsters and not give them a slap on the wrist? By doing that we'll ensure that justice is done.

The attorney for one of six South Hadley High School students accused of bullying Phoebe Prince in the months leading up to her suicide is asking for highly personal information about her, a move decried by a former prosecutor and victims advocates as “unconscionable.” In a six-page motion filed in Northampton Superior Court, Terrence M. Dunphy, the lawyer for Austin Renaud, asks for the names of any physicians, psychologists or rape counselors Prince saw; any medical and psychological records viewed by the prosecutor; details of any prior allegations of rape or abuse by Prince; and a statement as to whether...

Convicted felon Robert Creamer, who wrote the blueprint for the Democrats’ health care reform campaign, attended official health care signing celebrations in Washington, D.C. yesterday. He was joined by numerous activists and “community organizers” who have had their sights set on nationalizing health care and have finally achieved it. Creamer’s spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, was one of the bill’s most vociferous proponents. Creamer’s attendance was leaked by a fellow partygoer who blogged: “I just got back from the post-signing ceremony celebration at the Interior Department. It was like a family reunion–young Obama staffers mixing with warriors from the ’93-’94 health...

Pelosi: We are the most ethical Congress By Jordan Fabian - 02/26/10 11:46 AM ET House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday said that she is running the most ethical Congress in history. Asked at a press conference whether or not her Congress is the most ethical in light of new findings that Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) broke House rules, Pelosi responded "We are." But Pelosi dodged on whether or not she would officially discipline Rangel, who helms the powerful Ways and Means Committee. After Democrats reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, Pelosi, who at the...

HACKENSACK, N.J. – A jury convicted a Florida man Friday of murdering his former son-in-law, rejecting the man's defense that he was too fat to have run up and down a flight of stairs to commit the crime and make a quick getaway. Edward Ates looked down and shook his head in court as he was found guilty of murder and weapons counts for killing Paul Duncsak, who was shot six times at his home in Ramsey, about 25 miles northwest of New York. Ates' "too fat to kill" defense provided an angle to the trial that attracted attention from...

t was a memorable moment in the run-up to the corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko when the onetime political high roller complained to a judge that he had to share underwear at Chicago's federal jail. Rezko, used to a cushy life in his Wilmette mansion, had been locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day in the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center. His attorneys called conditions at the high-rise jail "disgusting" and said Rezko never got to breathe fresh air. So now that word has circulated that Rezko is considering cooperating in the federal probe of corruption in state government,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A 39-year-old Yemeni accused of being an aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was sentenced to life in prison Monday by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a Pentagon spokesman said. Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, an alleged aide and media secretary to Bin Laden, was convicted Friday by a military panel of charges of conspiracy, solicitation to murder and terrorist acts, and providing material support for terrorism, said Commander Jeffrey Gordon. It was the second trial of a "war on terror" detainee at Guantanamo Bay under a specially created system of military commissions that has...

In a Hollywood-style breakout, a 21-year-old inmate stole a 10,000-pound firetruck and rammed his way out of a state prison in southeastern South Dakota, authorities said. Jesse Oliver blasted the 2007 International white pumper truck through two sets of gates at the Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield about 1:45 p.m. Monday, the state Department of Corrections said. To the south in Nebraska, the Knox County Sheriff's Office is investigating a report that two people saw a truck matching the description of the one taken from the prison heading south near the Niobrara Bridge and toward Santee, Neb., shortly after...

Michael Sneed Rezko redux The fed bed . . . September 26, 2008 BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist Tipsville: Sneed hears rumbles that convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko, whose dealings have been linked to Barack Obama and Gov. Blagojevich, is singing to the feds. • • To wit: "I'm told by a close friend of Rezko that he's cooperating with the feds," said a Sneed source. "I don't know whether he's talking about Gov. Blagojevich or Barack Obama or anyone else," the source said. • • The shocker: Rezko, a Wilmette businessman who was a top adviser and fund-raiser for...

Prisoners who go on the run could have the time cut from their sentence, internal Government papers revealed last night. Convicts will be able to count both the day they absconded and the day they were caught as time spent behind bars. A criminal could walk out of an open jail in the morning and hand himself in the next day, and both days would count as time served. The Tories accused the Government of 'rewarding bad behaviour'.

When Sen. Barack Obama decided to buy a stately $1.65 million home last year on Chicago's South Side, Antoin "Tony" Rezko and his wife wasted no time. The same day the Obamas closed on the house, the Rezkos closed on the purchase of the adjoining vacant lot, which once was the estate's lush side yard.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that a Muslim inmate cannot sue the government over the disappearance of the prisoner's copies of the Koran and a prayer rug.Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia joined Thomas. The dissenters were Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

DALLAS — A man convicted of raping a woman in 1981 and sentenced to life in prison has been cleared by DNA evidence and will be released, according to attorneys who have helped free 14 other wrongfully convicted inmates in Dallas County. Charles Chatman, 47, is expected to be released Thursday after spending more than 26 years behind bars, said Natalie Roetzel of the Innocence Project of Texas. "I never lost hope," Chatman told The Associated Press. "I always believed I would get out. I didn't know when or how, but I kept believing."

A prisoner is suing the Macomb County Jail for not allowing him to sign his marriage certificate after tying the knot with his fiance. Waukeen Spraggins said his vows through a glass window in the visitor's room with a minister present in February. But deputies refused to let him sign because high-security inmates are barred from marrying in jail. Spraggins was considered a high risk after he escaped from jail in 1999.

Oregon child killer Ward Weaver stabbed during haircut Posted by The Associated Press May 08, 2007 06:18AM Categories: Breaking News Ward Weaver ONTARIO -- Convicted child killer Ward Weaver survived a stabbing by an inmate barber at the Snake River Correctional Institution, authorities said. Weaver, 44, is serving two life sentences at the Eastern Oregon prison. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to killing two Oregon City girls whose bodies were found in 2002 at his home -- one under a concrete slab and the other in a bag in a storage shed. The barber, Marvin Lee Taylor, 44, was charged...

Jimmy Lee Smith, the notorious, lifelong criminal whose role in the 1963 kidnapping and killing of a police officer inspired Joseph Wambaugh's true-life crime novel "The Onion Field," has died in jail at age 76, a state prisons official said Saturday. Smith died Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, where he was being held for failing to report to a parole officer, said Bill Sessa, a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman. The cause of death was under investigation, according to the county coroner's office, although foul play was not suspected. Smith was once sentenced to death...

One of two men convicted of the "Onion Field" kidnap.m.urder of a police officer in 1963 has violated parole and is being sought by authorities. Jimmy Lee Smith, 76, has been at large since Dec. 22, said California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Jonathan Parsley. Although Parsley couldn't specify what parole condition was violated, but Smith went back to prison in June 2005 after admitting that he had violated parole by possessing heroin. Smith and Gregory Powell were convicted of abducting two Los Angeles policemen from a Hollywood street on March 6, 1963. The officers were driven 75 miles...

Release from Prison Equivalent to Death Sentence for Some By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco January 10, 2007 SEATTLE, Jan. 10 -- Persons newly released from prison, within their first two weeks of freedom, have a nearly 13-fold higher risk of death than those in the general population. And even two years after release, former inmates have a 3.5-fold greater risk of dying than others in the community, found Ingrid A. Binswanger, M.D., of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues in...

Marth Stewarts Holiday Recipes