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Jury finishes first day of deliberations in terror trialAssociated Press - March 28, 2008 5:33 PM ET MIAMI (AP) - A Florida jury has wrapped up its first day of deliberations in the trial of 6 men accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Chicago's Sears Tower and FBI offices. Before the deliberations started, prosecutors appealed to the jury not to buy defense claims that the plot was really just a con aimed at getting some money. The alleged ringleader testified that he faked interest in terrorism in an effort to scam $50,000 out of a man he thought had been...

Panelists claim woman wouldn't consider evidence, accused them of racism - The sole black juror on a panel deadlocked along racial lines lied to win a seat on the jury and then set out to exact revenge on law enforcement by serving as the spoiler in the trial of an alleged drug chief serving as his own lawyer, some of her fellow jurors said Monday.Jurors in the trial of Johnnie "Bro" Martin walked out of U.S. District Court with nothing to show for nine days of work but a mistrial. "She made a mockery of the system," one juror said...

A Minneapolis man who was arrested in the same bathroom sex sting as U.S. Sen. Larry King convinced a jury that he should be acquitted. The Boise Idaho Statesman reports that 39-year-old Vince Tuzon told the jury he was not guilty because the officer conducting the sting initiated the foot tapping. Craig orginally pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, but then sought to withdraw his plea. A judge turned down his request, and that has been appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. - A jury has ordered the Denny's restaurant chain to pay $600,000 to 15 members of a black family who claimed their white waiter deliberately ignored them and used racial slurs.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and the city unfairly dismissed two police officers, a jury found Tuesday, capping a 15-day whistleblower lawsuit that churned out allegations of misdeeds by the mayor's staff and extramarital affairs by Kilpatrick. The 11-member jury awarded Gary Brown and Harold Nelthrope $6.5 million in damages.

CHICAGO - Do you believe "The Clown" or an admitted hit man? Jurors will have to decide when they begin deliberations Tuesday in Chicago's biggest mob trial in years. They got the case Thursday night after prosecutors made a last pitch to sway them to believe the testimony of their star witness, admitted hit man Nicholas Calabrese. Defense lawyers have pegged Calabrese as "a walking piece of deception" whose testimony shouldn't be believed, even suggesting that if Calabrese says it's raining, someone ought to go outside to check. But prosecutors say it's the five men on trial who can't be...

Could it be? Could it actually be that white people are starting to gain equal rights when it comes to claims of racism? Between the whole Nagin official thing, and now this, I am left to ponder.

Today a Louisiana Federal Jury found Attorney Tommy Cryer NOT GUILTY of 2 counts of willful failure to file an income tax return. Earlier on Monday July 9th the Government had on its own motion dismissed 2 counts of tax evasion charges that it had charged Tommy Cryer with.

LIVINGSTON — A Livingston Parish jury returned a verdict worth more than $1 million against Wal-Mart in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in December 2005, attorneys and court officials said. Ruby R. Guillory, 90, of Westlake died about month after she was hit in the leg by a garden cart being pushed by a Wal-Mart employee in the Walker Supercenter, plaintiffs’ attorney Timothy Pujol said in a statement. Guillory’s leg bled from the 8-inch cut sustained Oct. 3, 2005. The wound later became infected. She died five days after being released from a two-week hospital stay to treat that infection,...

Jury questioning Jefferson associateHer firm helped pay for trip to Africa Tuesday, May 08, 2007 By Bruce Alpert WASHINGTON -- The president of a company that helped pay for U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's trip to Western Africa in 2004 has signed a "testimonial agreement" with federal prosecutors and appeared before the grand jury on at least five days in the ongoing corruption investigation of the New Orleans Democrat. Disclosure of the grand jury appearance by Noreen Wilson, president of Global Environmental Energy, was made in billing documents filed by an attorney for the company in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New...

LOS ANGELES — A jury ordered the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay $7.6 million to the family of an epileptic boy who suffered a seizure at school and is now paralyzed in a minimally conscious state. Steve Martinez's family claimed the district was liable for the boy's injuries, saying the response to his April 18, 2005, seizure was inadequate. The district argued that adults responded almost immediately and tried to save the fourth-grader, but good-faith efforts to administer CPR were unsuccessful. "These are really, really hard cases," said Kenneth Reed, general counsel for the district. "Any time a...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The West Feliciana Parish school system must pay more than $1.4 million to an English teacher who was suspended and demoted after refusing to change the Ds and Fs she gave to 70 percent of her students, a federal jury has found. The jury of four men and five women deliberated almost four hours before finding that the school board, superintendent and the principal at West Feliciana High School had harassed Paula Payne, violated her First Amendment rights and retaliated against her. "This is civics in action," Superintendent Lloyd Lindsey said. "The jury has spoken." He...

WASHINGTON - Jurors in the Libby trial turned their deliberation room into one big visual aid, plastering the walls with dozens of poster-size summaries of witness testimony. Denis Collins. a juror in the perjury trial of former White House aide I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, talks to the press regarding the verdict in the trial, Tuesday, March 6, 2007, outside federal court in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) They pushed two long tables together, pored over testimony, reviewed their notes and spent a week just laying out the evidence. But in the end, it came down to credibility and they simply did...

WASHINGTON - Jurors began deliberating Wednesday in the perjury and obstruction trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is charged with lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Jurors heard about an hour of legal instructions from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Wednesday morning before beginning deliberations shortly before 11:30 a.m. They heard a full day of closing arguments Tuesday after a monthlong trial. The jury of eight women and four men must be unanimous before...

The Supreme Court of Canada has overturned the conviction of a medical marijuana crusader, ruling the trial judge erred by directing the jury to find the man guilty. In a 7-0 judgment released Thursday, the court granted a new trial to Grant Krieger, a Calgary man who had been found guilty on charges of possession of pot for purposes of trafficking. Grant Krieger, shown speaking to reporters outside a Calgary courthouse in 2000, has won a new trial on his medical marijuana conviction. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press) "The crucial fight is still ahead," Krieger told CBC News after the ruling was...

MCALLEN - Jurors today will hear about maintenance and safety practices of charter bus company Global Limo Inc. but not about the bus fire that killed 23 nursing home residents evacuated from Houston last year as Hurricane Rita bore down. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa granted a defense motion to limit testimony to alleged mismanagement that occurred during a four-month period before last year's accident. James H. Maples, president and director of Pharr-based Global, faces charges he falsified driver time records and failed to adequately inspect and maintain his fleet of buses. The company was shut down for safety violations...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Attorneys for a man who has been sentenced to death say some members of the jury rushed to judgment because they needed a nicotine fix. Tuesday the Ohio Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in the appeal of Phillip Elmore, convicted three years ago in the strangling of his ex-girlfriend in Newark. Elmore's attorneys say that the fact the judge wouldn't let jury members smoke or step outside to smoke led them to make a quick decision. That's one of 17 allegations the appeal makes. Lawyers for Elmore also say his trial attorneys were ineffective.

LOS ANGELES A jury convicted world-renowned geneticist William French Anderson on Wednesday of molesting the daughter of a colleague. Anderson, 69, is widely credited as the "father of gene therapy," a promising but controversial experimental medical treatment that involves injecting healthy genes into sick patients. He was the first person to successfully treat a patient this way in 1990, launching the field. The white-haired Anderson sat stoically, staring straight ahead, his head held high. He showed no reaction as the verdicts were read. His wife, a renowned surgeon, sat in the front row of the spectator section behind him with...

CLEVELAND - A jury on Tuesday found makers of welding rods were not liable for the health problems of a former civilian worker at a Navy base in a ruling that could influence thousands of other cases that allege welding fumes cause neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's disease. Ernesto G. Solis, 57, claims years of exposure to welding fumes at his job at a Navy base in Corpus Christi, Texas, damaged his health because of exposure to manganese within welding rods. Scientific research has been at odds over whether such exposure can lead to Parkinson's, which diminishes movement and speech....

WASHINGTON - Jurors in the David Safavian trial completed their first day of deliberations Wednesday without deciding whether the former Bush administration executive covered up assistance he gave Republican influence-peddler Jack Abramoff. The jury of 10 women and two men is weighing charges that while Safavian was the General Services Administration's chief of staff, he obstructed justice and made false statements. He is accused of concealing from GSA ethics officials and Senate investigators how he helped the disgraced lobbyist try to buy or lease two government properties. In the first trial to arise from the Abramoff scandal, the jury deliberated...

Jefferson can find hope in past caseFriday, May 26, 2006 Lolis Eric Elie "There are two sides to every story," Congressman William Jefferson said Monday. I doubt anybody would disagree with that general sentiment. But unanimity may have been lost when the New Orleans Democrat tried to apply that platitude to the specifics of his own situation. We've heard only the FBI's side, but it's pretty compelling. The feds say they have a videotape showing Jefferson accepting a $100,000 bribe. They also say most of that money ended up in Jefferson's freezer. Two of Jefferson's former associates have pleaded guilty....

General Motors has won the first round of a consumer lawsuit that could set a precedent for other automakers in similar suits pending in several states. A U.S. District Court judge in Dallas has dismissed a suit in which the owner of a 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe alleged that GM had been negligent in using tempered glass in its side windows rather than laminated glass.

A jury awarded $500,000 Friday to a woman who sued her employer after she was spanked in front of her colleagues in what the company called a camaraderie-building exercise. The jury of six men and six women found that Janet Orlando had suffered from sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on her backside on three occasions during her employment at home security company Alarm One Inc. in Fresno. The jurors, however, said that Orlando did not suffer from sexual assault as she had claimed. Orlando, 53, had asked the jury for at least $1.2 million in lost...

CHICAGO - Former Gov. George Ryan, who drew international praise when he commuted the sentences of everyone on Illinois' death row, was convicted of racketeering and fraud Monday in a corruption scandal that ended his political career in 2003. Ryan, 72, sat stone-faced as the verdict was read and afterward vowed to appeal. "I believe this decision today is not in accordance with the kind of public service that I provided to the people of Illinois over 40 years, and needless to say I am disappointed in the outcome," the former governor said. Ryan faces up to 20 years in...

A slip-up in the jury selection process in a state court homicide trial resulted in a non-U.S. citizen sitting as a juror in a first-degree murder case, Lawyers Weekly has learned. The gaffe comes just months after U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner — in the midst of a high-profile death penalty case that she is presiding over — publicly criticized the federal jury selection process.

Reality TV they are not, but two hit shows are so convincing as imitations of life in the criminal justice system that some legal experts worry they're distorting the expectations of real jurors. The influence of the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "Law & Order" franchises has permeated American law. Lawyers ask would-be jurors whether they watch the shows and then change strategies depending on the answers. Law schools maintain video libraries of the programs as teaching tools and even analyze the plot lines in class. Which side benefits the most - prosecutors or defense attorneys - is debatable. While...

An aging dominatrix cleared yesterday in the death and dismemberment of a man strapped to a torture rack called the ordeal “emotionally draining,” while the deceased’s elderly mother blamed the verdict on jury “liberals.” “I just wish we could have gotten a little justice,” Audrey Lord said yesterday from her Texas home. “Some of those New Englanders are pretty wise but a lot are liberals. I sort of expected it.”

(snip) After a spectacular collapse that left thousands jobless and slammed Wall Street with billions in losses, the firm's founder and former CEO are to be tried in a federal courthouse — only a few blocks from the firm's former headquarters with its swiveling "E" logo. More than 100 potential jurors were slated to pack a cavernous federal courtroom here on Monday, the first step in the trial of Kenneth Lay, 63, and Jeffrey Skilling, 52. (snip) Skilling faces 31 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors for allegedly lying about Enron's financial strength. Lay faces seven...

A little more than two years ago, Mario Barcia Jr. was awakened in the dead of night by banging on his door. Startled -- and shaken from two previous robberies -- he grabbed his gun and ran to the front of the house. Within a matter of seconds his life would change forever. Seeing what he described only as a bright light shining through his back door, Barcia fired a single shot. Five shots were returned. Then Barcia fired twice more. His first shot had hit Miami-Dade County police officer Chad Murphy in the back. Barcia was arrested and charged...

The disciplinary arm of the N.C. State Bar dropped charges of felonious misconduct against two former Union County prosecutors Friday because of a 1999 clerical error at the state Supreme Court. The State Bar had charged Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in a 1996 death penalty case. The ruling Friday marks the second time that Honeycutt and Brewer won on procedural grounds before the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which sits as judge and jury in disciplinary cases. . . . Prosecutors around the state are concerned that the case is damaging their reputation and...

AUSTIN - As if leading a superpower and fighting a war don't keep him busy enough, George W. Bush now has to report for jury duty.

..... Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes before finding the city negligent, but rejecting damages for the plaintiffs.

BOSTON - Sen. John Kerry's public profile and prosecutorial past didn't spare him from performing that most mundane of civic responsibilities — jury duty. Kerry was not only chosen this week to sit on a jury in Suffolk Superior Court, but also was elected foreman. The case involved two men who sued the city for injuries suffered in a 2000 car accident involving a school principal. The Kerry-led jury rejected their claim Tuesday, and his fellow jurors said the state's junior senator was a natural leader. "I just found him to be a knowledgeable, normal person," said Cynthia Lovell, a...

NEW YORK - Two executives of the International Longshoremen's Association and a reputed mobster who went missing mid-trial were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they helped the Mafia keep its grip on the New York waterfront. Supporters gasped and burst into tears as a federal jury in Brooklyn found union officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey not guilty of extortion and fraud charges. The jury also acquitted Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese crime family associate who had been accused of wire and mail fraud. But the victory may turn out to be empty for Ricci, who vanished in the middle...

TAMPA, Fla. - A fired college professor acted as a "crime boss" for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a murderous gang that operated like the Mafia, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday. Although Sami Al-Arian and three co-defendants are not charged with killing anyone, they conspired to bring about attacks and are just as guilty under the law as the suicide bombers who carried them out, prosecutor Cherie Krigsman said in closing arguments. "The men of the PIJ you got to know in this case, they didn't strap bombs to their body," she said. "They leave that to somebody else." Al-Arian,...

NEW YORK -- A jury has found the New York Port Authority negligent in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The verdict says the Port Authority, which owned the World Trade Center, failed to properly guard the parking garage where terrorists set off a half-ton of explosives in a rental van. The verdict is a victory for victims of the attack that killed six people and wounded 1,000. Other trials will now be held to determine money damages. The explosion filled the building with smoke, wrecked the towers' power and emergency systems, and spread fear across New York....

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Anti-tax crusader Irwin Schiff and an associate were found guilty Monday of charges including conspiracy, tax evasion and tax fraud that could get each of them decades in federal prison and millions of dollars in fines. Schiff, 77, who argues that paying taxes is voluntary, was handcuffed and led from U.S. District Court after a jury found him guilty of all 13 charges. "There's no reason to put me in jail," Schiff told Judge Kent Dawson, whose patience was tested while Schiff served as his own lawyer during the five-week trial. "I'm not a flight risk....

Pauerstein also blasted prosecutors for a new set of subpoenas that he said includes a request for the 2002 phone records of Ellis' daughter. "On top of that, they are now subpoenaing cell phone records of Jim Ellis' 17-year-old daughter. This is a prosecution that has run amok. It's time for this to stop," Pauerstein said. "I guess they think Jim's 17-year-old daughter is a money launderer. I think it's outrageous that they're doing that to the young lady." Earle responded to Pauerstein's comments by saying, "The investigation is continuing."

Members of jury leaned toward Democrats By Claire Osborn Cox News Service AUSTIN - More than half of the members of the grand jury that first indicted former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay last week have voted in the past as Democrats, according to public records. DeLay, R-Sugar Land, was indicted Wednesday on charges that he conspired to violate election laws barring the use of corporate money in Texas campaigns. He has called the indictments a partisan sham perpetrated by Democratic District Attorney Ronnie Earle. Actually, though, the 12 grand jurors voted to indict DeLay after reviewing evidence presented by Earle....

Police keep watch as Iraq war protest case goes to jury BINGHAMTON, N.Y. A large contingent of local, county and state police remain positioned outside a Binghamton federal building as the case against four Iraq war protesters goes to the jury. There's been a highly visible police presence around the downtown building since the trial started Monday. Two men and two women are being tried on federal conspiracy charges for spilling blood at an Ithaca-area military recruiting office in 2003. Binghamton Police Chief John Butler today said he feels "pretty good" with the way things have gone this week. People...

There is a new Identity Scam going around and it's called "Jury Duty Scam." This latest scam is being used to deceive their Victims into revealing their personal information. The Scammer calls the residence or office phone number of the intended victim and identifies themselves as an Officer of the Local Court or Jurisdiction. The Scammer announces to the victim, that he/she has failed to report for jury duty, and that a bench warrant was issued against them for their arrest. The Victim's reaction is one of shock and surprise which places them at an immediate disadvantage, and much more...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The public schools in Norfolk, Va., which over the last seven years have steadily narrowed a wide gap between white and black students in reading and mathematics scores, have won this year's Broad Prize, a $500,000 award to the urban school district making the greatest strides in student achievement. The prize was announced on Tuesday at a ceremony at the Library of Congress by Eli Broad, the founder of the Broad Foundation, which is dedicated to improving urban school districts across the country. "In our circles this is really the Nobel Prize of education," Stephen C....

ANGLETON — A few of the jurors on the nation's first civil suit against pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., over its painkiller Vioxx talked about their decision today. They awarded the widow of Robert Ernst, who died after taking Vioxx, $253.4 million in damages. The seven-man, five-woman jury deliberated for 10½ hours over two days before returning the verdict in a 10-2 vote. Ten of the 12 jurors concurred with Carol Ernst's contention that the Vioxx was responsible for her husband's death. Juror Derrick Chizer, who voted for Ernst, said the 10 like-minded jurors believed a heart attack triggered the...

LOS ANGELES - Jury deliberations in Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial were allegedly tainted by shocking misconduct that included smuggling in videotaped Court TV shows and secretly communicating with the pop star's mother, the Daily News has learned. Author Stacy Brown revealed the stunning jury room shenanigans he heard from two jurors who consulted him for help with tell-all books they plan to write. "From what I've heard, the whole trial was a waste of taxpayers' money and time. That jury would have acquitted him even if they had a videotape [of the alleged crime]," said Brown. Brown says the two...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A judge rejected a U.S. request that a Canadian marijuana activist be held without bail on Tuesday in a case that is likely to ignite debate over the countries' diverging drug policies. U.S. officials say Marc Emery illegally sold millions of dollars worth of marijuana seeds, but Emery's supporters say his business activities were well known for years and tolerated by groups that included Canada's federal health ministry. Emery is a founder of the pro-legalization B.C. Marijuana Party and his arrest comes as the Canadian government is pushing a measure to decriminalize possession of small...

MOSCOW, July 19 (Itar-Tass) - The Moscow City Court is to pass a sentence on Vyacheslav Ivankov on Wednesday. On Monday, a 12-member jury unanimously cleared him of the charge of killing two Turkish citizens. Ivankov was freed in the courtroom. His lawyer Alexander Gofshtein told reporters that the court had discussed “consequences of the verdict of the jurors”. Prosecutor Maria Semenenko said that the prosecutor’s office would appeal the ruling of the jury in the Russian Supreme Court within ten days.

A WWI soldier who died in battle has been called up for jury service 90 years after his death. Joko Popovic would have been 126 had he still been alive. The court in the town of Bar in southern Montenegro said that as it had had no record of his death it assumed he was still alive and able to do jury service. Popovic has no surviving relatives and it was left to local media to point out the court's mistake.

FORT WORTH - The jury award for a woman who sued a Colleyville church saying she was subjected to bruising exorcism attempts shrank to $178,000 after a ruling last week by the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth. In 2002, a Tarrant County jury awarded Laura Schubert $300,000 for mental anguish, past physical pain, medical expenses and loss of future income for injuries she received at the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church. On Thursday, the appeals court stripped away $122,000 in damages for Schubert's loss of future income but upheld the rest of the verdict. Church members could...

At long last, the Michael Jackson trial has come to an end. The vast trailer parks set up by the media outside Neverland and by the Santa Maria courthouse are being dismantled and taken away. The ceaseless media spin, the nonsensical commentary by so-called experts, the endless speculation about Michael Jackson’s health has finally drawn to a close.Celebrity trials rarely bring out the best in anyone. There are the fans in this case who are solely notable for being loud and extreme in their defence of their hero. One of the fans was so out of line that a reporter...

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- A jury acquitted Michael Jackson yesterday of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch -- exonerating the pop star who insisted that he was the victim of mother-and-son con artists and a prosecutor with a vendetta. Jurors also unanimously acquitted Mr. Jackson of giving the boy alcohol and of conspiring to imprison his accuser and the boy's family at the storybook estate. Mr. Jackson had faced nearly 20 years in prison. "Justice is done. The man's innocent. He always was," said his chief lawyer, Thomas Mesereau Jr. The verdict was a total legal victory,...