Free Republic

NEW BEDFORD - A convicted sex offender arrested this week on charges of raping a 6-year-old boy in the public library had been released from prison a year ago, despite the strenuous objections of the district attorney and three psychologists who argued that he posed a serious threat to children. Superior Court Judge Richard Moses denied the prosecutor's motion to keep Corey Saunders in custody indefinitely, arguing that he had a low IQ and had suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child. The judge said Saunders, who was sentenced to four years for the attempted rape of a 7-year-old...

TACOMA, Wash. -- Pierce County prosecutors on Tuesday filed aggravated murder charges against the man accused of killing a young couple in their Graham home. Daniel Thomas Tavares Jr. pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry the possibility of the death penalty. He's being held without bail. Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to seek the death penalty. According to a statement of probable cause filed in court, Tavares admitted to detectives that he shot Brian and Beverly Mauck last weekend in their home and tried to cover up the crime. The court documents state that Tavares said...

WASHINGTON - Presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has been winning over some conservative Republicans by promising to appoint judges in the mold of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and others who might seem likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Judges he named as New York mayor, however, could never be mistaken for Scalia. Giuliani's promise has helped overcome his abortion rights support as an issue for conservative voters. After all, the next president can do little about abortion except to name judges who interpret the law more strictly. As a result, some prominent conservatives,...

It turns out Deval Patrick was right about Massachusetts. Magic can happen here. Just ask Vith Ly. Ly is the Cambodian immigrant who kidnapped and raped a co-worker in Lowell when she spurned his affections. In 1990, he was sentenced to three 20-year stretches in MCI-Concord, but a liberal Massachusetts judge set him free on bail while he waited for an appeal. Ly lost the appeal and the court ordered him to serve his hard time. But Ly never showed up. An immigrant, a convicted criminal - Ly’s life was looking pretty lousy. And then the Massachusetts Miracle. The Middlesex...

CHICAGO: A federal judge in Illinois on Thursday approved a request for a trip to Disney World by a man who the government had once accused of aiding Palestinian militants, brushing aside prosecutors' claims that he may instead flee. "I'm confident that he will come back," U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve said in giving former Chicago grocer Muhammad Salah permission to make the trip to the Florida vacation spot.

Enemies: The ACLU is crowing about the feds backing down on subpoenaing a classified document the group possesses. With these extremist lawyers at constant war against America, the government must not retreat. Clinton-appointed Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York made it clear in a hearing last week that he would side with the ACLU regarding its possession of a classified directive on how prisoners of war can be photographed. The 101st Airborne document, marked "secret," had been e-mailed to the group. Government lawyers tried to get the ACLU to turn over "any and all copies"...

For those interested, and following it, the printed version of, "The Stand at Klamath Falls", is now available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The subtitle reads, "How rural western farmers stood up against entrenched environmentalists and agencies of the Federal Government...and prevailed." You can find links to the Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites at the main site here: THE STAND AT KLAMATH FALLS I have also made the Adobe eBook version of the book available for free to all Freepers. Just go to the following site and download it direct...no cost, no obligation. FREE EBOOK DOWNLOAD I...

O'Connor May Sit on Bench Again By Tony Mauro Legal Times March 13, 2006 The next stage of retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's public life began taking shape last week: a combination of speaking out, receiving accolades and even, she hinted, sitting as a judge again. In a talk Thursday at Georgetown University Law Center, she demurred when it was suggested she could be more candid now that she's no longer a justice: "I've retired, but I'm still a federal judge." Retired justices can sit by designation on any federal court, but O'Connor did not indicate where she hopes to...

Warning: Adult Content, counting down to get the kids off this thread.10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...GO. See for example this thread first. What the Cal. Supreme Court has said Makes me fear that they've lost their...head BJ's, said the bench from'a sixteen-year-old wench are just fine. (NAMBLA likes boys, instead...)

t's rare for Bill DiMascio, an advocate for prisoners, to argue that a criminal sentence is too light. It's even more unusual for him to rally behind Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham - in his words, an "ultra-punitive" prosecutor. But Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford A. Means has forced him to do just that. Means has caused a furor with his handling of the sexual-assault case of Tracy McIntosh, a former University of Pennsylvania professor, who last year pleaded no contest to assaulting a graduate student and niece of a close friend. Last March, Means sentenced McIntosh, an expert...

Thursday, December 08, 2005 Father's bid to have son returned is stymied By DOUG HARLOW Staff Writer E-mail this story to a friend NORRIDGEWOCK -- Bruce Holt of Martin Stream Road says the city of Elizabethtown, Ky., must have a saying similar to the half-joking "Welcome to Maine, now go home." The Elizabethtown version, he said, goes something like: "Welcome to Hardin County -- good luck getting your son back." Holt, along with his brother Eric Holt and nephew Dana Knight, traveled 1,300 miles by car to Elizabethtown, 44 miles south of Louisville, this past week to bring Holt's 7-month-old...

Terror: As Indonesians clean up after another terror strike, there's plenty of hand-wringing about why it doesn't stop. For terrorists, though, there's little mystery: Indonesia's courts are making terrorism cheap. Saturday's bombings at three crowded tourist restaurants on Bali were the fourth major strike against Indonesia in as many years. With 22 dead and 101 injured, there's no doubt this was an effort to drive out visitors. Tourism amounts to a quarter of Indonesia's hard-currency earnings. Scaring tourists away is an act of economic warfare. But Indonesia's legal system doesn't seem to take terrorism seriously as a national threat. Through...

Last week, I reported on the Supreme Court's Kelo vs City of New London decision, which seriously weakened Constitutionally guaranteed private property rights. Now, in what can only be viewed as an attempt at pure poetic justice, a budding developer, businessman Logan Darrow Clements, has begun the process of seizing Supreme Court Justice David Souter's homestead in Weare, New Hampshire and replacing it with a hotel. Citing the Kelo decision, Clements has contacted Weare's building official, saying: "Although this property is owned by an individual, David H. Souter, a recent Supreme Court decision, "Kelo vs. City of New London" clears...

The lefties are furiously linking to this column by Norman Ornstein of AEI, trying to demonstrate the radical nature of the operation contemplated by Dr. Frist and the Republicans to restore the 214-year tradition of voting up-or-down on judicial nominees who have majority support. Wrong. The facts: Senate procedures and practices can be set either by amending the Standing Rules of the Senate or by establishing parliamentary precedent. Amending the Standing Rules takes a simple majority vote, but such amendments can themselves be filibustered. So the same 60 votes needed to break the filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees would...

 A FEDERAL DISTRICT JUDGE IN Maryland has jolted the local liberal establishment in Montgomery County by blocking a pilot program in sex education. The program was designed to sweep away the "myths"--the lingering moral inhibitions and retrograde theological teachings--that apparently feed reservations, still widely held, about homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Judge Alexander Williams Jr. put the kibosh on this plan, and the jolt has had a deeper resonance, not least because Williams happens to be a Clinton appointee. But the lasting tremors come from the fact that the decisive strands in his May 5 judgment are lines of argument that...

People who say that the government has no business interfering in a private decision like removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube somehow have no problem with a squad of policemen preventing her parents (or anyone else) from giving their daughter food or water. Do those who want to keep the government out of private decisions think that the police are not the government? Do they think that the judges who authorized this are not the government? Sadly, this is not the only Alice-in-Wonderland confusion of words and deeds in this tragic case. We are being told that Terri Schiavo is being...

FILEDU.S. COURT OF APPEALSELEVENTH CIRCUITMarch 23, 2005THOMAS K. KAHNCLERK[PUBLISH]IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALSFOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUITNo. 05-11556D. C. Docket No. CV-05-00530-TTHERESA MARIA SCHINDLER SCHIAVO,incapacitated ex rel, Robert Schindler andMary Schindler, her parents and next friends,Plaintiffs-Appellants,versusMICHAEL SCHIAVO,as guardian of the person ofTheresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, incapacitated,JUDGE GEORGE W. GREER,THE HOSPICE OF THE FLORIDA SUNCOAST, INC.,Defendants-Appellees.--------------------------Appeal from the United States District Court for theMiddle District of Florida--------------------------(March 23, 2005)Before CARNES, HULL, and WILSON, Circuit Judges.PER CURIAM:Plaintiffs have appealed the district court’s denial of their motion for atemporary restraining order to require the defendants to transport Theresa MarieOur dissenting colleague says...

Here are some of the people on death row who were under age 18 when their crimes were committed: --- ALABAMA: Mark Anthony Duke was sentenced to death in the 1997 killings of his father, his father's fiancé and her 6- and 7-year-old daughters, crimes committed when he was 16 years old. According to trial testimony, Duke shot the adults and cut one of the girls' throats because he was angry his father refused to let him use his pickup truck. He held down the other girl while another man cut her throat. --- ARIZONA: Kenneth Laird was convicted of...

Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez"If we don't wake up to this, we could lose it all," that's Harvey Kushner's message to Americans — and American intelligence officials. Harvey Kushner is a familiar face to many Fox viewers. The terrorism expert is a frequent TV commentator. In his full-time work in terrorism prevention, he has been a consultant to major government agencies including the FBI, INS, and U.S. Customs. Kushner's most recent book is Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States, written with Bart Davis.Kushner recently answered some of NRO editor Kathryn...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge dealt a setback to the Bush administration and ruled on Monday that the Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspects can challenge their confinement and the procedures in their military tribunal review process are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green said the prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have constitutional protections under U.S. law. "The court concludes that the petitioners have stated valid claims under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and that the procedures implemented by the government to confirm that the petitioners are 'enemy combatants' subject to...