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Torture-slayings trial, Day 9: Victim's families: Jury 'let us down' with Letalvis Cobbins verdict KNOXVILLE - The families of a young Knox County couple tortured and killed in January 2007 tonight sharply criticized a jury's decision to spare defendant Letalvis Cobbins the death penalty. "I think the jury has let us down," said Mary Newsom, mother of murder victim Chris Newsom. "I think they've let Channon and Chris down. We were hoping for the death penalty." After deliberating a little more than two hours, the jury delivered its verdict about 6:50 p.m. in Judge Richard Baumgartner's courtroom. The judge polled...

UPDATE: William Jefferson jury completes fourth day without verdictby Bruce Alpert, The Times-Picayune Tuesday August 04, 2009, 3:15 PM ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- The jury in former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson's bribery and corruption trial has completed a fourth day of deliberations without reaching a verdict. Jurors concluded the day about 90 minutes early to accommodate the schedule of one of their members. They will return Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. There was some courtroom action today as Judge T.S. Ellis and lawyers in the case held two brief bench conferences in the morning to deal with a question from the jury...

Tariq Aziz guilty of Iraq murders Aziz surrendered to US troops in 2003 Tariq Aziz, for many years the public face of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime, has been jailed for 15 years for his role in the execution of 42 merchants. Aziz had denied any role in the summary trials of the men accused in 1992 of profiteering during economic sanctions. Two of Saddam Hussein's half-brothers were also found guilty and sentenced to death by a court in Baghdad. Another top official, Ali Hassan al-Majid - commonly known as Chemical Ali - was jailed for 15 years. Two other Iraqi...

For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

Excerpt - JACKSON – Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court. It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case. In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record. Diaz's document also wasn’t made available to the public, as every other order and dissent are. ~ snip ~

DETROIT — A jury convicted a 911 operator Friday of willful neglect of duty after authorities said she didn't take seriously a boy's calls to report his mother had collapsed. The mother was found dead three hours after the first call. The misdemeanor charge against Sharon Nichols is punishable by up to a year in jail. She will be sentenced March 11. Nichols, 45, testified she could not hear the then-5-year-old boy on the other end of the line. Authorities said Robert Turner called 911 twice on Feb. 20, 2006, to report his mother had passed out. Robert, now 7,...

An appeals court has overturned a $1.5 million verdict awarded to a woman who was spanked in front of co-workers in what her employer called a camaraderie-building exercise. A jury in 2006 had ruled that Janet Orlando had suffered sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on the rear end at home security company Alarm One Inc. The jury punished the company with a $1 million punitive damage award. But on Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeal overturned that verdict, ruling that the jury had been given improper instructions. In particular, the jury...

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Kurds bought sheep to slaughter in celebration and stockpiled generator fuel to keep televisions working for Sunday's verdict against Saddam Hussein's cousin, known as Chemical Ali, and others accused in a 1980s crackdown against them. Many in northern Iraq said they anticipate the harshest penalty possible against Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the Baath Party's Northern Bureau Command, who is accused of responsibility for using chemical weapons against Kurds in the late 1980s scorched-earth campaign to crush a rebellion in the north. The case — called Anfal after the codename for the...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein's cousin — known as "Chemical Ali" — and other former regime officials for their roles in a 1980s military campaign against the Kurds said Sunday it would issue a verdict in two weeks. All face a possible death sentence if convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the case. The decision will be announced on June 24, prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi told The Associated Press after a short court session that he said was attended by the six defendants, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former head of the...

3/6/07 - Regular readers - assuming there are any - know I’m not a fan of those who practice the craft of journalism. Journalists would like us to believe that they are public servants, without which a free society does not exist; which is why, so they say, there’s is the only profession which enjoys Constitutional protection. I find it very ironic that those who like to dump on the Second Amendment by saying, “The Founding Fathers never envisioned assault rifles,” would never dream of making an analogous statement about the First Amendment by suggesting that the Founding Fathers also...

WASHINGTON - Jurors deliberated Wednesday without reaching a verdict on whether former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby obstructed the investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative married to a prominent Iraq war critic. The eight women and four men heard 14 days of testimony, a full day of closing arguments and more than an hour of instructions from U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton before beginning their discussions. After 4 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jurors went home until Thursday. The jurors include a former Washington Post reporter, an MIT-trained economist, a retired math teacher, a...

LOS ANGELES - A jury imposed the death penalty Tuesday on the ringleaders of a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme targeting rich Russian immigrants whose bodies were found in a Northern California reservoir. Jurors deliberated less than a day before reaching their vote on sentences for Iouri Mikhel, 41, and Jurijus Kadamovas, 40. Last month, the federal jury convicted both men of three counts of hostage-taking resulting in death and three counts of conspiracy. The death penalty verdict is binding on U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian, who is scheduled to formally sentence the two men March 12. The case will be automatically appealed,...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2006 – The guilty verdict handed down Nov. 5 to former dictator Saddam Hussein marks “a great day for the Iraqi people,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday. Appearing on Fox News Channel, Rice saluted Iraqi judges and lawyers who were involved in Saddam’s yearlong trial, telling host Neil Cavuto they’d “been going on under the most difficult circumstances.” The Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced Saddam to hang for his complicity involving acts of torture and murder of citizens of Dujail, Iraq, in 1982. Saddam also charged in a separate trial with murdering Kurds in northern Iraq...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: On their 29th wedding anniversary, President and Mrs. Bush spent only a few hours together before GWB flew to Nebraska for a campaign rally. At Waco airport, he make brief remarks about the conviction and sentencing of Saddam Hussein today. For history buffs, this is not the first time Hussein has been convicted and sentenced to death. Years ago he was convicted of a murder, but escaped prison before his sentence could be carried out. This time escape is not likely with American troops guarding him. This time, he will finally make it to his...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2006 -- Without the help of American servicemembers, today’s verdict against Saddam Hussein would not have been possible, the commander in chief said today in Waco, Texas. President Bush called the trial “a milestone” in Iraq’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law. Today’s verdict, he said, represents a major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy and its constitutional government. The Iraqi High Tribunal found Saddam guilty in his actions against the citizens of Dujail, Iraq, and sentenced him to death by hanging. In the 1982 incident, Saddam ordered the military,...

A judge trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of 148 Shi'ite villagers in the 1980s will set a date on Monday for a verdict in a case that carries the maximum penalty of death by hanging, court officials said. A year after the case opened in a U.S.-backed courtroom in Baghdad, chief judge Raouf Abdel Rahman will hold a closed session to review witness testimonies and evidence and announce a final date for a verdict for former Iraqi president Saddam and seven of his top lieutenants for crimes against humanity. "The judge needs to review procedural and administrative issues and...

LOS ANGELES - A California jury on Wednesday found pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. not liable for causing an elderly man's heart ailments after he took the drug maker's once-popular painkiller Vioxx. After deliberating several hours in California's first trial over Vioxx, the 12-person jury determined that Merck was not negligent, did not conceal information and that the drug did not cause Stewart Grossberg's health problems. Grossberg, 71, had sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well $214,000 for medical bills. The drug maker faces more than 16,000 lawsuits involving Vioxx, which was pulled from the market in 2004 after a...

Federal prosecutors in Southern California toiled for years to build a case strong enough to cut off the head of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood prison gang and end its 40-year reign over the federal and state prison system. On Friday, the government saw the fruits of its labor: a sweeping verdict that convicted four top gang leaders of murder, conspiracy and racketeering and made two of the defendants eligible for the death penalty. Yet as prosecutors celebrated, legal analysts and prison gang experts questioned whether the government's near-complete victory will translate into what authorities so keenly desire - the eventual...

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-area sniper John Allen Muhammad was convicted of six more of the killings Tuesday after a trial in which he acted as his own attorney and the prosecution's star witness was his young protege and partner in crime, Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad, 45, is already under a death sentence in Virginia for a killing there. The most he can get for the six Maryland slayings is life in prison without parole. The jury took slightly more than four hours to convict him after a four-week trial. The trial marked the first time Malvo testified against the man prosecutors say was...

(AP) ROCKVILLE, Md. A Maryland jury has found John Allen Muhammad guilty of six counts of murder for the October 2002 Washington-area sniper shootings. The announcement Tuesday afternoon followed four weeks of prosecutors, experts and witnesses presenting evidence against Muhammad and Muhammad defending himself with the argument that he had been framed. Acting as his own attorney, Muhammad told the jury in his closing argument Friday that he was only in the Washington area during those three terrifying weeks to search for his ex-wife and children. He said government agencies planted evidence and collaborated to pin the crime on him...

ROCKVILLE -- A Montgomery County jury this afternoon found sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad guilty of shooting and killing six people in the county during the 2002 sniper shootings. Muhammad is not eligible for the death penalty in this trial, which is his second. In 2003, a Virginia Beach jury sentenced him to death for planning and coordinating the sniper spree. Authorities said they brought Muhammad to Montgomery County as insurance, in case his first conviction is overturned on appeal, and because the sniper shootings began and ended here. Muhammad, 45, and his convicted accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, shot 13...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. "I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace." Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence. "This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this...

HOUSTON - Former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted Thursday of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in a case born from one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history. The verdict put the blame for the demise of what was once the nation's seventh-largest company squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a trial that lasted nearly four months. Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate trial related to his personal banking. The former corporate titans...

HOUSTON - Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were known as visionaries, hands-on executives, corporate titans directing the high-flying ship at Wall Street darling Enron Corp. Add another title: convicted felons. "Certainly we're surprised," a shaken Lay said Thursday after a jury capped a four-month-long fraud and conspiracy trial and in its sixth day of deliberations returned guilty verdicts against him and Skilling. "I think it's more appropriate to say we're shocked. This is not the outcome we expected." Besides all six counts in the main trial, Lay, Enron's founder, also was convicted of four charges of bank fraud and making...

May 25, 2006 — The jury in the fraud and conspiracy trial of former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling has both men guilty of all charges against them. Lay, 64, was convicted on all six counts including conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Skilling, 52, was convicted of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Jurors spent six days deliberating after more than three months of testimony from 54 witnesses. Lay faces up to 165 years in prison; Skilling faces up to 275 years in prison. Lay founded Enron in 1985 and was its CEO for more...

Just on the News - Ken Lay convicted on all counts - Skilling convicted on most of the 28 counts against him. Quick jury verdict.

Lay, Skilling guilty on nearly all counts Former CEOs convicted of fraud, conspiracy, face lengthy.....

A recent cover of Newsweek magazine jarred me. In bold type across the face of the magazine cover were these words: “Freud Is Not Dead.” Just being reminded of Sigmund Freud, the Viennese psychiatrist who redefined modern psychiatry and dismissed God as the figment of our imaginations, gave me cold chills. Here was the man whose influence has ushered in the age of therapy—excusing anyone’s behavior because they sucked their thumb too long as a baby. He’s also one of the great intellectual influences that led to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, for which we pay dearly to this...

Moussaoui's Imam reads verdict to mosque: http://www.glumbert.com/media/rave.html

Poll The jury took 7 days to come back with a verdict of life in prison for Zacarias Moussaoui. Do you agree with the decision? Yes 68.59 % No 31.41 % Read the story

Residents in this Central Valley town had hoped to set aside the suspicions that divided them in the 11 months since federal agents arrested a young man, his father and two Muslim religious leaders amid terrorism allegations. But the government's chief prosecutor said Wednesday that the investigation is continuing - a day after a federal jury convicted 23-year-old Hamid Hayat of providing material support to terrorists by attending a training camp in Pakistan in 2003 and lying about it to the FBI. U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott is considering seeking a new trial for Hayat's father, Umer, 48, after a separate...

CHICAGO, Dec 15 (Reuters)- The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a $10.1 billion verdict against Philip Morris USA, ordering a lower court to dismiss the case in which the company was accused of defrauding customers into thinking "light" cigarettes were safer than regular ones. The much-anticipated ruling sent shares of Philip Morris parent Altria Group Inc. (MO.N: Quote, Profile, Research) up more than 5 percent to a new all-time high. The court found that U.S. Federal Trade Commission rulings specifically authorized tobacco companies to characterize their products as "light" or "low tar and nicotine." The case has been closely...

MIAMI (AP) — A jury has ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay more than $61 million to the family of a 17-year-old boy killed in a roll-over accident when his friend fell asleep while driving an Explorer.Ford was liable in the accident because it sold a vehicle with poor handling and stability, the jury said Tuesday.The company planned to appeal, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.The family of Lance Crossman Hall claimed Ford knew the Explorer was prone to roll-overs and failed to warn consumers about the vehicle's defects.Ford blamed defective Firestone tires for the Explorer's handling and stability problems, and the...

BAMBERG, Germany -- A U.S. Army chaplain has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of forcible sodomy against enlisted men. Capt. Gregory Arflack, a 44-year-old Roman Catholic priest, apologized at his court-martial in Germany. He sobbed and said, "I've had a lot of time to pray and consider what I've done as a priest and an officer and I'm ashamed." One of the victims, whom Arflack had been counseling about homesickness and family troubles, told the court, "I don't understand how a person of the cloth could do something like that." He added,...

A federal jury on Friday awarded a municipal judge from southern Colorado a $1 million verdict against a Colorado State Patrol trooper who arrested the judge on a drunken-driving charge in 2001. The jury found the trooper did not have probable cause to arrest John S. Wilder for drunken driving and prohibited use of a weapon, and that he violated the judge's civil rights. Jurors also found that Cpl. Kevin P. Turner was not entitled to qualified immunity. Wilder, of Monte Vista, said he had offered to settle the lawsuit without a monetary award if arrest procedures were modified, an...

A Manhattan jury said yesterday that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was negligent in safeguarding the World Trade Center before the first terror attack on the twin towers, the 1993 bombing that killed six people and injured 1,000. In a verdict that could prove costly for the Port Authority, the six-member jury in State Supreme Court unanimously found that the agency did not heed warnings that the underground garage was vulnerable to terrorist attack and should be closed to public parking. This failure, the jury said, was "a substantial factor" in allowing the bombing to occur....

......NEVER FORGET.....

NEW YORK - A jury ruled Wednesday that the Port Authority was negligent in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 - a long-awaited legal victory for victims of an attack that killed six people and wounded 1,000. The six-person jury ruled that the Port Authority, the agency that owned the World Trade Center, was negligent by not properly maintaining the parking garage, where terrorists detonated more than a half-ton of explosives in a Ryder van. It said the negligence was a "substantial factor" in the allowing the bombing to occur. The jury took just one day to...

The guilty verdict against a Hmong man who shot and killed six white deer hunters in northwestern Wisconsin has not eased racial tensions in the area, residents and church leaders said. At the St. Paul Hmong Alliance Church in Maplewood, Minn., church members told senior Pastor Nha Long Yang that they see it in glares from white neighbors or hear it from Hmong children who have been told by white classmates that they can no longer play together. The Hmong man, Chai Soua Vang, a 36-year-old truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., was convicted Friday by an all-white jury of...

Chai Soua Vang was found guilty this afternoon of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of six hunters in Wisconsin's north woods last fall. A jury of eight women and four men deliberated about four hours before coming to their verdict. Vang was also found guilty of two counts of attempted homicide in the shootings of two other hunters who survived. Killed in the confrontation last Nov. 21 were Dennis Drew, 55; Mark Roidt, 28; Robert Crotteau, 42; his son, Joey, 20; Allan Laski, 43, and Jessica Willers, 27. Wounded in the shootings were Terry Willers, 48, and Lauren Hesebeck,...

HAYWARD, Wis. -- A verdict has been reached in the Wisconsin trial of Chai Vang, 36, accused of killing six deer hunters and wounding two others during a confrontation in the woods last November after they caught him trespassing in a tree stand. Kelly Kennedy, of the state Department of Justice, said the judge, lawyers and other court personnel are being called back for the announcement. Vang, a Hmong immigrant from St. Paul, Minn., testified he was called racial slurs and that one of the others fired at him before he opened fire in self-defense. Two survivors testified Vang shot...

Last month it was my duty to serve on the jury in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen. It was my unpleasant charge to decide the fate of a fellow human. In the course of my 55 years I have survived a war, earned a bachelor's degree, suffered and exalted, traveled the world and worked my way from high school dropout to senior engineer. Still, nothing prepared me for this, nor did any of the other 11 jurors seem any less humbled by this task. No one took this lightly. My fellow jurors seemed to be a good representation of...

Geraldo Rivera's mustache is safe. The television personality had pledged to shave it off if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation. Geraldo had nothing to fear. A California jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of murder, so why should it hold Michael Jackson accountable for molesting children? Maybe Michael can now help O.J. search for the "real killer." Cable TV went berserk. The predictions were mostly wrong and the analysis was idiotic. One of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, Robert Shapiro, predicted on CNN that the jury would convict Jackson. Legal analyst Wendy Murphy confidently prophesied to Fox's Shepard Smith, "I...

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,...

After 14 weeks of trial, and seven days of deliberation, the Jackson case came down to a battle of two videos. Both videos played at the end of closing arguments showed the statement of the young accuser to the police, and the Bashir documentary outtakes that showed a side of Michael Jackson that is innocent and wistfully childlike. In the end, the jury decided that Michael Jackson was not guilty of molestation. Everyone knows that Michael Jackson is more than weird, he is a universe unto himself. But the jury may have leaned on a universe of innocent love and...

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (June 10) - About 2,200 members of the media received credentials to cover Michael Jackson's trial - more than the O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson murder trials combined and enough to form a vast, humming tent city outside the modest courthouse. Reporters from every continent but Antarctica are covering a story that has attracted perhaps the largest-ever media contingent for a criminal trial. The satellite trucks and portable toilets function at all hours, since foreign correspondents must file past midnight to meet deadlines an ocean away. Major TV networks have committed dozens of staff members. Nearly four...

Jackson 'Avenue of Hearts' angers locals 10.06.05 By Andrew Gumbel A fan wears a t-shirt proclaiming Michael Jackson's innocence. Picture / Reuters Michael Jackson's neighbours have had it. They've put up with months of hoopla surrounding the court proceedings in Santa Maria, in the heart of central California wine country, and they've put up with the fans plying the narrow road to Neverland. But now the jury has retired, passions on both sides are growing as surely as the tension over the looming verdict. The results have not always been pretty. Every day this week, the fans have erected an...

MICHAEL Jackson's family wants the judge in the pop legend's child molestation trial to bend the rules and let them gather en masse around him for the fateful moment when jurors deliver their verdict. Family aides said today they were hoping that Judge Rodney Melville will give Jackson more than his allotted six seats for family members in the courtroom. "The family wants to be with Michael when the verdict is read ... everybody wants to be there to give support," Jackson family lawyer Debra Opri told reporters. Opri said she hoped special dispensation could be made for Jackson to...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A jury acquitted tough-guy actor Robert Blake of murder in the shooting death of his wife four years ago, bringing a stunning end Wednesday to a case that played out like pulp fiction. Jurors also acquitted Blake of one charge that Blake solicited murder, but deadlocked on a second solicitation charge. The jury voted 11-1 in favor of acquittal and the judge dismissed the count. Outside court, Blake thanked his defense team and described the emotional and financial toll of the case. He said his lawyers saved his life. "If you want to know how to...