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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...