Recent Updates
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Court turns away suit over Confederate flag shirts
Court Alerts 01/23/2009A full federal appeals court won't hear a lawsuit by three Tennessee students threatened with suspension if they wore Confederate flag T-shirts. A three-judge panel ruled in August that Blount County, just south of Knoxville, could ban the clothing. ...
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Court sides with police officers in search case
Court Alerts 01/22/2009The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police officers in Utah who searched a suspect's home without a warrant cannot be sued for violating his constitutional rights.In ruling unanimously for five officers attached to the Central Utah Narcotics Task ...
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Court reinstates Wash. murder conviction
Court Alerts 01/21/2009The Supreme Court has reinstated the murder conviction of the driver in a gang-related, drive-by shooting that horrified Seattle in 1994.By a 6-3 vote, the court on Wednesday reversed a federal appeals court that had thrown out the second-degree murd...
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Wis. mayor charged with plotting tryst with child
Court Alerts 01/16/2009Prosecutors charged Racine Mayor Gary Becker with child-sex felonies Thursday and said he had gone to a mall to meet a 14-year-old girl he thought he had met during an online chat. A state agent had posed as the girl, and the 51-year-old mayor was ar...
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Noriega fights transfer to France before US court
Court Alerts 01/15/2009A skeptical panel of federal appeals judges questioned Wednesday whether former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega has any legal right to challenge his proposed extradition to France to face money laundering charges. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap...
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Court says evidence valid despite police error
Court Alerts 01/14/2009The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that evidence found after an arrest based on incorrect information from police files may be used against a criminal suspect. In a 5-4 split, the court upheld the conviction of an Alabama man on federal drug and gun c...
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Wash. court rules that truants entitled to lawyer
Court Alerts 01/13/2009A panel of judges has apparently made Washington the first state to rule that juvenile students accused of chronically cutting classes in public schools are entitled to a lawyer in their first court hearing. The Washington state Court of Appeals rule...
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High court to hear dispute over Alaska gold mine
Court Alerts 01/12/2009A case before the Supreme Court on Monday could set a precedent for how mining waste is disposed of in streams, rivers, lakes and even wetlands.The justices are hearing arguments on whether an Alaska gold mine can dump metal waste into a nearby lake....
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Mass. woman charged in fatal '99 fire faces trial
Court Alerts 01/11/2009For nearly a decade, Kathleen Hilton has been in jail, though she's been convicted of nothing.Prosecutors say the grandmother set a fire that killed five people, including three young girls, because she was allegedly angry her son's ex-girlfriend wou...
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NJ high court hearing case on witness intimidation
Court Alerts 01/06/2009New Jersey's highest court is grappling with one of the thorniest issues facing criminal justice today: what to do in cases where witnesses to a crime have been threatened or intimidated by defendants to the point where they refuse to testify in cour...
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12-year-old Arizona boy guilty in mom's shooting
Court Alerts 01/03/2009A 12-year-old boy who fatally shot his mother after an argument over his chores was found guilty of premeditated murder.Judge James Conlogue found the boy guilty after a hearing Friday in Cochise County Superior Court in the southern Arizona town of ...
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Wis. court: Nude people still have privacy rights
Court Alerts 12/31/2008A state appeals court ruled Tuesday that a person who is voluntarily nude in the presence of another still has privacy rights against being secretly videotaped, in a decision that bolsters Wisconsin's video voyeur law.The ruling upholds the felony gu...