Recent Updates
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Blackwater guards to appear in court Tuesday
Legal News Center 01/06/2009Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards are expected to appear in federal court to answer to manslaughter charges in the 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.The Blackwater guards are scheduled to appear for arraignment Tuesday aft...
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Rape conviction upheld despite juror's sex crime
Legal News Center 12/31/2008The Michigan Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a rape conviction that was challenged because a juror didn't disclose that he had been convicted of a sex crime.Michigan law bars felons from serving on a jury.But the high court voted 5-2 to uphold the...
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Number of uncounted ballots in Minn. still unclear
Legal News Center 12/30/2008The campaigns of Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken wrangled Monday over hundreds of unopened absentee ballots that could still tip Minnesota's Senate race.Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the secretary of sta...
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Blagojevich lawyer to submit Obama report to panel
Legal News Center 12/29/2008The lead attorney for Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he plans to submit President-elect Barack Obama's internal report on contacts with the scandal-plagued governor to the Illinois House committee weighing impeachment.Attorney Ed Genson told the Chicago S...
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Feds rights to baseball drug tests back in court
Legal News Center 12/19/2008Federal appeals judges voiced skepticism Thursday that prosecutors had the right to seize urine samples of more than 100 major league players not originally involved in the BALCO drug investigation.In a case dealing with the government's search-and-s...
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Mass. court reprimands judge libeled by newspaper
Legal News Center 12/18/2008Massachusetts' top court has publicly reprimanded a judge who wrote threatening letters to the publisher of the Boston Herald after he won a $2 million libel judgment against the paper.The Supreme Judicial Court's punishment for Judge Ernest Murphy i...
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Justices chide California-based appeals court
Legal News Center 12/02/2008The Supreme Court took aim at one of its favorite targets Tuesday, criticizing a California-based federal appeals court for its ruling in favor of a criminal defendant.The justices threw out a decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Cour...
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Federal judges to rule on Calif. prison crowding
Legal News Center 12/01/2008California's day of reckoning has finally come for three decades of tough-on-crime policies that led to overcrowded prisons and unconstitutional conditions for inmates.The federal courts have already found that the prison system's delivery of health ...
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Protesters rally near Texas court in dragging case
Legal News Center 11/17/2008Protesters galvanized by a dragging death that has stirred memories of the notorious James Byrd case rallied twice outside an eastern Texas courthouse to speak out against a judicial system they consider racist.About 60 people, led by a contingent fr...
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Supreme Court wrestles with TV profanity case
Legal News Center 11/06/2008The Supreme Court spent an hour on Tuesday talking about dirty words on television without once using any or making plain how it would decide whether the government could ban them.The dispute between the broadcast networks and the Federal Communicati...
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Court leaves NC campaign finance law untouched
Legal News Center 11/03/2008North Carolina's system of publicly financed judicial campaigns remained intact Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge over a provision for additional funds in expensive races.The justices declined, without comment, to consid...
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Amputee awaits high court, wants musical glow back
Legal News Center 10/30/2008When Diana Levine turned 63 recently, her daughter made her a birthday card, drawing on Greek mythology with an illustration of Diana the Huntress, her bow string drawn taut, an arrow ready to fly.But the arm pulling at the bowstring was amputated be...