Recent Updates

  • Court: Missouri not required to name execution drug's source

    Court: Missouri not required to name execution drug's source

    Headline Legal News 02/21/2017

    A Missouri appellate court has ruled that the state's prison officials aren't obligated to publicly reveal the source of the drug used to execute prisoners. The appellate court's Western District decided Tuesday to overturn a 2016 trial court ruling ...

  • UK court says income threshold for foreign spouses is lawful

    UK court says income threshold for foreign spouses is lawful

    Headline Legal News 02/20/2017

    Britain's Supreme Court says the government is entitled to set a minimum-income threshold for people wanting to bring foreign spouses to the country, a measure introduced to ensure immigrants won't draw on public welfare funds. But the court says the...

  • Rolling Stone defamation case over rape story back in court

    Rolling Stone defamation case over rape story back in court

    Headline Legal News 02/08/2017

    Attorneys for Rolling Stone magazine are heading back to federal court to try to overturn a jury's defamation verdict over its botched story "A Rape on Campus." A judge is holding a hearing in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Thursday to consider Rollin...

  • Driver due in court in Cleveland officer's hit-and-run death

    Driver due in court in Cleveland officer's hit-and-run death

    Headline Legal News 01/26/2017

    The driver accused in the fatal hit-and-run of a Cleveland patrolman on an interstate is set to appear in court. Forty-four-year-old Israel Alvarez, of Lorain, was scheduled for arraignment Thursday morning on charges of aggravated vehicular homicide...

  • Top court reviews free speech case of man's anti-police rap

    Top court reviews free speech case of man's anti-police rap

    Headline Legal News 01/23/2017

    Pennsylvania's highest court is reviewing the conviction of a Pittsburgh man for making threats against police in a rap song after he was charged with drug offenses. The Supreme Court on Monday said it would take up an appeal by Jamal Knox, who argue...

  • Supreme Court to hear case about party in vacant DC house

    Supreme Court to hear case about party in vacant DC house

    Headline Legal News 01/21/2017

    The Supreme Court will hear a case in which people arrested for having a party in a vacant house sued police for violating their constitutional rights and won. The justices said Thursday they will review lower court rulings in favor of 16 people who ...

  • Supreme Court considers suit over 2001 detention of Muslims

    Supreme Court considers suit over 2001 detention of Muslims

    Headline Legal News 01/12/2017

    Ahmer Abbasi speaks softly as he describes the strip searches, the extra shoves, the curses that he endured in a federal jail in Brooklyn following the Sept. 11 attacks. "I don't think I deserved it," Abbasi said during a telephone interview with The...

  • Former Haitian rebel leader due in US court on drug charges

    Former Haitian rebel leader due in US court on drug charges

    Headline Legal News 01/04/2017

    Minnesota's program for keeping sex offenders confined after they complete their prison sentences is constitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, reversing a lower-court judge who said it violates offenders' rights because hardly anyone is ...

  • Massachusetts teen due in court in texting suicide case

    Massachusetts teen due in court in texting suicide case

    Headline Legal News 12/19/2016

    A Massachusetts woman accused of sending her boyfriend text messages encouraging him to kill himself is due in court for a pretrial hearing. Michelle Carter is charged with manslaughter in the 2014 death of Conrad Roy III. The 18-year-old Roy died of...

  • Alabama inmate seeks execution stay from US Supreme Court

    Alabama inmate seeks execution stay from US Supreme Court

    Headline Legal News 12/04/2016

    An Alabama inmate on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his upcoming execution to consider whether a judge should have been able to give him a death sentence when the jury recommended life imprisonment.   Ronald Bert Smith is scheduled ...

  • Court revives lawsuit against California bullet stamping law

    Court revives lawsuit against California bullet stamping law

    Headline Legal News 12/02/2016

    Gun manufacturers have the right to present evidence supporting their claim that technology does not exist to comply with a California law requiring new models of semi-automatic handguns to stamp identifying information on bullet casings, a state app...

  • China court clears man 21 years after his execution

    China court clears man 21 years after his execution

    Headline Legal News 12/01/2016

    China's supreme court ruled Friday that a young man executed 21 years ago for rape and murder had been innocent, in a case that has drawn attention to problems in the legal system as well as the frequent application of the death penalty. Nie Shubin w...