Bruce Lisker, who was accused of killing his mother in 1985, should be sent back to prison because the U.S. 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in another case that inmates should not be allowed to file late peti­tions for release even if they can prove they are inno­cent, accord­ing to the attor­ney...
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By Karen Lot­ter “The CSI Effect is real, and it’s pro­found,” says jury con­sul­tant Robert Hirschhorn, who also says he pur­posely selected jurors famil­iar with CSI and forensics-​​type shows for the Durst trial in Galve­ston Texas in Sep­tem­ber 2004. In the Durst trial despite plenty of non-​​forensic evi­dence, pros­e­cu­tors couldn’t con­vince a jury that real-​​estate...
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Amer­i­cans United for Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State today warned cor­rec­tions offi­cials in three states not to use pub­lic funds to send inmates to a pro­posed “Christians-​​only” prison in Oklahoma. Cor­rec­tions Con­cepts, Inc., has pro­posed build­ing a pri­vate prison in Wakita, Okla., that will indoc­tri­nate pris­on­ers in fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tian­ity and will be staffed solely...
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Had Lora Hunt been eat­ing a sand­wich or dial­ing her cell phone instead of pol­ish­ing her nails when she struck and killed a motor­cy­clist, she would not now stand con­victed of reck­less homi­cide, her lawyer contends. But pros­e­cu­tor Mike Mer­mel said there’s a big dif­fer­ence between pol­ish­ing nails and other forms of dis­tracted dri­ving....
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By Karen Kleiss EDMONTON — A spurned Edmon­ton artist who claimed her furi­ous, knife-​​wielding attack on her estranged lover was a piece of per­for­mance art has been sen­tenced to two years of house arrest. Karen Mar­i­lyn Huska, 56, was con­victed Tues­day of utter­ing threats and break­ing and enter­ing with the intent to com­mit an...
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(TSG) Meet William Fer­ris. The Ohio man yes­ter­day paid a pros­ti­tute $50 with the under­stand­ing that he would receive a full menu of sex­ual ser­vices in the bath­room of a White Cas­tle in Cincin­nati. How­ever, when the hooker only per­formed oral sex on him, Ferris–who was also expect­ing vagi­nal sex–contacted police to report that...
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(Sci­ence Blog­gers) A defen­dant is much more likely to be sen­tenced to death if he or she kills a “high-​​status” vic­tim, accord­ing to new research by Scott Phillips, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­ogy and crim­i­nol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver (DU). Accord­ing to his research pub­lished in Law and Soci­ety Review, (43–4:807–837), the prob­a­bil­ity of being...
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By Levi Pulkkinen (Seat​tlepi​.Com) Defense attor­ney Colette Tvedt told the court that one under­cover detec­tive vis­ited Tal­ents West clubs more than 160 times dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, pay­ing some­where between $16,835 and $18,170 to the clubs. The offi­cer, Tvedt claimed, received “over 130 doc­u­mented VIP dances and an unde­ter­mined addi­tional num­ber of undoc­u­mented dances.” Those dances,...
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By Danny Aeber­hard (BBC News) The gov­er­nor of the US state of Texas, Rick Perry, has posthu­mously par­doned a man who had died in jail after being wrongly con­victed of rape. It is the first time Texas has issued a posthu­mous par­don. In 1986, Tim Cole was sen­tenced for the rape of a stu­dent....
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By Helen Kennedy (NY Daily News) Enraged pilot Joe Stack, who flew his plane into an Austin, Tex., office build­ing Thurs­day, has become some­thing of a hero to right-​​wing fringe groups. “Finally an Amer­i­can man took a stand against our tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that no longer fol­lows the Con­sti­tu­tion,” wrote Emily Wal­ters of Louisville, Ky....
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