The brothers were still in their beige school uniforms when their bodies were discovered in the brush on the outskirts of Caracas: three boys kidnapped on their way to school by men in police uniform and then murdered. According to relatives in Canada, the kidnappers had demanded a $4.5m (£2.6m) ransom for the safe return of the three boys, and had been in contact with the family to demand payment. A lawyer for the family told reporters that the Faddouls were in no position to pay that kind of sum. A teacher at the private school attended by the three boys, Nuestra Señora del Valle, told local television: “The whole school is in shock. “If policemen were really involved in the kidnapping and murder of these boys, it shows that our police force needs to be reformed urgently,” said Monsignor Roberto Lueckert, Archbishop of Caro.

Just read an article from Guardian Unlimited:

The vast majority of crime victims do not believe that prison reduces levels of offending, according to a major new report to be published tomorrow. It is based on an ICM survey of 1,000 crime victims which found that 62 per cent of victims do not believe prison reduces non-violent crime - the type of offences that makes up the vast majority of all crimes committed in Britain. More than half of crime victims said they were in favour of making offenders work in the community to stop them returning to crime. ‘What victims of crime are saying loud and clear is that we need more action on prevention to stop these crimes happening in the first place,’ Russell said.

Here’s a brief summary of an item from New York Times:

Wells told the police that when the lock was clicked closed, it seemed to set the timer on the bomb around his neck. Last Thursday, Mr. Wells walked into a PNC Bank two miles from the pizza shop where he worked, pulled up his shirt to show a bomb locked to his neck, and demanded money. Mr. Wells had told the police that a dark-skinned man attached the bomb to his neck, clicking it closed with a combination lock that seemed to set a timer. To the few people who seemed to know Mr. Wells in this aging industrial city of 103,000 along Lake Erie, the answer is clear: there is no way, they contend, the childlike Mr. Wells could have concocted, much less carried out, such an elaborate scheme. Mr. Wells dropped out of high school when he was a sophomore, seemed only modestly capable as a mechanic, did not own a computer and did not seem to know how to navigate the Internet. He was far from well off, but Mr. Wells showed little interest in money or possessions, living a spartan existence with few complaints, friends said. Though neighbors and investigators knew little about his early work history, it seems clear that Mr. Wells spent much of the past decade, and perhaps longer, delivering pizzas.

It was then that pioneering historians began to do what most historians had thought impossible: create crime statistics for eras that did not systematically keep crime data. America, where at least recently crime is higher in cities.'’ Some scholars argue that many of the prevailing theories about why crime rises and falls could be further upended as scholars use new computer models to estimate population figures for past eras more accurately. The theory that crime is determined by deterrence and law enforcement, by income inequality, by a high proportion of young men in a population, by the availability of weapons, by cities, most of those theories end up being wrong.'’ Historians have offered various explanations for the unexpected fall in the crime rate.

The latest scoop from New York Times.

He said about two-thirds of the redeployed Street Crime Unit officers would perform the same jobs in existing borough-based anticrime units, focusing, as they did before, on taking guns off the street. The move nonetheless effectively disbands the Street Crime Unit, whose plainclothes officers prowled the streets in search of criminals and which was widely credited with helping win the record declines in crime achieved in recent years. Yesterday, in addition to announcing that he will redeploy the Street Crime officers, Mr. Kelly said he also would move 150 detectives from the department’s Warrant Division and nearly 100 police officers — one each from the department’s 76 precincts and 20 from Housing and Transit Bureau commands — into the detective squads that investigate crimes in neighborhoods around the city.

After spending most of the decade re-creating the Civil War era and delving into the lives of Howard Hughes and Bob Dylan, New York’s Little Italy’s maestro of contemporary crime cinema, Martin Scorsese, is back on the mean streets. It’s all stuff that we associate with Scorsese’s New York masterpieces - “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “GoodFellas.” And most of the film’s interiors were filmed in Scorsese’s NYC comfort zone. To DiCaprio, who was on his third Scorsese feature in a row after “Gangs” and “The Aviator,” it didn’t matter when or where the film was set. And violence is part of most Scorsese films. Shut up.’ Damon adds, though, that some of what he learned from that raid found its way into “The Departed” - and that it’s that kind of verisimilitude that sets the violence of Scorsese movies apart from the bloody norm. Although “Gangs” certainly boasted a high casualty count, when Scorsese’s main focus is on period re-creation or some other topic, the films are usually criticized for not living up to his high artistic standards. “The violence in my films, I just - I tend to - I can’t defend it,” Scorsese ponders. It’s that understanding of the human condition - in all of its ugliness and occasionally, maybe, transcendence - that keeps the best in the business eager to work with Martin Scorsese.

As always, great info from San Francisco Chronicle:

The number of hate crimes reported in California decreased by 5.5 percent last year to the lowest number in a decade, according to a report released Friday by Attorney General Bill Lockyer. There were 1,409 hate crime incidents reported in 2004, compared with 1, 491 in 2003, according to the Department of Justice report “Hate Crime in California 2004.” Although crimes against whites, gays and those of Arab or Middle Eastern decent dropped, hate crimes directed at African Americans, Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders increased. Crimes against Asian/Pacific Islanders increased 8 percent to 69, and anti-Hispanic crimes jumped 34 percent from 103 in 2003 to 138 in 2004. Sexual orientation hate crimes decreased 22 percent from 337 in 2003 to 263 in 2004, and religion-motivated hate crimes dropped 6.8 percent.

USA Today writes:

PARIS French lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide. Deputies in France’s National Assembly voted 106-19 for the bill, which has prompted outrage in Turkey and embarrassed the French government. In Brussels, the European Commission warned soon after the vote that the bill - if approved by the French legislature’s other chamber and signed into law - would hamper reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia. Armenians say the killings were part of an organized campaign to force Armenians out of what is now eastern Turkey. The vote on the bill in Paris dominated front pages of most Turkish newspapers, with some reporting that thousands of Turks have promised to go to France and deny genocide in hopes of getting arrested if the bill passes. Turkey’s chief negotiator in European Union membership talks said Thursday that the French bill flew in the face of freedom of expression. He noted that the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who has sharply criticized the bill, had adopted a law that punishes the admission of a genocide with time in prison in Turkey. Chirac, during a visit to Armenia last month, said the bill “is more of a polemic than of legal reality” but he also urged Turkey to recognize “the genocide of Armenians” in order to join the European Union.

The two attacked the boy after he tried to kiss a 12-year-old girl at an unsupervised house party Saturday night in suburban Spring, authorities said. County prosecutor Mike Trent said the boy also had high levels of toxins in his organs, indicating the attackers may have poured bleach inside the pipe used to sodomize him. Doctors believe the boy, who was in critical condition Friday, passed out quickly and was unconscious for most of the attack. If the two are convicted of aggravated sexual assault, jurors will be told during sentencing about the ethnic slurs used during the attack, Trent said. The boy’s last posting was Saturday, the day of the attack.

Go take a look at the latest from Times Online:

The study, based on a sample of more than 17,000 people, suggests that no fewer than 17m Britons were victims of crime, from assaults to burglaries and vandalism. It indicates that not only is there a ‘hidden’ and unreported crime wave, but also that crime is increasing. The study mirrors the government’s British Crime Survey (BCS), which is based on quarterly interviews with 10,000 people drawn from a panel of 38,000 householders. The government study found 27.8% of people were victims of crime. Statisticians believe the higher crime rate uncovered by the Experian study may be partly explained by a rise in crime since the last BCS in July 2002 and marginally more affluent interviewees.

More Americans are worrying about crime, and many have experienced it but relatively few feel they know a great deal about how to prevent it, an ABCNEWS poll for Court TV has found. The poll found that women in particular are affected by fears about crime, with 66 percent saying crime worries affect their lives, compared to 47 percent of men. The rest, 43 percent, say crime worries don’t affect their lives all that much. There are a few possible reasons why crime worries are up, even though crime rates are down. Whatever the crime rate, there is a good deal of personal or family experience with some crimes. 36 percent express a great deal of worry about having a child abducted a result that probably reflects the enormity of that crime more than its likelihood. While women are more likely to say crime worries in general affect how they live, men and women don’t differ much when it comes to concern about the specific crimes mentioned above. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it might buy a sense of security: People in higher-income families worry less about specific crimes, perhaps because they live in more secure areas and have more money to spend on crime protection.

Updated news from Times Online.

As a result chief constables, led by Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, have been urging ministers to adopt tougher gun controls, which they say successfully took guns off the streets of New York. The rise of crack cocaine sold by Jamaican-based Yardie gangsters who routinely carry guns added to the rise in gun use and what police now call ‘black on black killings’. A month ago Sir Keith Povey, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, warned David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, that the biggest menace facing police was the spread of gun crime often linked with the drug trade and in particular crack cocaine. After studying reports from chief constables around the country, Sir Keith said: ‘The issue of gun crime and its connections with the drugs trade, particularly crack cocaine, is beginning to overshadow other efforts being made to reduce crime and the fear of crime.’ He added: ‘The increasing number of drug-related firearms incidents, the rise in the use of crack cocaine and the turf wars being fought between drug dealers all combine to strike fear in the heart of the worst-affected communities.’ It was a message that Paul Scott-Lee, the new Chief Constable of the West Midlands, knew by heart. ‘Without tougher penalties against such offenders and heightened information from the public and others, the many people who carry guns will increase, each of them a walking assassin.’ Are government proposals enough to curb gun crime?

Sudan said Tuesday it will try three Sudanese for crimes committed in Darfur, including a member of the country’s security forces who is being sought by an international war crimes court. Among the three men being tried is Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, a member of the security forces who is one of two suspects sought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Last week, the ICC accused Kushayb and Ahmed Muhammed Harun, the former junior interior minister responsible for the western region of Darfur, of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for alleged attacks against civilians in Darfur. Even though the ICC cannot prosecute individuals already on trial for the same crime in their own country, chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that Sudan’s investigation of Kushayb does not “encompass the same conduct that is the subject of the case now before the (ICC).”

From USA Today.

The Community Oriented Policing Services program began in fiscal 1994 with the goal of putting 100,000 new police officers on the nation’s streets. Police departments across the USA say they have been forced to abandon community-oriented policing to control flare-ups in crime. But police officials say that officer shortages and sudden crime surges have forced agencies to resort to triage responses in crime “hot spots.” Budget problems and rising crime in some neighborhoods forced the Camden Police Department to close four neighborhood precincts that had allowed officers to respond more quickly to incidents across the city. Muhlhausen, a critic of community policing, says police chiefs are trying to “shake down” the government for more money.

Eric Rudolph is shown in this sketch at his Birmingham, Alabama, court appearance on Wednesday. ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Revealing his motives for the first time, Eric Robert Rudolph blames the death and violence behind the four bombings he’s confessed to in Georgia and Alabama on the legalization of abortion and “aberrant sexual behavior.” Rudolph issued a rambling 11-page statement Wednesday after pleading guilty in Alabama and Georgia, declaring: “Abortion is murder. Rudolph also bombed a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta in February 1997, an attack in which five people were wounded. Rudolph’s guilty pleas were heard in two courtrooms Wednesday, first in Birmingham, Alabama, then in Atlanta, Georgia. “You may not appreciate how much dynamite 250 pounds is until you realize that Rudolph’s bombs that caused so much devastation in Atlanta and Birmingham each contained only 5 pounds to 15 pounds of dynamite.” Although Rudolph did approach one friend six months after going into hiding, he had apparently surveilled the friend for weeks, Nahmias said.

Here’s a peek at the latest news from Washington Post:

Keep demanding solutions to crime, and, see that the race issue as you related it -criminal crimes may factually occur under racial predominance per-capita by African American criminals. The County in-fact enjoys relatively extremely less occurrence of excessive crime, which flows in Prince Georges County - Its not a black thing - Its criminal behavior that majorities currently refer to themselves in negative pejorative N-word. If people would come together on fighting crime instead of accusing people of being racist for trying to stop it the county, all counties would be a better, safer place.

You should check out Times Online:

IT’S Operation Design Out Crime. Following a series of international studies showing that environmental factors contribute to burglaries and muggings, gardai have launched a certificate programme to reward developers who use design devices that reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. Inspector Pat McCabe of the Garda’s crime prevention unit says there is now an officer in every division in the country qualified to check housing- development design. “We have a look at the plans and the site, and based on policing knowledge and a crime profile of a particular area, we make recommendations in relation to how crime can be designed out,” he said. Pearse Smyth, an architect for Boylan & Sons who received the garda certificate for a site at Mulladuff in Monaghan, said crime prevention officers have been trying to get a foot in the door of planning for a long time.

LONDON — Hezbollah militants broke international law by firing thousands of rockets into Israel and killing dozens of civilians during the recent conflict with Israel, Amnesty International charged Thursday. Although Hezbollah denies targeting Israeli civilians, it fired inaccurate rockets packed with thousands of metal ball bearings to maximize harm to noncombatants, Amnesty said. Amnesty plans to publish additional reports studying whether Hezbollah contributed to civilian deaths in Lebanon by purposely hiding among civilians, said Nicole Choueiry, a spokesman for Amnesty in Britain.

Stewart on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice, accusing her of lying to government investigators about her 2001 sale of shares in ImClone, a biotechnology company. At the core of the Stewart debate is whether prosecutors are abusing their discretion when they charge people with lying to them, even though no charge is brought against the defendant on the suspected crime that triggered the investigation. Stewart with insider trading.) The complaint charges that they concocted a story that she had decided to sell the stock if it fell below $60. Stewart can be charged with lying to prosecutors or to other government officials, even if she was not under oath, under a little-known federal law that lawyers call 1001, for its section number in the United States criminal code.

ABC News is a good read:

Though both crime rates and the perceived severity of the problem are on the wane, crime remains a top public priority. June 7 The public has grown less pessimistic about the severity of the nations crime problem, mirroring a decline in actual crime rates in recent years. The FBI last month reported that crime has fallen in each of the last eight years, the longest stretch of declining crime rates on record. Though both crime rates and the perceived severity of the problem are on the wane, crime remains a top public priority. Indeed, among those who perceive a crime problem nationally, 82 percent say their assessment is based on crime reports theyve seen in the news.

You should check out New York Times:

ROME, Oct. 22 - Organized crime represents the biggest segment of the Italian economy, accounting for more than $127 billion in receipts, according to a report issued Monday. “From the weaving factories, to tourism to business and personal services, from farming to public contracts to real estate and finance, the criminal presence is consolidated in every economic activity,” the 86-page report said. Usury represents the most lucrative activity by organized crime, with syndicates taking in $43 billion while racketeering brings in $14 billion, the report estimated. The report says 80 percent of the businesses in the Sicilian cities of Catania and Palermo regularly pay protection money, known as “pizzo.”

The IRA is gathering intelligence and some of its members are still engaged in criminality but the group overall is making progress towards a peaceful transformation, a report said today. The report by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) also said security sources claimed that some IRA members still had access to firearms. The IMC claims about weapons opened up a row with the body responsible for overseeing the IRA’s decommissioning of weapons, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). In its conclusion, the IMC said the IRA was in a period of evolution but some members continued to be involved in assaults and organised crime, including money laundering and smuggling. Monitors clash The IMC report said security sources had told the four-member commission that some handguns had allegedly been retained by a number of IRA members for personal protection and “area defence”. Intelligence gathering The IMC’s claim that the IRA continues to gather intelligence may have the most significant bearing on next week’s talks about resuming power-sharing, given that the collapse of the assembly was prompted by a spying row. In today’s report, the IMC said the IRA continued to gather information on individuals and groups, including members of the security forces, and had “no intention” of stopping. Commissioners said smaller dissident republican groups, such as the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, have been responsible for hoax devices targeting the police or military.

Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article:

In a strongly worded warning to the leaders of both the militant group Hizbullah and Israel, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour threatened the “perpetrators of wanton violence against civilians in the current Middle East conflict with liability for war crimes.” “Attacking civilian areas indiscriminately is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and can constitute a war crime,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. The ICRC also reminded Israel that under international law, its air-and-sea blockade of Lebanon must not prevent ” food stuffs and other essentials ” from reaching the civilian populations. “Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel,” Zunes told IPS. Ireland On-line also reports that Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni rejected the criticism that Israel’s actions were “disproportionate,” saying that Israel offensive was not just a reaction the Hizbullah raids, but to the broader question of Hizbullah’s threat to Israel’s security. In a direct swipe at the international community, in particular the US, which said that Israel was acting in self-defense, Mr. Siniora said “said, “Is this what the international community calls the right of self-defense?

The IRA is gathering intelligence and some of its members are still engaged in criminality but the group overall is making progress towards a peaceful transformation, a report said today. The report by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) also said security sources claimed that some IRA members still had access to firearms. The IMC claims about weapons opened up a row with the body responsible for overseeing the IRA’s decommissioning of weapons, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). In its conclusion, the IMC said the IRA was in a period of evolution but some members continued to be involved in assaults and organised crime, including money laundering and smuggling. Monitors clash The IMC report said security sources had told the four-member commission that some handguns had allegedly been retained by a number of IRA members for personal protection and “area defence”. Intelligence gathering The IMC’s claim that the IRA continues to gather intelligence may have the most significant bearing on next week’s talks about resuming power-sharing, given that the collapse of the assembly was prompted by a spying row. In today’s report, the IMC said the IRA continued to gather information on individuals and groups, including members of the security forces, and had “no intention” of stopping. Commissioners said smaller dissident republican groups, such as the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, have been responsible for hoax devices targeting the police or military.

Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article:

In a strongly worded warning to the leaders of both the militant group Hizbullah and Israel, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour threatened the “perpetrators of wanton violence against civilians in the current Middle East conflict with liability for war crimes.” “Attacking civilian areas indiscriminately is a serious violation of international humanitarian law and can constitute a war crime,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. The ICRC also reminded Israel that under international law, its air-and-sea blockade of Lebanon must not prevent ” food stuffs and other essentials ” from reaching the civilian populations. “Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel,” Zunes told IPS. Ireland On-line also reports that Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni rejected the criticism that Israel’s actions were “disproportionate,” saying that Israel offensive was not just a reaction the Hizbullah raids, but to the broader question of Hizbullah’s threat to Israel’s security. In a direct swipe at the international community, in particular the US, which said that Israel was acting in self-defense, Mr. Siniora said “said, “Is this what the international community calls the right of self-defense?

You should check out New York Times:

WHEN Judge Florence Mumba of Zambia confronted three Bosnian Serbs at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague last month and convicted them of rape and sexual enslavement, she dismissed two excuses that soldiers have used through the ages: ‘’boys will be boys'’ and ‘’I was only following orders.'’ For the first time, a war crimes tribunal ruled that rape was a crime against humanity, and did not have to be ordered from above to rise to that highest level of atrocity. After the United Nations, in the mid-1990’s, set up the first international war crimes courts in half a century, it made the crucial decision to expand the list of crimes to include abuses of women. In fact, she pointed out, rape has been identified as a war crime since the American Civil War, when Francis Lieber included it in his code of conduct for the Union Army.

At 9.02pm last night Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, announced that the Hunting Bill had met all the provisions of the Parliament Act and would become law. That was the final defeat for the Prime Minister who, having failed to push through his compromise of licensed hunting, was desperate to give the hunting community longer to adjust to the decision of Parliament. The pro-hunting campaign, led by the Countryside Alliance, will today take its fight to the courts when a challenge to the 1949 Parliament Act will be lodged, but the prospects of the courts challenging Parliament are thought to be slim. People have said they are prepared to go to prison rather than stop (hunting).’ John Rolls, the RSPCA’s director of animal welfare, welcomed the ban as ‘a watershed in the development of a more civilised society’: ‘This new legislation reflects modern society’s abhorrence of cruelty to wild animals which has, for too long, been veiled in the bloody cloak of tradition and prejudice.’ “The NHS is 60 this year.

More quality info from Washington Post:

Who would dare punish President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the deaths of far more innocent civilians killed in Iraq by the American invasion than were killed by American nuclear bombs during WWII? And unilateral intervention by the U.S. to prosecute traffickers in nuclear weapons within sovereign nations is a prescription for war, war, war, and more war. So long as American officials at the highest level may act with impunity in crimes against humanity such as the present American killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, then there is no moral basis for supporting yet another attempt by the United States to manipulate international organizations to advance American economic and political dominance of the world. That knowledge is already beyond suppression from the nations that want to have it, and surely it ought to be in the hands of nations that fear that they,too, might wound up like Iraq unless they have such nuclear weapons to deter American military aggression denying them the right to defend themselves from an unwanted American military occupation. Who would dare punish President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the deaths of far more innocent civilians killed in Iraq by the American invasion than were killed by American nuclear bombs during WWII? And unilateral intervention by the U.S. to prosecute traffickers in nuclear weapons within sovereign nations is a prescription for war, war, war, and more war. So long as American officials at the highest level may act with impunity in crimes against humanity such as the present American killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, then there is no moral basis for supporting yet another attempt by the United States to manipulate international organizations to advance American economic and political dominance of the world. That knowledge is already beyond suppression from the nations that want to have it, and surely it ought to be in the hands of nations that fear that they,too, might wound up like Iraq unless they have such nuclear weapons to deter American military aggression denying them the right to defend themselves from an unwanted American military occupation.

You should check out CNN:

On February 26, California Superior Court Judge Roger Beauchesne issued a tentative ruling in a civil suit against Scott Peterson, who is charged with the murders of his wife, Laci, and their unborn child. While courts have been very hostile to the idea of effectively censoring books and movies in this way — considering it a First Amendment violation — victims’ rights groups have been adamant that courts consider sales of criminals’ stories an unacceptable reminder that crime can, indeed, pay. The California law was modeled after an earlier New York law, with its own roller-coaster history. In 1977, New York passed a law to prevent convicted criminals from reaping profits from sales of works about their crimes. It was nicknamed the “Son of Sam” law, because it was prompted by reports that “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz was set to reap a great deal of money from the sale of his story. Then, in 1986, California passed its own, similar “Son of Sam” law. New York Crime Victims Board, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s “Son of Sam” law, on the ground that it violated the First Amendment. Those who dislike the Court’s result in New York Crime Victims Board should remember that “Son of Sam” laws are not the only ways for victims to be compensated for some of the terrible consequences of crimes. Because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Crime Victims Board, New York passed a revised version of the law in 1992, hoping to hit on a compromise acceptable to the Court. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court struck down this revised version of the California “Son of Sam” law. Despite revisions, the Court found that the law still violated both the First Amendment and the California Constitution’s “liberty of speech” clause. In particular, the Court noted that, despite the “passing mention” exception, the California law still reached books or films that only briefly mentioned the crime at issue, in the context of a larger narrative.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida: Murders and other violent crimes rose at a “disconcerting” rate in Florida last year, Governor Charlie Crist said Tuesday. Despite the rise in gun crimes, Crist said it is not too easy to get a gun in Florida - but didn’t elaborate on why gun crimes are going up so much. Crist said a new law this year would help reduce violent crimes by making it more likely that probation violators who have committed violent crimes will go back to prison.

Updated news from New York Times.

A group of retired agents supported Mr. DeVecchio’s position that he did not provide improper information to Mr. Scarpa, noting that he had previously been investigated and cleared of similar charges by the Department of Justice. According to the indictment, Mr. DeVecchio told Mr. Scarpa that Mary Bari, 31, a onetime girlfriend of Alphonse Persico, a mob member, was cooperating with authorities. Another victim was Patrick Porco, 18, who was killed in May 1990, supposedly for providing authorities with information on a killing by Mr. Scarpa’s son.

But all of a sudden we had people coming out of the woodwork through the newsletter saying, ‘I’ve had all these things happen to me.”’ Although the newsletter reports seemed to suggest a rising crime rate, statistics showed otherwise. Along with the rest of the city, the 70th precinct, which includes Victorian Flatbush, has seen crime decline: from 1993 to 2003, crime in the precinct dropped 62 percent. I would say crime is down,'’ he said, ‘’someone would call me and say, ‘My uncle got mugged last week.’ When Mr. Heaton started the newsletter in June, to promote a new greenmarket on Cortelyou Road, he had no intention of being the ‘’crime fighting guy.'’ But the next month, when the first crime reports appeared, they struck a nerve in this community of turn-of-the-century homes west of Brooklyn College.

Here’s an in depth look: Forbes:

ATLANTA, Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ — The executive board of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) has approved a resolution opposing the development of city crime rankings from FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs). The American Society of Criminology is an international organization concerned with criminology, embracing scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the etiology, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency.

WHEN Judge Florence Mumba of Zambia confronted three Bosnian Serbs at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague last month and convicted them of rape and sexual enslavement, she dismissed two excuses that soldiers have used through the ages: ‘’boys will be boys'’ and ‘’I was only following orders.'’ For the first time, a war crimes tribunal ruled that rape was a crime against humanity, and did not have to be ordered from above to rise to that highest level of atrocity. After the United Nations, in the mid-1990’s, set up the first international war crimes courts in half a century, it made the crucial decision to expand the list of crimes to include abuses of women. In fact, she pointed out, rape has been identified as a war crime since the American Civil War, when Francis Lieber included it in his code of conduct for the Union Army.

Here’s a brief summary of an item from International Herald Tribune:

The day after his party lost the election, Abbas told me that his own struggling government could not sustain itself financially with their daily lives and economy so severely disrupted, and access from Palestine to Israel and the outside world almost totally restricted. Although Hamas leaders have refused to recognize the state of Israel while their territory is being occupied, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for peace talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Like Egypt and all other Arab nations before the Camp David Accords of 1978, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before the Oslo peace agreement of 1993, Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace. There is no doubt that Israelis and Palestinians both want a durable two-state solution, but depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.

As always, great info from Forbes:

ARLINGTON, Va., Nov. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) announced that its volunteer advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi New York, received the Bronze Bell for its creative work on NCPC’s cyberbullying prevention campaign at the 54th Annual Public Service Award Dinner. NCPC manages public service advertising under the National Citizens’ Crime Prevention Campaign–symbolized by McGruff the Crime Dog(R) and his “Take A Bite Out Of Crime(R)” slogan–and acts as secretariat for the Crime Prevention Coalition of America, more than 400 national, federal, state, and local organizations representing thousands of constituents who are committed to preventing crime.

Proposition 21, the get-tough-on-juveniles initiative passed by state voters last year, suffered its first major legal defeat yesterday when an appellate court overturned a provision that let prosecutors charge youths age 14 to 17 as adults in serious crimes. The prosecutor’s decision to file in adult court, where the defendants faced potential sentences of 12 to 16 years in prison, prompted the court challenge. The provision challenged in yesterday’s case, allowing prosecutors rather than judges to send certain cases to adult court, has generally been reserved for the most violent cases, said David LaBahn, deputy director of the California District Attorneys Association and a drafter of Prop. 21, prosecutors had to ask juvenile court judges to send a case to adult court, based on such factors as the seriousness of the crime and the youth’s record. It would be quicker at this point to ask juvenile court judges to transfer at least some of the cases to adult court, he said. But Justice Alex McDonald, in the majority opinion, said allowing prosecutors to move a case into adult court also let them determine the range of sentencing choices available, depriving judges of their authority to choose an appropriate sentence for a juvenile.

New York Times has an interesting article:

Mr. Allen, a former altar boy who is now confronting the Cincinnati Archdiocese in blunt terms, daring to subpoena Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk to demand all church records of reportedly abusive priests. It’s such a small minority of priests who offend, and a very noble vocation is suffering.'’ The prosecutor spoke with gratitude of being ‘’a product of a Catholic education who would not be where I am now but for that education from the good nuns and priests.'’ A graduate of Elder High School, a blue-collar Catholic powerhouse where his father went and his son now goes, Mr. Allen questions whether the American church hierarchy fully grasps the fury and frustration of the laity, which he said wants something far more corrective than the message that closed the two-day meeting at the Vatican.

Here’s a brief summary of an item from Washington Post:

The prosecutor in the rural Virginia county where Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick has admitted to bankrolling a dogfighting operation plans to present “a host of bills of indictment” regarding the case to a grand jury today. Dogfighting is a crime, the mistreatment of animals is a crime, so you could take your pick, or take them all,” Poindexter said before cutting the conversation short. The Falcons plan to discipline Pro Bowl cornerback DeAngelo Hall for a sideline tantrum that followed a series of key penalties during Sunday’s loss to the Panthers, Atlanta Coach Bobby Petrino said yesterday.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The prosecutor who brought charges against Sen. Larry Craig in an airport sex sting says he told the Idaho senator that he should hire an attorney, according to court papers filed Monday. Prosecutor Christopher Renz, in a motion opposing Craig’s request to withdraw his guilty plea, wrote that he spent considerable time in a July 17 conversation telling the Idaho senator how the legal process would work if he chose to plead guilty. The defendant’s current pursuit of withdrawal of his guilty plea is reactionary, calculated and political.'’ Judy Smith, a spokeswoman for Craig’s lawyer, Billy Martin, said, “Our response to the prosecutor’s motion will be in court.'’ Craig was arrested by an undercover police officer in a sting in an airport bathroom known as a meeting place for anonymous sex.

Updated news from FOX News.

Saying the crime “shocked and outraged our community,” prosecutors announced plans to seek the death penalty against the man accused of kidnapping 5-year-old Samantha Runnion from in front of her home and killing her. “There is no question in my mind that the person who kidnapped, molested and murdered 5-year-old Samantha should face the death penalty,” Orange County District Attorney Anthony Rackauckas told a press conference. Orange County sheriff’s officials have said they are certain Avila, who worked at a plant that makes pacemakers and other medical devices, is the man who abducted the girl. It now stands at $100,000, with any additional money contingent on whether pledges made in the heat of the manhunt are fulfilled, Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jim Amormino said.

04:00 PST Los Angeles — Bill Simon, the Republican candidate for governor, criticized Gov. Gray Davis’ crime-fighting record Tuesday, even as he defended his own portrayal of his short career as a federal prosecutor. The GOP candidate’s comments were his first public response to a Chronicle story based on legal records, media reports and interviews with some former prosecutors and defense lawyers that showed Simon, at best, played a minor role in the Mafia prosecutions handled during that time by the U.S. attorney’s Southern District office in Manhattan, which employed more than 100 prosecutors. Pressed to detail his own plans for budget cuts to preserve law enforcement as the state faces a $23.6 billion deficit, Simon noted that he had produced a plan last year to deal with a deficit then estimated at $13 billion. But Simon’s role in the case, court records show, involved federal efforts to seize Vasta’s assets, including his title and interest in the Times Square Boxing Gym, where he owned the contracts of half a dozen New York boxers.

I found an article on New York Times:

In her article in The Times on Sunday, which recounted two appearances before the grand jury, the reporter, Judith Miller, wrote that she was asked numerous highly detailed questions about what Mr. Libby told her in her three conversations with him in June and July 2003, as well as about sometimes cryptic notes she took during the conversations. Miller wrote that she told the grand jury she could not remember how she came to write the name in her notes. “I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby,” Ms. Miller continued, “in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.” Miller recounted them, seemed intended by the prosecutors as a check of the truthfulness of Mr. Libby’s version of the conversations and an effort by the prosecutor to obtain Ms. Miller, according to her account, whether Mr. Libby had Mr. Cheney’s approval to speak with her, suggesting the prosecutor could be investigating a possible conspiracy to disclose Ms. Miller said she was asked if she had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby, a hint that Mr. Fitzgerald may be investigating possible violations of the espionage laws, which make it a crime to transmit classified information to a person not authorized to receive it.

(AP) - Authorities decided Wednesday not to pursue hate crime charges in the kidnapping and weeklong torture of a black woman, instead going after the suspects, who are white, on state charges that carry stiffer penalties. Six people face charges, including kidnapping, sexual assault and lying to police in the torture of Megan Williams, 20, at a remote hillside home in Big Creek. State sexual assault charges carry a penalty up to 35 years in prison. In Williams’ case, Frankie Brewster is charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and giving false information during a felony investigation. Bobby Brewster, 24, also of Big Creek, is charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and assault during the commission of a felony. Bobby Brewster is scheduled to appear before a Logan County Circuit Court judge on Monday to be arraigned on the kidnapping charge, according to court records.

Read more at San Francisco Chronicle:

Given these facts, the prosecutor has two options: subpoena the reporters to testify, or fold up his tents and go home. When there is critical, available, nonprivileged evidence of a potential federal crime, the prosecutor’s duty is to pursue that evidence. Some are questioning why the prosecutor is going after these two reporters and not Novak. These reporters are being questioned not about anything they wrote or didn’t write but about who was doing the leaking. The leak is the potential crime, and any reporters who received the leak have critical evidence, whether or not they wrote about it. Finally, critics complain that reporters are being threatened with jail for simply “doing their jobs.” The reporters have been found in contempt not for any news-gathering or reporting but for refusing to testify without a recognized legal excuse.

Here’s a peek at the latest news from FOX News:

There’s not much middle ground in the legal community when it comes to opinions of local prosecutor Mike Nifong’s most famous case. Nifong’s critics say he has abused his discretion, prejudicing the case with unethically loose talk, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge contradictions in the accuser’s statements and ignoring strong exculpatory evidence. “Few prosecutors in history have publicized their case and condemned potential defendants as egregiously as Nifong did,”wrote Johnson, a Brooklyn College constitutional history professor. Suggesting that Nifong was grasping at anything to keep his case alive, critics noted that the second dancer at the party allegedly changed her story after the prosecutor personally intervened to have her bail reduced in an old embezzlement case. “The prosecutor is the de facto law after an arrest, deciding whether to charge the suspect with committing a crime, what charge to file from a range of possibilities, whether to offer a pretrial deal, and, if so, the terms of the deal,”wrote the authors of”Harmful Error,”a 2003 study on prosecutorial misconduct by the Center for Public Integrity. Researchers found more than 2,000 cases from the previous three decades in which judges and appellate court panels cited prosecutorial misconduct as a factor when dismissing charges, reversing convictions or reducing sentences. Insisting that true prosecutorial misconduct is rare, Marquis argues the prosecutor is the only member of the legal profession whose”sole allegiance is to the truth”_ even if it means”torpedoing”his own case. “One of the luxuries of being a prosecutor is the ability to look at a case at any stage of the proceedings and say, `You know what? After an indictment has been returned, it can be tough to walk away from a case, notes the prosecutor in another high-profile rape case, Mark Hurlbert of Eagle County, Colo., who brought charges against NBA star Kobe Bryant in 2003. “We were ready to go to trial,”says Hurlbert, who adds he hasn’t seen anything yet that makes him think Nifong should drop his case or appoint a special prosecutor. Nifong, facing election in November, says he expects to go to trial next spring, and he intends to prosecute the case himself _ if he’s still in office.

Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco International, and former Tyco finance chief Mark Swartz were sentenced Monday, and indeed it was: up to up to 25 years in prison. The former Tyco executives entered the courtroom Monday with one-time WorldCom Chairman Bernard Ebbers already having been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the $11 billion accounting fraud that toppled his company (which has emerged from bankruptcy as MCI) and Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas having been sentenced to 15 years in prison for looting and fraud at his company. Twenty years ago, a similar rash of Wall Street fraud resulted in only a few honchos like Michael Milken going to prison, and spending less than two years there.

You should check out NewsMax.com:

State Republican Party leaders have called for the resignation of Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle for referring to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, as a “bully” at a recent Democratic fundraiser in Dallas, according to a report in the Washington Times. Earle and DeLay, who has been charged with no crime by Earle, sparred in a “60 Minutes” segment recently - with DeLay calling the Earle investigation “partisan” and “frivolous.”

Local and national NAACP officials said they disapprove of Saturday’s march organizers, a group based in Washington, D.C., called Black Lawyers for Justice that wants hate crime charges brought against the defendants. Malik Shabazz, co-founder of Black Lawyers for Justice and legal adviser to the Williams family, said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been slow to respond to the black community and Williams’ needs. Shabazz said his group aims to raise $10,000 through the march for Williams, whose family struggles to get by. Logan County prosecutor Brian Abraham has said state hate crime charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, could be difficult to prove because Williams had a “social relationship” with Bobby Brewster for at least several months before the suspected assault.

Go take a look at the latest from eGov monitor:

Julie Wartell about how crime mapping can help reduce crime rate, making crime mapping data publicly available, and the use of GIS technology Q1 What impact do you think crime mapping can have upon the crime rate in a specific location? Crime mapping is an important tool that can be used in several ways to reduce crime in a specific location. First, crime maps can help identify high crime areas and locations not only broadly but also specifically to identify if the locations are high during certain times of day, days of week, or type of crime within a larger category, e.g. Based on experience, and through an evaluation including a survey of users in San Diego, crime mapping has contributed not only to reducing crime but in building partnerships between the police and the public. Agencies in the U.S. who are making crime maps publicly available on the Internet do not reveal any specific information about the crime such as victim name or address. I believe that the sharing of crime data and other public sector information through mapping on the Internet is underutilized.

The chief prosecutor in the case against accused child killer Alejandro Avila dismissed concerns Tuesday that pre-trial publicity would taint the jury pool in Orange County, California. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has charged Avila with four felony counts in the kidnapping, molestation and killing of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion — charges that could carry the death penalty. Avila made his first court appearance Monday through a video hookup from the Orange County jail. Avila, who lives near the Riverside County site where the body was found, was acquitted on child molestation charges in January 2001. The Orange County prosecutor would not say that the jury acquittal in the earlier case was a failure of the judicial system.

The latest scoop from Hickory Daily Record.

GASTONIA - Jurors in the Jerry Anderson murder trial told the court they were deadlocked three times this past week. Cayer declared a mistrial Friday after jurors told him further deliberations would not result in a unanimous verdict. One juror, however, disagreed, and said he remained convinced of Anderson’s guilt. Juror Cynthia Absher said the split was 6 to 6 on the first day of deliberation. Cayer called the jurors into the courtroom and asked if anyone felt further deliberations could render a unanimous verdict. She said she was upset to the point of tears, as were other jurors, when the case ended with a hung jury, sending Jerry back to jail.

Common Dreams Common Dreams (press release) is a good read:

To be sure, Ashcroft’s major crime-control proposal, which called for harsh federal sentences for even minor gun-possession offenses, would have a disproportionate impact on minorities. Ashcroft is not only backing away from a federal role in curbing corporate greed but also planning reversals in other areas. The selection of experienced federal prosecutors like Richard Mueller to head the FBI, which Ashcroft has moved to rein in, and Michael Chertoff to lead the criminal division seems designed to avoid butting heads with critics who saw him as an extremist. The decision to try to settle the tobacco case indicates that even without overt, full-scale efforts to transform the legal landscape, Ashcroft can whittle away rights and regulations that define the fragile and partial social progress of this country in the twentieth century. As the Administration’s most prominent emblem of religious fundamentalism and laissez-faire economics, he is now–sometimes on his own, sometimes following the dictates of the White House general counsel and associates–moving the agenda on civil rights, police misconduct, abortion, sentencing, drug and gun enforcement, and corporate (non)regulation predicted by his critics. (Janet Reno appealed all such decisions.) Ashcroft initially said he would not continue the task force created by Reno to coordinate federal efforts to prevent abortion clinic violence but backed down during the confirmation process when faced with strong resistance by women’s and medical groups. Ashcroft has stated that racial profiling is “wrong” but supports legislation mandating a national study of racially motivated traffic stops only if local police departments can opt out of collecting the data–a loophole waiting to be exploited. Since the 1992 Rodney King beating, federal legislation has authorized civil suits against police departments that demonstrate a “pattern and practice” of conduct that curtails constitutional rights, paving the way for a court order or settlement that can potentially bring about longer-term change than criminal penalties for individual cops. Although Ashcroft has opened an investigation of the Cincinnati police department–where gunning down unarmed blacks long predated the recent violent protests over yet another death at the hands of police–a Justice Department official asserts that “this is not a Department of Prosecution” and pledges to “work cooperatively” with police departments. While Ashcroft is hiring eight more attorneys for the voting rights section of the civil rights division, few observers predict that, even with the US Commission on Civil Rights finding of widespread disfranchisement of black voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, DOJ will act aggressively to insure that flawed election systems and malapportionment in Congressional districts do not dilute minority votes in future elections. (The DOJ response to the commission’s recommendation that it investigate possible violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been predictably noncommittal, given that the commission’s two conservative Republican members dissented vigorously from the report’s findings.) Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, notes that the department has not become involved in any of the lawsuits alleging disfranchisement in the 2000 election, investigating only charges of voter fraud in St. Louis rather than the charge by local black leaders that voters were discriminatorily excluded. He proposes to expand a pilot project in Richmond, Virginia, “Project Exile,” in which local and federal law enforcement cooperate to prosecute local gun crimes as federal offenses with mandatory-minimum sentences of at least five years. As a supporter of states’ rights federalism and constructive engagement with errant police departments, Ashcroft might be expected to agree.

McVeigh to blowing up an Oklahoma City federal building nine years ago and played a bigger role in the crime, a prosecutor said Monday in closing arguments at Nichols’s state-court trial. Keel said it was Nichols who methodically planned the deadly bombing with McVeigh, funding the conspiracy and acquiring the bombing components that McVeigh detonated on April 19, 1995, in front of the Alfred P. The prosecution, which called 151 witnesses over 29 days, built a case similar to the federal one, alleging that McVeigh and Nichols meticulously planned the bombing for almost two years, using aliases, storage sheds and calling cards with fake IDs to cover up their actions. Nichols was not in Oklahoma City the day of the blast, and there has been testimony suggesting that Nichols had backed out of the plot. The prosecutor also pointed to testimony that showed that detonating material stolen from a quarry in Kansas — near where Nichols was living — later was found in a search of Nichols’s home.

Here’s a brief summary of an item from CNN International:

Jackson, followed by attorney Thomas Mesereau, leaves court after his acquittal. SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) — A California jury has exonerated Michael Jackson of the child molestation, conspiracy and alcohol charges that could have sent him to prison for nearly 20 years. Jackson’s family members accompanied him to the courthouse to hear the verdict and flanked him as he exited the courthouse to the cheering of supporters. Jackson’s father, Joe Jackson, stared stiffly with hands clasped as he listened to the verdicts, Dornin said. Upon hearing the findings, Jackson’s family members reached out to touch one another and to support Jackson’s mother, Katherine Jackson, Dornin said. Prosecutors alleged that, following the broadcast of the Bashir documentary in 2003, Jackson and five associates plotted to control and intimidate the accuser’s family to get them to go along with damage-control efforts, including holding them against their will at Neverland. On March 10, the first day Jackson’s accuser testified, the pop star arrived late for court as the judge threatened to revoke the singer’s $3 million bail. Prosecution witnesses included the accuser’s mother, who was on the stand for three days, and a former security guard who testified that he saw Jackson engaged in oral sex with another teenage boy.

With little fanfare and some adept bureaucratic maneuvering, a partnership between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and a select group of Justice Department prosecutors has been forged to identify and single out for prosecution the nation’s most flagrant workplace safety violators. This new approach addresses a chronic weakness in the regulatory system - the failure of federal agencies to take a coordinated approach toward corporations that repeatedly violate the same safety and environmental regulations. Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, which is charged with bringing these new prosecutions. The effort is noteworthy in an administration that has generally resisted efforts to increase penalties for safety and environmental violations. Goldsmith, assistant chief of the environmental crimes section, has led most of the OSHA training sessions, in which he describes the many ways criminal and environmental statutes can be brought to bear. OSHA with the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, the administration has created a potentially potent means of changing that dynamic. With nearly 40 prosecutors, the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department has a long record of bringing complex criminal cases against major employers. Justice Department saw a way to produce an indictment that would “tell the whole picture” of how a company could put profit ahead of all other considerations, said Mr. Uhlmann, the chief of the environmental crimes section. In December 2003, several senior managers at the New Jersey foundry were indicted on charges of conspiring to violate safety and environmental laws and repeatedly obstructing government inquiries by lying and altering accident scenes.

New York Times wrote:

WASHINGTON, June 12 The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that new evidence about a long-ago murder in rural Tennessee, including DNA evidence, raised sufficient doubt about who committed the crime to merit a new hearing in federal court for a man who has spent 20 years on the state’s death row. That awkward phrase, with its multiple negatives and oblique structure, is the test the court set in a 1995 decision on how a state prisoner who claimed innocence could receive a federal court hearing that would otherwise be barred by procedural obstacles. When an inmate comes to federal court with evidence of innocence, he continued, “the court’s function is not to make an independent factual determination about what likely occurred, but rather to assess the likely impact of the evidence on reasonable jurors.” Chief Justice Roberts said the court should have given more deference to the conclusions of the Federal District Court in Chattanooga, which held a hearing in 1996 and rejected Mr. House’s claim of innocence after considering his new evidence. In his opinion on Monday, Justice Kennedy identified three aspects of Mr. House’s case that, taken as a whole, qualified him to pass through the gateway to a habeas corpus hearing in federal district court.

And they were hoping for something in return for the immigrants: the prosecutor’s certification that they were being helpful, the first legal step toward a little-known temporary U-visa for crime victims that could let them stay and work lawfully in the United States. The prosecutor’s actions have thrown new light on a little-known aspect of federal immigration law, enacted before 9/11 to protect immigrant victims of crime and to aid law enforcement. Now lawyers for the Trade Center survivors, who thought their case would help advance the special visa process, charge that the prosecutor acted arbitrarily in deciding which of the 14 immigrants had suffered enough, undermining the law’s purpose. “Under the law, being helpful is to come forward and give information to law enforcement - it doesn’t have to be the perfect information for the prosecutor’s needs,” said Andrew Kashyap, one of the Urban Justice Center lawyers. Besides certification that a crime victim “has been helpful, is being helpful or is likely to be helpful” to an official investigating or prosecuting the crime, applicants must show that the crime caused them to suffer “substantial physical or mental abuse,” and felons are not eligible. Leslye Orloff, an expert on immigrant victims of domestic violence who spent years working on the law with its bipartisan Senate sponsors, said judging whether the physical or mental abuse from the crime was substantial enough for a U-visa should be up to immigration authorities in the Vermont unit, not a federal prosecutor. In New York, local prosecutors and the police have used certification to encourage victims of domestic violence to come forward, leaving further evaluation to trained gatekeepers at Citizenship and Immigration, she said. “If all the prosecutors take this position, lots of victims won’t get helped, and lots of perpetrators won’t get prosecuted.”

International Herald Tribune wrote:

THE HAGUE: Witnesses in the trial of Kosovo’s former prime minister have been intimidated, potentially undermining the prosecution’s case, the chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said Monday. “If I have no witnesses appearing in this court, I will be obliged to withdraw this indictment,” she said at the opening of the trial of former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and two Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj. After the 1998-99 war between the Kosovar and Serb forces, Haradinaj rose through the political ranks and served for 100 days as prime minister of Kosovo under the administration of the United Nations. But another prosecutor, David Re, acknowledged that both sides had committed crimes, pointing to Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serb leader who died while on trial for war crimes in Kosovo and other places.

Common Dreams Common Dreams (press release) is a good read:

Okay kids, ready for your end-of-the-year corporate crime quiz? Two former Justice Department officials who wrote memos on how to prosecute corporations. Teaches a class at Columbia Law School titled “The Black Letter Law of White Collar Crime.” Corporation forced into deferred prosecution, required to fund a chair of business ethics at Seton Hall Law School — the school where the prosecuting attorney graduated from. He said this about prosecuting corporations: “Ten years ago, it was — save the individuals and plead the corporation. Company and seven of its current or former executives indicted earlier this year on federal charges that they knowingly put their workers and the public in danger through exposure to vermiculite ore contaminated with asbestos from the company’s mine in Libby, Montana.

The court heard allegations that Gary McKinnon ( search ), 39, illegally accessed 97 U.S. government computers between February 2001 and March 2002, causing $700,000 in damages. McKinnon’s lawyer, Karen Todner ( search ), confirmed a published report that McKinnon was motivated by a desire to expose the ease with which a civilian could breach government computer systems and by a strong conviction that the U.S. government was concealing evidence of UFOs. Janet Boston, acting for the U.S. government, told Bow Street Magistrates’ Court that McKinnon installed unauthorized software on computers used by NASA, the Defense Department, the Army, Navy and Air Force that permitted him to “completely control the computers.” He also told the court that since McKinnon’s initial arrest, he had made no attempt to leave the country or evade the attention of authorities since being released.

As always, great info from Washington Post:

Police said Wone was spending the night at the townhouse near Dupont Circle because he had worked late and did not want to drive home to Virginia, where he lived with his wife. Police used chemicals and an artificial light to detect trace blood on the walls, floors, door frame and sofa bed near where Wone’s body was found, according to the affidavit. Police took a computer from Price’s office, looking for e-mails to and from Wone, the document says. Three men, including Price, were at the house when Wone was killed. Shortly after the killing, one of the three men told police that an intruder had broken in through the back door and killed Wone, according to the affidavit. Morris said the three men told police they did not see an intruder or hear Wone being killed.

(AP) Like WorldCom’s Scott Sullivan, former Qwest Communications finance chief Robin Szeliga could play a crucial role in the government’s 3-year-old effort to punish anyone involved in the company’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Szeliga agreed last week to cooperate with federal prosecutors who have had poor luck so far in successfully prosecuting former Qwest managers. In white-collar crime cases, prosecutors often try to file charges against lower-level managers with the ultimate goal of gaining their cooperation against top executives, said Tony Leffert, a Denver attorney and former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s fraud section. He is expected to be a key witness in the conspiracy and fraud trials of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, former President Jeffrey Skilling and former chief accounting officer Richard Causey. In a civil lawsuit filed by the SEC in March, Szeliga was accused of helping Nacchio and former CFO Robert Woodruff implement massive financial fraud. Szeliga initially was a witness during probes into Qwest, testifying before a House subcommittee and later at the conspiracy and fraud trial of four former midlevel Qwest managers.

I found an article on USA Today:

In what could be a preview of securities fraud cases to come, a jury in Manhattan federal court convicted a former CEO of pumping up his company’s earnings so a 1998 IPO would succeed. In this case, New York prosecutors Andrew Ceresney and Joshua Klein convinced the jury not only of the existence of fraud at American Banknote but that the former CEO was behind it. Even worse, securities fraud cases were difficult to present to juries because they often involved the abuse of arcane accounting standards.

Federal prosecutors, preparing to expand their case against Enron Corp. next month, are running into resistance from a small group of senior executives who occupied key positions at or near the top of the Houston energy company, people close to the investigation said. Causey, Enron Corp.’s former chief accounting officer, is not cooperating with prosecutors seeking his testimony against the company’s former chief executive, Jeffrey K. But Causey — who approved the huge secretive financial deals that helped topple Enron — maintains that he did nothing wrong and will defend himself if he is indicted, which is expected to happen by the middle of January, lawyers in the case said. If prosecutors get no such help from key lieutenants, they are prepared to make a more circumstantial case that accounting fraud was so widespread that Enron’s top executives had to have known about it, lawyers said. For example, sources said, the task force is looking into whether Enron used improper accounting methods to inflate the value of pipeline and power plant assets, as a report by Enron’s interim chief executive indicated last April. Skilling presented those projections to securities analysts at a January 2001 conference and the analysts’ excited response gave Enron stock a strong if temporary boost while some executives were selling millions of dollars worth of Enron shares. Witnesses have told the grand jury that Rice’s team — using a similar projection — helped Enron “manufacture” $110 million in projected earnings from the broadband venture that were included in financial statements in 2000 and 2001, sources in the case said.

Here’s an in depth look: Times Online:

Quoting Winston Churchill and the Bible, Kenneth Lay, former chairman of Enron, told the audience a wave of truth would exonerate his reputation and that of the company he founded. Enron was a real company, an honest company, a company that had vision and values. Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive, will face charges that they misled employees and investors before the collapse of Enron, once one of the worlds most admired companies. If asked, I am certain that the Enron Task Force would say they have taken so much time because the crimes at Enron are so complicated, he said. Lay was the driving force behind the creation of Enron, but it was Skilling who pushed the company to its dizzy heights as it diversified into ever more complex and risky business ventures. In his recent speech Lay claimed Enron was still a strong company in the fourth quarter of 2001 and that a financial panic was responsible for the companys collapse. If Causey can say that he explained to Lay just how desperate their situation was, Lay cannot as optimistically tell the jury that everything was fine. If Causey says he told Lay how close the company was to the edge, it could prove a devastating blow.

ABC News is a good read:

This new probe comes after a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the rapper’s mother, Voletta Wallace, and other relatives, who’ve said that Los Angeles police officers were involved in the killing. A leading theory of investigators, according to gang members who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, is that Wallace was killed by a member of Compton’s Southside Crips gang as part of an East Coast vs. Another theory alleges that Marion “Suge” Knight, the owner of Death Row Records — Shakur’s record label at the time — hired a Bloods gang member to kill Wallace in retaliation for his client’s death, unnamed law enforcement sources told the L.A.

WASHINGTON - Pledging conciliation with Congress, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told senators yesterday that he would accept modifications to the USA Patriot Act, but he urged renewal of major provisions to fight terrorism effectively. Gonzales also acknowledged for the first time that FBI agents used provisions that allow for covert searches of homes, without conventional search warrants, during a 2004 investigation of a Portland attorney who was jailed wrongly for two weeks on suspicion of involvement in the Madrid train bombings. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., closely questioned Gonzales and said he would like to tighten some of the “very broad language” that allows “sneak and peek” searches in which a person isn’t told about a search until days or weeks later.

Just read an article from New York Times:

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have asked a federal judge to bar the public from the courtroom next week when an undercover police officer testifies in a drug trial, saying that revealing his identity could endanger him. Mr. Schatz said in an interview that closing the courtroom would ‘’add a level of danger and concern to a routine drug case that could infect the procedure.'’ ‘’Even with good intentions,'’ he said, ‘’the message is being sent that this case involves danger, that this case is serious, that ‘you are potentially at risk, jurors.’ In their letter to the judge, the prosecutors, Rosemary Nidiry and Jonathan Kolodner, suggested that the jury need not be told that the courtroom was being closed.

Police investigating the murder of 11-year old Rhys Jones in Liverpool last night arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with his death. It followed a day of mounting frustration among police officers investigating the murder, who expressed disappointment at the lack of response to repeated appeals for information about the killer, in spite of a powerful TV appeal by the murdered child’s parents. Merseyside police put on a large show of strength around the murder scene, a row of shops between the Fir Tree pub and Croxteth Park health centre. Ms Gallan said that the hunt for evidence was intense, but officers are still looking for the murder weapon, which is believed to be a powerful handgun. One witness has told police that the killer stopped his bike and sat astride it while aiming at Rhys and then firing two more shots from “a big handgun”.

More news from San Francisco Chronicle:

After listening to four months of testimony, jurors returned guilty verdicts Friday on charges of murder, conspiracy and racketeering in a federal case aimed at dismantling the violent white supremacist gang. Mills, Bingham and Hevle also were convicted of a count of murder for the killing of Arva Lee Ray, a prisoner slain at the Lompoc, Calif., penitentiary in 1989. Mills and Bingham were acquitted of a count of murder for the death of inmate William McKinney, a former Aryan Brotherhood member who was struck with a weight bar at Lompoc in 1993. Carter, the jury of eight men and four women heard testimony from a parade of killers, former gang members and jailhouse informants about a series of murders and attempted murders over three decades. Some testified they had been involved in murder plots hatched by the gang to kill those who violated its rules. Most of the killings were covered under racketeering law - questions referred to “acts involving murder” - rather than as specific murder counts. Mills, 57, and Bingham, 58, were each accused of two counts of murder, and multiple other murders and attempted murders as elements of racketeering. Hevle, 54, faced one count of murder and other acts involving murder as elements of racketeering.

Go take a look at the latest from BusinessWeek:

Former Enron Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling is due to be sentenced on Oct. 23. Federal prosecutors are demanding that Skilling pay $183 million that they claim he and former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay earned from their crimes. Petrocelli says that number may be as little as $4 million and in any case he’s owed an additional $30 million for Skilling’s defense. At the center of the fight is $55 million of Skilling’s assets, which the government either froze or forced Skilling to put up as a bond shortly after his indictment. Petrocelli says his Los Angeles-based firm, O’Melveny & Myers, is owed $30 million more, bringing the grand total to $70 million, an amount that leaves other attorneys astonished.