Crimes and Trials News

ELDORADO, Texas - Texas grand jury issues three new indictments against members of polygamist sect.

TYLER, Texas - An auto body shop worker was convicted and swiftly sentenced to life in prison Thursday for grooming children as young as 5 to perform in sex shows at a small-town swingers club.

TAMPA, Fla. - A jury in Florida has convicted a sex offender of second-degree murder in the death of a teenage girl in 2005.

NEW ORLEANS - A former police officer accused of repeatedly jolting a handcuffed man with a Taser before he died pleaded not guilty Thursday to a manslaughter charge.

BOSTON - The reputed underboss of the New England mafia, awaiting trial on bribery charges, is asking a federal judge to release him from home confinement for two hours a day so he can exercise.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Press-shy billionaire Kirk Kerkorian made a rare public appearance Wednesday in a Los Angeles courtroom to testify in the federal wiretapping trial of his longtime friend, attorney Terry Christensen.

EDINBURG, Texas - Prosecutors are trying to decide how to jail and bring to court a nearly half-ton, bedridden woman accused of killing her 2-year-old nephew.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A Texas woman dubbed the "ponytail bandit" has pleaded guilty in California to robbing banks in three states.

ELDORADO, Texas - A grand jury issued three new felony indictments Thursday against members of a polygamist sect raided here in April.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - A supervisor arrested after an immigration raid at a large meatpacking plant pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to hire illegal immigrants and aiding and abetting their hiring.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. firm pleaded guilty to illegally providing a Chinese national with data used in developing an unmanned aerial weapons system, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

BOSTON - A judge who won a $2 million libel award from the Boston Herald, then sent threatening letters to its publisher, will step down from the bench, a court said Wednesday.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday in favor of a Tennessee school system that banned the Confederate battle flag because of concerns the symbol could inflame racial tensions at a high school.

LOS ANGELES - A man convicted of causing a deadly commuter rail crash that he blamed on an attempt to commit suicide was sentenced Wednesday to 11 consecutive life terms by a judge who denounced him as a remorseless killer.

BOISE, Idaho - A 9-year-old boy who was tortured and killed by a convicted pedophile in front of his younger sister might have been able to survive a shot to the abdomen had he been taken to a hospital, a doctor told a jury that will decide whether the man gets the death penalty.

LAS VEGAS - O.J. Simpson's only remaining co-defendant made a last-ditch pitch Wednesday to persuade a judge to postpone the start of their armed robbery and kidnapping trial.

LOS ANGELES - Former Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler has pleaded not guilty to drug charges and will remain in rehab for at least the next month.

JONESBORO, Ark. - It took a jury 13 days to convict and sentence Damien Echols to death for the 1993 slayings of three second-graders.

STAMFORD, Conn. - The man dubbed the "Dinnertime Bandit" was convicted Wednesday of robbing upscale homes in the evening, while residents were home and had turned off their alarms.

MIAMI - A man who authorities said kept an arsenal of weaponry and military gear pleaded not guilty Wednesday to threatening to assassinate both President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

LOS ANGELES, (AFP) - The trial of a former US Marine accused of killing two Iraqi detainees during fighting in Fallujah four years ago began with jury selection in the landmark case, justice officials said.

LOS ANGELES - "Girls Gone Wild" entrepreneur Joe Francis wants a California court to rescind a settlement he claims a federal judge coerced him into signing.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - The five men accused of plotting an attack on soldiers at Fort Dix want their trial postponed because a key expert witness, an Army reservist, is being called to active duty in Iraq.

LOS ANGELES - Authorities say a California sheriff's deputy and an attorney were among 55 men charged with possessing child pornography after an eight-month investigation.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Three students from the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology who found a way to hack into Boston's transit system to get free rides can talk publicly about the security flaw, a court ruled on Tuesday in a decision hailed as a victory for academic freedom.

PICKENS, S.C. - A convicted sex offender admitted Tuesday that he strangled a 20-year-old South Carolina college student two years ago, leaving her body in her off-campus apartment with her bikini top still wrapped around her neck.

GREENVILLE, S.C. - A Montana woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing the identity of a missing South Carolina woman to attend an Ivy League school in what her lawyer called a bid to escape a painful past.

BOSTON - A retired Massachusetts lawyer has been found guilty of possessing six valuable paintings that had been stolen from a home in 1978.

LOS ANGELES - A defense attorney for the Missouri woman charged in a MySpace hoax that allegedly led to a 13-year-old girl's suicide argued in court papers that prosecutors are bending a cyber crime statute to prosecute his client.