| March 5, 2009 | - A man accused of killing his girlfriend was shot inside a California
courtroom after he repeatedly stabbed the judge presiding over his case.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 23, 2007 | - In a motion filed by the Justice Department, the Bush Administration argued that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, even though the office is listed as one of six presidential entities subject to FOIA on the White House website.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 0, 2007 | - The U.S. Justice Department released documents showing that Dr. Ayad Allawi, Maliki's chief opponent and the man most likely to replace him as prime minister, is paying the G.O.P. firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers $300,000 to lobby on his behalf.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| July 25, 2007 | -
Bulgarian medics who allegedly infected 426 Libyan children with HIV were pardoned and released by their home government.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| February 26, 2007 | - Jurists in The Hague ruled that a genocide occurred when Bosnian Serbs massacred Bosnian Muslims at Srebrinca in 1995. Serbia, said the court, was responsible for not preventing the genocide—but not directly responsible for the genocide itself—and is thus absolved of any obligation to pay reparations.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 29, 2006 | - A federal judge ruled that American paper currency discriminates against blind people.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 24, 2006 | - The American Association of Trial Attorneys announced it would change its name to the American Association for Justice.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 11, 2006 | - The U.S. Department of Justice accused blacks of suppressing the white vote in Mississippi.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 2, 2006 | - A vigilante mob in North Carolina beat and killed the wrong man.
| Source:
AP via CNN
|
| August 29, 2006 | - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Iraq to encourage “the rule of law.”
| Source 1:
NPR
Source 2:
icasualties.org
Source 3:
Reuters
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
Reuters
Source 6:
Sapa-AP via Independent Online
Source 7:
Reuters
Source 8:
Reuters
Source 9:
AP via Houston Chronicle
|
| July 7, 2006 | - Three people were arrested for plotting to sell Coca-Cola secrets to PepsiCo.
| Source:
Voice of America
|
| July 7, 2006 | - An Italian judge ruled that former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi should stand trial for fraud.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 6, 2006 | -
Prosecutors declined to press charges against Rush Limbaugh for possession of Viagra.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 2, 2006 | - John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, was sentenced to 6 consecutive life sentences.
| Source:
Baltimore Sun
|
| May 30, 2006 | - The European Court of Justice ruled that E.U. airlines are not required to provide passenger data to the United States.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 19, 2006 | - While acknowledging that Khaled al-Masri "deserves a remedy" for allegedly being tortured by the CIA, a federal judge dismissed al-Masri's case because allowing it to proceed would expose government secrets.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
Iraqi
police
shot a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Khalil in the head for being a gay
prostitute.
| Source:
Gay.com
|
| April 25, 2006 | - The United States announced that it would free 141 of the 490 "enemy combatants" at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba because they do not threaten U.S. security after all.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| April 5, 2006 | - The case against Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, an Iraqi cameraman for CBS who was arrested in April 2005 after filming the wreckage of a car bomb, was finally dismissed for lack of evidence.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| March 2, 2006 | -
Saddam Hussein told a court that, after a 1982 attempt to assassinate him failed in Dujail, north of Baghdad, he ordered trials for 148 Iraqis and had the local orchards razed. Hussein insisted that his actions were lawful; all of those tried were later executed or tortured to death.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 30, 2006 | - A new judge took over the Saddam Hussein trial and had Hussein and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim removed from the courtroom after Hussein began shouting and Ibrahim called the court "a bastard."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 25, 2006 | - With support from the ACLU, a boy in New Jersey won the right to wear a skirt to school; the boy wears the skirt to protest the school's policy banning shorts.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| January 18, 2006 | - A two-year, $939,233 study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department found that inmates who claim to have been raped in prison are usually lying. In prison, the study explained, sexual pressure is not seen as coercion; rather, "sexual pressure ushers, guides, or shepherds the process of sexual awakening."
| Source:
Chron.com
|
| November 28, 2005 | -
Saddam Hussein, on trial with seven other defendants for killing civilians in 1982, complained to a judge about being denied a pen and paper.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 4, 2005 | - I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| November 3, 2005 | - The mayor of Las Vegas called for vandals who deface freeways to have their thumbs cut off on TV. “They would get a trial first,” he offered.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 24, 2005 | - In the United States 2.3 million people were in prison.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| October 20, 2005 | - An Oklahoma man, sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in an armed robbery, asked for three more years of prison time to match Larry Bird's jersey number, 33.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| August 14, 2005 | - In Kansas Dennis Rader, the B.T.K. serial killer, was sentenced to ten consecutive life sentences; he will be eligible for parole in 2180. Rader believed that his victims would serve as his slaves in the afterlife, performing roles like "sex toy and boy servant."
| Source:
The Wichita Eagle
|
| August 5, 2005 | - An Israeli soldier was lynched after he shot and killed four Israeli Arabs.
| Source:
AFP
|
| July 19, 2005 | - Heidi Fleiss was planning to open a brothel in Nevada. “I'm a perfect example of the fact that prison does work,” she said. “I have served my time, now will do my crime legally.”
| Source:
MSNBC Gossip
|
| June 25, 2005 | - At the U.S. Justice Department, the $8,000 modesty curtains used to cover the bareness of the statues of Majesty of Justice and Spirit of Justice were removed, once again exposing an aluminum nipple.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 27, 2005 | - In North Carolina a man was released from prison after serving thirty-five years of his life sentence for stealing a $140 TV set.
| Source:
WRAL.com
|
| April 30, 2005 | - The state court of Florida blocked a thirteen-year-old girl from having an abortion. “Why can't I make my own decision?” the girl asked a judge. “I don't know,” the judge answered.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Sun-Sentinel.com
|
| April 29, 2005 | - In South Africa, two men were convicted of feeding a coworker to lions.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 23, 2005 | - Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and his top three aides were cleared of all wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib case.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 8, 2005 | -
Republicans held a conference to discuss ways to reform the federal judiciary, which they say has “run amok.” Senator Tom Coburn's chief of staff said that “mass impeachment” of judges might be necessary, and Tom DeLay, who is under investigation for illegal fundraising, gave a pre-recorded speech entitled “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 30, 2005 | - A federal judge refused to let the Bush Administration, which opposes torture, send prisoners from Guantánamo Bay to other prisons abroad without granting the prisoners access to the courts.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 26, 2005 | - A North Carolina man was arrested for trying to have both Terri Schiavo's husband and the judge who denied the request to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube killed.
| Source:
Citizen-Times.com
|
| March 20, 2005 | - The U.S. Senate subpoenaed Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1991, to testify before the Health, Education, and Labor Committee. The subpoena was intended to make it impossible for Schiavo to be taken off the feeding tube that allows her to survive; the order, however, was defied by a Florida judge, and the feeding tube was removed. Schiavo then began to die of dehydration. The House and Senate held emergency sessions in order to pass a bill that would transfer the case from state court to federal court. The bill was then signed by President George W. Bush, who had flown in from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the occasion.
| Source:
Wikipedia
|
| March 15, 2005 | - Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy, and seven counts of filing false reports.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and several other chemical companies on behalf of 4 million Vietnamese who were poisoned by the 80 million liters of Agent Orange sprayed during the Vietnam War. The judge said that there was no clear link between Agent Orange and the illnesses of the Vietnamese plaintiffs, even though the U.S. government currently pays compensation to ten thousand U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War impaired by Agent Orange.
| Source:
VOA
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A falling tree crushed the legs of Edgar Killen, a Mississippi
Baptist minister and Ku Klux Klansman currently facing trial for the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 5, 2005 | -
Martha Stewart was released from prison. While incarcerated Stewart's wealth increased $700 million, and her cappuccino
machine broke.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| February 17, 2005 | - The House approved a measure to limit class-action lawsuits, redirecting large lawsuits from state to federal courts.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| February 2, 2005 | -
Malaysia's Home Ministry gave illegal immigrants one last chance to leave the country before being whipped.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 1, 2005 | - A U.S. judge ruled that foreigners held in Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detainment.
| Source:
The Scotsman
|
| February 1, 2005 | - The selection of a jury of Michael Jackson's peers began.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 15, 2005 | -
Rwanda said that it will attempt to try one-eighth of its population for genocide. Trials will be held in small village courts, called gacacas.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 12, 2005 | - E! Television and Britain's BSkyB announced plans to broadcast 30-minute dramatizations of Michael Jackson's child
molestation
trial, based on the testimony from the previous day, in order to get around a ban on cameras in the courtroom.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 7, 2005 | - The Vietnamese government executed 450 ducks.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 6, 2005 | - Then his computer crashed.
| Source:
VNUnet.com
|
| January 3, 2005 | - Senator Richard Lugar called the lifetime detention of untried terrorism suspects a "bad idea,"
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| December 29, 2004 | - Six Navy Seals and two of their wives sued the Associated Press for publishing photographs of the men posing and grinning amid hooded prisoners; a reporter found the photos after one of the wives posted them on smugmug.com, a website she had thought was secure.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 29, 2004 | - In Dubai, an Italian man was fined for hugging and kissing a woman in public.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| December 19, 2004 | - The Iraqi Special Tribune opened hearings into the crimes of prominent former Baath government officials, most notably Hassan Al-Majeed, aka "Chemical Ali." Evidence against him included a tape on which he boasted that if any Kurd defied him, he would "blow him away, cut him open like a cucumber," and bury him with a bulldozer.
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| December 17, 2004 | - The supreme court of Kansas declared that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional but then issued a stay of its own ruling.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 16, 2004 | - A Washington State man received a three-year prison sentence for attempting to circumcise his eight-year-old son,
| Source:
The Columbian
|
| December 13, 2004 | -
Augusto Pinochet was indicted and placed under house arrest by a Chilean court for the abduction of nine dissidents and the murder of one of them during his dictatorship.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2004 | - Congress approved a measure that will permit soldiers and their families to seek reimbursement for combat equipment, such as body armor, that they have purchased with their own money.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2004 | - The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the world's whales had no standing to sue President Bush over the Navy's use of sonar equipment that kills them.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 4, 2004 | - A federal judge ordered the government to notify Indian land owners before it sells their property; the ruling was part of a lawsuit in which Indians claim that the U.S. government has cheated them out of $137 billion in royalties from the use of their lands.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 23, 2004 | - Charges were also dropped against Ahmad al Halabi, a Syrian-American airman who was accused of spying at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 26, 2004 | - Military trials were underway at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 19, 2004 | - A court in southern Darfur sentenced ten Janjaweed fighters to have their left hands and right feet amputated; the Sudanese ambassador in London denied that his government was supporting the militias.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 13, 2004 | - A British man was jailed for shooting off his testicles.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 8, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced the creation of military review panels to allow prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to challenge their detentions, though they will not be permitted to have lawyers present, nor will the hearings be public; critics said that the Pentagon's plan falls short of the standard set by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the prisoners have a right to an independent hearing.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 8, 2004 | - Kenneth Lay, the former chairman and CEO of Enron, was finally indicted.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 3, 2004 | - Four American soldiers were charged with fatally pushing an Iraqi off a bridge in January for breaking a curfew.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2004 | - Court proceedings began at "Camp Victory," the American base near Baghdad, against Saddam Hussein, who identified himself as the current president of Iraq, and eleven members of his administration. "You know that this is all a theater by Bush, to help him win his election," Hussein observed. He was read criminal charges covering thirty years, including the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja, which he recalled hearing about "on the radio." The U.S. said that Hussein had not provided any useful information while in custody, though he explained that he had his army invade Kuwait in 1990 to keep them busy.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 29, 2004 | - Observing that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Supreme Court ruled that both foreign prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay and so-called enemy combatants held in the United States can use the American legal system to challenge their detention.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 1, 2004 | - A judge in California ruled that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act is unconstitutional.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 31, 2004 | - Armin Meiwes, the famous German cannibal, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 29, 2004 | - A Chilean court stripped former dictator Augusto Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 18, 2004 | -
Iraqi torture victims were beginning to file lawsuits against the U.S. seeking damages.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 11, 2004 | - The British government proposed jailing people for merely associating with terror suspects.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| April 9, 2004 | - Florida police arrested a nine-year-old girl for stealing a black-and-white bunny rabbit named Oreo.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 8, 2004 | - A military lawyer for a Guantánamo Bay prisoner filed a civil lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the president's military tribunals.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 1, 2004 | - The International Court of Justice ruled that U.S. courts must review the death sentences of 51 Mexican citizens whose rights under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations were violated; although international treaties are "the supreme law of the land," according to the U.S. Constitution, Governor Rick Perry declared that "the International Court of Justice does not have jurisdiction in Texas."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 14, 2004 | - The British government was fighting in court for the right to charge people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes for the cost of keeping them in jail.
| Source:
Sunday Herald
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The United States released five British citizens from the camps in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Britain held the men for less than a day before releasing them.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 6, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart revealed that she was "distressed" to have been convicted for lying about an improper stock trade that saved her about $45,000. Stewart's television show was withdrawn by WCBS, and there was speculation that her company might not be able to survive its association with a convicted felon.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | - Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was seized in Chicago in June 2002 and declared an enemy combatant, met with his lawyers for the very first time.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
California's supreme court ruled that a Catholic charity must cover birth control in its employee health coverage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, was sentenced to death, eight years after his trial began.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 26, 2004 | -
Pentagon officials said that Guantánamo detainees who are found innocent might still be kept in detention indefinitely if they are deemed a security risk.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 25, 2004 | - Two Guantánamo prisoners were formally charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. Amnesty International and other human rights groups were told that they will not be permitted to attend the military tribunals, because there just aren't enough seats.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 21, 2004 | - A federal judge declined to ban homosexual marriages in San Francisco because opponents had failed to show that the weddings were causing "immediate harm."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 17, 2004 | -
Rwanda's prosecutor general said that thousands of genocide suspects would be released from prison if they simply confessed their crimes and begged forgiveness.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 16, 2004 | - Police chiefs from around the country were trying to defeat a Senate bill that would give gunmakers and dealers immunity from lawsuits.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 2, 2004 | -
Yasir Arafat expressed disbelief at Ariel Sharon's plan to remove 17 settlements from Gaza, right-wing politicians were outraged, and one political ally suggested that the prime minister was merely trying to distract attention from corruption scandals that could result in his indictment.
| Source:
Guardian, Ha'aretz
|
| January 29, 2004 | - A federal judge tried for the third time to impose punitive damages on the Exxon Mobil Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill fifteen years ago; Exxon Mobil said it would appeal the $4.5 billion judgment.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 27, 2004 | - A federal judge struck down as unconstitutionally vague the provision of the USA Patriot Act that bans giving "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 20, 2004 | - Thousands of people marched in Basra, Najaf, and Kerbala demanding that Saddam Hussein be turned over to the Iraqi people to stand trial.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 19, 2004 | - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is also the target of a corruption investigation, said that Israel might decide to change the route of the wall it is building around the West Bank but not because of any demands made by Palestinians, the United Nations, or the International Court of Justice.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 16, 2004 | - Five military lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in setting up military tribunals for their clients and the other detainees. "Under this monarchical regime," they wrote, "those who fall into the black hole may not contest the jurisdiction, competency or even the constitutionality of the military tribunals."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 16, 2004 | - One hundred seventy-five members of the British
parliament, including five former law lords, also filed a brief attacking the administration's detainment policy. "The exercise of executive power without the possibility of judicial review," they wrote, "jeopardizes the keystone of our existence as nations, namely the rule of law."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 14, 2004 | -
Italy's constitutional court struck down a law that gave Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi immunity from prosecution, a ruling that will revive the corruption charges the law was written to nullify.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 2, 2004 | - A French magistrate was thinking about indicting the vice president in a bribery case involving a gas liquefication factory built by Halliburton in Nigeria.
| Source:
Nation
|
| January 1, 2004 | - Six men were indicted for burning a cross in the yard of a Georgia woman who was dating a biracial man.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 30, 2003 | - Eight aides to President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea were indicted for illegal fund-raising.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Parmalat, the Italian dairy company, went bankrupt and its founder, Calisto Tanzi, was arrested on suspicion of fraud.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| December 28, 2003 | -
Michael Jackson said that when he was a boy he slept with grown men many times, and he complained that the police had locked him in a room that had "doo doo" all over the walls.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| December 24, 2003 | - Princess Anne's English bull terrier Dotty mauled Pharos, Queen Elizabeth's favorite corgi, which had to be put down as a result; the princess was convicted last year under the Dangerous Dogs Act after Dotty attacked two children in a park.
| Source:
BBC
|
| December 19, 2003 | - A federal appeals court ordered President Bush to release Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested last year in Chicago and has been held since then as an enemy combatant. The court ruled that "the president, acting alone, possesses no inherent constitutional authority to detain American citizens seized within the United States, away from the zone of combat, as enemy combatants."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 18, 2003 | - American officials said that the CIA might not be able to use its usual interrogation techniques on Saddam Hussein, because Hussein, unlike many Al Qaeda operatives, will probably stand trial for his crimes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 17, 2003 | - A federal district judge overturned the Bush Administration's decision to discard the Clinton Administration's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and said that the Bush decision was arbitrary and "politically driven."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | - A Colorado woman was jailed for falsely claiming that her son is a genius.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | - Three Rwandan journalists were convicted by an international court in Tanzania for inciting the 1994 genocide on the radio and in print.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 3, 2003 | - Eighteen Rwandan Hutus were given prison sentences for orchestrating the slaughter of 20,000 Tutsis who were hiding in a church complex during the 1994 genocide.
| Source:
AllAfrica.com
|
| November 26, 2003 | - The Recording Industry Association of America was seeking a permanent exemption to antitrust lawsuits.
| Source:
The Register
|
| November 21, 2003 | - President Bush was asked to comment on the contradiction between "all [his] talk of freedom, justice and tolerance" and the treatment of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. "Justice is being done," he replied. "These are illegal noncombatants."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 19, 2003 | - The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that homosexuals have the right to get married.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 31, 2003 | - A gang of Catholic schoolgirls chased down and pummeled a flasher in Philadelphia.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 24, 2003 | - Lightning struck the actor who plays Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's current film project, "The Passion of Christ," during a shoot in Italy.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 12, 2003 | - American soldiers bulldozed ancient groves of date, orange, and lemon trees in central Iraq because, the soldiers said, the farmers know who is in the resistance but refuse to tell.
| Source:
Independent
|
| October 11, 2003 | - Federal prosecutors indicted Greenpeace, under an obscure 1872 law designed to prevent "sailor mongers" from preying on returning seamen, for authorizing a protest in which two activists boarded a cargo ship and unfurled a banner. "Never before," said the director of Greenpeace USA, "has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organization for the free speech activities of its supporters."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2003 | - The FBI doubled the number of agents assigned to investigate the White House.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2003 | - A shoplifter in Amsterdam was kicked to death by supermarket employees.
| Source:
Scotsman.com
|
| October 2, 2003 | - A two-year-old Iraqi girl was shot dead in her home by American forces after a roadside bomb went off next to a military convoy. "If we determine there were deaths and/or injuries to innocent civilians as a result of U.S. forces responding to an attack," said Major Anthony Aguto, "we will compensate the family with three years of standard Iraqi salary." The grandfather of the dead girl said they didn't want the money: "I submit my complaint only to God."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 29, 2003 | - It was reported that the federal government is aggressively using antiterrorism laws to prosecute ordinary criminals.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 25, 2003 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft instructed federal prosecutors to stop making plea bargains and go for the "most serious, readily provable offense."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 13, 2003 | - Eight Israelis who were being investigated for terrorist attacks on Palestinians were released from custody,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - Comedian Tommy Chong was sentenced to nine months in prison for selling bongs over the Internet.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| September 5, 2003 | - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy said that judges are lunatics and are anthropologically different from other people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 4, 2003 | - A federal appeals court blocked the FCC's new rules expanding the freedom of media monopolies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - Paul J.
Hill, a Christian who murdered an abortion doctor in Pensacola, Florida, was executed by lethal injection.
Hill said that he was looking forward to getting his reward in heaven.
| Source:
New York Times, New York Post
|
| September 2, 2003 | - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced a settlement with energy companies that benefited from market manipulation in the California
energy crisis two years ago.
The companies agreed to pay about $1 million in fines, or about 3 cents for every Californian, though the energy scam cost the state $8.9 billion, or $250 per citizen.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 26, 2003 | - The body of Foday Sankoh, the late rebel leader of Sierra Leone, whose men specialized in mutilating civilians with machetes, was taken from his grave.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 24, 2003 | - John Geoghan, a defrocked pedophile priest, was strangled to death in prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 19, 2003 | - Enaam Arnaout, the former head of the Benevolence International Foundation, a Muslim charity, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraudulently funneling donations to terrorists.
Although he pleaded guilty, Arnaout declared his innocence and said that he had been kidnapped by the government.
"I came to this country to enjoy freedom and justice," he said.
"I came to have a peaceful life."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 15, 2003 | - It was reported that a Marine Corps lance corporal was convicted of using a military credit card to buy a car, a motorcycle, furniture, and a breast lift.
| Source:
ABCNews.com
|
| August 7, 2003 | -
Thailand announced that it will start using lethal injection to execute prisoners instead of shooting them with a machine gun while they hold a stick of incense and a lotus blossom.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| August 1, 2003 | - The State Department agreed to pay $30 million to the Iraqi who snitched out Uday and Qusay Hussein.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
|
| August 1, 2003 | - Swedish prison guards were protesting the cushy prison conditions of Biljana Plavsic, the former Serb president serving a war-crimes sentence in Sweden.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 25, 2003 | - A federal judge in Colorado sentenced three nuns to two and a half years in prison for damaging a nuclear-missile silo during an antiwar protest.
| Source:
AP
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| July 22, 2003 | - Officials in England unveiled a new system of "restorative justice," in which criminals may avoid court by apologizing to their victims.
| Source:
Reuters
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| March 11, 2003 | -
The United States Supreme Court ruled that it is not cruel and unusual punishment to put a man in prison for 50 years for stealing a couple of videotapes for his children.
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| January 28, 2003 | -
A Virginia man who was trying to beat his dog to death with a shotgun accidentally shot himself to death.
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| January 14, 2003 | -
In Nigeria, an Islamic court ordered that a man who cut off his wife's leg because he believed she was cheating on him must have his own leg cut off without anesthesia.
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| October 15, 2002 | -
Manhattan's district attorney said that the five teenage boys who were convicted in the 1989 Central Park jogger case were probably not involved in the attack.
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| June 25, 2002 | -
The Supreme Court of the United States decided that it was no longer okay to execute retarded people, because a “national consensus” has emerged that such judicial killings are cruel and unusual punishment and are thus, in light of “evolving standards of decency,” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
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| June 4, 2002 | - The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by the state of Texas in the matter of Calvin Jerold Burdine, who was convicted of murdering his gay lover and was sentenced to die after his court-appointed lawyer slept through the trial; Texas officials, who had argued that having an unconscious lawyer did nothing to affect the fairness of his trial, must now retry Burdine or let him go.
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| May 14, 2002 | -
The shrunken head of an Indian woman that was stolen from the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas, was found in a bag on the side of a road. “She looks all right,” said the local police chief. “They're just tickled to death that nobody tore her up. We're still going to investigate it, and hopefully we can get somebody in jail.”
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| May 14, 2002 | -
Jennifer Portnick, a 240-pound aerobics instructor, reached a settlement with Jazzercize Inc. after she brought a complaint against the company under San Francisco's “fat and short” law for rejecting her because of her size. Jazzercize will no longer require its instructors to maintain a “fit appearance.”
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| February 12, 2002 | -
A federal appeals court in California declared that sentencing shoplifters to life in prison under the state's “three strikes” law was cruel and unusual punishment.
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| December 18, 2001 | - Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting and illegal drug possession.
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| December 18, 2001 | -
Greece dropped spy charges against a group of British tourists who enjoy “plane spotting.” Federal officials arrested 35 people for smuggling cocaine using infants rented from poor families in Chicago.
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| December 18, 2001 | - The artist Martin Creed won Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for exhibiting a room empty except for a few flickering lights; another artist, annoyed that a gimmick had again taken the prize, threw two eggs at the installation and was arrested.
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| December 18, 2001 | - Kamaiel van Roussum, a Dutch construction-site supervisor working in Ghana, was arrested for defecating in a bucket used by his workers for drinking water.
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| December 11, 2001 | - Clayton Lee Waagner, who was arrested for mailing hundreds of anthrax hoax letters to abortion clinics, said he had nothing against John Ashcroft: “I understand he's anti-abortion also. He's a good man.”
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| December 11, 2001 | - In Sweden, four teenagers were convicted of treason for hitting the king in the face with strawberry cream cake.
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| December 11, 2001 | -
Moscow
police
arrested seven men trying to sell more than two pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
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| December 4, 2001 | -
Yasir Arafat declared a state of emergency and arrested 110 suspected Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
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| December 4, 2001 | - A former assistant director called Ashcroft's tactics “ridiculous” and “the Perry Mason School of Law Enforcement.” Robert Durst, a fugitive millionaire from New York, was arrested in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, after he was caught shoplifting a Band-Aid for a cut under his nose, a newspaper, and a chicken salad hero with roasted peppers.
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| December 4, 2001 | - Greek policemen, believing them to be spies, arrested a group of British plane-spotters who traveled to Greece to practice their hobby, which is unknown in most of the world.
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| November 27, 2001 | -
Spain announced that it would not extradite eight men who were arrested for participating in the September 11
attacks unless the United States agreed to give them a civilian trial; the military courts envisioned by the Bush Administration would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
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| November 20, 2001 | - A grave digger in Nigeria was arrested trying to sell two fresh human heads, which he was carrying in a bag; many Nigerians believe that human genitals, tongues, eyes, and skulls are good for casting spells.
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| November 20, 2001 | - Six men in South Africa were arrested for gang-raping a 10-month-old baby girl.
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| November 13, 2001 | - The government said it would no longer issue a running tally of the number of people arrested in its investigation of the September 11
attacks.
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| November 13, 2001 | - There were reports that the Pakistani who was arrested following September 11 and died in federal custody had multiple fractures and deep bruises on his body.
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| November 13, 2001 | - A couple in Colorado who because of their religious beliefs allowed their 13-year-old daughter to die of diabetes and gangrene without medical treatment were sentenced to 20 months' probation and 1,300 hours of community service. They were also required to provide medical insurance for their remaining 12 children.
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| November 13, 2001 | - Trevor Harvey, the president of Mad Dads, an anti-violence group, was arrested in Sarasota, Florida, for punching a referee during his son's football game.
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| November 6, 2001 | - America recalled its ambassador from Venezuela after President Hugo Chávez denounced the Afghan
war as “fighting terrorism with terrorism” and a “slaughter of innocents.” A Michigan fisherman was attacked by an enraged 200-pound deer; he wrestled the beast for 45 minutes, strangled it with his belt, and finally clubbed it to death with a piece of wood.
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| November 6, 2001 | -
Police in Milan, Italy, arrested seven homosexuals who were found sexually linked together next to a highway.
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| November 6, 2001 | - Acting Governor Jane Swift of Massachusetts signed a bill exonerating five witches who were hanged in 1692 and 1693.
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| November 6, 2001 | - An appeals court in San Francisco overturned a 50-year prison sentence of a shoplifter as cruel and unusual punishment.
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| November 6, 2001 | - Arapahoe County, Colorado, officials were planning to prosecute a 10-year-old boy for putting white powder in a film canister so he could be a hero for finding anthrax at his school.
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| October 30, 2001 | -
German
police
arrested a man who was holding his girlfriend hostage in exchange for a crate of lager and two packs of cigarettes.
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| October 23, 2001 | - In New York, four of Osama bin Laden's colleagues were sentenced to life in prison in connection with the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.
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| October 23, 2001 | - Dutch police
arrested Bert and Ernie in front of a hundred children at a fair in Bergen op Zoom because the actors wearing the costumes were violating Sesame Street's intellectual property rights.
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| October 23, 2001 | - An Australian woman, a professional butcher, was convicted of killing her lover, boiling his head and body parts with some vegetables, and serving the stew to his children.
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| October 23, 2001 | - In Ohio, judges and prosecutors apologized to a man who spent 13 years in prison for rape after new DNA tests cleared him of the crime.
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| October 16, 2001 | - Argenbright Holdings Ltd., an airport security contractor, was in trouble again for hiring convicted felons to screen passengers at Philadelphia International Airport; the company, which last year was fined $1.2 million and placed on probation for a related offense, has also committed major violations at La Guardia, Logan, Dulles, Los Angeles, and Reagan National airports.
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| October 2, 2001 | - Rodney King was arrested in California for exposing himself.
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| October 2, 2001 | -
Police in New Zealand
arrested a naked man pushing a baby carriage that contained a stolen shrub in a terra-cotta pot.
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| August 28, 2001 | - Smiley the Clown was convicted of sodomizing his young male apprentice.
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| August 28, 2001 | - Tom Green, husband of Hannah, Cari, Linda, LeeAnn, and Shirley, was sentenced to five years in prison for the crime of polygamy.
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| June 12, 2001 | - Three Guatemalan military officers were sentenced to 30 years in prison for crushing the head of a Roman Catholic bishop in 1998, a few days after he issued a report blaming the military for the deaths of some 200,000 people.
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| May 22, 2001 | - There were reports that an Iranian woman would be stoned to death for killing her husband, who was buried next to a cow's skull in a fruit garden.
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| May 22, 2001 | - A polygamist was tried and convicted in Utah.
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| May 15, 2001 | - Richard Baumhammers, an immigration lawyer who ran amok last year and murdered
a Jewish neighbor, two Asians, an Indian, and a black, was sentenced to death.
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| April 17, 2001 | - Two Utah men were sentenced to three years' probation for drilling a hole in a woman's head in an attempt to restore her “childhood buoyancy.” The Rio Grande once again failed to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
Italian
police
arrested two men for stealing the body of a dead investment banker to protest the recent drop in the stock market; the body was found under a pile of hay near Turin.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | - An Algerian who tried to smuggle explosives into the United States from Canada was convicted of “an act of terrorism transcending a national boundary.” The Bush Administration proposed dropping a program of random salmonella testing of ground beef destined for school lunches; the public was not amused, and the secretary of agriculture withdrew the proposal.
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| April 10, 2001 | - Former Philippine president Joseph Estrada was indicted for “plunder.” Vice President Dick Cheney said he thought the United States should build some more nuclear power plants; “I think I am a pretty good environmentalist,” he said.
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| April 3, 2001 | -
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was angry about a fact-finding mission led by former senator George Mitchell; he said that allowing such an investigation into the causes of the recent Intifada was an “historic mistake” because “no one has the right, no one, to put Israel on trial before the world.” A Palestinian
sniper shot and killed a ten-month-old Israeli girl in Hebron as she lay in her stroller; Israeli troops then shelled a nearby Palestinian neighborhood and other targets, including Yasir Arafat's home.
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| April 3, 2001 | - The Supreme Court said it would decide whether executing retarded murderers was cruel and unusual.
| |
| April 3, 2001 | - Ivan Boroughs, a Jamaican man who spent twenty-nine years in prison for breaking a window, was finally released; Jamaican officials said that Boroughs, who had been deemed mentally unfit to stand trial but was nevertheless kept in prison, had not been forgotten: “We were monitoring his progress yearly, but we had to wait on communication from the court and that did not come until Tuesday.” A man in New Jersey was on trial, facing ten years in prison, for allegedly stealing 58 cents from a parked car.
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| March 13, 2001 | - A Florida judge named Lazarus sentenced a fourteen-year-old boy to life in prison without parole for the murder two years ago of a six-year-old girl.
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| March 13, 2001 | - Nepalese police
arrested a woman in Kathmandu for possession of ninety-five human skulls.
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| February 20, 2001 | - A Massachusetts man was arrested for using a hidden camera to film up a woman's skirt on a crowded commuter train while watching the action on his laptop.
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| January 30, 2001 | - A Jewish settler who beat a ten-year-old Palestinian boy to death (after kicking the little boy to the ground, Nahum Kurman placed his foot on the boy's neck and repeatedly struck his head with a pistol butt) was sentenced to six months of community service.
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| January 16, 2001 | -
Chile's former dictator General Augusto Pinochet changed his mind and decided to undergo psychological examinations to determine whether he was fit to stand trial.
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| January 9, 2001 | - They were the ninety-first and ninety-second condemned inmates to be exonerated since 1973, when the death penalty was reinstated.
| |
| 0, 2000 | - Mr. T was called for jury duty in a drug case in Cook County, Illinois. “If you're innocent, I'm your best man,” he said. “But if you're guilty, I pity that fool.”
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| December 19, 2000 | - Timothy McVeigh, who was sentenced to die in 1997 for blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and killing 168 people in Oklahoma City, asked to be put to death within the next four months.
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| December 19, 2000 | - The number of executions carried out in the United States declined by 14 percent this year; half were held in Texas, which had its best year ever, killing more prisoners in one year than any other state in American history. The warden of the prison in Huntsville, Texas, who has presided over eighty-four executions, told a reporter: “Just from a Christian standpoint, you can't see one of these and not consider that maybe it's not right.”
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| December 12, 2000 | - Robert Ray, Kenneth Starr's successor as independent counsel in the ongoing Whitewater investigation, requested new interviews with Monica Lewinsky, Betty Currie, and Linda Tripp as he continued his quest for enough evidence to indict President Bill Clinton.
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| December 5, 2000 | -
Chile's former dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested, in Chile.
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| October 31, 2000 | - Montrose Chemical Corporation agreed to compensate
Californians for a gigantic DDT deposit just off the coast of Los Angeles, the result of thirty years of offshore dumping.
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| October 24, 2000 | - Amnon Chemouil was convicted in a French court of raping an eleven-year-old girl in Thailand while on a “sex holiday.” Greenpeace claimed that it had caused two biotech companies to withdraw plans to patent embryos for a human-pig hybrid; both companies denied making “mixed species embryos,” though one did admit to introducing a human nucleus into a pig cell.
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| October 17, 2000 | - Governor Jeb Bush of Florida restored Charles W. Colson's civil rights; Colson, who was convicted in the Watergate scandal, is a born-again Christian and the author of several apocalyptic Christian thrillers.
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| October 3, 2000 | - Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, the former head of Mexico's National Institute to Combat Drugs, was sentenced to 71 years in prison on drug and weapons charges.
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| August 22, 2000 | -
Al Gore's son was arrested in North Carolina for driving 97 miles-per-hour.
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| August 22, 2000 | - Governor George W. Bush agreed to pardon death-row inmate Roy Criner after new DNA tests proved that he was innocent; Ricky Nolan McGinn, a Texas inmate who was convicted of raping and murdering his twelve-year-old stepdaughter, failed his DNA test after receiving a stay of execution and will return to death row.
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| July 25, 2000 | - Two Japanese
terrorists were sentenced to die for releasing nerve gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995.
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