A Colorado man suspected in the death of his wife, who disappeared on Mother’s Day last year, is also accused of submitting a fraudulent vote on her behalf for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election, court documents show.
Related: California woman may have washed $26m lottery fortune down the drain
Continue reading...Anthony Antonio, who faces five charges over role in January riot, ‘started believing what was being fed to him’, lawyer says
The lawyer for a Delaware man charged over the Capitol attack in January is floating a unique defense: Fox News made him do it.
Anthony Antonio, who is facing five charges including violent entry, disorderly conduct and impeding law enforcement during civil disorder, fell prey to the persistent lies about the so-called “stolen election” being spread daily by Donald Trump and the rightwing network that served him, his attorney Joseph Hurley said during a video hearing on Thursday.
Continue reading...Jury convicts Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, over knife killing committed in 2019
Two American students have been sentenced to life in prison by a Rome court for the murder of Italian police officer Mario Cerciello Rega.
After almost 13 hour of deliberation, a jury convicted Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, of murdering Cerciello Rega, who had only just returned to duty after his honeymoon when he was stabbed to death, aged 35, on a street in central Rome in July 2019.
Continue reading...Christopher Marinello has spent three decades finding missing masterpieces, recovering half a billion dollars’ worth of art. He talks about threats from mobsters, tricky negotiations – and bungling thieves
One summer morning in 2008, Christopher Marinello was waiting on 72nd Street in Manhattan, New York. The traffic was busy, but after a few minutes he saw what he was waiting for: a gold Mercedes with blacked-out windows drew near. As it pulled up to the kerb, a man in the passenger seat held a large bin-liner out of the window. “Here you go,” he said. Marinello took the bag and the car sped off. Inside was a rolled-up painting by the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux, Le Rendez-vous d’Ephèse. Its estimated worth was $6m, and at that point it had been missing for 40 years.
Marinello is one of a handful of people who track down stolen masterpieces for a living. Operating in the grey area between wealthy collectors, private investigators, and high-value thieves, he has spent three decades going after lost works by the likes of Warhol, Picasso and Van Gogh. In that time, he says he has recovered art worth more than half a billion dollars. When I call him, he answers, then abruptly hangs up. “I was just on my way to a police station to recover a stolen sculpture,” he explains later, apologising.
Continue reading...A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US history
The trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.
Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America
Continue reading...A New Jersey high school teacher was suspended with pay for making profanity-laced comments to students about George Floyd.
Related: Teargas, flash-bangs: the devastating toll of police tactics on Minnesota children
Continue reading...Detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star and that the motive was the French bulldogs’ value
The woman who returned Lady Gaga’s stolen French bulldogs was among five people arrested in connection with the theft and shooting of the music superstar’s dog walker, Los Angeles police said Thursday.
Detectives do not believe that the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the pop star, the Los Angeles police department said in a statement. The motive for the 24 February robbery, investigators believe, was the value of the French bulldogs – which can run into the thousands of dollars.
Continue reading...Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murder for killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, a crime that prompted waves of protests in support of racial justice in the US and across the world.
The jury swiftly and unanimously convicted Chauvin of all the charges he faced – second- and third-degree murder, and manslaughter – after concluding that the white former Minneapolis police officer killed the 46-year-old Black man in May through a criminal assault, by pinning him to the ground so he could not breathe.
Continue reading...Members of George Floyd’s family choked back tears while speaking of their relief that the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in their brother's death. ‘Today, we are able to breathe again,’ George Floyd's brother Philonise Floyd told reporters. The Floyd family's attorney, Benjamin Crump, said they were leaving the court knowing ‘that America is a better country’
George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer touched off a new civil rights uprising that rippled across the world
The jury’s guilty verdict on the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd signaled the conclusion of a historic police brutality trial and a key moment for policing and for the battle for racial equality in America.
Observers have talked about this case being so significant that it will stand as a watershed between the way law enforcement was held to account in the US before George Floyd was pinned by the neck under Chauvin’s knee, and after.
Continue reading...The Derek Chauvin murder trial heard closing arguments on Monday before the jury was expected to begin considering a verdict over the death of George Floyd that is anxiously awaited by millions of Americans. The prosecutor Steve Schleicher told jurors the key to the case lay in video footage of Chauvin pressing his knee on to Floyd’s neck, even as he pleaded for his life, right to his last words of 'I can’t breathe'. The former Minneapolis police officer’s attorney, Eric Nelson, told the jury that his client's actions followed the 'reasonable force' guidelines for police officers when considering all the factors that Chauvin had to take into account on the day of Floyd's death
Continue reading...The Democratic representative Maxine Waters has come under criticism from the Republican house minority leader, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality at a rally on Saturday in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.
Waters said she would 'continue to fight in every way that I can for justice', prompting the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to accuse Waters of 'inciting violence in Minneapolis'
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Court has just reconvened this morning in the case against Derek Chauvin. Closing arguments are expected to begin soon.
Jurors will begin deliberating when closings end. The judge in Chauvin’s case, Peter Cahill, is now giving jurors instructions on the law for when they start deliberating, such as how they are to weigh evidence.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial. Closing arguments in the murder case against the former Minneapolis police officer are scheduled to begin at 9am local time in Minneapolis.
Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police department officer, faces charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the 25 May 2020 death of George Floyd. During an arrest, Chauvin pressed his knee against the neck of Floyd, who was Black, for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Police urged residents in the vicinity to stay inside while a manhunt was under way
Three people were shot dead in Austin on Sunday, authorities in Texas said. No suspects were in custody.
Law enforcement officials closed off roadways in the Great Hills Trail and Rain Creek Parkway area of the city for an “active shooting incident”, according to a tweet from the city’s police department.
Continue reading...Outcome is expected to resonate nationwide, particularly in cities that have seen continuing demonstrations over police violence
Protests against police killings flared across the US this weekend, from Minneapolis to Chicago to Portland, as Americans wait for a verdict in the trial of the white police officer charged with murdering George Floyd last year.
Closing arguments are expected in the Derek Chauvin trial on Monday. The most serious charge the former Minneapolis officer is facing in Floyd’s death is second-degree murder, but the jury might choose to find him guilty on third-degree murder or manslaughter, or acquit him altogether.
Continue reading...Brandon Hole bought assault weapons he used in attack months after his shotgun was confiscated over mental health concerns
A gunman who murdered eight people at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis legally purchased the two semi-automatic rifles he used in the attack, months after a shotgun he owned was confiscated by police over concerns around his mental health.
Brandon Hole, 19, who killed himself at the conclusion of the massacre, bought the two assault weapons in July and September 2020, according to Indianapolis metropolitan police chief Randal Taylor, after the shotgun was taken from him in March following a call from his mother concerned at his mental state.
Continue reading...The latest instance of a Black man killed by a police officer added fuel to the fire already burning in Minneapolis
It was shortly after midday on Thursday at the New Salem Missionary Baptist church in Minneapolis. In front of a towering stone facade, Katie Wright stood at the pulpit, almost dwarfed by the plexiglass lectern and mass of microphones in front of her. She shuddered with grief, held by members of her family.
Five days earlier, her son, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old father of one, had been shot and killed by a single bullet fired by a white police officer in the city suburb of Brooklyn Center. Four nights of unrest had followed with hundreds of protesters clashing with police dressed in riot gear, pelting crowds with teargas and rubber bullets.
Continue reading...After a dramatic final week, all that is left is closing statements and jury decisions
The prosecution took 10 days to lay out its case against Derek Chauvin. The former Minneapolis police officer’s defense to the charges of murdering George Floyd barely lasted two.
The relative brevity of Chauvin’s case might reflect a confidence on the part of the defense that the evidence against him is easily picked apart or at least shaky enough to raise reasonable doubt with the jury.
Continue reading...Jon Ryan Schaffer gave a guilty plea in hopes of getting a lighter sentence and will be considered for a witness security program
A member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and heavy metal guitarist has become the first defendant to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the insurrection at the US Capitol.
Jon Ryan Schaffer, the frontman of the band Iced Earth, has agreed on Friday to cooperate with investigators in hopes of getting a lighter sentence, and the Justice Department will consider putting Schaffer in the federal witness security program, a US district judge said.
Continue reading...Both sides will make closing arguments on Monday and the case over the death of George Floyd will then go to the jury
Derek Chauvin declined to testify in his murder trial over the killing of George Floyd as the defence wrapped up its case after just two days of testimony.
Chauvin invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination as he sacrificed the chance to explain to the jury why he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes and for his lawyers to paint a more sympathetic picture of the police officer. But he also avoided a minute interrogation of his actions and thinking by the prosecution’s cross-examination.
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