Category Archives: US justice system

Exonerated US man buys his mom a home after she sold hers for legal bills

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Greg Kelley, who was exonerated in 2019, uses money from settlement to buy 1.3-acre Texas property for his mother

Years before Greg Kelley was freed from a wrongful conviction, the Texas man’s mother – Rosa Kelley – sold her home to help pay his legal bills.

But she once again has a home of her own after her son recently bought her one as a gesture of his gratitude for her support, which helped set the stage for his exoneration in 2019, his state’s capital’s daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, reported this week.

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Bill Cosby plans to tour again in 2023 despite new sexual assault lawsuit

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Actor’s radio announcement met with incredulity after his 2018 conviction and new complaint filed by five women in New York

The actor Bill Cosby, the 80s TV comedian who was convicted in Pennsylvania of a criminal sex assault charge in 2018, is looking to return to live performing next year, according to a report on Tuesday.

In a WGH Talk radio interview, 85-year-old Cosby answered “yes” when asked if he planned to tour again in 2023.

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Adnan Syed hired by Georgetown to advocate for prison reform

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Syed, whose case was subject of the podcast Serial, has begun as a program associate with the school’s Prisons and Justice Initiative

Adnan Syed, who spent 23 years in prison before he was freed from his conviction for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, has gotten a job advocating for prison reform at Georgetown University, according to the prestigious US school.

Syed, whose case was the subject of the hit podcast Serial, began his role as a program associate with Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative on 12 December, school officials announced in a news release Friday. The gig is Syed’s first nine-to-five office job after the 41-year-old has spent more than half his life behind bars for a conviction by which authorities no longer stand.

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House January 6 panel recommends criminal charges against Donald Trump

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The referral marks the first time in US history that Congress has taken such action against a former president

The January 6 committee has referred Donald Trump to the justice department to face criminal charges, accusing the former president of fomenting an insurrection and conspiring against the government over his attempt to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and the bloody attack on the US Capitol.

The committee’s referrals approved by its members on Monday are the first time in American history that Congress has recommended charges against a former president. They come after 18 months of investigation by the bipartisan House of Representatives panel tasked with understanding Trump’s plot to stop Joe Biden from taking office.

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Brooklyn pastor who was robbed on live stream in July charged with fraud

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Lamor Miller-Whitehead, the ‘bling-bling bishop’ with hip-hop connections, is accused of swindling his own parishioners

The Brooklyn pastor who made headlines when he was robbed of an estimated $1m in jewelry during a church service being broadcast online in July was arrested on federal fraud charges on Monday after he allegedly swindled parishioners.

US prosecutors in Manhattan charged that Lamor Miller-Whitehead, 44, solicited money from victims – including $90,000 from a retired parishioner – using threats or false promises of enriching them, but then pocketed the money for himself and sometimes spent it on luxury goods.

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Who is Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Donald Trump?

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Man named to lead investigations into ex-president is experienced prosecutor most recently at international criminal court

Jack Smith is the man the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed on Friday to be an independent special counsel overseeing parallel justice department investigations into Donald Trump’s hoarding of top secret documents and involvement in the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, and he has been a criminal prosecutor for almost 30 years.

Smith has previously served as the chief of public integrity for the US justice department and dealt in particular with cases involving corruption, bringing cases against prominent Republicans and Democrats. In 2015 he was appointed first assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. He is a registered independent, not aligned with either of the two dominant political parties in the US.

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Ohio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in state

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The midterms include key elections to the state’s highest court as the judicial system becomes increasingly politicized

In Ohio, a highly partisan fight over three state supreme court seats could determine the political direction of the court on a slew of important issues – particularly abortion.

With the US supreme court increasingly handing issues such as voting rights, abortion, gun rights and gerrymandering back to the states, state supreme court races are becoming more important than ever.

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Special master ruling shows Trump’s takeover of courts has started to sting

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Aileen Cannon, who Trump nominated in 2020, granted his wish over the Mar-a-Lago search – a maverick decision that is the thin end of the wedge

In the first televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, the sitting president was asked why voters should re-elect him to the White House. He gave a relatively obscure answer – it was all about the judges, he said.

By the end of his first term in office, Trump bragged, he would have smashed all records for the number of his appointments to the federal bench. “I’ll have approximately 300 federal judges.”

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Senate panel to investigate Trump allies’ alleged meddling in prosecutions

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Judiciary committee notifies justice department of investigation into claims made by fired US attorney Geoffrey Berman

The US Senate judiciary committee has said it will investigate claims made in a recent book that allies of Donald Trump politically interfered with a prominent US attorney’s office.

William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general, fired Geoffrey Berman from the powerful southern district of New York (SDNY) five months before the 2020 election. In a memoir – Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department – which is published in the US on Tuesday, Berman alleges interference both on behalf of Trump allies and against Trump enemies.

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Two Pennsylvania judges ordered to pay $200m to kids-for-cash scandal victims

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Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan accepted $2.8m in illegal payments to send children to for-profit jails

Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200m to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes.

US district judge Christopher Conner awarded $106m in compensatory damages and $100m in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”.

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Federal judge supports seizure of John Eastman’s cell phone for January 6 inquiry

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The US Justice Department seized the phone of Donald Trump’s former lawyer in June; Eastman filed a motion to get it back

The US Justice Department was justified when it seized the cell phone of John Eastman, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, a federal judge in New Mexico ruled on Friday.

In its investigation into a scheme by the ex-president and his lawyers to overturn the 2020 election using “fake electors”, the justice department took Eastman’s phone on 22 June as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico. Eastman, in turn, filed a court motion in an attempt to get his phone back, arguing that the justice department violated his constitutional rights.

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Joe Biden scraps plan to nominate anti-abortion lawyer to Kentucky judgeship

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Senator Rand Paul announced Friday he would not consent to Chad Meredith’s nomination, vetoing the president’s effort

After weeks of criticism from fellow Democrats and abortion advocacy groups, Joe Biden has deserted plans to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer to be a federal judge in Kentucky.

The White House said on Friday that Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul would not be consenting to the nomination of Chad Meredith, effectively vetoing Biden’s move to put him on the bench.

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High-stakes California races will decide LA mayor and San Francisco recall

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Analysts watch to see if voters in America’s more liberal cities will address police reform, homelessness and mass incarceration

High-stakes primary races taking place on Tuesday in California are expected to have major consequences for police reform, incarceration and the state’s growing homelessness crisis.

The most closely watched race is the mayor’s contest in Los Angeles, where voters are deciding between a tough-on-crime real estate developer, Rick Caruso, who has already poured nearly $40m of his own fortune into his primary campaign, and the former community organizer and Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass.

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Suspected shooter who killed retired Wisconsin judge in ‘targeted’ attack identified

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John Roemer, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years, was found dead in his home by police

A retired Wisconsin judge was gunned down and killed in his home on Friday, and his suspected killer – a former defendant in his courtroom – shot himself in the basement, a government official familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The official confirmed John Roemer, 68, who sat on the Juneau county circuit court bench for 14 years beginning in 2004, was found shot dead in his home in the community of New Lisbon about 6.30am Friday. His alleged killer, identified Saturday as 56-year-old Douglas Uhde, was then discovered in the basement with a self-inflicted bullet wound, and was brought to a hospital.

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Woman testifies that in 1975 Bill Cosby grabbed her and kissed her aggressively

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The woman, now 61, took the stand during the civil trial over the lawsuit of Judy Hoth, who alleges she was assaulted during the same time

A woman testified Friday that she was 14 when Bill Cosby took her into a trailer on a movie set in 1975, grabbed her so she couldn’t move her arms, and kissed her aggressively.

“I was struggling to get away,” she said. “It was very shocking.”

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Wisconsin man killed in what officials say was a ‘targeted act’ to those in the judicial system

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Officers found a 68-year-old man fatally shot in his home and a suspect in the basement with an apparent self-inflicted wound


A man was fatally shot at his home in Wisconsin on Friday and a suspect was discovered in the basement with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in what may have been a plan to target people connected to the judicial system, Wisconsin’s attorney general said.

Josh Kaul, the attorney general Josh Kaul refused to name the victim or the suspect, but said the shooting appeared to be a “targeted act” and that the gunman had selected targets who were “part of the judicial system”.

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US Justice Department could be zeroing in on Trump lawyers, experts say

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Subpoenas for information on Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman’s roles in the fake electors scheme were issued in April

Legal experts believe the US Justice Department has made headway with a key criminal inquiry and could be homing in on top Trump lawyers who plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s election, after the department wrote to the House panel probing the January 6 Capitol attack seeking transcripts of witness depositions and interviews.

While it’s unclear exactly what information the DoJ asked for, former prosecutors note that the 20 April request occurred at about the same time a Washington DC grand jury issued subpoenas seeking information about several Trump lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, plus other Trump advisers, who reportedly played roles in a fake electors scheme.

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Depp-Heard trial verdict: jury rules in favor of Johnny Depp

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The focus of the case was a 2018 editorial Heard wrote calling herself ‘a public figure representing domestic abuse’

The jury in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial has ruled in favor of Johnny Depp, finding that a Washington Post editorial she wrote defamed her former husband.

The jurors’ unanimous decision on Wednesday capped a seven-week trial in a Virginia courtroom which featured dozens of witnesses and experts weighing in on whether Depp was abusive to Heard – or vice versa – during their 15-month marriage.

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Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power

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The justice department has alleged that Oath Keepers leadership called the president’s confidant to allow them to use force

Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, asked an intermediary to get Donald Trump to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power, the justice department has alleged in court papers.

The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.

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Hundreds wait in jail for trials as San Francisco backlog balloons

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Nearly a quarter of those awaiting trial are held beyond deadlines amid pandemic, at cost to their wellbeing

More than two years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly a quarter of those incarcerated in San Francisco county jail are being held past their original trial deadlines, with some individuals waiting for years for their cases to be heard.

In June 2020, in the early months of the pandemic, 68 people were incarcerated in the county past their original trial deadlines, according to data from the public defender. By January 2022, the latest data available, that number had grown to nearly 250. Hundreds more are awaiting trial out of custody.

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