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| Oklahoma botches execution, raising questions on death penalty in U.S Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 08:27 PM PDT  By Heide Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett died during a botched execution on Tuesday, minutes after a doctor had called a halt to the procedure, raising more questions about new death penalty cocktails used by the state and others. Thirteen minutes after administering a lethal injection at the state's death chamber in McAlester, Lockett lifted his head and started mumbling. The troubled execution was expected to have national implications, with lawyers for death row inmates having argued that new lethal injection cocktails used in Oklahoma and other states could cause undue suffering and violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. "This could be a real turning point in the whole debate as people get disgusted by this sort of thing," said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment. Full Story | Top |
| South Texas officers sentenced on drug charges Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 05:13 PM PDT McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Sometimes the heists were carefully choreographed ruses designed not to raise suspicion. Other times they were brazen grabs. Either way, lawmen sentenced Tuesday in South Texas used their badges to protect drugs or steal them for resale to other traffickers. Full Story | Top |
| DA: Holmes defense tried to sway potential jurors Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 04:49 PM PDT  DENVER (AP) — Prosecutors in the Colorado theater shootings accused defense lawyers of trying to influence potential jurors when they publicized James Holmes' offer last year to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Full Story | Top |
| Jurors in Apple v. Samsung begin deliberations Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 03:26 PM PDT  SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Jurors have begun deliberations in a patent infringement lawsuit involving Apple and Samsung over smartphone technology. Full Story | Top |
| Jurors deliberating in high-stakes Apple-Samsung trial Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 03:22 PM PDT  San José (United States) (AFP) - Jurors on Tuesday began deliberations in a big-money smartphone patent trial pitting Apple against Samsung, and by extension Google, in the heart of Silicon Valley In a new trial following up on a landmark 2012 case in the same courtroom, Apple attorneys argued that Samsung flagrantly infringed on iPhone patents in a desperate bid to compete with the California company's culture-changing smartphone. "Apple cannot simply walk away from its inventions," attorney Harold McElhinny told jurors in his argument for the US tech giant. McElhinny maintained that Samsung sold more than 37 million infringing smartphones and tablets in the United States. Full Story | Top |
| Reputed cartel deputy pleads guilty to conspiracy Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 02:25 PM PDT CHICAGO (AP) — A reputed lieutenant of captured drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking part in a $1 billion trafficking conspiracy after previously saying he would plead guilty and then reversing himself out of fear for his family members in Mexico. Full Story | Top |
| Ex-Black Panther offers guilty plea to kidnapping in 1984 hijacking Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 01:37 PM PDT  By Zachary Fagenson FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (Reuters) - A former Black Panther who returned to the United States nearly 30 years after he hijacked a plane to Cuba is offering to plead guilty to kidnapping, to avoid a more serious charge of air piracy, his lawyer said on Tuesday. William Potts, 57, initially pleaded not guilty to charges of air piracy and kidnapping. Federal prosecutors on Tuesday heard details of the offer during a hearing in a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His lawyer, Robert Berube, said in an interview the air piracy charge carried a mandatory 20-year minimum sentence. Full Story | Top |
| Three boys arrested in animal killings at California high school Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 12:38 PM PDT Six animals being used for student projects were killed when vandals broke into a Silicon Valley high school in California over the weekend, and three boys have been arrested in connection with the crime, authorities said on Tuesday. Police were called on Monday after caretakers found four chickens, a duck and a rabbit dead in their pens on the campus of Adrian Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, school district spokeswoman Jennifer Derrico said. Derrico declined to say how the animals had been killed but said one chicken and one rabbit were left unharmed by the attackers, who also vandalized a snack shack on the football field and an on-campus automotive shop. Full Story | Top |
| British terror convict emailed as 'sacrifice72' Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 11:35 AM PDT  A British convict who plotted to blow a US passenger plane out of the sky was so determined to die for Al-Qaeda that he used the email address sacrifice72@yahoo.com, he admitted Tuesday. Saajid Badat, 35, told the New York trial of British hate preacher Abu Hamza that he used the Yahoo account while researching Jewish targets in South Africa. The word sacrifice was a nod to his determination to die in the cause of violent jihad and 72 a reference to the number of virgins that Al-Qaeda preached a "martyr" is entitled to deflower in heaven. Under cross-examination from Abu Hamza's lawyer Jeremy Schneider, he said he spent two days preparing a "detailed" report for Al-Qaeda bosses on the targets. Full Story | Top |
| Ethiopia says journalists arrested in crackdown Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 10:57 AM PDT  Ethiopia said Tuesday several people had been arrested on charges of "serious criminal activities", but rights groups identified those detained as journalists and bloggers targeted in a sweeping crackdown against free speech. "They are suspected of some serious crimes, and the police are investigating," government spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP, without providing details of the alleged crimes. The journalists and a group of bloggers known as "Zone 9" were arrested last week, prompting an outcry from rights groups. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called the arrests "one of the worst crackdowns against free expression" in the country, while Amnesty International said it was part of a "long trend of arrests and harassment of human rights defenders, activists, journalists and political opponents." Full Story | Top |
| 41 arrested in Puerto Rico on drug charges Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 08:30 AM PDT SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Authorities in Puerto Rico on Tuesday arrested 41 people accused of running a drug-trafficking ring in the capital of the U.S. territory. Full Story | Top |
| Study Says Hundreds of Prisoners Sentenced to Death Were Probably Innocent Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 04:58 AM PDT  About 4.1 percent of those who were sentenced to death between 1973 and 2004, or about 300 people, are likely innocent, according to new analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. Courtesy of PNAS The paper authors, led by Samuel R. Gross, explain that the number of innocent people sentenced to death does not correlate to the amount actually executed, which is much lower. The high rate of exoneration among death-sentenced defendants appears to be driven by the threat of execution, but most death-sentenced defendants are removed from death row and resentenced to life imprisonment, after which the likelihood of exoneration drops sharply. The rest either died on death row, but were not executed; Full Story | Top |
| Ohio increases death penalty drug dosages after execution review Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 03:06 AM PDT (Reuters) - Ohio's prison department said it would increase the amount of two death penalty drugs it uses in executions after reviewing a case in which a condemned inmate was seen convulsing and gasping for breath for some time after being injected. Dennis McGuire, 53, who admitting raping and killing a pregnant woman, was executed in January with a sedative-painkiller combination never before used in the United States, where lethal injection is the preferred method of execution. The execution witnessed by reporters and McGuire's adult children took about 25 minutes to complete, amid reports that he gasped for an unusually long 15 minutes while clenching his fists and that his stomach had churned up and down visibly. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) said on Monday its use of a two-drug combination of the sedative midazolam and the pain killer hydromorphone to execute McGuire had been within constitutional bounds and that his movements had been consistent with the drug effects and other factors. Full Story | Top |
| Ethiopia says journalists arrested in crackdown 'criminals' Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 03:05 AM PDT Ethiopia said Tuesday they had arrested several people accused of "serious criminal activities", but who rights groups said were journalists and bloggers detained in a sweeping crackdown against free speech. "They are suspected of some serious crimes, and the police are investigating the case," government spokesman Getachew Reda told AFP, without providing details of their alleged crimes. The journalists and a group of bloggers known as "Zone 9" were arrested last week, prompting an outcry from rights groups. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called the arrests "one of the worst crackdowns against free expression" in the country, while Amnesty International said it was part of a "long trend of arrests and harassment of human rights defenders, activists, journalists and political opponents." Full Story | Top |
| Special Report - Golden Loophole: How an alleged Turkish crime ring helped Iran Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014 02:12 AM PDT  Turkish police believe that until recently, the area around the market also sat at the center of an audacious, multi-billion-dollar scheme involving bribery and suspect food shipments to Iran. But a recently leaked police report - which contains allegations of payments to top Turkish government officials including cash stuffed into shoeboxes - has added fuel to a growing corruption scandal that has shaken the highest levels of Turkey's political establishment. A review by Reuters of the report's 299 pages, as well as interviews with currency and precious metals dealers, offer colorful new details of how what police call a "crime organization" allegedly helped Iran exploit a loophole in the West's sanctions regime that for a time allowed the Islamic Republic to purchase gold with oil and gas revenues. While the gold trade was then legal, the police report alleges the purported crime network bribed officials in part so it could maintain control of the lucrative business. Full Story | Top |
| Lawyer: Man will plead guilty to killings at salon Monday, Apr 28, 2014 11:45 PM PDT SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A former tugboat captain's decision to plead guilty to killing his ex-wife and seven others hasn't won him any offer of leniency from prosecutors, who still want to see Scott Dekraai put to death for a shooting that terrorized a sleepy Southern California beach community three years ago. Full Story | Top |
| Hundreds of US inmates sentenced to death are innocent, researchers say Monday, Apr 28, 2014 10:02 PM PDT  Dozens of defendants sentenced to death in recent years have been exonerated before their sentences could be carried out, but many more were probably falsely convicted, said University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross, the study's lead author. "Our research adds the disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been sentenced to death have not been exonerated," Gross wrote in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. However, he stressed that this did not indicate a jump in the number of people believed wrongly executed because some had had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment and others lingered on death row. In their research, Gross and his colleagues examined the 7,482 U.S. death sentence convictions between 1973 and 2004. Full Story | Top |
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