Faced with a nationwide scarcity of execution drugs, Utah’s governor on Monday signed into law a bill that resurrects the use firing squads as an alternative method of executing condemned inmates. The law allows Utah to use a firing squad only if the lethal injection drugs are unavailable 30 days before an execution is scheduled…
Robert Durst says he ‘killed them all’ — but is that admissible in court?
For decades, no one has been able to convict millionaire Robert Durst. Not after his wife’s disappearance. Not after his friend’s suspicious death. Not even after he admitted he killed and dismembered his neighbor. But it may be Durst himself who does himself in with 11 words he muttered in a restroom: “What the hell…
Police Officer Matt Kenny: One career, two fatal shootings
For the second time in his career, Madison, Wisconsin, police Officer Matt Kenny is being investigated for using lethal force. But the cases and their circumstances are different, very different. Friday’s death of Tony Robinson, an unarmed biracial 19-year-old, has made Madison the latest epicenter of protests of black males killed by white officers. Eight…
Obamacare at the Supreme Court: Justices again divided over landmark health law
Washington (CNN)The future of health care in America is on the table — and in serious jeopardy — Wednesday morning in the Supreme Court. After more than an hour of arguments, the Supreme Court seemed divided in a case concerning what Congress meant in one very specific four-word clause of the Affordable Care Act with…
‘Pot’ use legal in Alaska, but details lacking
JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska on Tuesday became the third U.S. state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults, but it was met with little fanfare. Unlike in Colorado and Washington state, there were no street parties and public smoking displays in Alaska’s biggest cities. But backers of legal marijuana said the mild reaction…
Texas judge’s immigration ruling is full of legal holes
U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen’s decision to block the Obama plan to defer deportation for about 5 million immigrants here illegally ignores a basic principle of government: For better or worse, the executive branch of government always has discretion as to whether and how to enforce the law. The judge’s lengthy opinion is wrong…
St. Louis Puzzles Over Stubbornly High Murder Rate
St. LOUIS — Across from the Little Explorer’s Learning Center, diagonal to a crumbling house where heroin dealers and hangers-on often mill about, a garland of teddy bears adorns a telephone pole, a memorial to the latest victim to fall here at one of this city’s deadliest corners. The victim was a 27-year-old man shot…
Legal battles rage as A.C. casinos’ fates hang in the balance
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Fights over the fates of two bankrupt Atlantic City casinos heated up Tuesday as the main casino workers’ union filed 27 charges of unfair labor practice against the Trump Taj Mahal’s owner and Revel urged a judge not to delay its sale any further. Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union…
US Attorney General Nominee Defends Obama on Immigration
WASHINGTON—President Obama’s pick for U.S. attorney general defended the administration’s executive actions on immigration during questioning at a Senate hearing Wednesday. Federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch pledged to be an independent legal voice as the nation’s top law enforcement officer if confirmed by the Republican-led body, many of whose members accuse the Justice Department of acting…
McDonald’s sued over claims workers were fired from store with ‘too many black people’
Ten former McDonald’s workers in Virginia have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the fast-food chain, claiming that supervisors threw racial and sexual slurs at them, then fired them because the stores had “too many black people”. The employees say they overheard their supervisors talk about the “need to get the ghetto out of…