Hypnotizing Witnesses – Two Texas Death Row inmates seek to block their executions because their convictions relied in part on the testimony of a witness who had been hypnotized, which they attack as too unreliable to be accepted in court. Along with Richard Childs, an alleged accomplice, Charles Don Flores was accused of murdering a […]
Category: Appeals
Article: High Court Weighs Life Sentence for Underage Washington Sniper
In an early case during its new term, on October 16 the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal by Lee Boyd Malvo of the sentence of life without possibility of parole Virginia gave him in 2004 for his role in a series of lethal sniping attacks in the nation’s capital region during the autumn of […]
Article: Appeals Court Says Cops Not Liable for Wrecking Home
In June 2015, an armed shoplifter fleeing police in Aurora, Colorado, after a high-speed auto chase, decided to hole up in the upstairs bathroom of a randomly chosen home in suburban Greenwood Village. Police surrounded the site, and he was eventually captured alive after a 19-hour stand-off. The outcome was far less dramatic than were […]
Article: High Court Won’t Hear Killer’s Appeal on Jury’s Anti-Gay Bias
UPDATE: Charles Rhines was executed at 7:39 PM on November 4, 2019 by lethal injection. Despite trying to halt the execution, all three of his late appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the 20th person to be executed in South Dakota since 1877, but his sentence still surrounds controversy as the […]
Article: Appeals Court: Mugshots of Federal Defendants Need Not Be Released
Reversing a decision from 1996, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati has ruled the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not require the U.S. Marshals Service automatically to release mugshots taken when federal prisoners are booked. With all 16 judges participating in the July 14 decision, the 6th Circuit by a 9-7 vote held prisoners […]