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At a pre-trial hearing on May 28, the attorney for accused murderer George Zimmerman, Mark O'Mara, slipped a time bomb into the public record that no one in the major media seemed to notice. It had to do with a homeless man, and the relationship between that man and the victim of Zimmerman's alleged crime, Trayvon Martin. O'Mara's allusion had particular resonance in this case because Zimmerman first surfaced publicly in Sanford, Florida, in a case involving a homeless man. As it happened, in December 2010, a police lieutenant's son named Justin Collison sucker-punched a black homeless man named Sherman...

With just two weeks remaining before his trial, George Zimmerman's attorneys returned to court this morning for an important pre-trial hearing. Circuit Judge Debra S. Nelson has been be asked to decide a long list of issues, things that will determine how the trial plays out and what jurors will see and hear.

Today was supposed to be a fun one for liberals on the Investigations subcommittee for the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. They were going to haul in Apple’s CEO, CFO, and head of Tax Operations to browbeat them over their lack of — what, patriotism? Dumbness? — for having avoided tax liability last year. This was supposed to provide a little diversion from a week of wall-to-wall Obama administration scandals. Instead, Sen. Rand Paul rained on everyone’s parade, providing an exemplary rebuttal of the brain-dead populism that politicians so often engage in when it comes to corporate...

The prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder case has asked a judge to prohibit testimony about shooting victim Trayvon Martin's personal life, including whether he had been suspended from school, used marijuana or been in a fight. The information is irrelevant and would prejudice a jury, the state contends in the motion, filed late Friday. The motion also asks the judge to disallow: •Screen names used by Trayvon on social media. •The fact that he wore or owned a set of gold teeth. •The contents of text messages received or sent by Trayvon before Feb. 26, the day he died....

According to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), on Nov 1, 2012, vascular surgeon John Natale, M.D., 63, of Arlington, Ill., reported to the federal Bureau of Prisons to serve a 10-month sentence. According to a U.S. Department of Justice press release, he was convicted on two counts of making false statements in connection with surgeries performed between August 2002 and October 2004, and acquitted on two counts of Medicare fraud. Dr. Natale had saved the lives of five seriously ill patients, average age 78, by complicated repairs of abdominal aortic aneurysms. He was, however, accused of describing...

Khaled El-Masri, the Lebanese-born German national who claims the CIA abducted him in Macedonia in 2003 before subjecting him to unlawful imprisonment and torture, has become accustomed to his case being thrown out of court. But on Thursday, he was finally able to claim a victory. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in El-Masri’s favor and ordered that the government of Macedonia to pay him €60,000 ($78,456) in damages. Based in Strasbourg, the court found that his account of having been flown secretly to Afghanistan, brutally interrogated there at a prison run by the US intelligence agency and then...

Serbians reacted angrily at the acquittal of a former Kosovo guerrilla leader by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), less than two weeks after the court freed two Croatian military commanders who were accused of war crimes, EurActiv Serbia reports. The acquittal of ex-Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leader Ramush Haradinaj was met by fierce criticism of The Hague tribunalÂ’s work. Serbian officials said the decision was a blow to international justice and made the process of reconciliation in the region more complicated. Â… Belgrade considers that the tribunal has lost credibility and has shown bias in acquitting...

The appeals chamber at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday overturned guilty verdicts against Gotovina and fellow Croat general Mladen Markac in what is being called the most significant reversals in the court’s history. The two had been sentenced in 2011 to 24 and 18 years behind bars respectively for crimes against humanity and war crimes relating to a 1995 attack on Serbian civilians. The pair’s original conviction hinged on the tribunal’s acceptance of the existence of a plan led by the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to expel Serbs from Croatia. Three out of five...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- It's the case that captured national attention: the neighborhood watchman vs. the unarmed teenager. Was it self-defense or second-degree murder? Now, just days before a big pre-trial hearing in the case against George Zimmerman, his defense team has dropped a bombshell, blasting State Attorney Angela Corey and her office. The defense says the state isn't releasing all its evidence, using words like "haphazard and cavalier" when describing the state's handling of the case. To get a little perspective on these allegations, we went to local defense attorney, Randy Reep. He said, "That allegation is concerning because you...

TOPEKA – The State Objections Board brought the issue of President Barack Obama’s eligibility to be on Kansas ballots to a swift end Monday morning. After accepting several records related to Obama’s birth in Hawaii, Mark Dugan, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer’s chief of staff, moved to overrule the objection and close the board’s meeting. The board’s unanimous vote brings an end to an objection raised by Manhattan resident Joe Montgomery, who said Obama shouldn’t be on Kansas ballots and isn’t qualified to be president because his parents were not both born in the United States. Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2012/09/17/2492998/kansas-expects-to-end-challenge.html#storylink=cpy

The lawyer for Trayvon Martin’s parents harshly criticized efforts by George Zimmerman’s attorneys to obtain the school records and Facebook information for the deceased 17-year-old high school student, saying they were irrelevant to the case. “Zimmerman’s lawyers are attempting to assassinate Trayvon Martin’s character,” said Benjamin Crump, in an interview with BET.com. “Whatever Trayvon had on his Facebook page or whatever was in his school records have nothing to do with why Zimmerman shot him.” Crump said he is seeking to obtain Zimmerman’s medical records. “The medical condition and medical history of George Zimmerman is far more relevant to the...

Special prosecutor Angela Corey just released more than 120 recorded phone calls that murder suspect George Zimmerman made from the Seminole County Jail... Also released is the statement of "Witness 9," a woman who says Zimmerman is prejudiced against blacks and that he molested her when she was a child.

<p>Police officers who responded minutes after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin could not agree on whether George Zimmerman had a broken nose, but they all said the ex-neighborhood watch volunteer had cuts on his head, according to documents released Thursday.</p>

she is Holder's witness in the Texas case

For nearly 30 years he was the pharaoh-like ruler whose word was law; the plunderer of billions of pounds of government money and controller of Egypt’s brutal police state. On Saturday night Hosni Mubarak began a new life as a convicted murderer. A broken and humiliated man of 84, he was flown by helicopter to Torah prison—where many of his enemies had once been jailed—just two hours after hearing a Cairo judge pronounce a life sentence on him for complicity in the murder of 850 protesters. He appeared to be in tears and at first refused to leave the plane...

Despite ‘Castle Doctrine,’ defendant is convicted in slaying A PHILADELPHIA JUDGE said Wednesday he was convinced that a disabled, retired Marine was being attacked in the moments before he fatally stabbed a man last October, but he concluded that the stabbing was still a criminal act rather than self-defense. Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner then convicted Jonathan Lowe, 57, of voluntary manslaughter and possession of an instrument of crime. The judge found him not guilty of the more-serious charges of first- and third-degree murder. Lowe, who wears a pacemaker and has survived two strokes and two heart surgeries, could face...

<p>WFTV has learned charges against George Zimmerman could be getting more serious.</p> <p>State prosecutors said Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, profiled and stalked 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before killing him, so the FBI is now looking into charging him with a hate crime.</p>

Prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison sentence for Van der Sloot on murder and theft charges in a trial that will be held at Lima's Lurigancho prison. He is accused of murdering Flores with "ferocity and great cruelty," and prosecutors say he also stole 600 soles, about $220, from the victim. The handsome, garrulous Dutchman, a staple of true-crime TV shows for years after Holloway's disappearance, has in several interviews described himself as a pathological liar. He's been in custody after his arrest in neighboring Chile just days after Flores' death. Van der Sloot shares a cell with a Mexican...

Rule Of Law: What does it say about the prospects for democracy in Egypt when its military rulers put former dictator Hosni Mubarak, caged and on a gurney, through a show trial? Very little, if history is any guide. The Arab world is cringing with apprehension at the hasty, desperate trial of the former despot, who until February ruled Egypt with an iron hand for 30 years. It's not that the charges against Mubarak — corruption and violence against protestors — are likely false. It's that this trial has all the earmarks of mob-pleasing revanchism that will shake citizens' trust...

Geert Wilders: "I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands" Final remarks of Geert Wilders at his trial in Amsterdam, June 1st, 2011 Mister President, members of the Court, I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I. I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology...