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NASHVILLE — A state commission has rejected an effort to strip former Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison of his certification as a law enforcement officer, but a lawyer says the decision will be challenged in court. Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission voted last Friday to dismiss a complaint filed against Hutchison and “rescinded the decertification” imposed temporarily by a judge earlier, said Brian Grisham, executive director of the panel. Grisham said today the action means that, as far as the POST Commission is concerned, the matter has been put to rest. But Knoxville attorney Herbert S. Moncier, who...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Nigerian villagers can go to trial in San Francisco in a lawsuit that seeks to hold Chevron Corp. responsible for military attacks that killed and wounded protesters at oil company facilities in 1998 and 1999, a federal judge has ruled. In a series of decisions Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston narrowed the lawsuit against Chevron but said a jury could consider the gist of the villagers' claims -- that the oil giant summoned troops to the protests, directed their actions and should be held accountable for the injuries and deaths of peaceful demonstrators. "This is a...

Grenada County chancellor had overstepped his boundaries -- The Mississippi Supreme Court was correct when it vacated a judge's order on Friday that banned schools in several counties from holding outdoor activities during certain hours because of extreme heat. Five school districts had asked the high court to overturn the order that would have restricted activities outside schools from 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. There's no questioning that Chancery Court Judge Mitchell Lundy has his heart in the right place. But he was severely overstepping his authority - and acting a bit like Big Brother - in deciding he knew...

The governing body for high school athletics in Mississippi asked the state Supreme Court Friday to block a chancellor’s order banning outdoor activities because of the heat. The Mississippi High School Activities Association filed a request with the high court in response to Chancellor Mitchell Lundy’s order Thursday blocking activities between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. until the record high temperatures ease. The order blocked, among other activities, outdoor football practice in a six-county area, including DeSoto County, as teams prepare for the start of the prep season the end of this month. In asking the court to issue either...

NASHVILLE - A teenage gang member wanted in the slaying of a Nashville market owner has been granted refugee status by a Canadian judge, delaying efforts to have him returned to Tennessee to face charges. Nasser Mohammed Muhsin, 16, told the Canadian court he needs refugee status because he might be hurt or killed by rival gangs if he is sent back to the U.S. Nashville police suspect Muhsin fired the shot that killed Ebadolla Ghorbani during a November robbery at the Omid Market. Two other suspects are in custody. A juvenile court arrest warrant charges Muhsin with criminal homicide,...

In a move with wide-ranging implications, a North Mississippi judge Thursday banned outdoor school activities in DeSoto and five other counties in his district because of the searing heat. The order by Chancellor Mitchell Lundy of Grenada County -- a decision that a legal expert called unusual -- halted outdoor football practices as schools gear up for the start of the prep season the end of this month. Also affected until the heat relents are volleyball and band practice, recesses for elementary school students and outdoor activities for community college students. "It is our duty to protect the minors from...

ROCKVILLE, Md. — The prosecutor in the case of a Liberian native charged with repeatedly raping and molesting a 7-year-old girl said Monday that he is filing an appeal of a controversial judge's ruling that dismissed all charges because an interpreter who spoke the suspect's rare West African dialect could not be found.Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy called the ruling last Tuesday by Judge Katherine Savage "improper," adding that his office has "requested that an appeal be taken to reverse the court's order." Savage ruled on July 17 that Mahamu Kanneh, a Liberian who received asylum in the U.S....

A 7-year-old girl said she had been raped and repeatedly molested over the course of a year. Police in Montgomery County, acting on information from a relative, soon arrested a Liberian immigrant living in Gaithersburg. They marshaled witnesses and DNA evidence to prepare for trial. What was missing -- for much of the nearly three years that followed -- was an interpreter fluent in the suspect's native language. A judge recently dropped the charges, not because she found that Mahamu Kanneh had been wrongly accused but because repeated delays in the case had, in her view, violated his right to...

NASHVILLE — Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle today ordered former Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison’s status as a certified law enforcement officer suspended immediately. Lyle said the suspension will remain in effect pending the outcome of an Aug. 16 hearing on Hutchison’s certification before the Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) Commission. “Considering that thousands of tax dollars may be irrevocably and wrongfully committed if this court does not act immediately, that an aborted inquiry and investigation by the POST Commission harms the public perception of the certification process in the state of Tennessee, and considering that counsel for...

DALLAS (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch from enforcing a voter-approved law prohibiting apartment rentals to illegal immigrants until a legal challenge is resolved. U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay had previously issued a temporary restraining order in May, blocking the law a day before it was to take effect. He issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday. "Farmers Branch, rather than deferring to the federal government's determination of immigration status, has created its own classification scheme for determining which noncitizens may rent an apartment," Lindsay wrote. The law would have required apartment managers to...

ATLANTA — A Georgia judge on Monday voided a 10-year sentence given to a man who was convicted while a teenager of having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson voided Genarlow Wilson's sentence and dropped it to misdemeanor aggravated child molestation with a 12-month sentence, plus credit for time served. Under the new ruling, he will not be required to register as a sex offender

Last week Judge Reggie Walton sentenced Scooter Libby to 30 months in the federal penitentiary for allegedly lying about a crime that never occurred and didn't exist. While everything about the case qualifies as script material for The Twilight Zone, acknowledging plot contributions from both Kafka and Heller, the newer developments owe more to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. *** What is newly very apparent is the personal animus that Judge Walton has displayed towards those who have sprung to Libby's defense. *** Judge Walton's order allowing the 12 to file their brief was short, formulaic, curt. It contained...

Boise, Idaho (AP) -- A judge on Friday blocked new rules governing how ranchers use 160 million acres of federal land, saying a federal agency had given in to pressure from the livestock industry. The Bureau of Land Management violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in creating the rules, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled. The judge said the BLM's rule revisions would have loosened restrictions on grazing on public land nationwide, limited the amount of public comment the BLM had to consider and diluted the BLM's...

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California's electricity crisis a few years back is remembered for its bizarre blackouts. They resulted from a system that grew more dysfunctional over time until the lights simply couldn't stay on. Now California's water world is getting a taste of its version of blackouts. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, an endangered two-inch smelt is forcing a historic shutdown of pumps that supply 23 million residents and 5 million acres of farmland. Water will continue to flow from taps and onto fields during this shutdown as the water districts find various ways to maintain a steady supply. Never before have Delta...

SACRAMENTO -- The state has shut down the large pumps that send water to 25 million Californians in order to protect a tiny fish teetering on the brink of extinction. State officials said the shutdown could affect water supplies available to users in the Bay Area, the Central Valley and Southern California. Local areas that receive water from the State Water Project include the Tri-Valley, Santa Clara County, Yuba City and Solano County. Some of those areas can obtain water from other sources, including groundwater. The shutdown is expected to last seven to 10 days, officials said. Numbers of Delta...

Grocer sentenced in food stamp fraud case Posted by Mike Tobin May 31, 2007 14:41PM Categories: Breaking News, Crime The leader of one of the biggest food-stamp fraud rings in Ohio was sentenced to less than three years in prison Thursday during a secret hearing. U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster sentenced Amin Salem to 33 months in prison for his role in a $7.7 million food stamp fraud ring dating back to 1995. It's the second time Salem has been convicted of stealing from the program designed to feed poor people. Salem was supposed to be sentenced last...

A federal judge Friday ruled the permit that allows massive Delta water delivery projects to kill a tiny endangered fish is illegal. It is the second time in two months that a court has declared the state's water projects in violation of endangered species laws. The ruling comes the same week new information emerged showing the Delta smelt population has plunged yet again closer to extinction. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno did not immediately revoke water agencies' ability to operate, saying such a step would amount to a "draconian" impact on the state's farms and cities. However, his...

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 The horrors facing a first offender locked up with hardened criminals in the nation's high-security federal prisons highlighted testimony Tuesday in the sentencing hearing of Stanislas Meyerhoff, the first of 10 defendants to be sentenced in the Operation Backfire prosecution of radical underground environmental activists. The hearing is expected to conclude today in Eugene before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who will decide Meyerhoff's prison term and rule whether his crimes were acts of terrorism, a ruling that could bring a stiffer sentence. Through the day, prosecution and defense lawyers dueled over whether Meyerhoff was an...

NASHVILLE — Death row inmate Philip Workman's execution is back on schedule after being halted last week over concerns about Tennessee's revised execution method. In an opinion issued Monday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati vacated a temporary restraining order handed down Friday by a U.S. District Court judge in Nashville. Workman's execution is scheduled for Wednesday at 1 a.m. CDT. In the 2-1 majority opinion, Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote that Workman has come within days of being executed five previous times and never before challenged the state's three-drug lethal injection procedures. Workman's lawyers claimed that...