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Austin police say they have arrested a homeless 17-year-old they believe is connected in the death of University of Texas at Austin student Haruka Weiser. The Austin Police Department says Meechaiel Khalil Criner was booked into the Travis County Jail around 2 a.m. Friday and charged with murder. His bond has been set at $1 million. Police made the link to Criner after the Austin Fire Department alerted them to a trash fire they were called to on Monday, April 4 at 2900 Medical Arts Street, which is just off-campus. At the time on Monday, a woman called 911 to...

The madman who burned an elderly Prospect Heights woman to death had been doing odd jobs for her - but was fired after she caught him stealing, her nephew said today. “He was doing more stealing than cleaning,” said a distraught Rickey Causey, 52, about the man in custody for allegedly setting 64-year-old victim Delores Gillespie on fire Saturday. Causey said the unidentified suspect - who turned himself into cops at Brooklyn’s 32nd transit district early today reeking of gasoline - had left a note on Gillespie’s door with a list of chores he was demanding payment for.

KILLEEN, Texas — The US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree on a Texas army base has been ruled sane and thus fit for trial, a source familiar with the case said. The ruling by a group of medical experts, called a sanity board, opens the door for a court martial that could end in the execution of Major Nidal Hasan, who was paralyzed from the neck down during the November 5, 2009 massacre. Neither prosecutors nor retired Army Colonel John Galligan, a veteran military lawyer representing Hasan, 40, would confirm the board's decision.

The wild-eyed Long Island man who stabbed an 8-year-old boy playing video games has a history of mental illness and had planned the attack, prosecutors said. Evan Sachs, 23, was allegedly carrying a note saying he was committed to hurting a child when he walked into a Dave & Buster's in Westbury Friday night and plunged a knife into the boy's back five times.

U.S. Supreme Court: Mumia Abu-Jamal Verdict Stands Mumia Abu-Jamal has lost his bid for a new trial in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. The Supreme Court said Monday it will not take up Abu-Jamal's claims that prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted him of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction but held his death sentence invalid. The appeals court said it would not second-guess state court rulings rejecting Abu-Jamal's claims of bias in the composition of the jury. The high court...

Associated Press Article Launched: 05/09/2008 03:45:37 PM PDT SANTA ANA, Calif. - A man who cut out his girlfriend's tongue and let her bleed to death has been given a life sentence without chance of parole. The Orange County judge who sentenced Frank Mallory on Friday called it an unjustified and extraordinarily brutal murder.

Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain, and Injustice by Maureen Faulkner, Michael A. Smerconish Publisher: Lyons Press, The Pub. Date: December 2007 ISBN-13: 9781599213767 Synopsis Maureen Faulkner's husband, Philadelphia police office Danny Faulkner, was shot between the eyes on a cold December night in 1981. Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal's own confession. After his conviction, however, a national anti-death penalty movement was started to "Free Mumia;" Mike Farrell, Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg,...

The federal prosecutor who helped convict two U.S. Border Patrol agents sentenced to more than a decade in jail for shooting a suspected drug smuggler who illegally crossed the border from Mexico understands why the case stirred public outrage. However, he attributes the anger to the portrayal of the case by the news media and said the media version "is unfortunately not the narrative the jury heard" before convicting the two...

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Capital murder and hate-crime charges were filed Tuesday against an alleged member of a Latino gang in the fatal shooting of a black teenage girl, Los Angeles County prosecutors said. Ernesto Alcarez, 20, was charged with one count of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted premeditated murder, with the special circumstances of murder to further a gang and murder based on race, the district attorney's office said. Alcarez, jailed without bail, was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Long Beach Superior Court but the proceeding was postponed to Jan. 8. Prosecutors have not decided whether...

Prosecutor: Undercover cop begged for his life NEW YORK (AP) -- An undercover detective, after seeing his partner executed, begged for mercy before being killed himself in a weapons-buying sting gone awry, a prosecutor said Monday in closing arguments at the alleged gunman's death penalty trial. "Pleading for his life, begging to live, knowing he would never see his family again, knowing that this was the end -- that, ladies and gentlemen, is how James Nemorin spent his last moments on this earth," prosecutor Morris Fodeman told jurors in federal court in Brooklyn. Ronell Wilson, 24, is charged with killing...

The federal government may seek the death penalty for the accused kingpin of one of Mexico's oldest and most notorious drug cartels, a prosecutor said Monday. Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 36, did not seek bail during his second court appearance in five days. He pleaded not guilty last week to racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances and money laundering. Laura Duffy, an assistant U.S. attorney, said the government may seek new charges against Arellano Felix that would allow for the death penalty or life in prison if he is convicted. She did not elaborate on the...

State attorneys seek authority for Morales execution using one drug By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service February 21, 2006, 11:42 a.m. SAN JOSE (BCN) - Lawyers for the state of California went back to a federal judge in San Jose this morning to seek authority for corrections officials to carry out an execution tonight using only one drug. The action followed the postponement early this morning of the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Michael Morales, who was originally scheduled to be put to death shortly after midnight. The execution was delayed after two anesthesiologists said they could not...

MODESTO, Calif. - The parents of condemned murderer Scott Peterson hired two noted attorneys to begin his appeals. "Since he is innocent, we don't want him sitting there any longer than he has to," Lee Peterson, the former fertilizer salesman's father, said Tuesday. Peterson was convicted Nov. 12, 2004, in the murders of his pregnant wife, Laci, and the fetus she carried. Death sentences are automatically appealed in California, but it can sometimes take several years for inmates to receive a state-appointed attorney. Peterson's trial lawyer Mark Geragos could have handled the appeals but said he felt the case warrants...

Los Angeles' top law enforcement officers today urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to have no mercy for Stanley Tookie Williams, the gang co-founder convicted of four murders who is to be executed Dec. 13. Williams is a "coldblooded killer" who has "left his mark forever on our society by co-founding one of the most vicious, brutal gangs in existence, the Crips," according to the statement urging Schwarzenegger to deny clemency. The letter was from Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. "Williams now seeks mercy, the very mercy...

White Supremacist: I'm InnocentCHICAGO, March 3, 2005 White supremacist Matthew Hale, who's due to be sentenced for plotting to kill federal Judge Joan Lefkow, has denied any involvement in the slaying of Judge Lefkow's mother and husband. Hale issued a statement from prison through his mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, who speaks with her son by phone every week. "I want the perpetrator caught or prosecuted," Hale said. "There is simply no way that any supporter of mine would commit such a heinous crime," Hale said. "I only hope they sincerely wish to apprehend this animal instead of railroading the innocent."...

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Firas Adnan need only open his mouth to give evidence of Saddam Hussein's legacy. Just before the regime fell, the 24-year-old laborer quarreled with a Saddam loyalist, who punished him by chopping off his tongue with a box cutter. Now Adnan awaits the prosecution of Saddam with mixed feelings: happy the former dictator will have to answer for his crimes but bitter because he must live with the scars from the regime. "Saddam will stand trial, OK. But I'm handicapped. What's the use?" Adnan said Wednesday, his slurred words barely comprehensible. "It's not that I'm not happy...