Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction, but set aside the death sentence of a man condemned for kidnapping and murdering an 8-year-old Hayward girl in 1978. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means Richard Hovey's sentence is changed to life without parole. If the decision withstands appeal, Hovey, who tossed a bound Tina Salazar of Hayward from a car after beating her, would be removed from death row at San Quentin State Prison. The San Francisco-based appeals court reversed the sentence after concluding Hovey received ineffective assistance of counsel during the...

Although his political account bulges with $4.7 million in cash and he has no opponent in sight, US Senator Edward M. Kennedy is on a fund-raising rampage from coast to coast, a campaign that Democratic supporters say is designed to leave him without a Republican opponent for the first election in his four decades in the Senate. The Kennedy fund-raising bandwagon comes to Boston March 4, when the senator and his family are throwing a birthday party for him expected to raise at least $500,000. Kennedy, who is turning 73, is pressing the state's Democratic establishment for the event that...