Free Republic

A parolee was arrested Wednesday, nearly eight months after shooting a man who tried to intervene during a dispute with a woman in Costa Mesa, officials said. Around 5:40 a.m. on March 2, officers responded to a call of shots fired in the 2000 block of Harbor Boulevard and learned that a man had been shot and was driven to a hospital, the Costa Mesa Police Department said in a news release Thursday. Officers located the 30-year-old victim, who was being treated for a gunshot wound to the neck at a nearby hospital. An investigation revealed the victim heard a...

A Monroe County grand jury has declined to indict a controversial parolee who was facing felony charges for registering to vote illegally that could have sent him back to prison. The parolee, Jalil Muntaqim, was imprisoned under his given name, Anthony Bottom, for nearly 50 years for his role in the murder of two New York City police officers in 1971 before his release in October. The Monroe County Public Defender’s Office confirmed Tuesday that the grand jury last week “no-billed” Muntaqim’s case, meaning the jury declined to indict. The case is now sealed.

OAKLAND, Calif. - A man arrested in the robbery of a 75-year-old Oakland man who is now brain-dead is a parolee with an extensive criminal history, KTVU has learned.

A parolee charged with killing a University of Illinois at Chicago honor student spotted her as she walked alone past a CTA Blue Line stop on campus early Saturday morning and grew angered when she ignored his repeated attempts to talk, Cook County prosecutors alleged Tuesday. As Ruth George reached her car in a UIC parking garage, prosecutors said, Donald Thurman grabbed her around the neck from behind and put her in a chokehold. With his arm still wrapped around her neck, Thurman dragged an unconscious George to her car and threw her in the back seat, where he sexually...

A federal appeals court ruled 2-1 on Friday that Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped from South Lake Tahoe and held in Antioch by a parolee for 18 years, cannot hold federal parole officers liable for failing to supervise her captor. The ruling was made seven years to the day she was rescued - on Aug. 26, 2009. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had already ruled on this case in March, but Friday's decision was an expanded version of their original opinion. Friday's opinion now becomes a legal precedent. Dugard had argued, unsuccessfully, that federal parole officers failed to...

Warren Watson, a Colorado prison parolee who fled from parole and confessed to a murder in Lakewood, had a long history of such escapes but had still been placed on a comparatively low level of supervision by Colorado’s Division of Parole. ... a series of missteps, miscommunications and questionable judgments in the Watson case, much like in the case of parolee Evan Ebel, who is suspected of murdering Colorado’s Corrections Director and a young father while Ebel was on parole. The parole department is examining its handling of the Ebel case. Internal Colorado parole records now show that the Colorado...

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has vetoed a bill allowing officers to search people released on probation or parole without a warrant. The Republican governor said he sees no evidence that giving law enforcement the additional authority would decrease crime or reduce recidivism. He said the protection from unreasonable searches is an essential safeguard of liberty in America. The measure allows officers to bypass going to a judge for a warrant before searching people on probation or parole. Inmates must agree to the searches before they’re released. They can search the person, the vehicle the person owns or is driving,...

"The man convicted of a brutal rape and attempted murder is making plans to move back to the scene of the crime in Fresno."

SAN FRANCISCO – The parolee who killed three Oakland police officers and left a fourth brain-dead over the weekend had been tentatively linked by DNA evidence to a rape the day before the shootings, authorities said. Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason confirmed a report on the San Francisco Chronicle's Web site on Monday night that DNA from an unsolved rape in Oakland in February was a probable match to that of 26-year-old Lovelle Mixon. Investigators got that information Friday, the day before Mixon opened fire on the officers following a routine traffic stop. Mixon is the primary suspect in the...

A parolee who registered voters for the ACORN group in Detroit was bound over for trial Monday on six counts of forging applications for two Jackson women. Antonio Johnson, 23, worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in May and June, shortly after he was released from prison on drunk-driving convictions. Jackson police investigated Johnson after City Clerk Lynn Fessel said her office flagged six voter registration applications for two people who already were registered. Both women testified Monday they did not fill out or sign the forms Johnson submitted, and did not give him permission to...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - A man on parole for fatally beating a former girlfriend with an iron skillet was charged with murder Tuesday after authorities found the bodies of his wife, their infant son and her 13-year-old daughter, police said. Tony H. Pope, 36, a lumber company worker, was charged with the death of his wife, Andrea Pope, 36. Police were waiting for autopsy reports to determine what charges would be filed for the child deaths. "He confessed to the killing of the three individuals," police Chief Steve Parks said. Parks said all three victims had "extensive trauma" and it was...

Hundreds of inmates have been released from California prisons since Jan. 1 as a result of a federal court agreement Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration signed the first day it came to power. At least one of the prisoners released has since been arrested on suspicion of committing a new crime - a Porterville man accused of threatening to kill a police officer. The releases took place because Schwarzenegger's administration signed an agreement in a long-contested class-action lawsuit known as the Valdivia case. It required the state to provide revocation hearings for parolees within 35 days of their reincarceration - or...