Free Republic

KNOXVILLE — A special judge today granted new trials for four defendants in the 2007 torture-slaying cases, agreeing with lawyers that presiding Judge Richard Baumgartner's conduct led to fundamental structural flaws in the prosecutions. Jon Kerry Blackwood, his voice at times rising to a shout, said Baumgartner was obviously intoxicated in 2009 and 2010 while Lemaricus Davidson, Letalvis Cobbins, George Thomas and Vanessa Coleman were being prosecuted.

When "Dateline NBC" aired its first "To Catch a Predator" segment in 2004, it made for sensational television. Program host Chris Hansen on camera confronted grown men who had been lured to a house by the prospect of sex with children. The first two segments in New York and the northern Virginia/Washington, D.C., area nabbed a firefighter, a rabbi and a teacher. For the third installment, Perverted-Justice.com, the Internet watchdog group that collaborated with "Dateline" on the "Predator" stings, asked that law enforcement be added to the mix and suggested the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, which had worked with the...

Last month, the Web site Perverted-Justice.com posted news of the conviction of Sean Young, a Wisconsin man sentenced to 10 years in state prison for soliciting sex online from a 14-year-old girl. According to a transcript of an online chat posted on the site, at one point Mr. Young had asked the girl, identified only as Billie, what she was wearing. When she answered “sweats,” Mr. Young typed back that if she were his daughter, “i’d make u wear sexy clthes.” Billie turned out to be an adult volunteer for Perverted Justice, an anti-pedophile group, and when Mr. Young drove...

A Maryland rabbi caught in a television sting operation was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison yesterday for trying to solicit sex from a 13-year-old boy over the Internet. David A. Kaye, 56, told the judge that he traveled to Herndon for what he thought would be sex with a boy "as a cry out for help to fight my personal demons." Sobbing as he acknowledged his father, who sat in the courtroom in a wheelchair, Kaye said his conviction had made him face "the reality of who I am. . . . I know I need help. I...

A Democrat community leader who would "offer a homily during worship services" and facilitated his congregation's "opening our doors to all people regardless of sexual orientation" has been given a slap on the hand after pleading guilty to extensive child pornography offenses involving children as young as six. Authorities say Andrew Douglas Reed, 53, who reported for an abbreviated jail term just a few weeks ago, had pleaded guilty to a page-long list of counts of 2nd-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. Court records in the Asheville, N.C., case said he admitted that he would "record, develop and duplicate material...

f you ever wander into a stranger's house and see Chris Hansen lurking about, it's time to call a lawyer. The gotcha "journalist" behind "Dateline" NBC's "To Catch A Predator" series has created a huge buzz by exposing and shaming Internet predators to the delight of millions of Americans, parents' groups, and even a swooning Oprah Winfrey. Nowadays, the "To Catch A Predator" website is, oddly enough, even hyping the fact that former Representative Mark Foley at one time praised the program--making the show seem like a twofer, I suppose: "To Catch A Hypocrite!"

RIVERSIDE - A Norwalk man snared last January during a "Dateline NBC" Internet predator sting in Mira Loma has been sentenced to three years in state prison. Hoi "Eddie" Chan, 29, pleaded guilty June 23 to one count of attempted child molestation and was sentenced on Friday. That brings to eight the number of men who have entered pleas in the high-profile case that was televised nationally earlier this year. Five men, including Chan, have been sentenced. Defendants Corey Ahia, 26, of Fontana; Jonathan Daniel Vasquez, 21, of Chino and Miguel Angel Sosa, 35, of Perris, are all awaiting sentencing....