Free Republic

A Los Angeles-area man pleaded guilty to felony harassment charges in ​federal court on Thursday for sending fake ransom notes posing as a kidnapper of "Today" show co-host Savannah ‌Guthrie's missing elderly mother. Derrick Callella, 42, pleaded guilty to two counts of harassment by telecommunications device, marking the only criminal conviction to date stemming from the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie from her home in Tucson, Arizona, five months ago. The charges carry a maximum penalty of ​two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But the plea agreement with prosecutors calls for Callella, a resident ​of Hawthorne, California, to...

June 4 (Reuters) - A Texas prosecutor asked the state's highest criminal court on Tuesday to reverse a pardon granted by Governor Gregg Abbott to a former U.S. Army sergeant convicted of murder and sentenced to prison for fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester. Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, a Democrat whose office tried the murder case, said he asked the state Court of Criminal Appeals for a special order, called a writ of mandamus, to overturn Abbott's action. Garza told a news briefing in the state capital of Austin that Abbott, a Republican, violated the separation of...

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill., July 5 (Reuters) - The man charged with killing seven people at a Chicago-area July Fourth parade slipped past the safeguards of an Illinois "red flag" law designed to prevent people deemed to have violent tendencies from getting guns, officials revealed on Tuesday. [...] Sergeant Chris Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff's Office said earlier in the day that Crimo had legally purchased a total of five guns, including the suspected murder weapon, despite having come to law enforcement's attention twice for behavior suggesting he might harm himself or others. The first instance was an April 2019...