Free Republic

After years of trying — in the words of the judge — “to get the damned rascal in this court,” it was a conviction that many welcomed. But those words were not from Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, and the conviction was not that of former President Donald Trump. Rather they were from US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, at the end of the 18th century, when America embraced political prosecutions to target critics and opponents. The man on trial then was James T. Callender, a muckraking writer critical of President John Adams. For accusing politicians of corruption, Callender...

Sadistic killers at 16, girls showed no remorse for strangling their friend Two teenagers who wanted to experience murder told police it "felt right" to strangle a friend and bury her body in a shallow grave beneath her West Australian home. The 17-year-old girls, who cannot be named due to their age, today faced a sentencing hearing in Perth Children's Court after pleading guilty to murdering Eliza Jane Davis in the small coal mining town of Collie on June 18, 2006. As the girls sat stony-faced in court today, Prosecutor Simon Stone said they had confessed that after partying with...

PHOENIX -- The gunmen took turns as they drove around the city. Some nights it was Samuel John Dieteman, a burly electrician with a ragged mop of jet black hair. According to court documents, he'd blast at lone pedestrians from the window of a silver Toyota Camry in what he called "random recreational violence." Other nights the trigger was pulled by his roommate, Dale S. Hausner, a baby-faced janitor and freelance photographer, the court documents allege. After each shooting, the pair would drive slowly away, leaving little evidence other than the victim's body on a sidewalk. Court documents and interviews...