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A federal judge in New Jersey rejected Sen. Bob Menendez’s request to allow breaks in his criminal trial in order to fulfill his Senate duties, excoriating the senator for seeking “special treatment.” Menendez’s lawyers filed a motion requesting that his upcoming criminal trial take recesses any time the senator is needed in Washington on official business. They argued that forcing the senator to leave an ongoing trial to attend to congressional business would violate his due process rights. “A trial taking place during a session of Congress risks involuntarily denying Senator Menendez his rights to due process and confrontation, unless...

A judge has denied a request from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to delay his corruption trial so he can cast votes in the Senate, calling the request "nigh frivolous." "Defendant Menendez, granted, as are all defendants, with the presumption of innocence, need not appear in court if he does not wish or wants to be absent," Judge William H. Walls said in his reply to Menedez's legal team. "He may voluntarily absent himself. This is his prerogative. All defendants have that right. Such right is not new nor recent. Practically speaking, during any absence his lawyers will be present to...

A Nevada jury dealt another blow this week to the government’s case against participants in an armed uprising against federal agents three years ago. On Tuesday, a jury acquitted two men, Richard Lovelien and Steven Stewart, of all 10 charges against them, and two others, Eric Parker and O. Scott Drexler, on most counts. The jury deadlocked on the remaining charges against Parker and Drexler, and the judge declared a mistrial. This was the second trial for the four men, who had been accused of conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, among other charges. A jury in April...

“I KEPT the four girls in an abandoned house. Each night I would have sex with a different one,” a grubby looking man said, unperturbed.“Sometimes they seemed scared, but they never said no. They were all virgins when I got them and more beautiful than you can imagine.”It was the world’s single largest military operation in nearly 15 years.The battle for the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest offensive in the war against Islamic State - and no doubt, the bloodiest - took a mighty three years for allied forces to remove Islamic State’s tight grip.But with freedom, comes...

The upcoming bribery trial for New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez could have damaging consequences for his party whether or not he's convicted, by sidelining him from Congress just as Democrats gear up to fight the Trump agenda. The senator is now pleading with a federal judge to alter the trial schedule on certain days so he can return to Washington to vote. So far, however, the court has rejected these requests, which the Trump Justice Department has decried as a bid for "special treatment." The timing of the trial, set to begin Sept. 6, is critical. It would fall...

The Retrial of Defendants Eric Parker, Steven Stewart, Scott Drexler, and Ricky Lovelein took a decided twist today in a Las Vegas Federal courtroom.Cliven Bundy walks by a first amendment area set up by the BLM near Bunkerville, Nev. The defense had already been shot down by Judge Gloria Navarro. Yesterday, the day was spent previewing the defense witness testimony and Navarro refused to allow their witnesses to take the stand. She called the testimony “Not Relevant”.She has made it clear that there is no such thing as self defense against the government, or that of defending anyone else against...

SAN FRANCISCO - First a Chinatown gangster dubbed Shrimp Boy and state Senator Leland Yee were both nabbed in a federal corruption sting. Now three others who were also targets of that undercover operation may be going to trial on corruption charges. That's exactly what the judge in this case has to decide - whether or not there's enough evidence and probable cause to go to trial. The three are accused of four counts of bribery and one count of money laundering. All three were high profile city officials. The three defendants are former city Human Rights Commissioner Nazly Mohajer,...

Railroad — to convict with undue haste and by means of false charges or insufficient evidence; to push through hastily or without due consideration Before jury selection began Monday in the retrial of four defendants in the 2014 Bunkerville standoff at the Bundy ranch federal Judge Gloria Navarro granted a prosecution motion to bar presentation of evidence “supporting jury nullification.” In April, in the first of three scheduled trials for the Bunkerville defendants —charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy, extortion, assault and impeding federal officers — ended in a mistrial. The jury found only two of six people on trial...

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's jailed pro-Kurdish opposition leader said no judge could stand up to Tayyip Erdogan, expressing doubts he could ever have a fair trial after the president publicly labeled him a terrorist. In a rare interview from prison, Selahattin Demirtas also told Reuters he believed he accepted some blame for failing to halt the collapse of peace talks between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Bill Cosby's sexual assault case has ended in a mistrial. After six days of deliberation, the seven men and five women selected to serve on the jury were unable to render a unanimous verdict on any of the three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault with which Cosby had been charged. The comedian pleaded not guilty. Kevin R. Steel, the district attorney from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who brought the charges, has announced he will retry the case.

Former Rep. Corrine Brown (D., Fla.) / AP The attorney for former Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown (Fla.) named three members of Congress, all fellow Democrats, as potential defense witnesses for Brown's upcoming fraud trial. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee (D., Texas), Bennie Thompson (D., Miss), and Marcia Fudge, (D., Ohio) were all named on the witness list, filed Friday evening with Jacksonville, Florida's federal court, and are expected to be asked about Brown's involvement with causes she addressed in Congress, the Florida Times-Union reported over the weekend. Jesse Jackson, University of North Florida President John Delaney, and civil rights activists Martin...

Buenos Aires (AFP) - A judge on Thursday ordered Argentina's former president Cristina Kirchner to stand trial on charges of financial mismanagement. It is the first of several cases against the combative 64-year-old leftist leader to go to trial. A string of cases targeting Kirchner and her rival, current President Mauricio Macri, are clouding Argentine politics ahead of mid-term elections later this year. Kirchner is accused of ordering the central bank to sell dollar futures at artificially low prices, causing Argentina to lose hundreds of millions. She denies wrongdoing. Kirchner's defenders say she should not be prosecuted for a mishandled...

MARKSVILLE -- A jury has been picked in the trial for one of two Louisiana law-enforcement officers charged with murder in a 6-year-old boy's shooting death. Twelve jurors and two alternates are scheduled to hear attorneys' opening statements on Monday (March 20) for Derrick Stafford's trial. The Town Talk reports that jury selection ended Friday. The judge, prosecutors and Stafford's attorneys had spent five days questioning dozens of prospective jurors.

Ahmet Şık German magazine Der Spiegel has reported journalist Ahmet Sik’s imprisonment with the headline “The Absurd Trial of Journalist Ahmet Sik’.Ahmek Sik, the UNESCO Press Freedom Prize winner, has been imprisoned since 30 December 2016 in Silivri Prison, where Welt reporter Deniz Yucel is being kept.The investigative journalist Sik, whose unpublished book landed him in solitary confinement for a year in 2011 after prosecutors loyal to the Gulenist movement targeted him, is now detained on charges of membership to what Turkish authorities call the ‘Gulenist Terrorist Organisation’ (FETO), Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).The journalist wrote in his much-debated book, ‘The Army of the...

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his post without permission or orders to do so, in Afghanistan in 2009. He spent 5 years as a prisoner of the Taliban until May 2014 when President Obama traded 5 Taliban prisoners for him. Since being back in the US, he has been awaiting court martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. During the campaign, Trump referred to Bergdahl as a traitor. And Bergdahl’s defense tried to argue that it threatens their client’s chance at a fair trial. That argument was thrown out this past Friday by Judge, Army...

A Jewish Orthodox scholar is proposing an Old Testament ceremony, the redemption of the firstborn, to return Jesus of Nazareth to the Jewish fold and then hold a retrial at which he could be acquitted. The first trial, two millennia ago, resulted in Jesus’ condemnation by the high priests for blasphemy, his crucifixion by the Roman conquerors and his resurrection through which Christians worldwide believe they can receive salvation and life eternal. The Jewish authorities, however, have been libeled ever since as “Christ-killers” and more. One scholar, Ariel Cohen Alloro, while not “an official rabbi,” is a student of one...

Burns Chronicles #54 Though I have posted the Preamble to the Bill of Rights a number of times, people still ask if there really is a Preamble to the Bill of Rights. A preamble sets forth the purpose of the document, as the Preamble to the Constitution sets forth its purpose. It is not a part of the document, rather an explanation as to why the document was created. When Congress approved, and sent the Bill of Rights to the States, as required by Article V of the Constitution, the first paragraph explained why the Joint Resolution was passed. It...

The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et. al., Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017. Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017; return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there...

When U.S. Marshals physically subdued attorney Marcus Mumford at the finale of the Oregon militants' trial, the encounter created a buzz across the legal community with experts saying they'd never seen anything similar happen before. Marshals tackled and used a Taser on Mumford, Ammon Bundy's defense lawyer, following the Oregon standoff leader's acquittal in the federal conspiracy case Thursday. The agency said in a news release Friday that Mumford had become "upset and aggressive" in court after the jury verdict. The federal agency is conducting a review of the marshals' actions, according to Thadd Baird, supervising deputy of the U.S....

Baltimore City State’s Attorney is calling for major changes in investigations of police misconduct. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby pushes reforms for officer misconduct cases, including granting her office arrest powers. Do her proposals go too far or do they fix a broken justice system? Mosby wants the power to limit officers from choosing bench trials–after the strategy proved successful for the officers she charged in Freddie Gray’s death. It’s one of several changes the state’s attorney is asking for in police misconduct cases.