(abc) Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination. "We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration," Rockefeller said Thursday. "The Committee will take whatever action is necessary.  More...

(AFP) The US Supreme Court Monday refused to hear arguments for a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther accused of killing a police officer who has become an icon for anti-capital punishment campaigners. His lawyer Robert Bryan has already said he will seek to bring a second Supreme Court appeal -- on the grounds of racism -- for the 54-year-old former radio journalist accused of the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal's death sentence was overturned in March by a federal court in Philadelphia, which found that the jury in the case had been incorrectly instructed. The judges voted two-to-one to uphold his conviction, however. Having escaped death row, his lawyers are now fighting a life sentence and want to bring him back before a jury for a new trial.  More...

(LVS) O. J. Simpson is going to prison. A predominantly white, predominantly female jury has found the former NFL All Star guilty of all of the 12 robbery, kidnapping and weapons charges he faced following a run-in last year with a pair of memorabilia dealers. His co-accused, Clarence “C.  More...

(nydn) Black New Yorkers are 13 times more likely to be murdered - or arrested for murder - than whites, an NYPD crime analysis shows. Blacks and Hispanics dominated tallies of both suspects and victims, according to an NYPD racial breakdown of crimes requested by the Daily News. The News asked for the stats after civil rights groups slammed the NYPD because 90% of people shot at by cops in 2007 - the last year for which data was available - were black or Hispanic. Police brass said that was because minorities accounted for the majority of crime suspects and victims. Of the 244 murders between Jan.  More...

(freep) Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is in jail (finally) and the City of Detroit is in its most precarious state in decades. But who's the fool in this horrible production? It's not the mayor, despite his serial misbehavior, his unbelievable audacity, his ridiculous clinging to power. At this point, it's Detroiters -- of every hue, economic station, political affiliation, block club and neighborhood. It's the people who live here, who do business here, who care about this place and depend on its health and vitality. We are the fools, for letting this awful chapter in the city's 300-year history develop to this point.  More...

(bsun) When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes. After the raid, Prince George's County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights' mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered an hour earlier. What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct.  More...

(fp) Shortly after Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wakes up in jail this morning -- still reeling from becoming the first sitting mayor in Detroit's 307-year history to spend a night behind bars -- Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is expected to charge him with felony assault. The announcement will come just 25 hours after the onetime political wunderkind went to court Thursday, with plans to waive a preliminary examination and speed his way to trial on perjury and other charges from the text message scandal. Instead, he wound up getting locked up. Kilpatrick appeared devastated when 36th District Judge Ronald Giles, speaking in low-key tones from the bench, made his blockbuster ruling: The mayor's unauthorized trip to Windsor last month, a bond violation, had earned him a court-ordered trip to the Wayne County Jail. Immediately.  More...

(lat) Officers arrested eight members of an Anaheim biker gang and charged them with attempted murder this morning as part of an ongoing operation, authorities said. The charges stem from a fight last week at a Newport Beach bar between two biker gangs, said Anaheim police Sgt. Tim Schmidt. The group arrested this morning are members of a Christian biker gang named Set Free Soldiers, and the victims are members of the Hells Angels, Schmidt said. The operation, which included SWAT teams, began about 5 a.  More...

(nsl) Sharpe James, the five-term Newark mayor and a towering figure in New Jersey politics, was sentenced today to 27 months in prison for failing to disclose his romantic relationship with a girlfriend he helped get lucrative city land. "This is a sad day," U. S. District Judge William Martini said, announcing the decision after a four-hour hearing in a packed Newark courtroom. Martini also ordered James to pay $100,000 fine and report to prison Sept.  More...

(philly/ap) Luis Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican immigrant, crossed paths late one night with some teenage football players who had been out drinking in their small Pennsylvania coal town. Taunts ensued. One youngster threw a punch, knocking Ramirez to the ground, and another followed with a kick to the head, authorities said yesterday, when they charged three teens in the death of the farmhand and factory worker. Brandon Piekarsky, 16, and Colin Walsh, 17, were charged as adults with homicide and ethnic intimidation. Derrick Donchak, 18, was charged with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation.  More...

(cnn) A police officer shocked a handcuffed Baron "Scooter" Pikes nine times with a Taser after arresting him on a cocaine charge. He stopped twitching after seven, according to a coroner's report. Soon afterward, Pikes was dead. Now the officer, since fired, could end up facing criminal charges in Pikes' January death after medical examiners ruled it a homicide. Dr.  More...

(nydn) A top Bush administration pardon lawyer was fired for making racist remarks in the case of a beloved Brooklyn minister facing deportation, the Daily News has learned. "This might sound racist, but [the applicant] is about as honest as you could expect for a Nigerian. Unfortunately, that's not very honest," pardon attorney Roger Adams said as he recommended President Bush deny clemency to the Nigerian immigrant under consideration. That Nigerian turned out to be Park Slope minister Chibueze Okorie, sources familiar with the case told The News. Adams was forced out in January because of his anti-Nigerian comments.  More...

(ajc) Dexter Scott King said Saturday that he was "shocked" by a recent lawsuit filed by his siblings accusing him of mismanaging money in one family account and taking money for his own personal use out of another. "It totally blindsided me. I think maybe it was a reckless attempt to express their grievances. They are false claims and I will addressing that accordingly," King said in a brief interview at his Malibu home a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean in an exclusive community west of Los Angeles. "We are private family," King said.  More...

(ajc) Just seven months after Michael Vick was sentenced to federal prison, the fallen Falcons quarterback found himself in a "precarious financial position" and filed for bankruptcy protection. One of his creditors is the Falcons. In Chapter 11 documents filed in federal court in Virginia on Monday, Vick cites debts of between $10-50 million dollars. He also cites assets in the same range. In the court documents, Vick lists seven creditors, including the Falcons, that are owed a total of $12.  More...

We understand that Bernard Spitzer, father of former Governor Spitzer is gravely ill and for that we are very sorry. But we appeal to Mr. Spitzer now. . .  More...

(chron) A Harris County grand jury decided today that Joe Horn should not be charged with a crime for shooting two burglary suspects he confronted outside his neighbor's home in Pasadena last fall. The decision to clear Horn of wrongdoing came two weeks after the grand jury began considering evidence in the case, including Horn's testimony last week. Horn, a 62-year-old retiree, became the focus of an intense public debate after the Nov. 14 shootings. Many supporters praised him as a hero for using deadly force to protect property, while others dismissed him as a killer who should have heeded a 911 operator's instructions to stay in his house and wait for police.  More...

(examiner) Pioneering rapper Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters, who spent more than five years in prison on a 1991 attempted murder conviction and faced threats of deportation years after rehabilitating his life, was granted a full and unconditional pardon Friday by New York Gov. David Paterson. Walters, 43, has been under threat of being sent back to his native United Kingdom, although he has lived in the United States since he was a child. In a statement, he expressed gratitude to Paterson and his lawyers, and hoped that he could finally put the turmoil behind him. "This has been a long and difficult road and I am happy for this to be settled once and for all," Walters said.  More...

(nyt) Children who are confined to adult jails are at greater risk of being raped, battered or pushed to suicide. They also are more likely to become violent criminals than children handled through the juvenile justice system. When Congress reauthorizes the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, it should press the states to end this barbaric practice. The juvenile justice law provides federal aid to states that agree to humanize their often Dickensian systems — and to refrain from placing children in adult jails. The bargain worked well enough until the 1990s, when there was an outbreak of hysteria about so-called super predators and an adolescent crime wave that never materialized.  More...

(nyt) (nyt) The United States prison system keeps marking shameful milestones. In February, the Pew Center on the States released a report showing that more than 1 in 100 American adults are presently behind bars — an astonishingly high rate of incarceration notably skewed along racial lines. One in nine black men aged 20 to 34 are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Now, two new reports, by The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch, have turned a critical spotlight on law enforcement’s overwhelming focus on drug use in low-income urban areas. These reports show large disparities in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use.  More...

(ap) A civil liberties group sued Wednesday in a challenge to the NYPD's practice of stopping hundreds of thousands of people each year for questioning, saying it is racially biased. The New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit lists New York Post reporter Leonardo Blair as the sole plaintiff, saying he was stopped and frisked by police officers as he walked from his car to his Bronx home last November. He was taken to a police station, where officers expressed surprise that though he was black, he was not from "the projects," the lawsuit said. Blair, 28, has a master's degree from Columbia University. The lawsuit, filed in U.  More...

(nydn) The Queens judge who cleared three city cops of killing Sean Bell with a 50-bullet barrage has ordered all evidence from the controversial case turned over to the feds, sources said today. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman was asked for the evidence so the Justice Department could begin weighing if there are grounds to try the detectives on civil rights charges, the sources said. Queens prosecutors were to meet this afternoon with Bell's parents and fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, to assure them they are cooperating with the feds "even though the trial is over," sources said. While they are talking, staffers from the Queens district attorneys office will pick up a portable hard drive from the feds onto which the evidence will be downloaded. The sitdown comes a day after the Bell family took part in a massive but peaceful demonstration aimed at pressuring the government to go after detectives Marc Cooper, Gescard Isnora and Michael Oliver.  More...

(BBN Editors) This story of a organized drug crime ring on an American university campus is clear evidence that drug dealing doesn’t only take place in poor, urban neighborhoods as media and law enforcement authorities would have many to believe. If law enforcement agencies turned their attention from easy catch in Black and Brown communities to learning institutions like San Diego State as well as Ivy League universities, they'd see a pattern of drug dealing and use that would net them arrests like this………. (San Diego Tribune) San Diego State University police have contended with illegal drugs before, but what investigators discovered over the past year was worse – more sophisticated, more pervasive and more dangerous. Federal agents and SDSU police culminated a yearlong investigation into drug dealing around campus yesterday, the first anniversary of a freshman's cocaine-related death. Ninety-six suspects, including 75 SDSU students, have been arrested on drug-related charges as a result of the undercover operation, launched after Jenny Poliakoff, 19, was found dead in her off-campus apartment after a night of celebration with her sorority.  More...

(newsday) The acquittal of three officers Friday in the shooting death of Sean Bell lays bare the flaws in a system desperate for reforms, civil rights activists said Sunday, calling for a special prosecutor to handle such cases. "It is difficult, almost impossible, to prosecute on-duty police officers in police misconduct cases, especially those involving homicide allegations," said civil rights lawyer and former New York Civil Liberties Union head Norman Siegel. "The verdict underscores the need for systemic change. " Flanked by Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn) and members of the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care at a news conference outside One Police Plaza in Manhattan, Siegel called on Gov.  More...

(Juan Gonzalez) It is the nightmare that keeps recurring. Whether its Amadou Diallo and the 41-shot barrage in the Bronx, or Timothy Stansbury opening the roof door of his public housing building only to be gunned down without warning, or the 50 shots unleashed on Sean Bell. It's all become predictable - after much public fanfare, sometimes even a trial, our courts say no crime was involved in these heart-breaking shootings of unarmed black men. Anyone who spent time in the Sean Bell trial knows the prosecutors were only going through the motions. The absymal New York Knicks had a better game plan this season than the prosecutors of Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper.  More...

(Denis Hamill)It's one for the books. "I never saw a case prosecuted like this," Marvyn Kornberg, the noted defense lawyer, said several times during the Sean Bell trial. "It's a throw-everything-at-the-wall approach. " Stephen Murphy, who won the only acquittal in the sensational Howard Beach trial in the very same Queens courtroom 21 years ago, is still scratching his head. "I've thought all along that these cops were going to be acquitted because the prosecution made major blunders in the case," he said.  More...

(orlandosentinel) Actor Wesley Snipes was sentenced to three years in prison late this afternoon. The decision in federal court here came after a daylong hearing. A federal judge earlier heard objections from a lawyer for Snipes, as the defense struggled to keep the Orlando-born actor out of prison for willfully failing to file a tax return. When the sentence was read, Snipes had no expression at all on his face -- neither did his wife, who was sitting in the front row behind him. When a reporter asked whether he wanted to say anything, Snipes just spread his arms as if to say, "Like what?" He was with Dan Meachum, his legal counsel, who replied: "Not now.  More...

(tampa tribune) Prosecutors raised the stakes in the videotaped beating of a Lakeland girl with their decision Thursday to try eight teenage defendants as adults and with crimes that include kidnapping. The defendants, one as young as 14, now face a penalty of up to life in prison. The mother of one of the suspects said she can't understand the prosecutors' decision. "Look at their ages, they're not adults," said Christina Garcia, the mother of Mercades Nichols. "They still have a teenage mentality.  More...

(freep) Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty were charged today with multiple counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office and conspiracy because of their conduct in last year’s police whistle-blower trial, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced. Kilpatrick is charged with eight felonies and Beatty with seven. They are: perjury, conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office. Worthy said the perjury charges accuse the two of lying during a whistle-blower lawsuit about the firing of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown and about their romantic relationship. Kilpatrick, 38, serving his seventh year in office, is the first Detroit mayor to face criminal charges while still in office.  More...

(nyt) Inspired by the many Web sites that allow users to rate their teachers, their doctors, even their neighbors, a couple from Culver City have created one that allows people to rate police officers and sheriff’s deputies across the country. Some law enforcement officials, though, strongly object to the site, arguing that it exposes officers to resentment and reprisal and vowing to pursue legislation to block it. “Officers who are rated face unfair maligning without any opportunity to defend themselves,” said Jerry Dyer, the chief of the Fresno Police Department and president of the California Police Chiefs Association. The site, he said, puts officers and their families “in grave danger” because it reports their names and agencies, the raw material for further Internet research by those with the intent to harm. But Gino Sesto, a founder of RateMyCop.  More...

(ap) A black father was sentenced to two to four years in prison Wednesday for fatally shooting an intoxicated white teenager during a racially charged confrontation with two carloads of young people at the end of his driveway. The parents of victim Daniel Cicciaro Jr. , 17, were irate after learning that John White did not receive the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. White, 54, was convicted in December of second-degree manslaughter and a weapons charge. "Nice message it sends to society that as long as you're black and there's a problem at the end of your driveway you can grab an illegal handgun and shoot someone in the face and get away with it," an infuriated Daniel Cicciaro Sr.  More...

(lat) Stanford University called about Jamiel Shaw a week or so ago, intrigued by the slight but speedy running back for Los Angeles High School, the Southern League's most valuable player last year. Rutgers University called a few days later. The Shaw family already had reason to be proud. Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, was on her second tour of duty in Iraq.  More...

(abc/ap) Voters in two Vermont towns approved measures Tuesday calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for what they consider violations of the Constitution. More symbolic than anything, the items sought to have police arrest Bush and Cheney if they ever visit Brattleboro or nearby Marlboro or to extradite them for prosecution elsewhere — if they're not impeached first. In Brattleboro, the vote was 2,012-1,795. In Marlboro, which held a town meeting on the issue, it was 43-25 with three abstentions. "I hope the one thing that people take from this is, 'Hey, it can be done,'" said Kurt Daims, 54, who organized the petition drive that led to the Brattleboro vote.  More...

(ap) Marsha Cunningham was no drug dealer. But when authorities busted her boyfriend in the 1990s for selling crack and powdered cocaine, they also arrested her on a crack possession charge. Her sentence: Fifteen years behind bars, only two less than her boyfriend got. But Cunningham is now one of up to 20,000 inmates convicted of crack offenses who may see their prison terms reduced under new federal guidelines intended to bring retroactive fairness to drug sentencing. "Marsha is a really good person," said her aunt, Ruby Jones of Houston.  More...

(ajc/ap) Rap star Juvenile was the father of one of three Lawrenceville residents murdered Thursday night at their home, according to court records. Jelani Deleston, 4, who police say was gunned down with her mother and sister, was the daughter of the 32-year-old rapper, according to child-support records in Gwinnett County. The mother, Gwinnett County Sheriff's Deputy Joy Deleston, brought a paternity lawsuit against the 32-year-old rapper, whose real name is Terius Gray, in 2004. Police say Anthony Tyrone Terrell, Deleston's 17-year-old son, killed her and her daughters Micaih, 11, and Jelani. They still don't know why he did it.  More...

(bloomberg) Duke University, rocked by unfounded rape allegations involving its lacrosse team two years ago, was sued by 38 members of that squad who say the school unfairly lent its credibility to the charges. Duke officials remained silent during the rape probe, even though they had evidence the players were innocent, attorney Chuck Cooper said today in a statement. The players sued because of the emotional distress they suffered when school officials failed to support them during an investigation into the racially charged incident, according to a statement. The case, which led to the cancellation of the ninth-ranked team's season and the coach's resignation, continues to haunt Duke even after the three students criminally charged were cleared. The lawsuit, filed today in U.  More...

(nymag) Last March, Erin Primmer, 35, had been a producer on The Montel Williams Show for two years. She was making $110K a year and was generally healthy until all of a sudden, on March 29, 2007, smack in the middle of Montel's show on "Survivor Stories: Ripped From the Headlines," she had a brain aneurysm, collapsed on the floor, and was rushed to the hospital. Fortunately for Erin, it wasn't the kind of brain aneurysm that kills you — but it was the kind of brain aneurysm that kills your career. According to the lawsuit she is filing against CBS, when Erin returned to work, she was told that her contract wouldn't be renewed, that they needed someone physically “at the top of their game,” and “capable of handling the pressure” and that the next year was going to be “worse. ” It was in fact worse: Montel's show was canceled two weeks ago.  More...