Gotti Freed After Mistrial
A judge declared on Tuesday that the racketeering trial of John “Junior” Gotti, son of a famous crime boss, was a mistrial. The jury had failed to reach a verdict against him, making it the case’s fourth hung jury in five years. Gotti later told reporters that he was looking forward to spending time with [...]
Indiana Woman Gets 125 Years, Videotaped Molestation
A babysitter from Indiana has been sentenced to 125 years in prison for videotaping herself performing sexual acts with children as young as two months. Samantha Light, age twenty-six, pleaded guilty to three felony counts of child molestation last month. During her sentencing on Wednesday, Light apologized and said that she had been coerced by [...]
Petters Found Guilty
A jury has found the businessman Tom Petters guilty of twenty counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other charges, composing what prosecutors called a $3.5 billion Ponzi scheme. Petters had claimed that his subordinates carried out the scheme without his knowledge. He was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. U.S. District Judge [...]
Ex-bus Driver Convicted in Pedestrian Death
A former bus driver from Cleveland who was on her cell phone when her bus hit and killed a pedestrian in a crosswalk has been found guilty of vehicular homicide. A jury on Wednesday acquitted Angela Williams of a more severe charge of aggravated vehicular homicide – if she had been convicted of that charge, [...]
Former UPS Pilot Gets 25 Years for Child Molestation
A pilot from Bonney Lake, Washington has been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for using money, alcohol, and manipulation to molest over a dozen boys. Weldon Marc Gilbert was sentenced on Monday by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle. The sentencing memo said that, according to prosecutors, Gilbert remains “incapable of real remorse” for the [...]
Jury Awards $16M in Radio Contestant Death
A Sacramento County jury awarded $16.5 million to the family of a twenty-eight-year-old woman who died after participating in a radio station’s water-drinking contest. Jennifer Strange, a mother of three, died of acute water intoxication in January 2007. The challenge was to see who could drink the most water without urinating. The prize for the [...]
Teen Convicted in Michigan Homeless Killings
A jury recently convicted a fifteen-year-old boy of two counts of felony murder after the beating deaths of two Michigan homeless men. The jury deliberated for five hours before delivering the verdict for Thomas McCloud. McCloud had been charged for the deaths of Wilford Hamilton and Lee Hoffman. The homeless men, both age sixty-one, died [...]
Official Gets a Year in Prison for Abramoff Scandal
The former top procurement official in the cabinet of George W. Bush was recently sentenced to a year in prison for lying about his relationship with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Paul Friedman, a United States District Judge, told David Safavian that he is being punished for lying to authorities investigating the Abramoff scandal. Safavian gave Abramoff [...]
Maryland Man Convicted of Drowning Three Children
A father in Maryland pled guilty and was convicted of drowning his three children in a hotel room bathtub in Baltimore. Prosecutors say that Mark Castillo pleaded guilty guilty on Wednesday to three counts of first-degree murder, and was sentenced by the Baltimore Circuit Court to three consecutive life sentences in prison without possibility of [...]
Puerto Rico Human Smuggler Gets Three Years
A Dominican man that was smuggling illegal immigrants to Puerto Rico across the ocean was recently sentenced to three years in prison. The trip took the lives of three of the immigrants on board. Simeon de la Cruz was the captain of a vessel that landed in western Puerto Rico carrying around seventy illegal immigrants [...]