News

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan died Friday morning at 91, more than two decades after leaving office for the last time. See NPR news article.

He died just one day after being put into hospice care in his native Kankakee.

Ryan, a Republican, served one term as governor from 1999 to…

A federal court in Texas Thursday ruled that President Trump's use of the 18th-century wartime law Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to detain and deport Venezuelan immigrants from South…

U.S. Sentencing Commission issues a policy statement in 2023 that a non-retroactive change in the law can present an "extraordinary and compelling" reason warranting a sentence reduction if it results in old inmates serving much longer sentences than new inmates who committed the same crimes.…

In Alabama, certain sex offenders cannot ever spend the night in the same home as a child even if the offense was years ago, they are reformed, and the child is their own. Unanimous Eleventh Circuit: This…

Pope Francis, the first non-European head of the Roman Catholic Church in more than a millennium, died at age 88. 

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Buckle up for a Fourth Circuit judge-on-judge benchslap! It stems from a man's guilty plea for robbing a gas station and the appellate waiver in his plea agreement waiving his right to appeal the sentence. Rather than explain what…

Dentist writes two hefty morphine scripts after an eight-hour dental procedure; the patient tragically ODs and her blood test comes back triple the fatal amount. The jury finds that the dentist knowingly issued an illegal prescription; he's convicted and gets a 20-year sentence. Dentist appeals…

Black teen, turkey in hand four days before Christmas, gets stopped and frisked by Milwaukee cops Justin Schwarzhuber and Jasen Rydzewski—waiting to see if any “new fresh robberies [had] come over” the radio. Teen is unarmed, cooperative, and still held for 20 minutes with no charges, no…

They say the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Unless, that is, if a cop shoots and kills the good guy with a gun because the cop thinks he's the bad guy with a gun. Does that make the cop liable to the good guy's family?…

Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court held that imposition of mandatory life sentences for individuals under 19 and 20-years-old years old at the time of their offense violates the Michigan state constitution. See…