FindLaw |

Find a Lawyer. Find Answers.

Michael David Barrett, the accused stalker and criminal voyeur of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews will be arraigned in federal court on Monday, November 23, 2009.

The latest in a series of sordid charges against the 48-year-old Chicago-area Combined Insurance employee suggests that the nude videos Barrett secretly record of Andrews in hotel rooms where not simply a one-time occurrence,

Rather, it now appears that Barrett relentlessly stalked Andrews for more than a year.

Helmer Toro, co-founder of the H&H Bagels empire, was indicted by a grand jury in New York City today on felony charges accusing him of stealing withholding taxes from his employee's paychecks, and manipulating his company's New York State unemployment insurance tax payments at an illegal, lower rate.

If convicted, the 59-year-old dough boy could be sentenced to 15 years in state prison after a 37-year career in the bagel business.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced that the investigators from his office found that Toro (inset) "collected but failed to pay $369,318.77 withheld from the payroll of the employees of his bagel business."

In bagelese, he's accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in dough from the employees of his bagel empire -- dough that his workers withheld from their paychecks so that Toro's company would submit it to New York tax authorities.

Wanda Barzee, a co-defendant in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, pleaded guilty to several criminal charges in federal court today in exchange for a reduced prison sentence recommendation and her cooperation with prosecutors in the kidnapping, sexual assault, and violence case when Smart was 14-years-old.

Instead of life in prison, Barzee will receive a 15-year (180-month) federal prison sentence, and plead guilty to Utah state kidnapping charges.

Here is what Barzee admitted to in U.S. District Court:

The US Senate is scheduled to vote on cloture today for the nomination of U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton to a seat on the Seventh Circuit.  Leading Republicans have so far filibustered the nomination in response to what they see as Hamilton's liberal social agenda, and have vowed to keep the filibuster going as long as possible.

Never mind the fact that Hamilton has been lauded as a moderate by both Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar - a Republican from Hamilton's home state - and the president of Indiana's chapter of the conservative Federalist Society.  Lugar plans to cross party lines and vote for a motion that will allow a final vote on Hamilton's nomination.

Also disregard the fact that the GOP condemned the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block several of George Bush's judicial nominees, even going so far as to call it unconstitutional and threatening to remove the use of filibusters from the judicial confirmation process altogether.

A federal judge in Utah ruled that a defendant accused of tampering and falsely bidding upon oil and gas leases offered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management cannot present a 'necessity defense' a/k/a 'lesser of two evils defense' at trial.

Timothy DeChristopher sought to argue that his submission of winning auction bids on BLM federal oil and gas leases that he never intended to honor was justified because, he maintained, extracting oil and gas from federal lands would exacerbate global warming and climate change.

Oreo, the dog who was thrown off a six-story roof in Brooklyn by Fabian Henderson, her teenage owner this spring, was put to sleep by the A.S.P.C.A. in Manhattan this afternoon.

Yesterday The New York Times reported that an animal behaviorist hired by the A.S.P.C.A. to assess Oreo's disposition -- after several months of unsuccessful therapy and rehabilitation at the organization's facility -- concluded that Oreo displayed "exhibited intense aggressive behaviors," and concluded that "Oreo should not have any access to the public or uncontrolled areas outdoors. Oreo shouldn't be around children."

In a statement, the A.S.P.C.A. revealed further details on Oreo's suffering:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ('KSM'), the reputed al Qaeda plotter of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be put on trial in federal court in Manhattan, one site of the Sept. 11th attacks, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced this morning.

Four other Guantanamo Bay detainees -- Walid Muhammed Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, Ali Abdul-Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi -- will also be tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Not only will KSM still face prosecution in the SDNY for his reputed role in the 9/11 attacks, but he is likely to also face outstanding charges in a secret 1996 indictment for his alleged role in the 1994 'Bojinka' plot -- described by the 9/11 Commission as "the intended bombing of 12 U.S. commercial jumbo jets over the Pacific during a two-day span."

Prosecutors are likely to face defense challenges over KSM's waterboarding while he is was in U.S. Custody. But according to National Public Radio's Dina Temple-Raston, "he actually admitted before being tortured that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks."

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (inset), the U.S. Army psychiatrist being held for killing thirteen (13) people at the Army's Ft. Hood base in Texas, and wounding 43 soldiers and civilians in the attack, was charged with 13 counts of murder

Hasan's charges include 13 specifications of premeditated murder, in violation of Article 118, Uniform Code of Military Justice.

If convicted, the UCMJ provides that "he shall suffer death or imprisonment for life as a court-martial may direct."

 

The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this morning on two cases involving jurisdictional issues.

First up is Kucana v. Holder, a case involving questions over the jurisdiction-stripping provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.  The Act removed courts' jurisdiction to review a "decision or action of the Attorney General . . . the authority for which is specified under this subchapter to be in the discretion of" the Attorney General.

In a new per curiam opinion issued by the U.S. Supreme Court today, the Justices held that a convicted Ohio killer's "attorneys met the constitutional minimum of competence," reversing a 2008 federal appeals court ruling that his attorneys failed to find certain mitigating factors in his defense in violation of the Sixth Amendment.

How convinced was the Supreme Court of its decision? The justices concluded that:

[t]his is not a case in which the defendant's attorneys failed to act while potentially powerful mitigating evidence stared them in the face,