Criminal trials

Two media organizations have asked the Nevada Supreme Court to make clear that the court overseeing the kidnapping trial of O.J. Simpson acted improperly in keeping juror questionnaires secret until after the trial, and heavily redacting the questionnaires before they were finally released.  

A man in Illinois accused of killing eight people complained to The Associated Press in a jailhouse interview Tuesday that his trial isn't happening quickly enough. He also expressed dissatisfaction with the public defenders representing him.

On Wednesday, the judge slapped a gag order on the case.

Two Utah newspapers sounded the alarms this week over a rule up for debate in the federal district court there that would heavily veil plea agreements in criminal cases.

The judge presiding over the trial of United States District Judge Samuel Kent issued a broad gag order Friday, prohibiting court staff, lawyers and “all other witnesses expected to be called by either side” from giving out non-public information that could interfere with a fair trial.  

Kent was indicted in August on charges of abusive sexual contact and attempted aggravated sexual abuse.  He is the first federal judge to be indicted for federal sex crimes, and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison and a fine of $250,000. 

From The Dallas Morning News: A Texas-bordering Mexican state where the drug trade subsists on public corruption, and murders this year have topped 700, is trying a new approach to crime: Public trials, with the burden of proof now foisted onto the government.

A sheriff's deputy in North Carolina posed as a Newsweek reporter to coax an anonymous source out of a local newspaper journalist. And it worked.

In a case of scandal climbing atop scandal, the deputy got The (Jacksonville) Daily News reporter Lindell Kay to hand over the phone number of a source in a high-profile homicide case, leading to criminal charges against an intern in the local district attorney's office.

A Kansas judge declared a mistrial in a rape case Thursday and faulted a local newspaper for reporting that the defendant had just been sentenced separately for fondling a child.

A federal judge in New York decided Tuesday not to release the grand jury testimony of a crucial witness in Ethel Rosenberg's 1950s espionage case, although other related witness transcripts will be made public, The New York Times reported.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that she will speak with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on behalf of a 23-year-old Afghan reporter who has been sentenced to death for handing out an allegedly anti-Islamic paper to his class.

Sayad Parwez Kambaksh shared the paper with his teacher and fellow students at Balkh University, and several classmates complained to local authorities.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has reaffirmed the need for lawyers representing detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay to have full access to government information on their clients. The full court declined to reconsider a decision that a three-member panel of the court issued last year ordering the government to release nearly all its information on the 275 detainees being held without charges.