All Blog Posts from Crimesider

JACKSON, Mississippi - The U.S. Supreme Court should decide whether a reputed Ku Klux Klansman should have been tried on a kidnapping charge 43 years after two black men were abducted and slain in rural Mississippi, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

A majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said other Civil Rights Era cold cases could be affected by a Supreme Court ruling on whether time had run out for prosecutors to charge James Ford Seale. Seale, now 73, was convicted in 2007 of abducting two 19-year-old friends who authorities said were beaten, weighted down and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater in 1964.

Read full post…

JENA, La. - The Jena Six case, which once prompted a massive civil rights demonstration and drew international attention, saw the final chapter played out quietly.

Five neatly dressed young men answered "Yes Sir," on Friday as state District Judge Tom Yeager asked them if they accepted the terms of a deal that included pleading no contest to misdemeanor simple battery.

Read full post…

JENA, Louisiana (AP) Five of six black teens accused of beating a white classmate in a case that led to the biggest civil rights protest in decades are expected to plead guilty Friday

The six students were initially charged with attempted murder in a 2006 attack on Justin Barker.

Read full post…

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that school officials violated an Arizona teenager's rights by strip-searching her for prescription-strength ibuprofen, declaring that U.S. educators cannot force children to remove their clothing unless student safety is at risk.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that Safford Middle School officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches with their treatment of Savana Redding. The court ruled that the officials could not be held financially liable but left it to lower courts to decide if the school district could.

Read full post…