By Paul Giblin The Republic A federal judge suspects that seven attorneys representing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives committed fraud in the case of a retired federal agent who infiltrated the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Arizona. Court of Federal Claims Judge Francis Allegra banned the attorneys from filing documents in his…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A man convicted in the 1990 shooting death of an FBI special agent has been ordered released from death row in Nevada, KLAS-TV reports. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du said Jose Echavarria must be released within 60 days barring the prosecutors willingness to retry the case. Du said then-Clark County District…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Three Columbian nationals who participated in the kidnapping and murder of DEA Special Agent James “Terry” Watson in Bogota, Columbia, on June 20, 2013, were sentenced to 20 to 27 years. The defendants had previously entered guilty pleas to charges of conspiracy to kidnap and aiding and abetting the murder of…
By Steve Neavling tickethewire.com A Philadelphia municipal judge who pleaded guilty last week to mail and wire fraud charges was caught in the act when the FBI invented a defendant, the Associated Press reports. Judge Joseph Waters Jr., who was suspected of corruption, had no idea that the FBI created a bogus defendant, David Khoury,…
The following was written after ex-ATF Agent Jay Dobyns’ won his lawsuit against ATF. A federal judge awarded him $173,000 and lambasted ATF. Dobyns, who had gone undercover with the Hells Angels, claimed that the department didn’t do enough to protect his life after getting death threats and having his house catch on fire. The…
Ross Parker was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit for 8 years and worked as an AUSA for 28 in that office. By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com While six extradited Colombians have been arraigned and await trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on…
Marvin Zalman is a professor in the Criminal Justice Department at Wayne State University. He teaches classes on constitutional criminal procedure, criminal justice policy and wrongful convictions. He was commenting on a column about a racist joke that Chief Judge Richard Cebull circulated via email. By Marvin Zalman For ticklethewire.com I too was outraged by the…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com It’s certainly understandable that ex-Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich would be under a lot of stress. His travails began in 2008 when he was arrested on a number of public corruption charges. Since then, it’s been all down hill. He was removed from office, and he faced two high-profile, highly-stressful public corruption…
