New England Sun-Times

How does this mess happen? The Justice Department refuses to release several North Carolina inmates that it acknowledges are innocent! A USA Today investigation identified more than 60 men who essentially became innocent overnight last year, when an appeals court ruled that the Justice Department had been incorrectly applying its law preventing felons from possessing guns in North Carolina, locking up people whose criminal records weren’t serious enough to make possession illegal. But the DOJ hasn’t notified inmates of their newfound innocence, and when challenged has fought their release in court. In one April filing, it argued that an inmate “at most has become legally innocent,” but wasn’t entitled to release. “We can’t be outcome driven,” one Charlotte U.S. attorney says. One example is Terrell Mccullum, seen below, He’s still being held at the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, Va. “We’ve got to make sure we follow the law.” Public defenders are frustrate...

Cheryl Blair BOSTON - State environmental police are seeking criminal charges against a state trooper who was hunting on New Year's Eve when he accidentally shot his neighbor walking her dog. Authorities say they filed a complaint against Trooper John Bergeron last week on one count of careless or negligent use of a weapon causing injury or death. Meanwhile, the woman who was shot, 66-year-old Cheryl Blair of Norton, has sued Bergeron and the owner of wooded property where the incident occurred seeking damages and compensation for medical bills. Blair spent two months in the hospital and required multiple surgeries. Police have said that the off-duty Bergeron mistook Blair's dog for a deer and shot Blair once in the leg. Bergeron denies negligence and has previously expressed remorse for the shooting. (source: ap)

Newly released footage from the altercation allegedly shows Chris Brown in a headlock. Following last night's brawl at W.i.P. club in New York City, New York, video footage of Drake and Chris Brown's brawl has been released . At the beginning of the clip, a man who appears to be Chris Brown is spinning out of a headlock in the upper right corner of the shot. His bodyguard then comes out of the area with blood on his tanktop. He then stumbles into the club and is confronted by another man, and then is punched. Earlier today, Drake's rep released a statement explaining that he was not present at the time of the altercation, though eyewitness reports claim that he was there. Watch the video below.

When Ice-T's documentary Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap hits theaters Friday, he hopes the music genre will get something he feels it has long been lacking: respect. In his directorial debut, the gangster rap pioneer-turned-actor interviews more than 40 hip-hop legends about how they craft the lyrics to the songs. The movie was picked up by Indomina Releasing for distribution rights after its premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival . Sony just released a 23-song, digital-only soundtrack. The Art of Rap provides a dynamic history lesson that has nothing to do with sales, beef or riches, but instead gets rappers to talk about what inspires and influences what they say on the mike. "I was looking at the state of hip-hop, which has gotten a little pop for me, and I just wanted to document where we came from," says Ice-T, 54, who since 2000 has starred on TV's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. ...

It was a complex counterfeit scam involving runners, identity theft and cigarettes. The 14 people who took part in it scammed more than $13 million from one of the world’s largest retailers: Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said. The scam: gift cards bought with fake credit cards. Police busted the ring, which used stolen identities to apply for 23,527 credit cards, which they then used to purchase 56,873 gift cards. They used those cards at the stores to buy cigarettes and other goods to resell. Overall, they cost the companies $13,029,011.59, according to an arrest warrant. Twelve of the fourteen people charged appeared in bond court on Wednesday. Arrest warrants were issued for Daniel Cabello, Midiala Arango La Rosa, Alejandro Duarte, Pedro L. Duarte, Miguel A. Peraza, Jimmy Ariel Suros Corzo, Boris L. Estrada, Luis Arango La Rosa, Juan Carlos Fernandez Rodriguez, Joel Mayo Hernandez, Eduardo Cardero, ...

HAHAHA! I got a real kick out of this video. I think everybody needs to take need to the way its going down. And the way its going down is IT AIN’T THAT SERIOUS! Peter Rosenberg took the lowest road possible and clowned himself over the whole Nicki Minaj beef. I think even Nick would get a kick out of this lil’ skit. Check it out below. (source: illseed/allhiphop)

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) mocked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday for trying to stop cuts to the nation's food stamp program, questioning the program's morality and saying that her type of thinking would bleed the treasury dry. Gillibrand seeks to offer an amendment to restore $4.5 billion in aid for the hungry that the Senate's farm bill proposes to slash.  "The junior senator from New York proposes to increase food stamp spending even more than the current growth that we've seen, explaining, quote, food stamps are an extraordinary investment because every dollar that you put into the SNAP program, the food stamp program, you get out $1.71, close quote," Sessions said in a Senate floor speech. He was referring to estimates touted by the Agriculture Department and Moody's economist Mark Zandi, who say that helping people feed themselves serves to stimulate a bad economy because the money goes to grocery stor...

Ice-T explains how the mainstream music industry has hurt the power of Hip Hop. On June 15, Ice-T's Sundance Film Festival selected Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap will finally hit theaters across the country. Now, in a recent interview with Time , the gangsta rap legend speaks on his directorial debut. Ice explained that the film came out of a growing resentment towards modern Hip Hop and the lack of lyricism in the mainstream. He said that he simply wanted to sit down with his musical peers and delve into what rapping meant to them and Hip Hop culture outside of the industry's influence. "I wanted to start directing. I’ve been in film for a while and that’s something I want to do down the road, and I said, ‘Maybe this should be my first project,'" he said. "I was looking at the state of Hip Hop and I was like, ‘I don’t feel people respect it as much as they should.’ So I went out and called all my frie...

Coming up this evening, "Piers Morgan Tonight" welcomes J. Cheney Mason, the attorney for Casey Anthony. Having spoken with Anthony on the phone earlier in the day, tonight Piers Morgan reads direct details of the conversation, and asks her attorney for his reaction. Referring to various media interviews from the past, today Anthony told Morgan: "It's horrible. It looks absolutely horrible, and I'm ashamed in many ways of the person that I was," Anthony said over the phone. "Even then, that wasn't who I am." Morgan describes the comments as "strong stuff," to which Mason says: "Strong person. Casey had a bad background. Lot of problems with her history that don't need to be talked about now." Tune in this evening at 9 p.m. as Morgan and Mason review further elements of Tuesday's phone call with Casey Anthony.  

The daughter of megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar Jr. told a Fayette County 911 operator Friday morning that she felt “threatened” being in the house with her father, adding their alleged violent altercation was not unprecedented. “It was not the first time it’s happened,” the 15-year-old girl said in an audio recording of the 911 call. The girl’s name and audio of the call are not posted because she is a minor. Sounding calm and speaking directly, the girl said her father “punched … and choked” her. Fayette Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the Dollar family’s home on Sandy Creek Road where, after a brief investigation, they arrested the 50-year-old reverend, charging him with simple battery, family violence and cruelty to children. Dollar was released on $5,000 bond later Friday morning. The televangelist and author, speaking from the pulpit at World Changers Church International Sunday morning, denied the allegations. “I want you to hear it personally from m...

Shellie Zimmerman, the wife of Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman was arrested! She was booked into the same jail as her hubby on a perjury charge. We’ve learned she’s now out on bond. According to the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were alerted by prosecutors Tuesday that a warrant had been issued for Shellie Zimmerman, 25. She was arrested about 3:30 p.m. “at the location she was residing in Seminole County,” deputies said in a statement. She’s accused of lying to a judge about their finances during Zimmerman’s bond hearing and faces one count of perjury. She allegedly made a total of eight transfers, according to the documents — four transfers in the amount of $9,990, two for $9,999, and two others for $7,500. Even after Zimmerman’s release, the large transfers of cash continued. On April 24, Shellie Zimmerman transferred more than $85,000 from her account to her husband’s. Six of the transfers were just under the $10,000 threshold that would have ...

Lakers superstar shooting guard, Kobe Bryant has convinced his wife, Vanessa Bryant, to give it another go with their marriage. For the past few months, Vanessa Bryant has been spotted at games to greet Kobe afterwards and the two have also been seen at LA Kings playoff games with their two daughters. Kobe has been said to been working at saving his marriage as hard as he has famously been known to work on his basketball game . Under California law, Vanessa has to wait 6 months before she can file final docs making the divorce official. The 6-month mark hits this weekend, so Vanessa could end the marriage as early as Monday.

An engaged dad was stabbed to death while trying to protect a friend from domestic abuse in Manhattan early Saturday, police sources and friends told the Daily News. (SEEN BELOW) 31 year old Corey Capers, was trying to save the woman — a grandmother and family friend — from a beating by her boyfriend around 3 a.m. at a building on E. Fifth St. in Alphabet City, friends and police said. That’s when the abuser turned on Capers, fatally stabbing him in the chest. “He was a wonderful guy. He had a heart of gold. He died trying to protect someone,” said Nashaba Torres, 37, a friend who spoke to The News at Capers’ apartment Saturday night. Capers’ fianceé was too distraught to speak and was sobbing in their apartment, blocks from the murder scene. Friends said Capers had a 5-year-old son and had worked as a handyman. The killer remains on the run. SCOOP: NYDAILYNEWS

Two teenage boys (16 & 17) accused of being gay , were allegedly taped to chairs, burned with cigarettes, forced to wear women’s underwear and made to undress, shower and kiss each other by at least four attackers, prosecutors say. It was all taped and posted to Facebook. They were also thrown down the stairs and beaten with fists and sticks at a house in St Louis, Missouri, on October 27 last year. (seen below) Nicholas Nettles, 20, and his 22-year-old brother Brandon have had their pre-trial hearings at St Louis County Court set for later this month. (seen below) Walter Worthan, 21, faces trial in August. Nicholas Nettles’ lawyer Nick Zotos said: “I think it’s more bullying-hazing than anything else. Or humiliation.” Richard Lozano, Worthan’s lawyer, added that he thought his client was named because the events happened at his house. He said: “There may have been ‘boys-will-be-boys’ type of activity happening, but would certainly be nothing that would rise to the leve...

Naomie Breton begged a judge two weeks ago to forbid her violent ex-boyfriend from coming near her but was immediately turned down. On Monday, her ex-boyfriend allegedly doused the 34-year-old single mother of three with gasoline and set her ablaze , a gruesome event captured by a surveillance camera. Although burned on her face and body, doctors at Delray Medical Center say she should recover. Breton in March moved out of the home she shared with Roosevelt Mondesir, the father of her 4-year-old son. She told police the two were meeting about 3 a.m. outside the 7-Eleven in Boynton Beach to exchange custody of the boy. Breton, a limo service dispatcher, was pumping gas into her silver Mercedes when Mondesir’s white Jaguar pulled up. But her son was not with him. Instead Mondesir rushed at her with the gas can and what appeared to be a machete, police said. Mondesir poured gas on Breton and set her on fire. “Get away from me!” Breton yells as she tries to lock her a...

David Boone will attend Harvard, where he will study engineering and computer science. Picture: Courtesy of Fox news.com.au There wasn't much the then-15-year-old could do about the prostitutes or drug deals around him when he slept in Artha Woods Park - in the American mid-west city of Cleveland. And the spectator's bench at the park's baseball diamond wasn't much of a bed. But the aspiring engineer, now 18 and headed to Harvard University in the fall, had no regular home. Though friends, relatives and school employees often put him up, there were nights when David had no place to go, other than the park. So he said he made the best of those nights on the wooden bench. His book bag became his pillow, stuffed with textbooks first - for height, he said - and papers on top for padding. In the morning, Boone would duck into his friend Eric's house after Eric's parents left early for work so he could shower a...

  A newspaper report has found that the Stand Your Ground self-defense statute in Florida is more likely to succeed when the victim is black. The Tampa Bay Times looked at 200 cases and found that in instances in which the victim was black, the person who invoked the defense went free 73 percent of the time. If the victim was white, the person walked free 59 percent of the time. The report also found that more than two thirds of all the people who invoked the law were acquitted, and that the defense is being invoked in more and more cases. "People often go free under 'stand your ground' in cases that seem to make a mockery of what lawmakers intended," wrote the Times reporters. "One man killed two unarmed people and walked out of jail. Another shot a man as he lay on the ground. Others went free after shooting their victims in the back. In nearly a third of the cases the Times analyzed, defendants initiated the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursu...

Katherine Jackson, mother of Michael Jackson, shares her thoughts on the sentencing of her son's doctor and whether or not it brought her closure.

Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak sits inside a cage in a courtroom during his verdict hearing in Cairo on June 2, 2012. Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was in a coma Monday, a spokesman for Egypt's Interior Ministry said. "Mubarak entered today into full coma. His two sons Gamal and Alaa submitted a request to the prison authority to move beside him and it has been accepted. His health has been deteriorating since the verdict, with high blood pressure, problems breathing, and irregular heart beat," Interior Ministry spokesman Alaa Mahmoud said. Mubarak's lawyer has submitted a request that he be moved from prison to a private hospital, Mahmoud said. Mubarak, 84, is in a Cairo prison hospital after being sentenced to life in prison for the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators last year. Mubarak was already suffering from health problems and attended court on a gurney.