Speaking of the U.S. Marshals Service (did you buy some of Bernie Madoff's crap from them this weekend?), another of the service's programs has also proven wildly popular. Five years ago, the service started "Fugitive Safe Surrender," a program that…
Hope you had a good New Year's Eve, and that you didn't have to spend it in jail. On the other hand, if you were hoping to spend it in jail because you preferred that to spending it with your…
The New York Times Topics blog has a post today on prepositional phrases and how they can result in unintentional comedy if you aren't careful. This is common in legal writing, too, and one of the NYT's examples has a…
On August 6, Tremayne Durham was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an Oregon man in 2006. Durham, who either realized he had a weak case or was just really hungry, agreed to plead guilty in exchange…
The owner of Wagon Wheel Liquors in Durango, Colorado, says he will comply with a police order to stop taking shoes from people he catches shoplifting in his store. Gabe Fidanque said he was frustrated because calling the police did…
A judge in Vinton County, Ohio, has been asked to revoke probation for Timothy Caudill and send him to prison for nine months. The offense: sharing a Little Debbie snack cake without permission. At the time of the infraction, Caudill…
A judge in Massachusetts has ruled that a convicted two-time bank robber can keep a $1 million lottery prize he won recently, even though playing the lottery violated the terms of his probation. Timothy Elliott pleaded guilty to unarmed robbery…
A judge in Fort Lupton, Colorado (northeast of Denver) has received some attention for his creative sentencing of people who violate the town’s noise ordinance. As these are mostly young people who cruise around the streets of Fort Lupton with…
A judge in Painesville, Ohio, has agreed to suspend a jail sentence for men who pleaded guilty to solicitation, in exchange for their agreement to spend three hours walking around outside in a chicken suit. The men also agreed to…
On Monday, a Milwaukee couple were sentenced to jail time after they pleaded guilty to charges that they locked the woman’s 7-year-old son in a closet while they went to a casino to watch a Packers game last season. They…