Courtroom

In the state's first decision involving juries and social media, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has called on judges to better police jurors' use of the Internet to make sure they do not discuss cases online, and thus risk a mistrial. The court said judges need to do more to explain to jurors that refraining from conversations about a case also means not posting anything about it on Facebook or Twitter, common practice in today's technology-driven world. "Jurors must separate and insulate their jury service from their digital lives," the court said in a ruling involving a Plymouth Superior Court...

CAIRO - Fans charged in Egypt's deadliest soccer riot declared their innocence in the first session of their trial Tuesday, directing their anger toward police accused of collaborating in the killing of 75 supporters of a rival team. Nine senior officers, including six police generals and a colonel, are among the 73 people charged in the case. The officers were present in the courtroom, dressed in traditional white defendant uniforms, but they were not held in the courtroom cage with the rest of those on trial.

Under the aegis of the US War Department, writer-director Stuart Schulberg and his brother, Budd (scriptwriter for “On the Waterfront’’), made “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today.’’ This intelligent and impressively concise documentary about the famous Nazi war crimes trial now gets its first US release more than 60 years after it was made. Sandra Schulberg, Stuart’s daughter, oversaw the restoration of the documentary, along with Josh Waletzky, director of the documentary “Partisans of Vilna.’’ What took so long?

A defiant Tarek Mehanna was sentenced Thursday to 17 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to kill American soldiers and supporting Al Qaeda, culminating a dramatic terrorism case in which the Sudbury man emphatically professed his devotion to Islam and his anger at America's support of "unjust policies against its minorities. " The 29-year-old Mehanna compared his call for jihad against US soldiers who kill Muslim civilians to America's Revolutionary War against England. He showed no remorse as he was about to be sentenced in US District Court in Boston, and at one point called a prosecutor a...

Chief Justice John Roberts says he’s concerned about the effect that having television cameras in the Supreme Court would have on lawyers and justices. The court doesn’t allow live television or audio broadcasting of arguments inside its chambers. Roberts says “movement will be gradual’’ at the court. He says he’s concerned how lawyers and justices will act if they are televised nationwide. He says they “unfortunately fall into grandstanding with a couple hundred people in the courtroom.’’ Roberts does note that the court is providing argument transcripts and...

Hollywood typically brings us courtroom dramas full of last-minute revelations, shocking witnesses, and actorly bombast ("You can't handle the truth!"). Abderrahmane Sissako's mighty courtroom drama "Bamako" offers none of these overheated frills. Court is held in a multifamily courtyard in Bamako, Mali. A breeze gently covers onlookers with insects and dust. And during the proceedings villagers are likely to be seen going about their daily business peeling potatoes or transporting the children here and there.

In a dramatic return to the neighborhood he once ruled as a mob boss, James “Whitey’’ Bulger appeared in federal court in South Boston yesterday on charges of racketeering, extortion, and 19 counts of murder during a savage criminal reign that cast a shadow over the city. In perhaps the highest-profile court appearance in the city’s history, the former gangster returned to Boston after 16 years hiding from an international manhunt, finally brought back to answer to his alleged crimes by the same law enforcement agency that had allowed his criminal enterprise to flourish.

A defiant Tarek Mehanna was sentenced Thursday to 17 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to kill American soldiers and supporting Al Qaeda, culminating a dramatic terrorism case in which the Sudbury man emphatically professed his devotion to Islam and his anger at America's support of "unjust policies against its minorities. " The 29-year-old Mehanna compared his call for jihad against US soldiers who kill Muslim civilians to America's Revolutionary War against England. He showed no remorse as he was about to be sentenced in US District Court...

They cried out when a tiny blood-stained T-shirt was held aloft by a prosecution witness. They rushed out of the room when grisly pictures of their loved ones's bodies were shown in court. One man was dragged out of the room by court officers after he screamed at a witness, calling him a snitch. Emotions have been on display during the past two weeks in a courtroom of Suffolk Superior Court, as a prosecutor presented the case against two men charged with plotting a home invasion that led to the shooting deaths of four people, including a 2-year-old...

The crime happened more than a year ago in Mattapan, but yesterday the scene was brought before jurors - and the victims' families - as prosecutors sought to recreate the horror of that bloody night. The first witness of the day in the quadruple homicide trial in Suffolk Superior Court, a California-based expert on high-tech gunfire detection, brought with him an audio recording of the Sept. 28, 2010, shots that killed four people and left one man paralyzed. The second witness - a 30-year police veteran who has responded to hundreds of bloody crime scenes, including the...

The Suffolk jury charged with deciding the case against two men accused in the 2010 Mattapan killings twice told a Superior Court Judge that it was deadlocked, but then voted unanimously to continue deliberating, a highly unusual decision, according to legal specialists. The jury of four men and eight women surprised a packed courtroom late Wednesday afternoon when they told Judge Christine McEvoy that they were not done discussing the case, even though a single holdout has declined to join the majority on nine of the 19 counts against the defendants.

A Suffolk County jury was sent home for the weekend today after failing to reach a verdict in the case of two men charged in a quadruple murder in Mattapan. Dwayne Moore, 34cq, and Edward Washington, 32cq, are charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the Sept. 28, 2010cq Woolson Streetcq slayings of Simba Martincq; his girlfriend, Eyanna Flonorycq; her 2-year-oldcq son, Amanihotep Smith; and Levaughn Washum-Garrison, who was sleeping on Martin's couch the night of the slaying.

The state's highest court ruled on Wednesday that a 21st-century media project that shows Quincy District Court hearings live on the Internet is protected by provisions of the US and Massachusetts constitutions, which guarantee a free press. The Supreme Judicial Court also ruled that the project, OpenCourt.us, run by Boston radio station WBUR, can archive the recordings it makes of daily court hearings and post them on its website without first getting approval from judges. "We conclude that any order restricting OpenCourt's ability to publish - by...

A former California Highway Patrol officer was sentenced Friday to 50 years to life in prison for murdering her husband. Tomiekia Johnson, 32, slumped over and put her face down toward the defense table as the punishment was announced. In January, she dramatically collapsed to the courtroom floor when the jury convicted her of the first-degree murder of 31-year-old Marcus Lemons, who was shot in the head while seated on the passenger side of Johnson's car near a freeway off-ramp on Feb. 21, 2009.

Before he arrived, officials checked to make sure the wheelchair Marcus Hurd now needs to get around would fit inside a Boston courtroom built during the Great Depression. And officials then positioned the sole survivor of the Mattapan massacre inside the eighth floor courtroom even before the two defendants appeared. For some brief moments, Hurd and the two men who allegedly tried to murder him and who also are accused of killing four people, including a two-year-old child, exchanged glances before the jury in the Suffolk Superior Court trial...

Police are investigating an incident at Plymouth District Court Monday that began as a fight between two codefendants in a trial and resulted in the hospitalization of a court officer who tried to intervene. State courts spokeswoman Joan Kenney said the two defendants, who were handcuffed and wearing leg irons, began to fight as they were being led out of the courtroom toward holding cells. As court officers tried to separate them, one swung his arms at an officer, knocking him to the ground.

For somebody who’s supposed be in such poor health, Whitey Bulger was able to pick out his little brother Billy in a crowded courtroom and mouth a cheerful hello even before he made it to the defendant’s table. And for a guy whose moll, Cathy Greig, was telling the neighbors back in Santa Monica that he had Alzheimer’s, Whitey seemed like he still had his fastball. He didn’t miss a beat when the judge asked him if he could afford a lawyer. “Well,’’ he replied, “I could if you’d give me my money back.’’ Once a wiseguy, always a wiseguy.

Singer Stevie B , best known for the 1990 hit "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)," was in a Springfield courtroom yesterday to answer charges he owes more than $400,000 in child support. But, according to the Associated Press, the matter remains unresolved as the judge ordered the singer to come back in February. Stevie B's full name is Steven Bernard Hill , and he lives in Las Vegas.

The past was present in a courtroom where former police detective Stephanie Lazarus sat before a judge while the man whose love she is alleged to have killed for watched in the courtroom behind her, his face as grim as hers as lawyers recounted a 26-year-old tragedy that brought them here. "The motive was jealousy, one of the darkest and deepest of human emotions," Deputy District Attorney Paul Nunez told jurors Monday in the first part of the prosecution's closing arguments of a trial that has riveted attention in law enforcement circles.

Nineteen people were sitting in the gallery when Edward Washington, on trial on murder charges, walked into Courtroom 808 in the Suffolk Superior courthouse Monday. His codefendant, Dwayne Moore, strolled in a few minutes later and then Moore's lawyer, John Amabile, stood up and asked Judge Christine McEvoy to declare a mistrial in this, one of the most unnerving murder cases in these parts in some time. Amabile is a fine lawyer, and this is what he is supposed to do. But the reason he asked for a mistrial explains how reality and the notion of a fair trial are often...