Defendants

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...

Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case at Guantanamo are seeking the testimony of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama in a motion to dismiss charges, according to a legal motion released Wednesday. Lawyers for three of the five defendants charged with planning and helping carry out the attacks say the charges should be dismissed because Bush, Obama and other top officials have made many statements that could influence potential jurors in their eventual trial before a special tribunal known as a military commission, according to the motion.

A military court in Somalia's breakaway region of Somaliland has sentenced 17 people to death for attacking a military base over a land dispute one day earlier, an official said Thursday. Dozens of angry people marched through the streets of Hargeisa on Thursday to demand the release of the defendants. Riot police dispersed the crowd. The court in Somaliland's capital convicted the 17 on Wednesday, saying the defendants confessed to attacking soldiers during Tuesday's confrontation.

A defendant says a Florida A&M drum major who died after being hazed got on a bus where band members were ritually beaten because it was a sign of respect to have survived such an encounter. Jonathan Boyce says in a deposition released Wednesday that the 26-year-old Robert Champion had asked all season to go through the hazing ritual. Champions' parents have said their son was a vocal opponent of the routine hazing in the band. Prosecutors are releasing more than 1,500-pages of evidence against the 13 people charged in last year's hazing death of Champion.

Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case at Guantanamo are seeking the testimony of former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama in a motion to dismiss charges, according to a legal motion released Wednesday. Lawyers for three of the five defendants charged with planning and helping carry out the attacks say the charges should be dismissed because Bush, Obama and other top officials have made many statements that could influence potential jurors in their eventual trial before a special tribunal known as a military commission, according to the motion.

WASHINGTON -- Despite the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who have gone through federal court jurisdictions in the past three years. Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005, according to an Associated Press investigation. Most of these defendants are cooperating government witnesses, but the secrecy surrounding their records prevents the public from knowing details of their plea-bargain arrangements with the government, court observers say. Most of these...

The 12th and final defendant involved in a massive Massachusetts mortgage-fraud ring has been sentenced to 70 months in prison, closing a case that stemmed from a federal investigation into sales of 21 properties from Cohasset to South Boston. Ralph Appolon, 30, a loan officer formerly from Watertown, was sentenced in US District Court in Boston for his role in the 2005 conspiracy that resulted in about $10.6 million in fraudulent mortgage loan proceeds, federal prosecutors said yesterday.

A Moroccan court has delayed a terrorism trial over the bombing of a tourist cafe that killed 17 people. The MAP news agency said the court also increased the number of defendants on trial from seven to nine. After a brief hearing Thursday, the court delayed the proceedings until Sept. 22. The April 28 explosion was one of the worst terrorist acts to hit the North African kingdom. It tore through the Argana cafe in Marrakech's old town, a popular tourist destination. Several of those killed were foreigners.

Two more defendants charged with the hazing death of a Florida A&M drum major have turned themselves in to authorities. Twenty-one-year-old Ryan Dean and 24-year-old Jonathan Boyce turned themselves in Friday at the Leon County Jail. Both bonded out. That leaves only one of the 11 defendants charged with felony hazing still at large. Authorities believe the woman is in Georgia, and law enforcement agents have been in contact with her family. Eleven band members were charged with third-degree felony hazing as a result of 26-year-old Robert Champion's death.

They knelt in prayer, ignored the judge and wouldn't listen to Arabic translations as they confronted nearly 3,000 counts of murder. The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants defiantly disrupted an arraignment that ended late Saturday in the opening act of the long-stalled effort to prosecute them in a military court. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted architect of the 2001 attacks that sent hijacked jetliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the four men accused of aiding the conspiracy put off entering...

President Obama Monday vigorously defended his reelection campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's business record, saying the principles of private equity do not apply to the presidency. "If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,' then you're missing what this job is about," Obama said. "My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. " In a challenge to the Romney campaign, Obama pointedly said this issue would be a focal point of his effort to win reelection.

Another NCAA championship is stocked with Southeastern Conference teams looking to add one more title to the league's crowded trophy case. The NCAA women's golf championship begins Tuesday at the Legends Club, the home course for Vanderbilt — one of seven SEC teams looking to finish the week lifting the trophy. LSU, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida also are here, giving the SEC more teams than any other conference. "We want to win, and there's no doubt about that," Vanderbilt coach Greg Allen said Monday after his Commodores played nine...

Once again there will be no repeat champion at the Sprint All-Star race. Defending champion Carl Edwards bowed out in the second segment Saturday night at the Charlotte Motor Speedway after the engine in the No. 99 Ford blew up on lap 25. Edwards was looking to become the first repeat champion at the All-Start event since Davey Allison did it in 1991 and ‘92, but had to park his car in the garage for the night. "We were running really well the first segment and I knew something wasn't right," Edwards said.

John Tortorella stood out again at a playoff news conference. Only this time it was because of his feistiness toward the New Jersey Devils and not for his brevity and contentiousness with the media. The New York coach defended Rangers forward Brandon Prust, who was given a one-game suspension Sunday because of an elbow to the head of New Jersey defenseman Anton Volchenkov, and accused the Devils of embellishing to draw penalties in the Eastern Conference finals. "We tell our players, 'Don't stay down on the ice. Get up,"' Tortorella said Sunday.

A top surrogate to Mitt Romney said making money -- rather than creating jobs -- was the primary goal of the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee when he was running Bain Capital LLC , saying he "acted responsibly" as chief executive officer of the Boston-based private-equity firm. "The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money," said Tom Stemberg, the founder of Staples Inc. , in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital.

A military judge is considering whether to split off one or more of the defendants and hold separate trials for five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, a lawyer for one of the men said Friday. The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, proposed the change in a written order in part because of the difficulty trying to schedule hearings for five defendants and multiple lawyers at the U.S. base in Cuba, said James Connell, a civilian attorney for defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. Pohl also questioned whether one trial for all five defendants would create a conflict...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fingered his long, henna-dyed beard and stared down in silence Saturday, pointedly ignoring a military commissions judge asking whether the self-described architect of the Sept. 11 attacks understood what was being said and whether he was willing to be represented by his defense lawyers. Minutes later, Ramzi Binalshibh, another of the five detainees arraigned Saturday as accused conspirators in the attacks, stood, knelt and started praying.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — The self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks repeatedly declined to respond to a judge's questions Saturday and his co-defendant was briefly restrained at a military hearing as five men charged with the worst terror attack in US history appeared in public for the first time in more than three years. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants appeared for arraignment at a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on charges that include 2,976 counts of murder for the 2001 attacks.

A military court in Somalia's breakaway region of Somaliland has sentenced 17 people to death for attacking a military base over a land dispute one day earlier, an official said Thursday. Dozens of angry people marched through the streets of Hargeisa on Thursday to demand the release of the defendants. Riot police dispersed the crowd. The court in Somaliland's capital convicted the 17 on Wednesday, saying the defendants confessed to attacking soldiers during Tuesday's confrontation.