Judge Thomas Horne of the Virginia Loudoun County Circuit sentenced a former Internet spammer to nine years in prison Friday for violating a Virginia anti-spam law in the first US felony prosecution for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail. Jaynes was indicted when investigators discovered that he was sending 10 million e-mails a day through a network [...]

Philip Alston , a UN human rights investigator speaking in Geneva Friday, urged countries to remove their "cloak of secrecy" and disclose the numbers of prisoners executed and those waiting on death row. Alston, an Australian jurist and law professor, remarked that secrecy undermines procedural safeguards that ensure fairness and prevent errors and abuse. He [...]

Six major electronics companies have been indicted for allegedly defrauding the federal E-Rate program, a $2.25 billion per-year project that assists underfunded schools and libraries in accessing the Internet. While some companies are accused of overcharging equipment and submitting false accounting statements, others are accused of bid rigging and billing the government for items never [...]

AP is reporting that Eric Rudolph has agreed to plead guilty to four terrorist attacks, including the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympic Games.

Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky , the former CEO of Yukos , concluded their defense of the oil magnate Friday before the three judge panel that has heard the trial for the past 10 months. Khodorkovsky , once Russia's richest man, has been fending off charges of fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion, arguing that the case [...]

Lawyers for "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla have asked the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of Padilla's indefinite military detention. The Supreme Court considered Padilla's case last year, but dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds , saying the lawsuit was improperly filed in New York. Padilla refiled his lawsuit in South Carolina, and [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Friday unsealed the war crimes charges against former Bosnian Serb army captain Milorad Trbic. Trbic is charged with crimes against humanity on the same indictment as former Bosnian Serb general Vinko Pandurevic , who surrendered to the ICTY in late March. The ICTY prosecutor alleges that Pandurevic, [...]

In his first interview since being named Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani said Friday that the country's new constitution will be drafted by August 15, meeting the deadline stipulated in the Transitional Administrative Law . There had been speculation that the draft could be delayed up to six months due to the National Assembly's difficulty in [...]

In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Thursday, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, slammed the Defense Department's proposed changes to the guidelines concerning the detention of enemy combatants for violating protections outlined in the Geneva Conventions. The Joint Doctrine for Detainee Operations extends the enemy combatant status normally reserved [...]

While in Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, House Republican leader Tom DeLay has expressed his continued disappointment with federal judges, saying they have "run amok". Speaking by videotape Thursday to attendees at the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration's Confronting the Judical War on Faith conference, DeLay said that "unelected, and all [...]