Together, the four men sitting handcuffed in a Baltimore courtroom had spent 151 years in prison.
Nicholas Marshall-Bey: 34 years on a murder conviction. Salim Sadiki: 37 years after being found guilty of rape. Michael Person: 39 years in the slaying of a bartender. Hercules Williams: 41 years in the death of a man in his living room. Yet, after a short hearing earlier this month, the men did something that once would have seemed impossible. They walked out of the courthouse as free men and stood on a city street, hugging family and wiping away tears.
The men were released after Maryland's highest court decided that judges had given improper instructions to juries that heard the men's cases decades ago, making them fundamentally flawed. The same faulty instructions have now freed approximately 50 people statewide, and some 200 prisoners could ultimately be released from Maryland prisons as a result.
Some Md. prisoners freed after 2012 court ruling
Employees plan protests at 1,500 Walmart stores on Black Friday
As part of their effort to win a $10-an-hour minimum wage, Walmart employees plan to disrupt operations at 1,500 of the company's stores on Black Friday, hitting the retail giant in the pocketbook on the biggest shopping day of the year.
Union officials backing the employees say the number of protests, which will include employee walkouts, will be "unprecedented," taking place at stores across the country.
New Study: EPA Seriously Underestimates Methane Emissions
An important new study measures actual methane levels in the U.S. atmosphere. This is a case where the total is definitely more than the previously imagined sum of its parts. The study, soon to be published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found, in particular, that the EPA continues to greatly under-estimate methane emissions from shale gas production, as well as from fossil fuel extraction and processing in general.
Andrew Revkin, who wrote yesterday’s New York Times article, “New study finds U.S. has underestimated methane levels in the atmosphere,” also co-wrote a key analysis four years ago in the New York Times, revealing how serious the EPA’s under-estimation of methane emissions from gas wells was at that time.
IRS moves to curb tax-exempt groups' political activity
The Obama administration is moving to clamp down on the growing political activity of "social welfare" tax-exempt groups, six months after controversy erupted over the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.
The Treasury Department's proposed rules, released Tuesday, would restrict the ability of those groups to conduct a wide range of activities, from running ads to distributing mailers that target specific candidates to get-out-the-vote drives.
CBS suspends Lara Logan over faulty Benghazi report
CBS News has suspended its chief foreign affairs correspondent, Lara Logan, over an erroneous report on the 2012 Benghazi attack that the network broadcast last month.
Logan's "leave of absence" coincided with the release of an internal review enumerating a damning series of failures behind the broadcast. These included a failure to vet sources, to disclose conflicts of interest and to perform follow-up reporting. The review, by CBS standards and practices director Al Ortiz, also found that the reporting team failed to heed a "red flag" admission by a central source, and was hampered by its own blinkered search "from the start" for "a different angle."
US B-52 bombers challenge disputed China air zone
The US has flown two B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea in defiance of new Chinese air defence rules, officials say.
China set up its "air defence identification zone" on Saturday insisting that aircraft obey its rules or face "emergency defensive measures". A Pentagon spokesman said the planes had followed "normal procedures".
The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are a source of rising tension between the two nations.
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U.S. seeks Iran's help in finding missing American
The United States on Tuesday asked Iran for help in finding an American who has been missing there for more than six years, in a hint of the potential for a thaw between the two adversaries after a landmark deal on Tehran's nuclear program.
The White House called for Iran to cooperate in locating retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared during a business trip to Iran in March 2007.
U.S. Retailers Decline to Aid Factory Victims in Bangladesh
One year after the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, many retailers that sold garments produced there or inside the Rana Plaza building that collapsed last spring are refusing to join an effort to compensate the families of the more than 1,200 workers who died in those disasters.
The International Labor Organization is working with Bangladeshi officials, labor groups and several retailers to create ambitious compensation funds to assist not just the families of the dead, but also more than 1,800 workers who were injured, some of them still hospitalized.
Supreme Court to weigh Secret Service liability against GWB protesters
The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday it would weigh whether Secret Service agents were liable for distancing protesters from President George W. Bush.
In October 2004, toward the end of the presidential campaign, Bush was expected to stay at a cottage a short distance from the Jacksonville Inn in Jacksonville, Ore.
Pro-Bush and anti-Bush demonstrators were nearby.
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