In a victory for news technology in federal courts, a judge is allowing a reporter to use the microblogging service Twitter to provide constant updates from a racketeering gang trial this week. ...more

March 7, 2009

A former local lawyer and Chicago police officer received a 10-year federal prison sentence today for sending threatening letters to his estranged wife and others while in state prison. ...more

March 6, 2009

A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit questioning President Barack Obama's citizenship, lambasting the case as a waste of the court's time and suggesting the plaintiff's attorney may have to compensate the president's lawyer. ...more

March 5, 2009

A Winter Haven man was spared the death penalty today for his role in the 2006 slaying of a Polk County drug dealer. ...more

March 5, 2009

Randy Nowak told a judge today that he never wanted any harm to come to the IRS officer he tried to have killed. ...more

March 5, 2009

Five men who were arrested last year at the same time as John "Junior" Gotti will join him in New York after a judge today ordered their trial to take place there. ...more

March 3, 2009

A 26-year-old man faces a possible death sentence after being convicted this afternoon on federal murder, robbery and drug charges in connection with the 2006 robbery of a Bartow drug house. ...more

March 3, 2009

The federal government has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of money to a Massachusetts mobster who was accidentally shot by an FBI agent in Tampa in 2004. ...more

February 27, 2009

An accountant who submitted false statements to a bank so he could get loans for his business and his clients was sentenced today in federal court to one year and a day in prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. ...more

February 25, 2009

The Japan-based operator of a cargo vessel that dumped oily sludge into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean was sentenced today to three years of probation and fined $1.75 million. ...more

February 24, 2009