TAMPA - Circuit Judge William Fuente this morning sentenced a man to death for the stabbing deaths of the man's wife and stepdaughter in 2002. It was a dry, half-hour-long hearing where Fuente read from the sentencing report. Ultimately, he sided with jurors, who recommended Khalid Ali Pasha receive the death penalty in a 7-5 vote in late October. ...more

May 30, 2008

TAMPA - The trial of man charged with murder will continue today despite an outburst Tuesday afternoon where a man in the courtroom gallery yelled that the defendant killed his brother and struggled with bailiffs as he was dragged from the courtroom. ...more

May 21, 2008

Timothy Craig Blackwelder is charged with murder, burglary of a dwelling with assault and violating a domestic violence injunction. If Blackwelder is found guilty of the murder charge, he will receive a mandatory life sentence. ...more

May 20, 2008

Regarding "State Jurors Gain Power To Question" (front page, Jan. 4): Kudos to the Florida Supreme Court for allowing judges in criminal cases to permit jurors to submit questions when they believe they need to have an answer(s) that may be crucial to their ability to ascertain "reasonable doubt." By joining Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana in this practice, Florida has significantly advanced and improved the system of jurisprudence in Florida. The next step should be to mandate that judges allow vetted questions from a juror to be asked. ...more

January 4, 2008

When Kevin Shelden sat as a juror on a recent murder case, he had questions he would have liked to ask the witnesses. ...more

January 4, 2008

One juror, a white woman, was trying to convince the others that the murder victim had been bruised during a struggle, not during consensual sex with the defendant. Bruises like those, the juror supposedly said, can happen "when a big black guy beats up on a small woman." ...more

January 4, 2008

SARASOTA — A telephone scam that targets residents of Sarasota County is playing on the fear of arrest, authorities said. ...more

December 13, 2007

After about two hours of deliberation, a jury voted 7-5 on Friday to sentence Khalid Ali Pasha to death by lethal injection. ...more

November 3, 2007

The biggest terror-financing trial since Sept. 11 ended in confusion Monday, with no one convicted and many acquittals thrown out after three jurors took the rare step of disputing the verdict. ...more

October 23, 2007

This concerns the decision of not guilty by the jury in the Lee Anderson case. Emotions about that verdict have not been as high since the O.J. Simpson trial and the same jury decision of not guilty. Emotions were greatly enlarged by the media, with its repeated showing of the guards taking Anderson to the ground. The problem with making judgment on the basis of emotion and not on the evidence (especially if the jury does so) is that we then lose the basis of equality under the law. ...more

October 23, 2007