Acquittal

Your headline on the Goetz verdict really made my day! Thank God for the jury system and common sense. BERNARD JOHNSON Ventura

ROME -- Italy's highest court Tuesday ordered Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to stand trial again for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher in 2007, overturning their acquittals. The Seattle-born Knox and Sollecito, her former boyfriend, were convicted in 2009 of murdering fellow student Kercher, 21, who was found half-naked in a pool of blood in the house in Perugia that she shared with Knox. The convictions were overturned in 2011 on grounds of a lack of sound evidence and motivation.

Re "A Tragic Lesson," editorial, Feb. 7 Although your paper covered the trial of Ed Drake for the killing of Leonard Coppola, I feel that the opinion stated in this editorial really didn't capture the injustice that was truly done. Everyone who has heard about this case from inception right up to the acquittal knew at the very least that this was involuntary manslaughter--even Ed Drake. On the day of his acquittal, he himself said he feared he would be convicted and serve time under the lesser charge.

Dean R. Gits, who won an acquittal for his client Peggy McMartin Buckey in the infamous child molestation case of the 1980s and early 1990s and represented thousands of other clients during a lengthy career as a public and private defense attorney in Los Angeles, has died. He was 68. The chief deputy of the federal public defender's office for California's central district, Gits died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home of complications from cancer, said his wife, Christina Larson Gits.

Re impeachment: Over $100 million; a plethora of attorneys, myriad investigators, a jury of senators and Ken Starr's case against Clinton ended in an acquittal! With $100 million, a plethora of attorneys, myriad investigators--I believe I could prove there really is a Santa Claus. ELROY SCHWARTZ, Palm Springs

"Twilight Zone: The Movie" director John Landis, telling USA Today how his post-acquittal recovery is progressing: "My wife Deborah and I are still in a daze . . . (but right now) I'm having lox and a bagel by the pool."

Wanted: An attorney who will put up with the media circus that will likely follow Casey Anthony for the rest of her life. The attorney who previously held that position, Jose Baez, released a statement to the media Wednesday announcing that he is no longer representing Anthony. If you'll recall, Baez stood alongside Anthony, clutching her hand, when she was found not guilty last year of killing her daughter, Caylee. Anthony's acquittal outraged many and led one online poll to dub her the most hated person in America.

While O.J. Simpson wiled away another morning in a Nevada prison, a group of attorneys and former acquaintances gathered in a Santa Monica courtroom Monday to debate the rightful ownership of memorabilia, including the brownish-green suit Simpson is said to have worn at his 1995 acquittal. A onetime agent for the NFL star, Mike Gilbert, said at the hearing that he had the jacket, trousers and shirt in a storage unit near his home in Fresno. Gilbert says Simpson gave him the suit the morning after the acquittal, although Simpson's current lawyer says the garments are fakes.

A former Irvine developer who wound up bankrupt and mired in more than a hundred civil lawsuits has won an abrupt, court-ordered acquittal on all 28 criminal counts of grand theft and fraud. Superior Court Judge James J. Alfano left prosecutors stunned when he issued the acquittal in his Fullerton courtroom Monday after jurors had heard more than two months of prosecution testimony.

The lead defense attorney representing Jerry Sandusky told reporters on Friday that it would be a shock if the former Penn State University assistant football coach were acquitted of all of the charges of sexually abusing children now being weighed by sequestered jurors. As the jury of seven women and five men ordered dinner and continued their deliberations well into the second day, defense attorney Joseph Amendola told reporters in the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa., that he would “probably die of a heart attack” if Sandusky beat all of the charges, according to media reports from the courtroom.

Thomas P. Puccio, a former federal prosecutor who won the convictions of several members of Congress in the Abscam bribery scandal in the early 1980s and later became a prominent defense lawyer who secured for socialite Claus von Bulow an acquittal in his second trial on charges that he twice tried to kill his heiress wife, has died. He was 67. Puccio, who lived in Weston, Conn., died of leukemia March 12 in Yale-New Haven Hospital, said his wife, Kathryn. Known as a tough, aggressive and tenacious lawyer, Puccio was head of the Organized Crime Strike Force for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, N.Y., when he gained national attention as head prosecutor in four of the eight Abscam trials.

Wanted: An attorney who will put up with the media circus that will likely follow Casey Anthony for the rest of her life. The attorney who previously held that position, Jose Baez, released a statement to the media Wednesday announcing that he is no longer representing Anthony. If you'll recall, Baez stood alongside Anthony, clutching her hand, when she was found not guilty last year of killing her daughter, Caylee. Anthony's acquittal outraged many and led one online poll to dub her the most hated person in America.

ORLANDO, Fla . — With the exception of a few moments when she walked out of jail early Sunday, Casey Anthony has not appeared in public as a free woman. Her whereabouts is a mystery. Defense lawyer Jose Baez wanted to use Anthony's parents, George and Cindy Anthony, as a decoy during her release, their lawyer, Mark Lippman, told a television station. "And I, of course, did not agree with that, and neither did my clients," said Lippman, who did not elaborate on the decoy plans.

The media circus came to town, this time not in Los Angeles but in Orlando, Fla. In a case compared to the courtroom dramas of O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers, the trial of Casey Anthony -- if there were any doubts before -- became a full-fledged national legal spectacle Tuesday after outrage erupted over the jury's decision to acquit the young mother on charges she killed her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, with chloroform and duct tape....

Those who never thought terrorists should be put on trial in civilian courts are now claiming vindication in the partial acquittal of a Tanzanian man accused in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. It's nothing of the sort. The exoneration of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani on 276 counts of murder and attempted murder, and his conviction on a single conspiracy count that could lead to life imprisonment, instead demonstrate the deliberateness and fairness of civilian justice. The danger is that President Obama will overlook that fact amid the din from critics such as Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.

The Obama administration remains committed to trying more terrorism suspects in civilian court even though a federal jury acquitted a Tanzanian of all but one charge in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, senior Justice Department officials said Thursday. Alleged Al Qaeda accomplice Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantanamo Bay prisoner to be tried in civilian court, was convicted Wednesday of one count of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property but cleared of 284 counts of murder and attempted murder.

The lone surviving member of the November 2008 attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people was convicted Monday on 86 counts, including murder, conspiracy and waging war against India, while two alleged Indian accomplices were acquitted. The guilty verdict against Pakistan national Ajmal Amir Kasab, 22, was expected. Kasab was seen by several witnesses and recorded on closed-circuit video attacking the Mumbai railway station with a serene smirk that prompted Indian media to dub him the "smiling assassin."