Crimes

Federal authorities have repeatedly said their priority is to find and remove illegal immigrants with violent criminal histories, but the U.S. government's stepped-up enforcement in recent years has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to a new study.

A Disposition to Be Rich How a Small-Town Pastor's Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States Geoffrey C. Ward Alfred A. Knopf: 415 pp., $28.95. In 1863, the young Ferdinand Ward was alone with his mother in their parsonage in Geneseo, N.Y., his minister father and older brother both off to war and his older sister visiting relatives out of town. Diphtheria swept through the village, killing friends and neighbors, and each mail delivery carried the risk of disaster - would it include a notice that one of the Ward men had been killed?

A series of highly publicized child rape cases in which the defendants were widely seen as receiving lenient sentences has outraged South Koreans, who have called for tougher penalties for sex crimes, including the castration of repeat offenders. The most prominent case involves a 57-year-old habitual offender sentenced to 12 years for raping a first-grader and flushing detergent into her body to destroy evidence of the crime. Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment in the attack, which left the girl with severe intestinal damage.

ROME - A bomb exploded at the entrance of a high school in southern Italy named for the wife of a slain anti-Mafia judge, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring at least four people as students were arriving at school for Saturday classes. Police were investigating the possibility of organized-crime involvement in the attack in the Adriatic port city of Brindisi, but authorities said it was too early to exclude other possibilities. They noted that the school is named for Francesca Morvillo, the wife of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

An 18-year-old gay man from Texas allegedly slain by a classmate who feared a sexual advance. A 31-year-old transgender woman from Pennsylvania found dead with a pillowcase around her head. A 24-year-old lesbian from Florida purportedly killed by her girlfriend's father, who disapproved of the relationship. The homicides are a sampling of 2010 crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people compiled by a national coalition of anti-hate organizations. The report, released Tuesday, showed a 13% increase over 2009 in violent crimes committed against people because of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or status as HIV positive, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

"Person of Interest," the new thriller from Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams that premieres Thursday on CBS, proves, once again, that a great idea for a television show is not at all the same thing as a great television show. The central conceit of "Person of Interest," which smartly mines post-9/11 anxieties, is that crimes can now be detected before they are committed, as in 2002's "Minority Report," only without the damp and distressing pre-cogs. In their place is a computer program, designed by the mysterious Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson)

A jury in New Jersey on Friday convicted Dharun Ravi, a former Rutgers student, of hate crimes, invasion of privacy and other charges related to his spying on his gay college roommate, Tyler Clementi, who later committed suicide. Ravi, 20, sat silently and with no visible expression on his face as the verdict was read. He faced a total of 15 counts in the case, which made national news in September 2010 after Clementi, who was 18, hurled himself from the George Washington Bridge in the New York City area after learning that Ravi had set up a secret webcam and captured him in an intimate encounter with a date in their dorm room.

Fortified by muffins and coffee, the detectives gathered under the chandeliers in the hotel's Grand Ballroom. San Francisco Police Inspector Greg Ovanessian prepared to start his presentation. "Before I begin," he said. "Not all Gypsies or Rom are criminals." "Bull...!" yelled someone in the back. After the laughs died down, Ovanessian, a bespectacled, soft-spoken investigator, continued.

There is the world of neoconservative columnists such as The Times' Jonah Goldberg, who in an Aug. 24 column asserted that the anti-Muslim backlash is mainly a myth. Then there is the world where the rest of us live. Anyone who is witnessing the debates over the proposal to build an Islamic center in New York City has watched an unraveling of emotions across America. Muslims in America — numbering between 4 million and 7 million — have been chastised for not being sufficiently sorry for the acts of 19 hijackers on that terrible day in September 2001, or sensitive enough to the victims' families.

Hate crimes reported in Los Angeles County fell to the lowest level in 21 years, fueled by major drops in vandalism and in gang-related crimes, particularly those by Latino gangs targeting African Americans, which had made up a large number of the most violent hate crimes. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations' annual report for 2010 documents a third consecutive year in which hate crimes declined across the county. The total fell from 593 hate crimes in 2009 to 427, the lowest number since 1989.

LONDON — Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic confronted the accusations against him at the opening of his war crimes trial in The Hague on Wednesday with contemptuous gestures to the court and the victims who had come to see him face justice for atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Slowed by age and the hardships of 15 years on the run from the indictment by the United Nations tribunal, Mladic still mustered a hint of his trademark swagger as...

My mom's first day of motherhood was one of the happiest of her life. It was also one of the worst. She had accompanied my dad from Sri Lanka to Washington State University in 1968, so he could complete his doctorate as a Fulbright Scholar. The school was in Pullman, a small town near the Idaho border. Fluent in English, she worked as a university librarian. During her pregnancy, at age 30, she received care from one of Pullman's few obstetricians. She endured labor without drugs, and I was born healthy in 1972.

Concerned that mobile phone networks are becoming surveillance tools, the American Civil Liberties Union recently asked hundreds of local law enforcement agencies whether they've tracked people's movements through their cellphones. Most of those that responded said they had, usually obtaining the information from mobile phone companies without a warrant. The practice has become so routine, the ACLU found, that phone companies are sending out catalogs of monitoring services with detailed price lists to police agencies.

An Orange County man who swindled elderly people out of their homes after promising to help them avoid foreclosure was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison under California's tough three-strikes law. Defense lawyers and prosecutors across the state could not recall any other case in which a white-collar offender received such a lengthy sentence under a statute typically applied in violent crime cases. The sentencing of Timothy Barnett was unusual because his entire criminal record involved fraud.

USC and the Los Angeles Police Department announced sweeping new security measures Thursday, including the addition of 30 police officers to the area surrounding the campus. The move comes three weeks after the university was stunned by the slayings of two graduate students from China, a case that remains unsolved. The measures go beyond more police on the street to include the sharing of crime data with USC public safety officials, the installation of more security cameras and the addition of a city prosecutor who will focus on cases in and around the campus.

"Headhunters,"the new Norwegian thriller based on the novel of the same name by Jo Nesbo, tells the story of a wealthy but insecure executive recruiter who moonlights as an art thief to support his posh lifestyle. Years before "Headhunters" was an international box office success or a bestselling book, Nesbo was living his own double life as a stockbroker at the Oslo Stock Exchange and rock musician with the band Di Derre (translation: "those guys"). "I was seen as this sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," said Nesbo, 52, on the phone from his native Oslo.

Re "Mislabeling Hides Extent of Hate Crimes," Aug. 23: The logic behind passing laws against "hate crimes" is that they are crimes against society rather than individuals, and in an effort to reduce these crimes we pass new laws that enhance existing penalties by adding years to a sentence, limiting parole or elevating misdemeanors into felonies. While I believe that people who commit heinous crimes should be punished severely, I have a problem with compound laws that seek to penalize our state of mind.

The municipal judge in Vista who dismissed the civil rights violation charge concerning the Mexican migrant farm worker may be reflecting the prejudice and attitude of the "home territory" of the Skinheads and Tom Metzger mentality, but he didn't concern himself with the federal, state or county definitions of "hate crimes." Precisely because these crimes indicate a social pathology that is a real and present danger to all of us, we need to know at least the county definition: "A 'hate crime' is any act, or attempted act, to cause physical injury, emotional suffering, or property damage, which is, or appears to be motivated, all or in part, by race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability or other group characteristic."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The litany of abuses was chilling: mass murder, rape, sexual slavery. Forcing children to fight. Chopping off victims' limbs. Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's conviction Thursday by an international tribunal in the Netherlands on charges of abetting such war crimes in the West African country of Sierra Leone sent a powerful message to other warlords that they will eventually face justice, human rights activists and prosecutors say. But it also highlights what can be a wrenching tension between pursuing justice or peace first in some of the world's most violent, chaotic corners.

The Oslo courtroom where confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is on trial offers a look at a tragic outcome of anti-Islamic hostility. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, years of war and repeated calls for violence against the West stirred worldwide fears of Muslim extremism, but many human rights analysts say they find it difficult to explain a recent surge in anti-Islamic hate crimes other than political manipulation and fears that displays of Islamic faith herald new threats from radicals.