Witnesses

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday turned down a death row inmate's request for a new trial, even though most of the key witnesses in the case have recanted or contradicted their earlier testimony. Troy Anthony Davis, 39, was convicted of killing a Savannah police officer after a 1991 trial based entirely on witnesses' accounts. Seven of the nine who implicated Davis have since changed their story in sworn affidavits, with several claiming they were pressured by police in their earlier statements.

ATLANTA - On the night George Zimmerman fatally shot unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, a witness said he saw some of the scuffle - and described a black man in a dark hoodie on top of a white or Latino man, punching him repeatedly, "mixed martial arts style. " Then there was a pop, the witness told police, according to documents made public Thursday in Zimmerman's second-degree murder case. Soon, he said, the man in the hoodie was "laid out in the grass. " The detail, one of many in a trove of discovery records released by prosecutors, could bolster Zimmerman's contention that he acted in self-defense on the night of Feb. 26, after he called police and reported Martin as a suspicious character in his neighborhood.

Manager Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, under investigation for alleged gambling, will be allowed to bring witnesses to his hearing before Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti next Thursday. Deputy Commissioner Francis T. Vincent said: "It's going to be a fair hearing."

WASHINGTON — Rusty Hardin, lead attorney for Roger Clemens, got the former pitcher's chief accuser to admit to a series of lies in a day of aggressive cross examination, but did not undermine his credibility with a single grand stroke. Clemens is on trial for perjury, accused of lying to Congress about his use of performance enhancing drugs. Brian McNamee, a former trainer who worked closely with Clemens, admitted that in 2007 he lied to federal agent Jeff Novitzky and the Mitchell Commission, which was investigating performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Vicki Rock remembers how the fight started. When she wanted to go out for a hamburger on a hot July Arkansas night, her husband blocked the door and bounced her off a wall. She also remembers picking up his loaded gun lying next to a beer can on the kitchen table. What happened next, she told police, was a blank. The next thing she remembered was calling for an ambulance as her husband lay dying on the floor, a bullet wound in his chest. To refresh her memory, her lawyer had her hypnotized.

After a jury favoring acquittal failed to reach a unanimous verdict, a judge declared a mistrial Wednesday for Gregory Diles, a former bodyguard accused of participating in the 1981 Laurel Canyon murders. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Curtis Rappe "reluctantly" excused the panel after each agreed with the foreman that further deliberations would not be fruitful. The jury had deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of acquittal.

Delivering a blistering attack on prosecution witnesses, Ricky Kyle's defense attorney asked a Los Angeles Superior Court jury Tuesday to acquit Kyle of his father's murder and "not to follow the rabbit trail put out by the prosecution." Ending his three-day summation, attorney Michael P. Gibson ridiculed prosecution theories about the July, 1983, shooting death of multimillionaire Henry Harrison Kyle.

A young man who once toted a book bag and attended classes at Cal State Los Angeles testified in federal court Tuesday that he authorized the executions of as many as 40 people as a rising star in the Mexican Mafia. Max Torvisco, 24, took the stand as the government's first witness in the trial of 11 suspected Mexican Mafia members and associates, describing the organization as the "gang of all gangs."

After Eileen Franklin-Lipsker witnessed the murder of her best friend, she wondered why no one, including police investigators, thought to question her because she was only 8 years old. Now, at 29, she will finally testify, and what she will say, she promises, is that the man she saw commit the crime was her own father. Franklin-Lipsker, who came forward with her accusation for the first time last month, is the key witness against George Thomas Franklin Sr., 50, a former San Mateo firefighter.

One intersection. Seven unsolved homicides. That's the tally for the cross streets of San Pedro and 84th dating to the late 1980s. The spot is typical of many in South and Central Los Angeles where extraordinary numbers of people are murdered and the killers are never caught. Unsolved homicides -- killings for which no suspect is ever arrested -- are stacked up block by block, mile by mile, in this part of Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON — An anxious wife drove Brian McNamee to hold on to evidence of Roger Clemens' steroid use for self-protection, the former trainer testified at the former pitcher's federal perjury trial. "She kept saying in the midst of a battle royale, 'You're going to go down if something ever happens,' " McNamee said. So as a measure of insurance, McNamee said, he held on to a beer can filled with a used needle, a syringe and a glass steroid ampule he had fished out of Clemens' recycling bin in 2001.

The 17-year-old football star's skin was black and his backpack red. Were it not for those colors, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, Jamiel Shaw II might never have been murdered by an 18th Street gang member eager to earn his stripes. Deputy Dist. Atty. Allyson Ostrowski said Pedro Espinoza, now 23, shot Shaw execution-style in 2008 thinking he was a Bloods gang member because he was African American and was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack. Shaw, who played for Los Angeles High School, was killed in March of that year just a few houses away from his Arlington Heights home.

Back when single-celled organisms ruled Earth, a gigantic black hole lurking quietly at the center of a distant galaxy dismantled and devoured a star. On Wednesday, astronomers reported that they watched the whole thing unfold over a period of 15 months starting in 2010, the first time such an event had been witnessed in great detail from start to finish. "The star got so close that it was ripped apart by the gravitational force of the black hole," said Johns Hopkins University astronomer Suvi Gezari, lead author of a paper about the observations that was published online by the journal Nature.

A hostess escorted Emily Blunt to a private room in the commissary on the Universal Pictures lot, where a lone table had been set for a meal. The actress glanced around at the empty, window-less space and asked, "Might we be able to go out into the main dining room? I feel a bit cooped up in here. " As a team of handlers scurried to grant her request, one publicist whispered admiringly, "Wow, I've never had a star ask for less privacy. She's so cool, right?" Blunt, 29, seems to inspire this breathless sort of praise.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — After days of salacious testimony about a mistress, a love child and naked political ambition, John Edwards' criminal campaign finance trial focused Wednesday on the credibility of the prosecution's chief witness. In the first of what is expected to be several days of cross-examination, the defense sought to portray former Edwards aide Andrew Young as an opportunist who profited from the rise and fall of the aspiring presidential candidate. As he questioned Young, defense attorney Abbe Lowell held up a copy of Young's tell-all book about Edwards, "The Politician," and highlighted inconsistencies between Young's testimony and the book, as well as his TV appearances to promote the book.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — A former aide to John Edwards on Tuesday described the detailed plans he said the former presidential candidate devised to hide his extramarital affair and his mistress' pregnancy, including accepting money from a wealthy benefactor to pay for his paramour's expenses. Andrew Young, the prosecution's chief witness, testified throughout the second day of the criminal trial against Edwards, who is accused of six counts related to campaign finance violations. Young testified that he approached a number of Edwards supporters seeking money to pay the living and healthcare expenses for mistress Rielle Hunter, who gave birth to Edwards' daughter.

At dawn on the eve of her high school graduation, the battered body of 18-year-old Teak Dyer was found on the floor of a Pacific Palisades bathroom. Before day's end, a security guard who told police he had "stumbled upon" the bloody scene was arrested and later charged with the murder of the young woman.

Twenty years ago today, a groundskeeper making his rounds discovered the horror: the body of 8-year-old Susan Nason dumped in a litter-strewn ravine. Now, long after detectives had shelved the investigation as unsolvable, George T. Franklin Sr., 50, a father of five, is in jail. San Mateo County sheriff's detectives arrested him on Wednesday after one of his daughters came forward and named him as the killer of Susan, her childhood playmate.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Roger Clemens, seeking to discredit a key government witness in the All-Star pitcher's perjury trial, contend that Brian McNamee is telling lies, on which he is cashing in. McNamee, a former strength coach, has said he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone. Rusty Hardin, the lead Clemens attorney, said in his opening statement Tuesday that the former trainer had become a celebrity as a result of the allegations he made against Clemens.

An Afghan immigrant who admitted planning to bomb New York City targets to protest the war in his homeland takes the stand again Wednesday in the trial of an alleged co-conspirator in the plot, which officials called "one of the most serious threats" to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Najibullah Zazi began his testimony Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan, looking far different from the defiant, bearded man who stood in a courtroom in February 2010 and pleaded guilty to terror-related charges.