Wednesday, October 28, 2026
The cases, the courts and the stories behind the headlines.
Every story from Two Taps News, newest first. 114 stories and counting.
The defeated Brazilian senator, under investigation for money laundering, has landed in the U.S., sources say. The State Department will issue visas.
A Washington grand jury returned a no bill on the Justice Department's bid to charge the former Trump aide with lying to the Jan. 6 committee in 2022.
The Ninth Circuit dismissed the emergency appeal 2 to 1. Judge David Carter signaled skepticism and plans a special master to examine the list.
A judge tossed two Mary G. Montgomery players' suit over a recruiting ruling, finding school sports are not protected by due process. State claims go on.
Judge Valerie Caproni called their conduct monstrous and gave Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander 30 years each, between the life and 15 year terms sought.
An Alabama judge made a jury's unanimous death verdict official five years after the 2021 shooting that led to the state's Nick Risner Act.
The Fifth Circuit held switchblades are protected arms and struck the 1958 law's interstate ban, but left its territories and tribal land rule standing.
Official results are due November 4. The president then picks a nominee, who gets up to 42 days. The newsroom maps the deadlines.
Prosecutors filed an information, not a grand jury indictment, on the last day of a 10-year deadline. Here is why that choice could decide the case.
Turnout hit a record 66.7% by 6 p.m. as Likud sought longer voting hours, Yashar objected and the election committee rejected claims of systematic fraud.
A two-count information accuses the ex-FBI director of directing a 2016 leak. It was filed exactly ten years later, and his lawyers say that is too late.
Judge Ana Reyes issued a preliminary injunction in the East Potomac Park case, writing that the Justice Department urged her not to believe the president.
An unsigned, unsworn complaint added an obstruction count against ex-FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. A magistrate judge threw it out.
Senatobia officer Hunter Foster fired into a moving car in June, killing Kohen Wiley, 1. The state declined charges, and the bodycam video is out.
Laura Owens pleaded guilty to four felonies over a fake twin pregnancy used against former Bachelor star Clayton Echard, who asked for prison time.
Lula won about 51.8% for a fourth term after trailing in round one. Bolsonaro is challenging a voting extension his own campaign had requested.
Question 9 asks voters to keep or repeal Chapter 135, which covers ghost guns, auto conversions and red flag orders. A yes vote keeps it.
Judge Jesse Furman rejected the claim of unlimited power to fire career prosecutors and ordered back pay. The Justice Department says it will appeal.
Orlando police say 2011 phone records that were never analyzed contradict Dale Smith Jr.'s account of the day Michelle Parker vanished.
Young's copyright suit says the Trump 47 Committee played his 1989 song at an Ohio rally without a license. Trump himself is not named as a defendant.
After Trump said at a Michigan rally that Norway "sucks" over the Peace Prize, Oslo's foreign minister said he knows the Nobel Committee is independent.
CNN, citing U.S. and Israeli sources, says Trump asked Israel to wait. Netanyahu's office calls it fake news, U.S. strike plans are reportedly ready.
Roth v. Trump, filed in Manhattan federal court, asks for an injunction protecting the whole White House press corps, not just the outlets already barred.
Chaze Cable and Robert Celifie are serving life for the 2022 shooting of Ilya Shimonov. Messages read by police point to someone else who wanted his phone.
The Seventh Circuit hears Anderson v. Raoul on October 28. A judge ruled suppressors are not "arms," just as federal rules on the devices are loosening.
The justices denied Baltimore, New Haven and Columbus's bid to block a Texas and Justice Department deal that killed the 2024 administrative closure rule.
Twenty-one of the firearms cases on the list are federal prosecutions. They reach the justices weeks after the Third Circuit narrowed the felon gun ban.
Jacob Morley, 28, serving life for a 2022 murder, got through a Tennessee prison fence Sunday night. Officials say he stole a truck 90 minutes later.
The Justice Department agrees 11 of Robert Bowers's 22 death sentences should be vacated under a 2026 Supreme Court ruling, but not the other 11.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants played Star Trek's young Russian navigator for decades and later Babylon 5's Bester. He died of natural causes.
Lebanese security sources say Iran has sent Hezbollah tens of millions of dollars for weapons and drones. Washington says it will keep squeezing the group's finances.
The final polls put Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, but both camps fall short of 61 seats as a tense campaign ends in court filings and a military alert.
The former Bucks guard pleaded not guilty in July. His lawyer now says a deal with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn is being negotiated, with a direction expected within days.
Former Stoughton officer Matthew Farwell says Sandra Birchmore took her own life. Federal prosecutors say she was strangled, and they are telling jurors the first investigation got it wrong.
The One About Matthew Perry premieres Tuesday, three years after the actor's death. All five people charged in the ketamine case that followed have now pleaded guilty and been sentenced.
Prosecutors say Anna Mochalova stabbed one man and cut another within minutes near the Diamond District. Her lawyer is already questioning how police identified her.
Both rules remove the duty to retreat, but one stops at the front door. Here is how the castle doctrine works, where it ends and how Florida writes it into law.
The Senate has again come within one vote of passing a resolution to end Operation Epic Fury. The legal panel explains the 1973 law at the center of the fight and why it rarely wins.
In a rare Sunday hearing, a Ninth Circuit panel pressed the government on whether it can make California set aside mail ballots from people it calls likely noncitizens.
HBO's ghost story docuseries ends tonight. The real case behind it was solved by a witness who said he was haunted, and it ended with a manslaughter plea instead of a murder trial.
The mother of Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie disappeared from her Arizona home in February. No suspect has been charged. The legal panel was among the first to break down the case.
Oil, an exit strategy, lobbying money and the lessons of past wars. Daniel Rosenberg, Michael Dye and Lloyd Golburgh argue it out with maps and history.
With arguments set for December 2, the two governments told the justices that popularity cannot shield a rifle from regulation. The gun owners suing them say the Second Amendment says otherwise.
Fourteen years after a 19-year-old sophomore was beaten to death in Chapel Hill, a Durham jury rejected the defense's tunnel vision argument and returned guilty verdicts on every count.
Inon Dan Kehati went from a secular peace advocate to an outspoken online voice for Jewish identity. He told Daniel Rosenberg why conviction, not compromise, gives him hope.
Federal monitors have watched polling places for decades. This year there will be more of them, prosecutors among them, and some state officials want to know why.
A think tank counts 28 attacks on merchant ships this month alone, a record for the Iran war. Tankers keep sailing anyway, lured by freight rates above $1 million a day.
Johnny DiGiorgio grew up in New York with a family name everyone knew. Attorney Johnny Weekes explains how one federal law changed loyalty, informing and the street forever.
Hours after watching body camera video of police killing his son, Rodney Hinton Jr. drove into a retired deputy. A Cincinnati jury found him guilty of murder but not aggravated murder.
A national reciprocity bill has waited on the House calendar for a year, and two lawsuits against Denver show how a lawful carrier can become a lawbreaker at a state line.
A federal judge in California found the door knocking operations likely intimidate citizens and rest on flawed data. DHS says it targets only noncitizens who vote.
In 1967, Israeli forces attacked an American Navy ship during the Six Day War. Both governments called it a case of mistaken identity. Many of the survivors never accepted that.
Prosecutors accuse the 82 year old Democrat of using her office to protect an illegal marijuana operation. She vows to fight, and the governor questions the timing.
Federal agents searched her Washington home and relatives received grand jury subpoenas. No charges have been filed. The legal panel walks through what the probe can and cannot lead to.
Mary Ann Turner was strangled in 1986 while searching for her runaway daughter. Police say a decades old tip, a ruse letter and DNA under her fingernails led them to a 74-year-old man.
Two courts threw the case out and ordered Trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1 million. His petition asks whether a sitting president gets more time to sue.
Kay Ivey commuted Toforest Johnson's death sentence to life without parole in the 1995 killing of a Birmingham area deputy. She said it is not a finding of innocence, and his lawyers vow to keep fighting.
Four justices sat out, the Court lost its quorum, and a songwriter who wrote Double Shot in 1962 kept a ruling that lets him take back his song around the world.
A deadlocked jury does not mean an acquittal, and it does not end the case. Here is how mistrials, retrials and double jeopardy actually work.
Payton Gendron is serving life without parole for killing 10 Black shoppers in Buffalo. Federal prosecutors want a death sentence, and jury selection is moving slowly by design.
Daniel Rosenberg and his daughter Olivia argue over which scary movies still work, from The Shining to Longlegs. Here is a watch list built from their conversation.
Trump removed the NLRB member without the cause the law required. After this summer's rulings on presidential removal power, the justices declined to take her case, and the firing stands.
The deals would have spared Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and two others the death penalty. The justices declined to review a ruling that let the Pentagon walk away from them, leaving the capital case alive.
Lawyers ranked them, judges have quoted them and one Supreme Court justice warned juries not to copy them. Here is how the great trial films hold up against a real courtroom.
Most federal crimes must be charged within five years. Murder can be charged decades later. Here is how criminal deadlines work, why they exist and how DNA has rewritten the rules.
A rushed prosecution in 2006 ended with three players declared innocent and a district attorney disbarred. The legal panel explains why that history comes up every time a campus case makes headlines.
The former Dallas officer who shot Botham Jean in his own apartment served seven years of a 10-year murder sentence. His family fought the parole, and lost.
An arraignment can be over in minutes, but it is where formal charges are read and a plea goes on the record. Here is what the rules require and what two recent federal cases show.
Five teenagers were convicted in the 1989 Central Park jogger attack on the strength of confessions they quickly recanted. DNA and another man's confession cleared them 13 years later.
A passenger jet plunged thousands of feet, passengers restrained the co-pilot, and the plane diverted to Saudi Arabia. The legal panel asks why the coverage stopped there.
The Tate brothers are fighting a British request from a Miami jail. Here is how the Constitution, treaties and the State Department decide who gets sent back to face charges.
Gloria Kowalewicz vanished on her way to morning Mass in 1960. Police now say DNA and a fingerprint point to a homicide detective who died in 2006 and was never charged.
The documentary about the activist convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents is now streaming. The case still divides supporters, the FBI and the families of the agents.
A 17 round magazine put the Sentencing Commission's commentary on trial. At argument, most justices seemed wary of discarding a rule that has guided federal sentencing since 1993.
Sixty years after the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, the warnings are part of American life. What they require, where the limits are, and how a 2026 ruling in the Etan Patz case fits in.
In the summer of 1925, a small Tennessee town staged a trial over a schoolteacher and a new law against teaching evolution. It ended with a $100 fine and a debate that never really closed.
DNA has cleared more than 600 people since 1989, including an Illinois man who spent 32 years in prison. Here is how the evidence works, and where its limits are.
A federal judge in Manhattan froze a $20 million Homeland Security ad campaign that critics call political propaganda and the White House calls public service.
About 90 percent of federal defendants plead guilty, and only about 2 percent go to trial. Here is how a plea bargain is struck, what a judge must ask, and what John Bolton's deal shows.
Prosecutors declined to file charges. A civil lawsuit is moving forward, and it plays by different rules.
Marco Rubio says the court will end its threats or Washington will end the court. The ICC says the move is meant to obstruct justice, and U.S. allies say they disagree.
Prosecutors say they suspected Michael Jerome James for years but could not charge him until Indiana closed a gap in its juvenile law. His first hearing came this week. A jurisdiction fight may come next.
A drifter convicted of breaking into a Florida pool hall wrote to the Supreme Court from his prison cell. The 1963 ruling in his case is why poor defendants in America get a lawyer today.
Daniel Rosenberg and Lloyd Golburgh visited Netiv HaAsara, Sderot and the Nova festival grounds. They came back with footage and a lot to say.
It is the highest burden of proof in American law, yet the Supreme Court has never required one definition. Here is what jurors actually hear in the jury room.
A grand jury does not decide guilt. It decides whether there is enough evidence to charge someone, and it does that work in secret. Two cases from the past year show why that matters.
The justices turned away the government's appeal in the Hembree case, keeping a Fifth Circuit ruling that a drug possession felony was not enough to take away a man's right to own a gun.
Two middle school brothers were told to take off their Let's Go Brandon sweatshirts. The justices let stand a ruling that the school could treat the slogan as vulgar, even though it is political.
He is already serving life in federal prison for killing Melissa Hortman and her husband. A Minnesota judge has now delayed the state trial, where Boelter wants to claim he was making a citizen's arrest.
In 1935, a carpenter from the Bronx went on trial in a small New Jersey town for the murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby son. The crowds, the press and the forensic fights set a pattern that still holds.
It is raised in about 1 percent of felony cases and wins in roughly a quarter of those. Here is how M'Naghten and other tests decide who is held responsible.
Bail is more than a dollar figure. In federal court a judge weighs danger, flight risk and the evidence, and the answer can keep a defendant locked up until trial.
Thirty one years ago this week, a Los Angeles jury acquitted O.J. Simpson after an eight month trial. Defense lawyers still study how his team turned strong DNA evidence into reasonable doubt.
Eleven jurors favored a finding of lack of criminal responsibility. One held out for first-degree murder. What happens now?
The only witness against him recanted, and a federal appeals court called the prosecution's misconduct egregious. A judge vacated his murder conviction, and a plea deal sent him home.
Daniel Rosenberg and fan favorite Olivia R. sort the year in film into hits and misses, from Project Hail Mary to the Michael biopic.
A Brentwood murder put a spotlight on how families, treatment programs and courts handle dual diagnosis. Two defense attorneys explain where the system breaks.
Zohran Mamdani’s rise brought international courts into New York City politics. The panel explains what those courts can and cannot do.
Thirty years after the shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, Duane Davis faces life in prison. The panel explains how the state won with circumstantial evidence.
Before the jury deadlocked, the legal panel laid out the evidence on both sides, from 13 medications to the question of planning.
A dismissed federal murder count, stalking charges and a New York double jeopardy rule could shape how the case ends.
The public story says one thing and the photographs suggest another. Two defense attorneys look at the evidence in the Nolan Wells investigation.
U.S. Marshals took the brothers into custody on a sealed UK indictment. Two defense attorneys explain why extradition is hard to stop.
Historian Ramon Rico traces today’s headlines back to the Bronze Age collapse, the Sea Peoples and the empires that followed.
Video, text messages, engraved bullets and a roommate testifying under immunity. The legal panel explains what prosecutors showed and why conspiracy theories are struggling.
A disputed red card, Messi at his best and a coach who lost his cool. The panel trades the courtroom for the pitch.
Daniel Rosenberg and his daughter Olivia talk Zodiac, Bundy and Gacy, and what a career in criminal defense teaches about mental illness and trauma.
A clerk of court’s contact with a juror undid one of the most watched trials in years. What happens now?
A new documentary has reopened old questions. The legal panel revisits the 2005 trial, the evidence and why the jury acquitted.
A rabbi who grew up in Buenos Aires and now leads a South Florida congregation talks about Jewish identity, criticism of Israel and the world after October 7.
The legal panel takes on the Thomas Massie race, the line between criticism and antisemitism, and the indictment of Raúl Castro.
The rapper and activist talks about writing a song on October 7, taking it to college campuses and the attack he describes at a street vigil.
How self-defense really works in a Florida murder trial, why carry laws changed and how a group chat can end up in front of a jury.
A veteran South Florida defense attorney on picking juries, cross-examination and the one piece of advice every young lawyer needs.
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