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The trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards took a dramatic turn Wednesday when his daughter abruptly left the courtroom during testimony about a fight between her mother and father over his affair with a campaign videographer.

Peter Bergen was the only journalist granted access to the squalid compound where Osama bin Laden lived -- and died

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — There was no single blow, stomp or strike to Robert Champion's bruised and battered body that killed him as he was pummeled by fellow Florida A&M University marching band members during a hazing ritual aboard a charter bus last fall.

Instead, his death was caused by multiple ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, arrived in China for economic talks and found herself in the middle of a diplomatic firestorm with U.S. officials defending a deal with Chinese authorities over an activist's future.

GILBERT, Ariz. — Police on Thursday identified one of the five people killed in a shooting in a Phoenix suburb as a former Marine with ties to neo-Nazi and Minutemen groups.

Jason Todd Ready, 39, organized a militia in the Arizona desert with the goal of finding illegal immigrants and ...

The Supreme Court building is getting a face-lift to its famous facade, seven years after a chunk of marble fell 100 feet onto the stairs leading to the entrance, where it broke into pieces.

Frida Ghitis says that Obama administration must help the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng and uphold the values of human rights

CNN's Stan Grant talks to Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng amid controversy over his handling by U.S. officials.

Massachusetts engages in a sensitive analysis of abandonment and subjective reasonable expectation of privacy and concludes that a fleeing suspect who stashes a backpack under a bush in a neighbor’s yard really didn’t have one. (Alternatively, there were exigent circumstances.) Commonwealth v. Carnes, 2012 Mass. App. LEXIS 182 (May 2, 2012):

A search in the constitutional sense requires that the defendant must have had a subjective expectation of privacy in the item or place searched, and that such expectation must have been one that society recognizes as reasonable. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Pina, 406 Mass. 540, 544, cert. denied, 498 U.S. 832 (1990); Commonwealth v. Montanez, 410 Mass. 290, 301 (1991). "The defendant bears the burden of establishing both elements." Commonwealth v. Montanez, 410 Mass. at 301. Here, the judge's conclusion of abandonment requires us to consider whether the defendant manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the place searched, and in the contents of his backpack, which "could be considered objectively reasonable or legitimate." Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. 756, 759 (1996). More particularly, abandonment is a question of intent, which may be inferred from words, behavior, and other objective facts. See generally Commonwealth v. Paszko, 391 Mass. 164, 184 (1984).

Because we conclude that the defendant's actions in discarding the backpack in the back yard of his best friend suggest a subjective expectation of privacy, we focus on whether the defendant's subjective expectation of privacy "could be considered objectively reasonable or legitimate." Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. at 759. First, we consider that the defendant concealed his backpack outside, in a back yard in which "by law, he ... had no reasonable expectation of privacy." Id. at 761. He was neither the owner nor did he establish any right of control over the property. See Rawlings v. Kentucky, 448 U.S. 98, 105 (1980) (defendant put drugs in friend's purse over which he had no control or right to exclude others); United States v. Hershenow, 680 F.2d 847, 855-856 (lst Cir. 1982) (defendant had "no legal interest or even access rights" to the storage barn where he directed another to hide a box of incriminating evidence). See also Commonwealth v. Williams, 453 Mass. at 207-209 ("defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the basement area [of her mother's apartment building] in which she had deposited some possessions"); United States v. Soto, 779 F. Supp. 2d 208, 219 (D. Mass. 2011) (defendant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in computer's hard drive left in vehicle defendant obtained by fraud and turned over to third party; hard drive deemed abandoned). Contrast Commonwealth v. Mubdi, 456 Mass. 385, 391-394 (2010), citing with approval Commonwealth v. Williams, supra.

. . .

In sum, the defendant's act of hiding his backpack in the bushes in his best friend's yard without establishing that he placed the backpack in someone else's control, while he was trying to avoid apprehension, and in particular, while he was in possession of a handgun, fails to evoke an expectation of privacy that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. See Commonwealth v. Carter, 424 Mass. 409, 412 (1997) (art. 14 "does not relieve a defendant who unlawfully intruded on someone else's reasonable expectation of privacy from establishing that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy himself"). The motion judge properly concluded that the backpack had been abandoned. See generally United States v. Morgan, 936 F.2d at 1570-1571, cited with approval in Commonwealth v. Straw, 422 Mass. at 760-761; United States v. Soto, 779 F. Supp. 2d at 219.

One could wish that all courts would do this analysis. Few would. Still, the defendant loses, but he can't complain he wasn't adequately heard.

John Yoo gets immunity under Ashcroft v. al-Kidd for the “Torture Memo.” Padilla v. Yoo, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 8934 (9th Cir. May 2, 2012):

After the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States, the government detained Jose Padilla, an American citizen, as an enemy combatant. Padilla alleges that he was held incommunicado in military detention, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and detained under harsh conditions of confinement, all in violation of his constitutional and statutory rights. In this lawsuit, plaintiffs Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, seek to hold defendant John Yoo, who was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 2001 to 2003, liable for damages they allege they suffered from these unlawful actions. Under recent Supreme Court law, however, we are compelled to conclude that, regardless of the legality of Padilla's detention and the wisdom of Yoo's judgments, at the time he acted the law was not "sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he [wa]s doing violate[d]" the plaintiffs' rights. Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S. Ct. 2074, 2083 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore hold that Yoo must be granted qualified immunity, and accordingly reverse the decision of the district court.

As we explain below, we reach this conclusion for two reasons. First, although during Yoo's tenure at OLC the constitutional rights of convicted prisoners and persons subject to ordinary criminal process were, in many respects, clearly established, it was not "beyond debate" at that time that Padilla — who was not a convicted prisoner or criminal defendant, but a suspected terrorist designated an enemy combatant and confined to military detention by order of the President — was entitled to the same constitutional protections as an ordinary convicted prisoner or accused criminal. Id. Second, although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla's alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.

The dissident leaves the U.S. Embassy under murky circumstances.

The trouble with MPs who want to dictate media ownership.

Mormonism and Islam are among the fastest growing religions in America, while just over half of all Americans are unaffiliated with any denomination, according to a major census of the country's religious congregations published Wednesday.

The decennial census, released by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies in Chicago, ...

A strike force of federal, state and local agents and investigators, led by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, has charged 107 persons in seven cities with Medicare fraud involving more than $452 million in false billings, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday.

Mr. Holder, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have joined forces to offer free online courses in a project aimed at attracting millions of online learners around the world, the universities announced Wednesday.

Beginning this fall, a variety of courses developed by faculty at both institutions will be ...

Universities are no longer turning a blind eye to what happens inside the fraternity house.

After horrific, firsthand accounts from students and multiple recent deaths, the long-accepted practice of hazing — both in Greek organizations and other university clubs — has been thrust into the spotlight, and a fierce, unprecedented ...

Unless they plan to be union lifers, what's in an Obama vote for young Americans?

Disunity among the ruling elites and the rising defiance of dissidents signal that one-party rule could be nearing its end.

Russia and China recognize the low-cost efficiency of lasers. Does the Pentagon?

California could become the first state in the nation to require food producers to label all genetically modified products after activists this week capped a successful petition drive to get the measure on the state's November ballot.

More than 971,000 signatures from 58 counties - almost twice the legal requirement ...