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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A late-night encounter with four bears trying to snack from backyard birdfeeders gave Vermont's governor a lesson in what not to do in bear country.

One of the bears chased Peter Shumlin and nearly caught the governor while he was trying to shoo the animals away, ...

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The mayor of New Jersey's largest city said Friday he feared for his life as he helped rescue a neighbor from a fire before firefighters had arrived.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, speaking on "CBS This Morning," described how he returned home Thursday night and saw his ...

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — Trayvon Martin's supporters fought for weeks to win an arrest after the 17-year-old was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. Now George Zimmerman's attorney has begun what could be a lengthy legal battle to free his client from the second-degree murder charge filed ...

WASHINGTON — Accidents in which drivers mistakenly hit the gas instead of the brake tend to involve older female drivers in parking lots, a new government study has found.

One of the study's most striking and consistent findings was that nearly two-thirds of drivers who had such accidents were female. ...

Defendant was stopped and volunteered he had drugs in the car, and handed them to the police. He was arrested and his car was locked up. When the police came back to the car to impound it, a gun was seen sticking out from under the seat. The automobile exception permitted the search despite the delay. [Not to mention plain view.] People v Thomas, 2012 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 2717, 2012 NY Slip Op 2714 (2d Dept. April 10, 2012).

Defendant’s stop for driving too slow was justified where his car impeded other vehicles. Marijuana in plain view justified a search under the automobile exception. Shell v. State, 2012 Ga. App. LEXIS 391 (April 12, 2012).*

A 16 year old runaway was riding with defendant and she told the police that she had oral sex with defendant which he recorded on his telephone. A search warrant for the phone was obtained, but the officer exceeded the scope of the warrant by looking for picture files and not just the video. Significantly, the court also held that the government’s preferred justification for obtaining 404(b) evidence was rejected under the terms of this warrant. United States v. Labuda, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 154700 (W.D. Tenn. October 13, 2011):

Finally, while the United States argues that the scope may have been justified to locate material "evidence of intent, plan, motive or common scheme" in accordance with Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the fact remains that the scope of the authority to search Defendant's cellular phone was based upon the authority granted in the Search Warrant. The Affidavit recited the victim's account that the alleged sexual assault occurred during a brief time period and did not indicate that there was any lengthy span of time during which investigators believed that Defendant corresponded, schemed, or planned the sexual assault. It was the substance of the Affidavit that the issuing judge relied upon to grant the authority to execute the search. Thus, the Court finds that any attempt of investigators to search for evidence not reasonably related to the time frame provided by the victim, no matter whether it may or may not be admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence, was beyond the scope of the Search Warrant.

Ultimately, although Detective Campbell did prudently narrow his search in ways that were not required by the warrant, specifically by not viewing any files other than videos, that does not negate the fact that he also improperly broadened his search to include dates and times that the record reflects he had no reasonable basis to believe that Defendant may have been engaged in or recording sexual offenses relating to the sixteen-year-old victim about whom the Search Warrant was issued. Accordingly, the Court finds that Detective Campbell exceeded the scope of the Search Warrant in his seizure of evidence that had no temporal proximity to the sexual assault of the sixteen-year-old victim.

Death penalty opponents said Thursday that this week's votes putting Connecticut on track to become the 17th state to abandon capital punishment shows that the long campaign against the death penalty is gaining serious momentum.

"The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty has been at it for 35 years, ...