Jail

A day after a split verdict in the first major Philadelphia mob trial in a decade, a judge Wednesday jailed two defendants, denied a bid to release a third, and waited to see if reputed boss Joseph Ligambi would ask to be freed on bail. Ligambi, 73, has been imprisoned since his May 2011 indictment. After 21 days of deliberations, the jury Tuesday deadlocked on the racketeering conspiracy charge and three others against him, and cleared him of five lesser crimes. Defense lawyer Edwin Jacobs Jr. had called the verdicts "a failure" for the government and said he would ask U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno to release Ligambi on bail immediately.

Convicted former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo must pay much more in restitution to one of his victims, a federal appeals panel ruled Monday. In another rebuke to U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter, the panel said Buckwalter had imposed too light a burden on Fumo in resentencing him in 2011. The appeals court returned the case to Buckwalter to decide precisely how much Fumo should pay, but it strongly suggested he pay as much as an additional $800,000. Two years ago, Buckwalter ordered Fumo and a former aide convicted with him, Ruth Arnao, to split 50/50 about $1.6 million in restitution due a South Philadelphia civic-improvement organization.

Megan Galo, whose concerns about a Philadelphia charter school's operations helped land two of its ex-leaders behind bars, was sentenced to prison Monday for stealing money from the orthopedics practice that employed her. Galo, 48, of Abington, pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court to one felony count of theft by deception for stealing more than $100,000 from the Center for Advanced Orthopaedics on West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, where...

Marijuana activist Ed Forchion, who calls himself NJ Weedman, predicted last week that he likely would face "a short jail stint" because he had refused to report to Burlington County authorities as required by his sentence of probation for possessing a pound of the drug. Forchion, 48, is now in a Philadelphia jail awaiting extradition. U.S. marshals arrested him at Philadelphia International Airport on Thursday, at the request of the Burlington County sheriff's office, as he was about to depart for his home in Los Angeles, authorities said.

Rafael Robb must have been ready to get out of prison. After all, only a few weeks stood between him and the release date the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole had granted him six years into his five- to 10-year sentence for beating his wife to death with an exercise bar. That return to freedom was to come Monday. But frustration with the board's decision and a process that largely excluded the victim's family fueled a public campaign by relatives and elected officials to keep him behind bars.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Authorities on Sunday finished evacuating inmates from a prison where 61 were reported killed in one of the deadliest prison clashes in the nation's history. Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela said in a message on Twitter that the evacuation of Uribana prison in the city of Barquisimeto was completed on Sunday morning. Inmates were loaded aboard buses and driven to other prisons. Varela posted photos of inmates filing out led by authorities, and said that what will come next for the prison is "now the reconstruction!"

THERE ARE 2.2 million people now incarcerated in American prisons - the most, by far, in any country on this planet. A large number of them are no doubt - or at least beyond a reasonable one - guilty of terrible crimes that have harmed others. But tens of thousands are imprisoned for much less: for stealing or selling (or possessing) relatively small amounts of drugs, or filing false tax returns or maybe cooking the books of their small businesses. Or because they have incompetent lawyers.

Skyler Robinson did not intentionally kill Gloucester Township's beloved police dog, and he is not a violent criminal, says his attorney, Saul Steinberg. Legislators and local law enforcement officials see it differently. They say Robinson, 22, of Sewell, belongs in jail for robbery, assault, resisting arrest, and causing Schultz's death. But Robinson may avoid prison if he is accepted into and successfully completes drug treatment as ordered Thursday by a judge. National outrage after the dog's 2010 death led to New Jersey's "Schultz's Law," sponsored by Sen. Fred Madden and Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, both Democrats from Gloucester County.

The words, about 7,000 in all, were scribbled in the margins of newspapers and on other scrap paper. They did not show the soaring rhetoric he would use in a famous speech in Washington just months later. But some say the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail" – a sharp, at times line-by-line rebuke of arguments white clergymen made denouncing King's tactic of nonviolent protest – marked a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement, swaying clergymen to become more and more involved.