Jailhouse snitches are notoriously unreliable. In this country, they are a major contributor to wrongful convictions.

That isn't stopping 10 News in Australia. It's about to air a paid interview with Bali 9 inmate Renae Lawrence, doing 20 years (after narrowly avoiding the death penalty) for smuggling heroin into Bali with 8 other people. She had 2.5 kilos strapped to her body. Two of the nine are waiting for the executioner, and six are doing life.

Reportedly, Renae will claim that during a period when she and Schapelle shared a cell (with several other women), Schapelle confessed to her that she knew the drugs were in her boogie-bag. I don't buy that for a second. [More....]

It was a dramatic day 8 at the Oscar Pistorius trial. The investigator who took over the case from the Hilton Botha, Colonel Vermulon, testified about the physical evidence. There are some serious problems.

Both sides now agree Oscar was on his stumps when he shot through the door, and after that, he used a cricket bat to bash in the door. Here's the rub: The state, which claimed at the bail hearing Oscar had his prostheses on when he shot at the door, now says he didn't have them on at either time: when he shot through the door or used the cricket bat. The defense says Oscar put them after shooting at the door and had them on when he used the bat.

In Oscar's bail affidavit, he says he shot through the door while on his stumps, then "I put on my prosthetic legs, ran back to the bathroom and tried to kick the toilet door open."[More...]

Last week, Oscar Pistorius' defense team spent a lot of time trying to get witnesses to acknowledge that they might have confused the sound of gunshots with the sound of Oscar bashing in the door to to the toilet with a cricket bat. Here's an interesting You Tube video of an experiment comparing the two sounds. Conclusion: If you weren't able to listen to both sounds for comparison purposes, you could easily mistake the sound of the cricket bat for the sound of a gunshot.

Here's a recap of yesterday's testimony. In a nutshell, Reeva was shot three times, in the hip, the arm and the head. She would have died within a few breaths of the gunshot to the head.

The New Yorker has an in-depth interview with Peter Lanza, the father of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza. It's remarkably candid.

Lanza, who hadn't seen Adam in two years because Adam refused to see him, says Adam was pure evil and he wishes he had never been born. He says he has no doubt that had Adam had the chance, he would have killed him too.

“It was crystal clear something was wrong,” Peter said. “The social awkwardness, the uncomfortable anxiety, unable to sleep, stress, unable to concentrate, having a hard time learning, the awkward walk, reduced eye contact. You could see the changes occurring.”

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On Feb. 26, Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez announced in court he would plead guilty without a plea agreement in the Chicago case in which Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla are co-defendants. In court yesterday, his lawyer announced he had changed his mind and wants to go to trial in May after all.

Why? A local ABC News affiliate reporter named Chuck Goudie had erroneously reported on TV that Vasquez-Hernandez had turned against Chapo. The inmates at the jail saw it and word spread to Mexico, where VH's wife and children live. Vasquez Herandez would rather go to trial than potentially put their lives in jeopardy.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Shakeshaft called Goudie’s error, “an unfortunate piece of journalism.”

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I've been watching the Oscar Pistorius trial live on the internet since it began Monday. They are still on the first witness.

The format of the trial is different than in the U.S. In South Africa, the defendant has the right to make a statement addressing the charges at the beginning, before the state gives an opening argument. Oscar's lawyer read a detailed statement, in the first person as if Oscar was speaking, refuting the charges paragraph by paragraph. He went through the facts of what happened, and it was much like what the affidavit from the bail hearing. (The only difference I could discern was that he said Oscar went to the balcony to bring two fans back. In the bail application, they said there was one fan.) [More...]

There's an interesting article in the New York Review of Books on the arrest of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. In one portion, it explores alternative theories of his arrest:

Many now believe that Chapo voluntarily turned himself in, that the commandos who went through the building at four in the morning, according to witnesses, were there simply to guarantee the operation’s safety while all the appropriate contracts and agreements were signed, that Emma Coronel was there to say good-bye.

This version does not attempt to explain why Guzmán would feel like ending his life at large, with the prospect of a lifetime of solitary confinement in a US prison before him, but there are many other views about how and why Guzmán was snared.

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Congrats to Jerry Lefcourt and Bill Aronwald, defense lawyers for Kerry Kennedy, for the acquittal today on charges of drugged driving. The jury deliberated for one hour.

On July 13, 2012, she drove her Lexus S.U.V. erratically after swallowing Zolpidem, a generic form of the sleep medication Ambien. She sideswiped a tractor-trailer on a highway in Westchester County before she was found, slumped over her steering wheel, her car stalled on a local road.

Ms. Kennedy has maintained that she took the pill accidentally, mistaking it for medication she took for a thyroid condition. She testified on Wednesday that she did not realize her mistake until well after the accident.

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Oscar Pistorius goes on trial Monday in South Africa for the killing of his girlfriend and illegal possession of ammunition. Yesterday, a judge ruled parts of the trial will be televised and live audio will be provided for all of it.

The trial will take place in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.

Eyewitness News, eNCA and MultiChoice are launching a 24 hour Oscar trial channel on Sunday.

The televised portions include opening and closing arguments and the state's witnesses. Oscar's testimony, and the testimony of his witnesses will only be available on audio. [More...]

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman-Loera won't be leaving Mexico anytime soon. A judge has ordered him to stand trial in Mexico.

The judge said Tuesday that Guzman will stand trial on drug trafficking charges. Mexico's top officials say he must face all local charges and interrogation by investigators looking to dismantle his multibillion-dollar cartel before possible U.S. extradition.

The U.S. will have to wait.

Mexico's interior minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, emphatically states that the DEA did nothing more than provide intelligence information in the arrest of Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman-Loera and that the U.S. was not involved in his capture. (Similar article in English here.)

"There was no involvement of any single person, everything has been by special operation of the Navy of Mexico (...) I have not heard of anyone from the U.S. government and any statement about this is clear because there is not" , he said.

Osorio Chong insists all the DEA did was provide geo-location technology for Chapo's satellite phone. [More...]

While prosecutors in Chicago and the Eastern District of New York vie to extradite Chapo Guzman, they may have to cool their heels. Mexico has filed new charges against Guzman.

More on his capture and the wiretaps and tunnels here and here.

El Proceso in Mexico today reports that Jesus Vincente Zambada-Niebla, the son of Ismael Zambada-Garcia, who is charged in Illinois, has agreed to plead guilty and cooperate to avoid a life sentence. It claims an announcement will be made soon. [More...]