A firefighter involved in a fatal hit-and-run in 2010 has received a plea deal that will force him to complete community service, but serve no jail time. According to Streetsblog, Pat Quagliariello, who was charged with criminally negligent homicide for fleeing the scene after his BMW SUV struck and killed Manuel Tzaj Guachiac in Bensonhurst, must give a speech at 35 high schools about "the perils of reckless and drunk driving." more ›

Subway riders are free to leisurely lick their shoes or feed their families off high fructose corn syrup. But only the hardest, baddest, most ectothermic criminals put their feet up on another seat, and a recent report by the Times on seat-hogging arrests in 2011 proves yet again the NYPD is serious about enforcement. So serious, that in March a man was deported after showing an Ecuadorian ID to NYPD transit officers. more ›

Lori Berenson, the New Yorker who served 15 years of a prison sentence in Peru as a convicted terrorist, said Peruvian immigration officials prevented her from visiting the US yesterday despite a court-order that allowed her to travel to New York City until January 11. "They said I needed a document for immigration and I didn't have it," she told the Times, "so they wouldn't let me leave the country. Berenson is currently on parole through November of 2015, and her attorney called the actions "an abuse of authority." more ›

In July, a driver with a suspended license was quickly backing up on Amsterdam Avenue to score a parking space when he ran over two women crossing the street at West 98th Street. Yolanda Casal, 78, was pronounced dead at the hospital while the other woman, her 41-year-old daughter Anais Emanuel, was hospitalized with injuries. Shortly after the incident, a witness told the Post, "They had the right of way and that guy just kept backing up. He was trying to get that spot." Now Streetsblog reports that the driver, 38-year-old Edwin Carrasco of Paterson, New Jersey, did not get off scot-free—he'll have to pay $500 as punishment. more ›

"Oh, sh*t! JUSTICE is here?" Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky and his entourage leapt over the ottomans and coffee tables in the makeshift lounge set up for talent at the Creators Project on Saturday. The French duo, who were to appear for a DJ set to promote their upcoming album, Audio, Video, Disco, had moments before been sitting quietly in the far corner of the room speaking to the endless parade of media. Now they were engulfed in one-finger salutes and raised glasses for a impromptu photo-op. "Yeah, son! Motherf*cking JUSTICE! Motherf*cking A$AP Rocky! That's right!" more ›

After becoming the deciding factor in the acquittals of a DWI and an attempted murder suspect, ticket-fixing may become the focal point of a Bronx murder trial. 25-year-old Careem Johnson is charged with shooting 18-year-old Jose Arvelo with seven bullets in 2008, and the alleged murder is caught on surveillance tape. But arresting officer Detective Jason Allison was caught on a wiretap asking a union delegate to erase a summons. "The ticket-fixing defense can only help here, even if it's a long shot," a Bronx defense attorney tells the Daily News. more ›

DSK isn't the only person getting charges against them dropped this week. DNAinfo today has the heartening story of how one persistent man was able to prove that his brother did not in fact kill a homeless man in Union Square with a bike lock earlier this summer. Though witnesses had sworn that 29-year-old Keenan Bryce was the one who threw the lock at homeless man Stanley Novak early on the morning of July 8, Bryce's brother was able to prove them wrong. more ›

The New Jersey Supreme Court is making some changes that will make it easier for defendants to challenge eyewitness accounts. As more cases shed light on just how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be (two of the "West Memphis Three," who were were recently freed, were convicted based largely on eyewitness testimony), the court is saying that the now 34-year-old guidelines set by the U.S. Supreme Court need an update. more ›

Prosecutors and Dominique Strauss-Kahn's defense team have agreed to push back the upcoming hearing in the case, to August 1 from July 18, giving Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. and his team more time to decide whether or not to dismiss the sexual assault charges against Strauss-Kahn, offer him a plea bargain, or pursue the case full bore. According to the Times, Assistant DA Joan Illuzi-Orbon, who is heading up the Strauss-Kahn case, wrote in her request to the court that the move would "provide both parties with additional time for their investigations." The defense adamantly believes that the case will go away, stating, "We hope that during this time, the district attorney will make the necessary decision to dismiss the case." more ›

Finally, NY Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd is weighing in on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, which has turned from the authorities believing they had a strong sexual assault case against the leading international politician to revelations that the accuser has been lying a lot. She begins, "So what’s the moral of this Manhattan immorality tale? That the French are always right, even when their hauteur is irritating? They were right about Iraq and America’s rush to war. And they may be right about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and America’s rush to judgment." more ›

Much of the city is still reeling after yesterday's acquittal of "Rape Cops" Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata. And for good reason: the officers falsified a 911 call, left and entered the victim's apartment four times; Moreno testified that he had sung Bon Jovi for the victim, spooned with her on her bed, and even admitted to her in person that he had used a condom and that he wanted to be her boyfriend. An article in the Times today interviews the bar owner whose surveillance camera caught the officers entering and leaving the victim's apartment, the crucial piece of evidence that enabled prosecutors to try the cops, and she had but one comment about her state of mind after the verdict: "Heartbroken, and in disbelief." more ›

As the French complain that leading politician and IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn is being subject to barbaric American treatment because he has been photographed while in handcuffs, Mayor Bloomberg stood up for the tradition of perp walks. While in Albany to lobby for gay marriage, Bloomberg said, "I think it is humiliating, but you know if you don’t want to do the perp walk, don’t do the crime." Oh, snap! more ›

Many of us share in the blood-boiling, white-knuckle rage that is summoned when the cacophony of the city rouses us from our precious six hours of sleep, but few of us are able to do anything about it beyond screaming obscenities out the window or drowning it out with uncontrollable sobbing. EV Grieve shares the account of one dad on East 5th street who awoke to a raucous party bus at 4 a.m. whose first reflex wasn't to dial 311, but to "[get] a bat...but didn't want to wake the kids by opening their baseball gear. It was their sleep that I was trying to preserve after all." No bat? That's why the Good Lord invented shoes. more ›

After a band of anonymous teenagers "accidentally" torched PS 29's playground in Cobble Hill two weeks ago, their well-heeled parents agreed to donate $50,000 to smooth things over. But for some, "you break it, you buy it" does not equate justice. "I don't think it's right to buy your kids out," the Brooklyn Paper quotes one Cobble Hill resident, who is totally lame and COME ON that slide totally burned your butt when it was sunny anyway. more ›

The Daily Show tackled one of the most pressing legal issues that Staten Island is facing (well, besides the horrible number of hate crimes): How the borough is the only one that hasn't produced a Supreme Court Justice. The show's Wyatt Cenac asked Assemblyman Matthew Titone why Staten Island was so great, only for Titone to pause (jokingly?) and then Titone talks about how it's diverse—"Staten Island often is thought of being exclusively Italian-American, having the guidos, but we have the largest Liberian population outside of Liberia." more ›

Patrick Pogan, the former NYPD officer who was caught on tape in 2008 violently shoving a cyclist off his bike, seemingly without provocation, faced up to four years in prison for a felony conviction of filing a false criminal complaint against cyclist Christopher Long. But yesterday Justice Maxwell Wiley (a Pataki appointee) sent a clear message to all those following the high-profile case: Lying cops suffer no consequences. And the "sentence," a "conditional discharge" which set no conditions, was even more lenient than Pogan's lawyer, Stuart London, had recommended. more ›

After poring over NY State data, the NY Times suggests that "courtrooms are now seeing the delayed result of the country’s economic collapse... New York’s judges are wading into these types of cases by the tens of thousands, according to the new statistics, cases involving not only bad debts and soured deals, but also filings that are indirect but still jarring measures of economic stresses, like charges of violence in families torn apart by lost jobs and homes in jeopardy." Chief judge Jonathan Lippman said, "Society’s problems come to us. We are the emergency room for society.” And another judge, who has seen many credit cases, said of the future, "I would describe it as a train wreck and I think it’s going to get worse for the next couple of years.” more ›

This is certainly not helping us get any happier. A Queens blogger reports that on December 18th a dog was removed from a private home in the borough and brought to a vet. He was living in a crawl space under a porch, and clearly has mange — in the video, he had been bathed twice already. Thank goodness this poor pup (nicknamed Justice) was saved, right? However, "a neighbor lady told the owner where the dog was and was threatened with jail by the owner of dog. She got scared and now the vet's hands are tied." more ›

Hundreds of demonstrators protested Saturday against the plan to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 plotters in a Manhattan civilian court. The protesters rallied in Foley Square in front of the federal court complex, arguing that the accused terrorists should not be transferred to New York from Guantanamo Bay, and that their fates should be decided in military tribunals. more ›

A judge announced on Monday that he will likely throw out the conviction and dismiss the indictment of a Bronx man who was incarcerated for four years on rape charges that his accuser has admitted were made-up. Though he didn't immediately clear William McCaffrey's name, State Supreme Court Justice Richard D. Carruthers said "it seems from what I hear, the case against William McCaffrey should be dismissed," according to the Times. more ›

With federal judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, everyone is predicting how things will turn out during the Senate confirmation hearings. Newsday looks at how Sotomayor actually has many similarities with Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed by President Bush in 2005: "Both grew up Roman Catholic in modest homes wanting to be judges, attended the same Ivy League schools, became prosecutors in their first full-time jobs and served more than a decade on the circuit court. And both have remained closely tied to their ethnic roots and the communities where they grew up: Alito, 59, as an Italian American in New Jersey, and Sotomayor, 54, as a Puerto Rican in the Bronx." And, as Sotomayor's impartiality gets the once over, keep in mind that Alito said during his confirmation hearings, "When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account." more ›

Just before noon, a rally is being held outside the Manhattan DA's office, demanding for an investigation into the deaths of four-year-old Hayley Ng and three-year-old Diego Martinez. The two pre-schoolers were killed when an unoccupied van, left idling on East Broadway in Chinatown, jumped a curb and crash into them as their class was coming back from a field trip. The incident was deemed an accident, but the children's families are upset that the driver wasn't even issued a ticket and still has his license. Hayley's aunt told Streetsblog "We're hoping for the DA to set a precedent and prosecute this person or convene a grand jury." (WCBS 2 interviewed Hayley's mother who said, "No, I'm not all right! I'll never be all right! She's gone!") The rally is at One Hogan Place. more ›

The Reverend Al Sharpton held a press conference on the steps of City Hall today to discuss the Sean Bell shooting trial verdict, which will be announced on Friday. Sharpton said an acquittal would not be justice. more ›

The persona Snoop Dogg has created for himself is a fascinating one. Once a gritty, talented gangsta rapper from Long Beach, he's now some sort of lovable, cartoonish pot smoking pimp that seems to have a larger than life mainstream appeal, despite his questionable character traits. With a new album this week, which sounds more like pure retro funk than an actual rap record (at least going by the early singles,) Snoop was in New York to promote and celebrate. He hit up The View, performed on Letterman, acted on the soap One Life to Live, Threw a massive album release party at Touch nightclub, and blew it out at a last minute surprise show at the intimate Gramercy Theater. With all this going on, along with his family reality show on E!, this is likely not the last you'll hear from the Doggfather in the near future. Brace yourselves. more ›