November 8th, 2011 – 5:40pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about police use of GPS tracking without a warrant, appearing deeply disturbed by unlimited use of the technology but uneasy about whether and how to regulate it.
The justices likened their concerns to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” in oral arguments in the case of Antoine Jones, a District nightclub owner was arrested in 2005 on cocaine-distribution charges after police placed a GPS device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and tracked the car for a month.
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Read more: courts, Washington Examiner, writing
October 26th, 2011 – 5:36pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
Jayna Murray died in a “horrific” argument with her co-worker at a Bethesda yoga store — but the killing was not a premeditated murder, an attorney for the woman charged in Murray’s death says.
Brittany Norwood “lost it” and “unfortunately and stupidly” killed Murray at the Lululemon Athletica where the pair worked, Douglas Wood, an attorney for Norwood, said in his opening statement at her trial.
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Read more: breaking news, courts, Washington Examiner, writing
October 6th, 2011 – 6:12pm
Live tweets from the courtroom during jury deliberations, the verdict and sentencing for a woman charged with murder in the death of her 2-year-old granddaughter.
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Read more: breaking news, courts, multimedia and social media, Washington Examiner
September 27th, 2011 – 5:29pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
Carmela Dela Rosa told detectives she “did a terrible thing” when she flung her 2-year-old granddaughter to her death off a six-story walkway at Tysons Corner Center, according to a taped interrogation played in court Tuesday.
Dela Rosa, 50, is charged with murder in the November 2010 killing of Angelyn Ogdoc. Her attorneys are presenting an insanity defense at her trial, which began Monday in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
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September 19th, 2011 – 5:12pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
The number of rapes reported in D.C. spiked nearly 25 percent in 2010, the largest such increase in the country in a year when most states and the nation as a whole saw a decline.
FBI statistics released Monday show that 187 forcible rapes were reported in the District last year, up from 150 in 2009. That’s a sharp contrast to the 5.5. percent decline nationwide.
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Read more: crime, Washington Examiner, writing
September 18th, 2011 – 5:23pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
The methods they use to get drugs into the United States range from soup packets to suitcases to their own bodies. But many drug smugglers nabbed at local airports have at least one thing in common: They say they turned to the drug trade because of financial hardships.
In court papers, attorneys for drug couriers cite myriad economic woes that befell their clients, leading them to work as drug mules to recoup lost funds. A few of their stories:
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Read more: courts, crime, enterprise, Washington Examiner, writing
September 18th, 2011 – 5:21pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
These weren’t clams you’d want to serve on the dinner table. The juice boxes weren’t what you’d put in your child’s lunch box. The soup wasn’t what you’d use to nurse yourself back to health. And the statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph definitely weren’t fit for a church.
They’re all methods used by drug smugglers trying to get their contraband into the United States through Washington-area airports, sending couriers on flights with cocaine-stuffed clams, soup packets and statues, or with stomachs full of ingested heroin pellets.
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June 19th, 2011 – 5:05pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
Three years after a government report uncovered that abuse of domestic workers by diplomats was more pervasive than expected, officials and advocates say progress is being made in preventing such cases.
A Government Accountability Office study found 42 likely trafficking cases between 2000 and 2008. Since then, programs have been set up to inform diplomats’ domestic workers about human trafficking before they arrive in the United States and better track abuse allegations.
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June 17th, 2011 – 5:03pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
A maid or nanny alleges that her employer has raped her, taken her passport, made her shovel snow in shorts, refused to pay her or beat her unconscious.
In most cases, this is what would happen next: Police would investigate. If the allegations were true, the employer would face criminal charges and a potential civil lawsuit for emotional and monetary damages.
Unless the employer is a diplomat.
All of those allegations have been made against high-level foreign officials in Washington in recent years. They foreshadowed the sexual assault accusations from a New York hotel maid facing Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now the former chief of the International Monetary Fund. But unlike Strauss-Kahn, D.C.-area diplomats have largely escaped criminal courtrooms and serious consequences.
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Read more: courts, enterprise, Uncategorized, Washington Examiner, writing
June 13th, 2011 – 4:15pm
The Washington Examiner
By Emily Babay
When Carl Diener was fatally beaten and stabbed on a Clarendon street in 2009, Patti Diener didn’t understand how her tall, strong older brother — a retired government worker who was working at a gym — couldn’t fight off an assailant.
On Monday, she learned part of the reason: Police believe he had two attackers.
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Read more: crime, Washington Examiner, writing