A Texas teenager is on trial after he beat, mutilated and killed a classmate in a satanic ritual.
Jose Reyes, 18, is facing a life sentence for the murder of Coriann Cervantes. The two attended Clear Path Alternative School in League City, TX.
Reyes invited Cervantes to an abandoned apartment in Houston for drinking and smoking marijuana along with Reyes friend Victor Alias. The two men then decided to use the 15-year-old girl for a sacrifice in a satanic ritual.
They beat the girl with the lid of a toilet tank and then stabbed her with a screwdriver before carving an upside down cross on her stomach. The two then proceeded to commit further mutilation of the body in connection with the ritual.
“They discussed the fact that Mr. Reyes had sold his soul to the devil, and if they ended up killing this teenager, that would also allow the 16-year-old to also sell his soul to the devil,” Assistant Harris County District Attorney John Jordan told reporters. “The teenager screamed, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ During that time, they stopped her. It became a kidnapping and, ultimately, she was killed.”
“What happened in that vacant apartment was sadistic,” Jordan said. “What will eventually happen in the… courtroom will be justice.”
The grand jury in St. Louis County Missouri has issued no indictments in the case of officer Darren Wilson.
The grand jury made up of nine whites and three blacks examined every piece of evidence collected by the local, state and federal investigators. They heard hours of testimony and were able to ask direct questions of those involved including officer Wilson.
The evidence showed the claims of supporters of Michael Brown did not know the facts of the case.
One witness said Brown charged at officer Darren Wilson in a manner that was “like a football player. Head down.”
Wilson said that Brown attempted to grab his gun while the officer sat inside his cruiser. When the officer fired a round through his car window in an attempt to back off Brown, the 18-year-old showed an “aggressive” posture.
“The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked,” Wilson told the grand jury. “He comes back toward me again with his hands up.”
“Just coming straight at me like he was going to run right through me,” Wilson said. “And when he gets about … 8 to 10 feet away … all I see is his head and that’s what I shot.”
The Justice Department says their investigation against Officer Wilson is still open and no decision has been made regarding charges.
The New York Court of Appeals has ruled that a marriage between an uncle and niece is not a violation of restrictions against incestuous marriage.
The court ruled that “parent-child and brother-sister marriages . . . are grounded in the almost universal horror with which such marriages are viewed . . . there is no comparably strong objection to uncle-niece marriages.”
The case focused on a Vietnamese citizen who married her uncle in what the government said was an illegal marriage in an attempt to not be deported. A judge in 2000 ruled the marriage invalid and ordered deportation.
The husband in the case was the half-brother of the girl’s mother.
“This really was an all-or-nothing issue for them,” lawyer Michael Marscalkowski commented. “If this would have been denied, she would have been deported and sent back to Vietnam.”
The lawyer argued that because they were only half-siblings, they only had at maximum 1/8th of the DNA like cousins, who are allowed to legally marry.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has sided with the IRS and thrown out lawsuits connected to the IRS targeting conservative and Christian groups.
Judge Reggie Walton ruled that the cases against the IRS for their actions were “moot” because the IRS claims they are no longer targeting conservative groups and because the IRS granted the tax-exempt statuses for the groups involved in the suit.
“After the plaintiff initiated this case, its application to the IRS for tax-exempt status was approved by the IRS. The allegedly unconstitutional governmental conduct, which delayed the processing of the plaintiff’s tax exempt application and brought about this litigation, is no longer impacting the plaintiff,” Walton said in his decision to throw out True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS.
This means that the IRS could begin targeting Christian or conservative groups again at any time because there is no legal prohibition to those actions.
“[T]he Court is satisfied that there is no reasonable expectation that the alleged conduct will recur, as the defendants have not only suspended the conduct, but have also taken remedial measures to ensure that the conduct is not repeated,” the judge wrote.
A Pakistani court has upheld a death sentence for a Christian woman who was accused of blaspheming the prophet Mohammed during an argument with a Muslim woman.
The Lahore High Court rejected the appeal of Asia Bibi on her sentence that was passed down by a lower court. Bibi’s lawyers say they will appeal the decision to the country’s Supreme Court.
Bibi was sentenced to death in 2010 for the accusation.
“The case against Asia Bibi is a great example of how Christians and other religious minorities are abused in Pakistan by fundamentalists wielding the controversial blasphemy laws. The blasphemy laws were originally written to protect against religious intolerance in Pakistan, but the law has warped into a tool used by extremists and others to settle personal scores and persecute Pakistan’s vulnerable religious minorities,” International Christian Concern’s Regional Manager for South Asia, William Stark told the Christian Post.
Stark said that many times accusations of blasphemy are used against Christians as weapons.
“Sadly, the vast majority of blasphemy accusations brought against Christians and others are false. Unfortunately, pressure from Islamic radical groups and general discrimination against Christians in Pakistan has transformed trial courts and now appeals courts into little more than rubber stamps for blasphemy accusations brought against Christians, regardless of the evidence brought to bear in the case.”
The final two employees of the “abortion house of horrors” run by convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell have been sentenced for their parts in killing babies born alive and the death of a young woman from a botched abortion.
Lynda Wiliams, 45, the acting phlebotomist at the clinic, was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison on two counts of third-degree murder. However, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner then reduced the overall term to just 2 ½ years in prison.
Williams had been charged with multiple charges but they were ultimately reduced to just the two counts of third-degree murder.
Tina Baldwin, 48, who was the receptionist for the clinic but also illegally gave anesthesia to women when she had no training to do it or licensing to do it, was sentenced to 30 months of probation for her guilty please to sustaining a corrupt organization.
Baldwin had been facing multiple charges as well, including corruption of a minor for having her 15-year-old daughter participating in the illegal activities of the clinic.
The case did have some positives result. Jack McMahon, the attorney for Gosnell, told Fox News that abortion should be banned after 17 weeks. He also called for inspection of abortion clinics, which has been roundly denounced by pro-abortion groups.
A pastor who was charged with murder after defending himself when a man attacked him in Las Vegas, Nevada called it an “answer to prayer” when the state dropped all charges.
However, the news was tempered with a need to continue to praying because a grand jury is being convened to hear the evidence and decide if the charges should be reinstated against Robert Cox.
Pastor Cox, his wife and 20 interns stopped at the Four Kegs Sports Pub in June 2013 during a Las Vegas trip to get dinner. As the group chatted in the parking lot before leaving, 55-year-old Link Ellingson approached the group and assaulted several of the members. Cox stepped in to stop him. At some point, Ellingson lost balance and fell hitting his head.
Cox’s attorney says he’s not concerned with the grand jury.
Frank Cofer told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he believes that even if the grand jury indicts the pastor he will eventually be acquitted.
Pastor Cox says the whole episode made him rely more on the Lord.
“The whole time I’ve had to trust God,” he told the Journal.
A federal court is telling a group of anti-Christianists to explain why the ground Zero cross is “offensive”, “repugnant” and a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
American Atheists has been filing suit to have the Ground Zero Cross removed from the National 9/11 Museum in New York. The court has taken a surprisingly skeptical view of the plaintiffs and their claims of being harmed by the mere existence and display of the cross formed when two beams fell on each other during the collapse of the Twin Towers.
“Plaintiffs’ brief should, at a minimum, clarify both the injuries alleged and legal theories relied on to support standing,” the Second Circuit Court of Appeals asked. “Further, to the extent plaintiffs allege that they have been ‘injured in consequence of having a religious tradition that is not their own imposed upon them through the power of the state,’ First Am. Compl. because individual plaintiffs view use of the challenged ‘cross, a Christian symbol, to represent all victims of the 9/11 Attacks’ as ‘offensive,’ ‘repugnant,’ and ‘insult[ing]’ to them as atheists, plaintiffs should explain how such offense states a cognizable constitutional injury.”
The anti-Christian group had claimed in their filing that the cross’s existence alienates anyone who wishes to learn about events at the museum. They also state because the cross is bigger than any other religious artifact at the memorial, it means the government is endorsing Christianity over all other religions.
An appeals court in Sudan has begun the appeals trial of Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian mother sentenced to death for her refusal to renounce her faith in Christ.
Daniel Wani, the husband of Ibrahim, told CNN that formal notification has been given to himself and his wife’s attorney that the court has begun the deliberations of the case. The formal notice was issued Thursday meaning the court’s ruling could come at any time.
The appeal that was filed by Ibrahim’s attorney reportedly focused on what he termed “procedural errors” in the initial court’s ruling and the actions of the prosecutors.
Wani, an American citizen, has been asking the U.S. State Department to expedite an asylum process for his wife based on religious persecution. He also says that if she is released from prison, it’s very likely Islamic extremists will attack her.
Wani told reporters that after a lack of action from the State Department he has appealed to his state’s U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Kelly Ayotte to take steps to help his wife and children.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that those who have been challenging the Pledge of Allegiance on the basis that the phrase “under God” means the government is endorsing Christianity have no basis.
The Supreme Judicial Court said that the words “under God” reflect a patriotic practice and not a religious one.
“We hold that the recitation of the pledge, which is entirely voluntary, violates neither the Constitution nor the statute,” Chief Justice Roderick Ireland wrote, later adding “it is not a litmus test for defining who is or is not patriotic. Although the words “under God” undeniably have a religious tinge, courts that have considered the history of the pledge and the presence of those words have consistently concluded that the pledge, notwithstanding its reference to God, is a fundamentally patriotic exercise, not a religious one.”
The lawsuit was brought by lawyers representing a pair of atheist adults who said their children were being illegally subjected to religion because of the phrase “under God.”
“We likewise reject the plaintiffs’ contention that, when some children choose to exercise their constitutionally protected right not to say the words “under God,” there is necessarily conveyed a message that the children are “unpatriotic.”” Justice Barbara Lenk wrote in Friday’s ruling.