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SAT, OCT 17, 2026

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Legal news and true-crime analysis from a practicing trial lawyer.

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True Crime

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

A child and an adult were killed when a truck drove through a youth soccer game at Wichita's Stryker Sports Complex.

The question everyone is asking is whether this was deliberate, and police have not answered it. Witnesses describe a truck that never slowed down, but witness accounts are not findings. Speed, the driver's condition, how the truck got onto the field and any charges will come from the investigation, and that is what decides whether this becomes a homicide case.

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Reporting noted by Wichita Police Department, Fox News, CBS News, ABC News, USA TODAY, and The Wichita Eagle.

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Booking photo of Maxwell Hawkins
Trials

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

A Lackawanna County jury found Maxwell Hawkins guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Nicole Vega.

The whole trial came down to one question: was Hawkins too drunk to form the intent to kill? The defense wanted third-degree murder. Prosecutors answered with video of him walking to a convenience store, apparently steady, and a phone call to his uncle claiming Vega was suicidal. The jury took about three hours to side with the prosecution.

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Reporting noted by The Times-Tribune, WNEP, FOX56, and Lackawanna County District Attorney's Office.

Booking photos of Kris Maxwell, Giann Nelson and Samil Smith
True Crime

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

New Orleans police booked Kris Maxwell, Giann Nelson and Samil Smith on second-degree murder warrants in the killing of Corey Williams.

Four months after a Sand Street shooting, NOPD says it has three named defendants and a second-degree murder charge that carries a mandatory life sentence if a jury convicts. A warrant and a booking are still accusations. Motive has not been made public, and the department says the investigation remains open.

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Reporting noted by New Orleans Police Department, WWL-TV, NOLA.com, and Hoodline.

Booking photo of Julian Charles McElhaney
Trials

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Julian Charles McElhaney was sentenced to 100 years to life for killing his parents in Fresno.

A plea on Sept. 17 and a 100-years-to-life term on Oct. 16 close the case without a trial verdict. The call McElhaney made to dispatch — reporting that he had shot someone — is still the detail that defines the charging narrative police and prosecutors have told since 2022.

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Reporting noted by Fresno County District Attorney's Office, GV Wire, FOX26, and The Fresno Bee.

Trials

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Jose Vazquez-Cano was sentenced to 42 years to life for killing Bryan Barrios-Marroquin and burning his body near the Oakland Zoo.

Eleven shots and a burned body drove the sentence. Mockler rejected the defense account that the gun went off by accident in self-defense, and she kept the arson term from running concurrent with the murder because the fire made it harder to map the wound paths. The firearm enhancement is the piece that turns a 15-to-life baseline into decades before parole eligibility.

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Reporting noted by Hoodline, The Mercury News, and Contra Costa County Superior Court.

Nicholas Peter Romeo
True Crime

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Berwick police charged Nicholas Peter Romeo, 22, with criminal homicide in the shooting death of Christopher James.

The affidavit leans on two things: a dying man's two-letter answer and a car on neighborhood cameras. Both are the kind of evidence that sounds airtight in a charging document and gets picked apart at a preliminary hearing, where the defense can ask who else goes by RJ and who was behind the wheel. The other fact that will draw attention is that Romeo was already out on bail, awaiting trial in an April robbery case in the same town.

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Reporting noted by Borough of Berwick Police Department, NorthcentralPa.com, FOX56, and Press Enterprise.

True Crime

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Mohammed Arif Ansari, 27, is charged with second-degree murder in the 2022 deaths of Coquitlam couple Kiesha Garie and Umair Kasim.

Four years is a long time for a family to wait, and Garie's family said so publicly, including a protest outside RCMP headquarters in February. The delay has an explanation that matters for how to read this charge: B.C. prosecutors approve charges only when they see a substantial likelihood of conviction, a higher bar than in most U.S. courtrooms. That bar has now been cleared on paper. The evidence behind it has not been tested in court.

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Reporting noted by Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, CBC News, CityNews Vancouver, CTV News, Vancouver Sun, and Tri-Cities Dispatch.

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Pop Culture

The culture desk
Booking photo of Cordarrelle Patterson
Pop Culture

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Former NFL star Cordarrelle Patterson was arrested in Tennessee on a domestic assault charge.

Right now the public record is a booking and a mug shot, and the grin in that photo is getting more attention than the charge itself. What matters next is the paperwork: the warrant or affidavit, what Sevier County prosecutors actually file, and whether the charge holds, changes or goes away at a first appearance.

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Reporting noted by TMZ Sports, Daily Mail, and Rolling Out.

2008 booking photo of Casey Anthony.
Pop Culture

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

Casey Anthony, acquitted of murder in 2011, called for an end to the death penalty.

Anthony is arguing from a seat few death-penalty critics have sat in: a defendant the state asked a jury to sentence to death, who was acquitted of murder. Her post makes the policy case on cost, deterrence and the burden of proof, but its last line is personal. The 2011 verdict is the legal answer to the murder charge, and it stands. Her post is opinion, not a filing in any case.

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Reporting noted by TMZ.

Pop Culture

By Crime Talk Network Staff Writer

A federal judge threw out most of Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' lawsuit against two New Mexico prosecutors, and one of them quit the Legislature a day later.

Baldwin lost most of this round, but not all of it. Prosecutorial immunity is a high wall, and the judge said so even while writing that she was concerned by the misconduct allegations. The piece that survives is the one Baldwin's side has hammered since the criminal case collapsed: what happened to the gun. And the separation-of-powers finding already cost Reeb her legislative seat.

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Reporting noted by Courthouse News Service, Source NM, and ABA Journal.

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