Steve Wolfson was a busy defense attorney before he was appointed in January to serve as district attorney for Clark County, Nev. That has presented a problem for his new colleagues, who have been dealing with efforts to disqualify the entire DA’s office from prosecuting at least seven cases due to Wolfson’s claimed prior involvement as legal counsel for the defendant, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (Read Full Article Here)

A Tennessee man armed with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol waited outside the offices of an administrative law judge last February, but the judge never emerged, according to a federal document supporting a plea in the case. (Read Full Article Here)

Justice Stephen G. Breyer has been victimized by criminals for two months in a row. In the latest incident, Breyer’s Washington, D.C., home was burglarized, according to the Washington Post blog the Reliable Source. The burglar made off with a pair of $500 silver candlesticks and a silver set valued at $2,500, the story says. A housekeeper reported the crime when she arrived at the house on May 4. (Read Full Article Here)

In a scenario that is increasingly in the news as the subject of internal investigations and legal claims, two police officers in Connecticut are set to go to trial in federal court in Hartford on Monday for killing a family pet after entering the perimeter of a home. The guardian of a 12-year-old girl who, a lawsuit says, saw her dog slain by the defendant officers after they came into the yard without a warrant is seeking compensatory and punitive damages on her behalf over the December 2006 incident, as well as attorney fees, the Hartford Courant reports. (Read Full Article Here)

The Obama administration is weighing policy changes that would lift a tattered veil of secrecy from its controversial campaign of drone strikes, a recognition that the expanding program has become a regular part of U.S. global counterterrorism operations. (Read Full Article Here)

John Edwards has been a United States senator and a presidential candidate and has fathered five children. But this day was the most important day of his life, Abbe D. Lowell, his lawyer, told a jury on Thursday. (Read Full Article Here)

Decision puts appeal on track to U.S. Supreme Court. (Read Full Article Here)

JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon, whose bank was once seen as best able to make the public case against some of the more controversial parts of the Wall Street reforms, will be asked to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next month on JPMorgan’s recently reported $2 billion trading loss, the committee’s chair announced Thursday. (Read Full Article Here)

The House is preparing to vote again on an unresolved legal controversy: whether the military may imprison terrorism suspects captured on United States soil without trial. The renewed debate comes as a federal judge has enjoined the government from enforcing a statute codifying the government’s powers of indefinite detention. (Read Full Article Here)

A lawyer for Roger Clemens today tried to undermine the credibility of the government’s chief witness, suggesting it was implausible that a professional baseball star would seek the help of a relative stranger to acquire and inject steroids just weeks after the two first met. The witness, Brian McNamee, who told jurors this week that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, said he assumed Clemens wanted a performance enhancing substance when he said, for the first time, he wanted help with a ‘booty shot’ in June 1998. Clemens and McNamee were first introduced earlier that year. (Read Full Article Here)

New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has begun an aggressive campaign to achieve his top legislative priority: passage of a court system reform that would raise to 18 from 16 the age of criminal responsibility for non-violent crimes. (Read Full Article Here)

By Barbara Ehrenreich, “According to one of the few recent nationwide estimates, from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 10.5 million misdemeanors were committed in 2006. No one would risk estimating the average financial penalty for a misdemeanor, although the experts I interviewed all affirmed that the amount is typically in the “hundreds of dollars.” If we take an extremely lowball $200 per misdemeanor, and bear in mind that 80%-90% of criminal offenses are committed by people who are officially indigent, then local governments are using law enforcement to extract, or attempt to extract, at least $2 billion a year from the poor. (Read Full Article Here)

Movie images of families visiting their aging, senile relatives in nursing homes doesn’t quite reflect reality. In fact, those with dementia are more often than not at home. A recent study has found that those who have dementia are more likely to die … (Read Full Article Here)

A criminal investigation launched by the Manhattan DA’s office into the actions of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s former chairman is moving ahead. Partners still with Dewey as of May 10 received an email telling them to retain all documents in their possession related to a variety of Dewey business practices, according to three partners who received the email. (Read Full Article Here)

The California Supreme Court has unanimously agreed to consider whether an undocumented immigrant brought to the U.S. as a young child should be admitted to the State Bar. Sergio Garcia’s attorney says Garcia’s application for a green card has been pending for more than 15 years. (Read Full Article Here)

Alluding to ‘overwhelming evidence’ that the New York Police Department is running a centralized stop-and-frisk program that has led to thousands of unconstitutional stops, a federal judge has certified a 2008 class action challenging the policy. The suit alleged that the NYPD engaged in a widespread practice of concentrating its stop-and-frisk activity in black and Hispanic neighborhoods based on their racial composition rather than legitimate non-racial factors. The lawsuit said officers are pressured to meet quotas for stops, and are punished if they do not. (Read Full Article Here)

Additionally, scientists have long warned that many of those veterans may be at risk of long-term problems such as Alzheimer’s-like dementia. Wednesday’s study, while very small, sheds important light on how damaging those TBIs can be even if the … (Read Full Article Here)

The program is not “art therapy,” which implies it can help heal an injury, but it is therapeutic. “Painting is a positive thing for people with Alzheimer’s because it gets them interacting with others, gets them actively using their brain, … (Read Full Article Here)

A federal judge has blocked enforcement of part of a law allowing the indefinite detention and military trial of any person who ‘substantially supported’ al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces” in armed conflict. Journalists and activists claimed the provision would sweep up reporters and advocates who contact designated terror groups. (Read Full Article Here)

An ethics board has recommended a three-month suspension for an attorney who stole neckties from a Nordstrom department store while he worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. The board took into account mental health professionals’ opinions that the attorney’s actions were related to depression stemming from the breakup of his marriage. (Read Full Article Here)