A judge finds that there is enough probable cause for a man charged with dousing a Virginia city councilman in gasoline and setting him on fire to have his case be sent to a grand jury. The 29-year-old Shotsie Michael Buck-Hayes is charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding in the attack against Councilman Lee Vogler. Authorities in court said on Tuesday the motive for the July attack appeared to stem from a relationship between Vogler and Buck-Hayes' wife. The wife filed for divorce from Buck-Hayes in the weeks leading up to the attack.

The 33-year-old founder of the startup student financial aid company Frank has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Charlie Javice was sentenced Monday in Manhattan federal court after her March conviction by a jury on fraud charges. Prosecutors say Javice duped JPMorgan Chase into buying her fledgling company for $175 million by submitting false records that made it seem that Frank had 4 million custody. It actually only served as few as 300,000 students. The jury rejected her defense that JPMorgan made up the fraud allegations because it had buyer's remorse.

A veterinarian in Michigan has been convicted of theft for refusing to return a dog to a homeless man. Amanda Hergenreder discovered the 16-year-old dog tied to a truck last November. A jury in Grand Rapids returned a verdict Friday. Hergenreder took the dog to her clinic, where she performed various medical procedures and removed a rotten tooth. She named the pit bull mix Biggby. She declined to return the dog to Chris Hamilton because there were no assurances that the animal's living conditions would be investigated. Hamilton knew the dog as Vinny. The dog died in July.

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies reached new heights Thursday as his Justice Department brought criminal charges against a longtime foe and he expanded his efforts to classify certain liberal groups as “domestic terrorist organizations." Former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime Trump target, was indicted by a grand jury for lying to Congress in a hastily brought case days after Trump publicly demanded action. Hours earlier, he signed a memorandum directing his administration to target backers of what he dubbed “left-wing terrorism” as he alleged without evidence a vast conspiracy by nonprofit groups and activists to finance violent protests.

A jury has convicted a man of murder for setting a fire at the New Zealand boarding house where he lived that killed five fellow tenants. Esarona David Lologa was also found guilty of arson for the 2023 blaze. The jury at the High Court in Wellington reached the verdicts after less than three days of deliberations. Jurors rejected a defense of insanity argued by Lologa’s lawyers. The five men who died included older and vulnerable people and their deaths sparked outrage over the state of boarding houses in New Zealand. Lologa will be sentenced in November. Murder carries a mandatory life sentence.

An Arizona man has been convicted on eight murder charges for a string of fatal shootings in Phoenix after a trial that spanned several months. The jury in Phoenix found 43-year-old Cleophus Cooksey Jr. guilty in the killings that targeted random victims and the defendant’s mother and stepfather over a three-week span in 2017. He was also found guilty of other crimes including kidnapping, sexual assault and armed robbery. The sentencing portion of the trial begins Monday, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Cooksey has maintained his innocence.

A federal jury has deadlocked for the second time in a trial of a former correctional officer charged with sexually abusing four inmates at a now-closed federal women’s prison in California. Prosecutors said Darrell Wayne Smith, who worked at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, assaulted the women in their cells and in the prison’s laundry room between 2019 and 2021. He faced 14 counts related to sexual abuse. Jurors, who had been deliberating since Sept. 18, could not reach a unanimous verdict and deadlocked on Wednesday. In March, Smith faced similar charges in a trial that also ended with a deadlock.

Arizona jury convicts man on 8 murder charges for metro Phoenix shootings over three-week span in 2017.

A man tried for murder after he was accused of killing eight people in the metro Phoenix area in 2017 is set to hear a jury’s verdict against him. Cleophus Cooksey Jr.’s trial came more than seven years after the killings due to repeated delays caused by the pandemic. The 43-year-old is accused of murder and other charges stemming from the fatal shootings in Phoenix and nearby Glendale over a three-week span. If he is convicted in the verdict expected Thursday, prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. Cooksey has said the allegations against him are false. He pleaded not guilty.

Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy said Wednesday it expects to pay about $640 million to settle lawsuits alleging it was responsible for starting Colorado’s most destructive wildfire that killed two people and destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in 2021. The announcement came right before jury selection was set to begin in a trial combining lawsuits brought by homeowners and insurers over the fire in the heavily populated suburbs between Denver and Boulder. Xcel has maintained that its equipment did not cause or contribute to the fire. It said it does not admit any fault under the settlement. Investigators found that a sparking power line owned by Xcel was one of the causes of the fire that was fanned by high winds.