Word: year
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Pottawattamie County prosecutors David Richter and Joseph Hrvol presented a case that rested almost entirely on the testimony of a 16-year-old kid who was caught stealing cars and offered a $5,000 reward if he provided information about the murder. The witness misidentified the murder weapon, changed his story multiple times and fingered two other men before naming McGhee and Harrington in the crime. He even had to be coached by prosecutors about what to say during the trial so that his story matched the evidence. Richter and Hrvol revealed none of this at trial, nor the fact...
Theirs was a small town still reeling from the shock of a murder. Richter, the county attorney, was up for election the following year. The authorities' first suspect - a white man married to the daughter of the fire chief - failed a lie-detector test and was identified by more than one witness; his case was inexplicably dropped. Instead, Hrvol and Richter targeted two black teenagers whose only connection to the murder came from the testimony of a teenage boy who was arrested for stealing a car. The boy gave three alternate versions of the murder, admitted to lying on multiple...
Republicans would pay a huge price if they tried to run Doug Hoffmans in every race in the country. But they aren't doing that. They're running a slew of moderate candidates for the Senate next year. Michael Castle in Delaware, Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Mark Kirk in Illinois have provoked some grumbling from Republicans to their right but so far face no credible primary competition. In Florida, Charlie Crist does have a primary challenger in Marco Rubio. But since polls show that either one of them could win the general election, that challenge does not threaten...
...This year's health care debate has helped the GOP, both by making independent voters anxious about the Democrats' ambitions and by forcing Republican candidates to pay more attention to the issue. The Republican comeback could yet fizzle out. But it is happening, and die-hard conservatives aren't the only ones taking part...
Fredys Villanueva has abandoned his native Colombia for neighboring Venezuela. But he's not quite like the hundreds of thousands of Colombians who have fled their country's bloody 44-year civil war for the safety of the land of Hugo Chávez. Instead, he's like the 2 million or more Colombians who have moved to Venezuela because it offers greater employment opportunities and a more secure social-safety network. Perched on a sofa on the porch of his home in El Aguacate, a barrio outside Caracas, Villanueva is more than happy to be caught in the ideological...