Prison, Jail | featured news

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who is serving a 24-year prison term for his role in the energy giant's epic collapse, could get out of prison early under an agreement being discussed by his attorneys and the Justice Department, CNBC has learned. Skilling, who was convicted in 2006 of conspiracy, fraud and insider trading, has served just over six years.

A New York judge frees a man unjustly convicted of murdering a rabbi 23 years ago, offering what she acknowledged was a "grossly inadequate" apology.

Bobby Brown walked out of a Los Angeles County jail after serving just nine hours of a 55-day sentence imposed for his second drunken driving conviction in a year.

In the wintry darkness 23 years ago on a back street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a jewelry thief fleeing a botched robbery panicked and shot a Hasidic rabbi in the head. Four days later, the rabbi, Chaskel Werzberger, an Auschwitz survivor, died of his wounds. Even in the New York City of 1990, as homicides crested at 2,245, the murder stirred grief and outrage. The “Slain Rabbi” was front-page tabloid news. Mayor David N. Dinkins traveled to Williamsburg’s Satmar enclave to sit in mourning and to offer a $10,000 reward.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is spending his time in federal prison teaching Civil War history and learning to play the guitar, while his attorneys work on an appeal, his wife said on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of his 14-year term for corruption....

A shipyard worker who set fire to rags aboard a nuclear submarine because he wanted to go home was sentenced to a little more than 17 years in federal prison Friday for the blaze that transformed the vessel into a fiery furnace, injured seven people and caused $450 million in damage.

Samuel Mullet Sr. was sentenced along with 15 followers for a series of beard- and hair-cutting attacks on other Ohio Amish that drew national attention.

David Headley, an American who admitted scouting targets for the 2008 Islamic militant raid on Mumbai and later agreed to testify against the plotters to avoid the death penalty, was sentenced on Thursday to 35 years in prison.

A court in Nicaragua gives maximum jail sentences to 18 people caught crossing the border with $9.2m while posing as journalists from Mexican TV.

A Michigan woman spent 11 days behind bars for cursing to herself in a county clerk's office before a retiring superior court judge mercifully overruled the judge who jailed her and ordered her release.