Tag: Law, Crime & Court

Spokane Fire Department officials have confirmed that yesterday's blaze at a local Mormon church was arson.

The fire was intentionally set with some sort of accelerant around 2 p.m. on Tuesday at at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints located at 732 West Indiana Ave.

U.S. Sikhs are taking heart in a widely publicized Senate hearing on hate crimes and a pledge by the Justice Department to consider tracking hate crimes directed at their community.
The hearing, on Wednesday (Sept. 19), featured Harpreet Singh Saini,18, whose mother was one of six Sikh worshippers killed Aug. 5 when a gunman opened fire in their Wisconsin temple.

Muslim Americans condemned violence in Egypt and Libya that left four Americans dead, but remain concerned that the deaths could rekindle anti-Muslim sentiment just as post-9/11 resentment was starting to ebb.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three embassy workers were killed Tuesday (Sept. 11) when fundamentalist protestors attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in response to a low-budget film that attacks Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, reportedly made by an Israeli real estate developer who lives in California.

Catholic Bishop Robert W. Finn was found guilty Thursday (Sept. 6) of failing to tell police about a priest suspected of sexually exploiting children, an unprecedented verdict that is being hailed as a landmark in the effort to bring accountability to the church's hierarchy.

In a press release sent out today Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced it has asked a federal appeals court to find that pharmacies do not have the right to opt out of filling certain prescriptions on religious or moral grounds.

On Sept. 6 local author Victoria Ann Thorpe will discuss her new book, "Cages" at Auntie's Bookstore.

"Cages" tells the story of how Thorpe's sister, Kerry Lyn Dalton, was sentenced to death row for a crime she says she never committed.

A Moscow court on Friday (Aug. 17) found three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" after a guerrilla performance in Moscow's main cathedral in February. They were sentenced to two years in a penal colony.