Florida : Doctor guilty in drug deaths

A doctor was found guilty of manslaughter Tuesday for prescribing OxyContin to four patients who overdosed on the powerful painkiller, a synthetic opiate.

Dr. James Graves, who was Florida’s top prescriber of Oxycontin, faces up to 30 years in prison.

Graves, 55, is believed to be the nation’s first doctor to stand trial on manslaughter or murder charges in the OxyContin death of a patient. He was convicted in Milton on four counts of manslaughter, one count of racketeering and five counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance.

Graves had testified that he did not know his patients were abusing drugs and said no one would have died if OxyContin had been taken as prescribed.

Houston: Jury told mother informed husband of child drownings

Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in the bathtub, called her husband at work that day to say “she finally did it,” a jury at her murder trial was told Tuesday.

Russell Yates went home after getting the call last June, and police Sgt. David Svahn testified that he was the first officer to encounter Yates as the father ran up to the house.

“He was screaming and hollering,” Svahn testified. “He was saying, ‘What did she do to my kids? What did she do to my kids?”‘

Svahn said he had the grim task of informing Yates that his children, ages 6 months to 7 years, were dead.

Andrea Yates, 37, is charged with murder and could face the death penalty. She has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

Washington, D.C.: Class-action suit filed against terrorist groups

Seven World Trade Center widows have filed a lawsuit against a litany of defendants they claim are directly and indirectly responsible for the attacks.

Those named in the suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, include accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida network, Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers and the estates of the 19 terrorist hijackers, as well as the governments of Iran and Iraq.

The action seeks at least $100 billion in total damages.

Washington, D.C.: Attorneys file challenge to detentions in Cuba

Attorneys representing the families of three suspected terrorists imprisoned at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to free the men or conduct a hearing into whether they should be let go.

The legal filing in U.S. District Court names President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “respondents,” saying they’ve violated the three men’s constitutional rights, as well as the rights of 297 other captives currently detained without charges in Cuba.

The legal maneuver on behalf of one Australian and two Britons is the first of what some attorneys expect will be a number of lawsuits filed by relatives of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. It calls into question the government’s policy of detaining al-Qaida and Taliban fighters without criminal charges.