St. Tammany Parish voters will decide Saturday whether to give another chance to a pair of sales tax renewals for the parish jail and courthouse, the highest-profile items among seven issues on the ballot. The renewals ran into an anti-tax buzzsaw last year, when 60 percent of voters rejected a quarter-cent sales tax for the

At 10 a.m. on a recent Wednesday morning, a line of parents pushing strollers filed into a conference room at the Sacramento County Courthouse in California. They sat at rows of narrow plastic tables, shushing their babies and looking up at a man in a black robe. Hearing Officer Jim Teal sounded his gavel. “This

Every Wednesday Patrick Dugan, a judge at the Philadelphia Municipal Court and a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves JAG Corps, presides over a special kind of courtroom. “You are here because it’s your choice,” he told a roll call of defendants as he opened court on a recentWednesday morning, pointing to the front bench

Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as inflexible and overly punitive. The Justice Department has tentatively embraced the new approach, allowing United States attorneys to reduce or even dismiss