material witness

(Newser) - After 905 days in jail, the country's supposed longest-held witness is a free man and has been given $5,982 from the state of Oregon for his trouble. Police escorted Benito Vasquez-Hernandez, the prosecution's star witness in the murder trial of his son, from Washington County Jail yesterday,...

(Newser) - A 59-year-old man in Oregon has been in jail for more than two years awaiting a murder trial that begins on Tuesday. Which might not be that unusual, except for one thing: "He's not the defendant," observes a headline about the case in the ABA Journal . No,...

(Newser) - The Supreme Court will step in to decide whether a Muslim American can sue John Ashcroft for a policy that led to his arrest in the wake of 9/11. The FBI arrested Kansas native Abdullah al-Kidd at Dulles International Airport in 2003, while he was preparing to board a flight...

(Newser) - Former Bush attorney general John Ashcroft can be held personally responsible in a lawsuit brought by a US citizen who was detained on suspicion of being a material witness to terrorism but was never charged with a crime, an appellate court ruled today. Abdullah al-Kidd alleged the detention, begun in...