All kinds walk through the security checkpoints at the Frederick County Courthouse on any given day, but few manage to turn heads like Giuseppe, Welton, Zeke and Zoey. “We’re just the handlers. They call us ‘the dopes on the ends of the ropes,'” said Francina Baldi with a smile as she led Giuseppe, a 3-year-old mini goldendoodle, toward the stairwell...

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has upheld the involuntary manslaughter conviction of a Plainville woman after she encouraged her boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to “get back in” a truck filled with toxic gas.

The Supreme Court says Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been released from a Baltimore hospital where she had been treated for a possible infection. The 86-year-old Ginsburg has returned to her home in Washington, D.C., and is “doing well,” court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Sunday. Ginsburg spent two nights at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She was taken there Friday...

A woman hired to oversee the books and finances at a major Washington, D.C. ballet school founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon is charged with defrauding the school, including by using its credit cards at MGM National Harbor casino.

A Massachusetts youth hockey coach awaiting trial for child rape charges was located and arrested Friday morning, after failing to turn himself in to a Vermont court on Thursday. He was released on bail earlier this month after he met certain conditions due to rulings by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in two unrelated cases.

A federal court in Boston has ruled that warrantless U.S. government searches of the phones and laptops of international travelers at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. Tuesday’s ruling in U.S. District Court came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of 11...

A Virginia doctor allegedly performed hysterectomies and tied a patient’s fallopian tubes without consent, federal authorities said in court documents, NBC News reported. Javaid Perwaiz, 69, was arrested Friday and charged with health care fraud and making false statements to federal investigators, according to papers filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. In one case, Perwaiz, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Chesapeake,...

A youth hockey coach awaiting trial for child rape charges is expected to be released on bail following rulings by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in two unrelated cases. Thirty-three-year-old Christopher Prew of Marblehead is accused of sexually assaulting eight boys under the age of 14. He had been held without bail since a court appearance in March of 2018.

Felicity Huffman is paying her dues following her 11-day prison sentence. Nine days after being released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, Calif. for her involvement in the college admissions scandal, the “Desperate Housewives” alum has begun carving away at her community service hours.

Is stealing a presidential portrait a prison-worthy crime? Or a laudable act of civil disobedience? Courts around France are grappling with this question in response to an unusual new environmental movement that’s aiming to push French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to fight climate change. One by one, environmental activists around France have removed Macron’s official portraits from more...

A Massachusetts man who lived in a squalid home with his girlfriend where authorities found the remains of their three dead babies has pleaded guilty to related charges. Ramon Rivera pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges including assault and battery on a child and reckless endangerment.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration took steps Monday to maintain its retail ban on all vaping products. The Department of Public Health filed an emergency regulation with the secretary of state’s office to comply with a Superior Court judge’s ruling while keeping the first-in-the-nation ban on vaping products from lifting.

Top Republican leaders in Texas this week weighed in on two parents’ battle over their 7-year-old child’s gender identity after the case was shared widely on social media and conservative news sites. Former spouses Anne Georgulas and Jeffrey Younger, who live in the Dallas area, have been embroiled in a legal dispute over their divorce and the care of their...

A judge ruled Monday that Massachusetts’ temporary ban on vaping can remain in place.

A Virginia judge has ordered the dismissal of decades-old charges against five African-American men stemming from a 1939 sit-in at what was then a whites-only library.

Take a look at six of the most memorable lines from the fourth Democratic presidential debate held Tuesday night in Ohio.

A man has been sentenced to at least 47 years in prison for killing a woman last year in Exeter, New Hampshire. Derek Webber had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for beating and stabbing 65-year-old Carol Felides and then setting her home on fire in a mobile home park last year.