=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Memorial held for sarin victims; bitterness lingers
2. Sarin gas victims press for state help
3. Group urges state to aid survivors of sarin gassing

=== Falun Gong
4. Sect ban pressure is denied by Tung

=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media
5. Reports from China's government-controlled media
6. Religion, cult different terms

=== Scientology
7. Cruise Dogged by Scientology Split Rumors
8. Columbine Counselor's Teen Sex Abuse Prompts CCHR's New Website Tracking System of Mental Health Criminals

=== Islam
9. Call to spread Islam's message on tolerance
10. Taliban Bans New Year's Celebration

=== Catholicism
11. Report: Priests, Missionaries Sexually Abuse Nuns
12. Reports of abuse

=== Mormonism
13. Mormons' Long, Strange Trip to the Mainstream

=== Hate Groups
14. Judge Sentences Supremacist Pastor in Abduction of Grandchildren.
15. Racist church heads to court
16. Calif. Supremacist Pleads Guilty
17. Brown Students Steal Univ. Paper
18. Brown Protest Targets Ad
19. State House passes hate-crimes measure
20. Germany Won't Stop Yahoo! Auction

=== House of Prayer, Atlanta
21. Pastor, 5 followers arrested in child beatings
22. Defendants have criminal records
23. Church faces abuse probe over whipping of children

=== John and Carrie Davis
24. Jailed father found dead
25. Torture suspect 'upbeat' before his death

=== Recovered Memory Therapy
26. New trial ordered in recovered-memory case
27. Brain: Some choose to lose memory

=== Other News
28. End Near For Ex-Devil Church
29. Some in Egypt shun religious freedom panel
30. Three held for distributing Christian literature

=== Science
31. Skull may alter theory of human evolution

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations
32. Convicted Killer is Freed After His Sister Finds DNA Evidence
33. Judge bans use of electric chair

=== Noted
34. Worshippers in Paris flock to Afro-Christian cults
35. Exorcism thriving in Australia
36. A Herd of Psychics on Larry King
37. When a body can be worth $220,000

=== Books
38. Sects, death and the spirit of the age
39. Mainstream Publishers Get Religion for Christian Audience
40. Take a Web site test on religion

=== Death Penalty & Other Human Rights Violations

32. Convicted Killer is Freed After His Sister Finds DNA Evidence.
AP, March 16, 2001
http://www.apbnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) _ A man who spent 20 years in prison for murder was released Thursday because of DNA evidence obtained by his sister, a former high school dropout who put herself through law school in hopes of someday clearing her brother's name.

Judge Vieri Volterra freed Kenneth Waters, 47, pending a possible retrial, after the genetic evidence cast doubt on his guilt.
(...)

Waters was convicted of beating and stabbing to death Katharina Brow during a robbery in 1980. His lawyer at the time argued Waters was in court on the morning of the slaying to face a charge of assaulting a police officer, but authorities were unable to verify the alibi. Waters was sentenced to life in prison in 1983.

Betty Ann Waters, 46, of Middletown, R.I., went back to school, earning a bachelor's degree and a master's from Rhode Island College and attending law school at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

``The idea was that I could learn something and maybe try to help him,'' she said. ``I thought all along the way I might not be able to do it. But I wanted to try.''

After graduating, she focused on her brother's case, and to this day has taken only a few other cases on behalf of friends.

The breakthrough came when she hounded the clerk at the courthouse and learned that a box of evidence with her brother's name on it was in the basement. The box contained the knife used in the slaying and pieces of cloth with blood on them.

She enlisted the help of the Innocence Project, a group that helps inmates challenge convictions with DNA evidence. The material was tested, and the district attorney's office announced Tuesday that the DNA she found did not match her brother's.

``She did re-investigation. She got recantation from the witnesses. She came to us with a strong case,'' said defense attorney Barry Scheck, who heads the Innocence Project.

Prosecutors said they will decide whether to pursue a new trial based on review of all the evidence. In a statement, they said their decision not to oppose Waters' request for a new trial does not mean they believe he is innocent.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

More about the Innocence Project:

Actual Innocence : Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted by Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck

33. Judge bans use of electric chair
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mar. 21, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A Fulton County Superior Court judge today banned the state from executing people in the electric chair until another court can decide whether electrocution is unconstitutional.

Judge Wendy Shoob dismissed arguments by state Attorney General Thurbert Baker's office that the Department of Corrections should be permitted to proceed with electrocutions until the Georgia Supreme Court rules whether the method violates the Constitutional ban against ''cruel and unusual'' punishments.

Because a Superior Court judge's jurisdiction stretches across Georgia, Shoob can order a statewide halt to electric chair executions. However, her decision is expected to be appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Today's action came after a lawsuit filed on Monday, in which 40 plaintiffs --- including dozens of metro Atlanta clergy members and theologians --- asked the court to declare electrocution unconstitutional.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


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