Update: The state's attorney handling the George Zimmerman investigation said today she will make a statement within 72 hours. She said she is "preparing to release new information regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting death investigation.". It doesn't explicitly say the announcement will be her decision on whether to file charges.

In another bizarre turn in the Trayvon Martin shooting. George Zimmerman's lawyers have withdrawn from representing him, saying he hasn't returned calls since Sunday and called the prosecutor and Sean Hannity to talk to them. The prosecutor refused to talk to him without counsel.

The website he set up was done on his own. His lawyers, at his request, had been in the process of setting one up, when he decided to do his own. [More..]

Special Prosecutor Angela Corey has decided against using the grand jury to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Corey says the grand jury isn't needed and the case is still being investigated. She says ""The decision should not be considered a factor in the final determination of the case." She previously said she's never used one before in investigating whether a case involved justifiable homicide and she has previously said she may or may not use the grand jury in this case. The initial decision to use the grand jury was made by State's Attorney Norm Wolfinger, before he recused himself from the case. /p>

Here is her actual statement, courtesy of NBC 6 Miami.

I have no clue which way she is leaning.

Kim Dotcom and MegaUpload have beefed up their legal teams . News reports say prominent copyright lawyer Andrew Schapiro of Quinn Emanuel is joining the defense.

But there's a hitch. The Quinn Emanuel lawyers only want in if they can opt if the court decides they can't be paid from the funds seized from MegaUpload.

Checking the docket, Mr. Schapiro hasn't individually entered his appearance yet, but Paul Brinkman and William William Burck, other lawyers from his firm, Quinn Emmanuel, are trying to.

The Quinn Emmanuel lawyers (and long-standing MegaUpload lawyer Ira Rothken) are attempting to enter a special or limited appearance for the purpose of litigating the release of seized assets for attorneys' fees and issues related to the preservation of data on Carpathia's servers. [More...]

For weeks, the City of Sanford has maintained a page on their website dedicated to the Trayvon Martin shooting. It included the 911 calls of George Zimmerman and the neighbors who called 911 to report the shooting. It also included the video of Zimmerman arriving at police station from several camera angles, a written description of his earlier 911 calls and police reports of earlier burglaries in the neighborhood.

No more. Those are gone from the city's page, with this statement:

The office of the State Attorney, 4th Judicial Circuit, State Attorney Angela Corey has requested that the City of Sanford remove all reports, videos and audio pertaining to the Martin/Zimmerman case from the website. Their office has provided legal justification for the action and they believe further access to the information will have an adverse effect on their efforts to come to a resolution to this investigation.

The calls are all over You Tube and other media websites. [More...]

NBC not only acknowledged its misleading portrayal (composite graphic here) of George Zimmerman's statements on his 911 call concerning Trayvon Martin, it has now fired the producer responsible for the error.

Now it's time for CNN and CNN NewsWire to explain an apparent similar gaffe -- one about what Zimmerman purportedly told his lawyers he said on the 911 call, in partiuclar, a word that some have claimed is a racial slur. It's been more than 24 hours since I began writing this very long post, and I still haven't seen an explanation or acknowledgement by CNN on the change in its articles. If I missed it, please let me know in comments so I can correct it. Since online versions of the articles keep changing, in many instances, I am using the versions of the articles as they appeared on LexisNexis.

The unexplained edit is contained in articles that appeared Thursday, April 5, under the headline "Expert: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin," later changed to "Lawyers: Zimmerman whispered 'punks' before shooting Trayvon Martin." [More...]

Bump and Update: The Judge rejected the Government's request for a life sentence, and sentenced Viktor Bout to 25 years, the minimum term possible given the mandatory sentence requirement of the statute. Mr. Bout did address the judge:

"Your honor, I am not guilty...."I never intended to kill anyone. I never intended to sell arms to anyone. God knows this truth."

According to the Judge,

... Mr. Bout simply took advantage of the opportunity presented to him, rather than actively looking to commit a crime that could be prosecuted in U.S. courts. She also said the federal sentencing guidelines in the case called for too harsh a sentence.

Presumably, he will get credit for his jail time since March, 2008 in Thailand, since he was only being held on our extradition request. He will get credit for the time in custody since he got to the U.S. That would make the sentence 21 years, of which he will have to serve 85% or 17.8 years, if he doesn't win his appeals and Congress doesn't increase good time while he's serving the sentence. He'd be 66 when he gets out. The Judge made the right call in my view by refusing to sentence him to life or 30 years. [More...]

An official mea culpa and apology from NBC News for editing and distorting the meaning of George Zimmerman's 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case in a Today show segment that was repeated on MSNBC.

During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret. We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers.

I wrote yesterday NBC was investigating the edit error. Good that they followed up swiftly. [More..]

ABC News acknowledged today that the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into custody following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin shows injuries to the back of his head. It says a forensic enhancement it commissioned allows the injuries to be seen.

Forensic enhancement wasn't needed. As I showed here, the injuries were noticeable from ABC's original footage. You just had to look. Here's the screengrab I got back on March 29. [More...]

A judge in New Zealand today eased the bail restrictions on Kim Dotcom and his MegaUpload co-defendants. Kim DotCom requested:

....internet access, permission to meet with his co-accused to research their court case, permission to go swimming at the pool at his mansion and be allowed to travel to a music studio to finish recording an album.

The judge granted all, with some limits on how often he could visit the recording studio. The Crown did not oppose internet access or going to the pool. The Judge, in granting the motion, said Kim DotCom was not a flight risk: [More...]

Details of Osama bin Laden's life on the run, from a police report of an interview with one of his wives. Two of his kids were born in a Pakistani hospital.

Toulouse Update: French police arrest 19 suspected Islamic militants. They aren't suspected of playing a role in Mohamed Merah's killing spree, they are just part of a crackdown on "undesirables" that has followed it.

Who's buying a MegaMillions ticket? It's up to $640 million.

I'll be busy at work today, this is an open thread.

The Sanford Police have released the full, six minute camera surveillance video of George Zimmerman's arrival at the police department.

MSNBC reports the video was taken four hours after the shooting. Also:

In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Appearing on NBC's TODAY on Thursday, Zimmerman's attorney Craig Sonner described the video as "very grainy." He also pointed out that Zimmerman had been "cleaned-up" and received first aid in the four hours between the incident and Zimmerman's videotaped arrival at the police station.

Update: USA Today says the video shows it was taken at 7:52 pm, 35 minutes after the shooting. [More...]

This WOFL FOX 35 extensive interview last night of George Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, a former judge and Vietnam Veteran, deserves equal time with the video released yesterday of Zimmerman arriving at the jail from which so many people are deducing Zimmerman wasn't injured.

There's no resolution in the interview, we're still left with George's version vs. the Martin family's version. While he discusses what he's learned from George and others about the fatal encounter with Trayvon Martin, the interview is as much about the effect of the incident on George and the family, and the hate that the case has generated, as it is about the facts. It's long and painful to listen to because there is so much grief in his voice. My synopsis is below: