Governors, Prison | featured news

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is spending his time in federal prison teaching Civil War history and learning to play the guitar, while his attorneys work on an appeal, his wife said on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of his 14-year term for corruption....

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and decide whether the state can be forced to release 46,000 inmates -- more than one-fourth of its prison population -- to relieve overcrowding.

The court's intervention is a victory for the governor and state prison officials, and it puts a judicial order on hold, at least until this fall.

At issue is whether federal judges have the power to order the release of state prisoners as a necessary means of curing a constitutional violation.

A U.N. court trying the architects of Rwanda's 1994 genocide jailed a former Kigali governor for life on five counts including ordering the killing of 60 Tutsi boys in a church-run pastoral center.