A Georgia jury sided against Ford in a wrongful death case and awarded $1.7 billion to the children of a couple killed in a pickup truck crash in 2014.

The Associated Press reported that in April 2014, Melvin and Voncile Hill were killed when they were involved in a rollover crash in their 2002 Ford F-250.

The roof collapsed after the rollover, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The couple's children, Kim and Adam Hill, filed the lawsuit against the automaker for what their attorneys called dangerously weak roofs, the news outlets reported.

During the trial, the Associated Press reported that the Hills' lawyers presented evidence of nearly 80 similar rollover wrecks that involved someone was injured or killed after the truck roofs collapsed.

A spokesperson for the automaker told The Associated Press they plan to appeal the verdict.

“While our sympathies go out to the Hill family, we do not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence, and we plan to appeal,” the automaker said in a statement Sunday to The Associated Press.

The verdict is believed to be the biggest in state history, the newspaper reported.

WAVERLY, Ohio —

Jurors in Pike County will begin deliberations Wednesday morning in George Wagner IV's murder trial.

The jury will return to the courtroom at 8:30 a.m. to begin deliberations.

Prosecutors spent the last two-and-a-half months trying to prove Wagner is guilty of murdering eight members of the Rhoden family in April 2016.

It's a verdict prosecutor Andy Wilson told jurors during closing arguments they can reach even if they don't believe Wagner pulled the trigger.

"If you're firmly convinced that he aided, abetted, assisted his family in these crimes, participated in these crimes, then he's guilty," Wilson said during closing arguments.

Defense attorney John Parker tried distancing Wagner from his brother, Jake Wagner, and mother, Angela Wagner. They both pleaded guilty in this case.

"Jake and Angela have destroyed this man's life," Parker said.

They both testified against George Wagner.

"They're liars. They're con artists. They're thieves," Parker said.

Parker said Jake and Angela Wagner took the stand solely for their own benefit and asked jurors to revisit their testimony.

"What about Jake when he was up here laughing and smiling and smirking as he's talking about these murders? He's cult-like. I think he's psychotic. He's a sick man. You can't believe what that guy says, and Angela's not a lot better" Parker said. "She sold her testimony. She's a con artist. She's a liar, and she pulled another one, because nothing she said about George can be verified. Nothing."

Wilson disagreed.

"Their statements and their testimony show that everybody in the family was acting under the same collective intent and that everybody participated in the murders and that everybody is guilty," Wilson said.

George Wagner was indicted on 22 counts including eight counts of aggravated murder.

Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murder Thursday in the shooting deaths of his wife and son in a case that chronicled the unraveling of a powerful Southern family with tales of privilege, greed and addiction.The jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder at the end of a six-week trial that pulled back the curtain on the once-prominent lawyer’s fall from grace.Murdaugh, 54, faces 30 years to life in prison without parole. His sentencing has been scheduled for Friday morning.Through more than 75 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence, jurors heard about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh’s failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, a fatal boat crash in which his son was implicated, the housekeeper who died in a fall in the Murdaugh home, the grisly scene of the killings and Bubba, the chicken-snatching dog.In the end, Murdaugh’s fate appeared sealed by cellphone video taken by his son, who he called “Little Detective” for his knack for finding bottles of painkillers in his father’s belongings after the lawyer had sworn off the pills. Testimony culminated in Murdaugh’s appearance on the witness stand, when he admitted stealing millions from clients and lying to investigators about being at the dog kennels where the shootings took place but steadfastly maintained his innocence in the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh.“I did not kill Maggie, and I did not kill Paul. I would never hurt Maggie, and I would never hurt Paul — ever — under any circumstances,” Murdaugh said.Murdaugh’s 52-year-old wife was shot four or five times with a rifle and their 22-year-old son was shot twice with a shotgun at the kennels near at their rural Colleton County home on June 7, 2021.Prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill the Murdaughs or other direct evidence like confessions or blood spatter. But they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, led by a video locked on Paul Murdaugh’s cellphone for more than a year — video shot minutes before the killings that witnesses testified captured the voices of all three Murdaughs.Alex Murdaugh, 54, had told police repeatedly after the killings that he was not at the kennels and was instead napping before he went to visit his ailing mother that night. Murdaugh called 911 and said he discovered the bodies when he returned home.But in his testimony, Murdaugh admitted joining Maggie and Paul at the kennels, where he said he took a chicken away from a rowdy yellow Labrador named Bubba — whose name Murdaugh can be heard saying on the video — before heading back to the house shortly ahead of the fatal shootings.Murdaugh lied about being at the kennels for 20 months before taking the stand on the 23rd day of his trial. He blamed his decadeslong addiction to opioids for making him paranoid, creating a distrust of police. He said that once he went down that path, he felt trapped in the lie.“Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Once I told a lie — I told my family — I had to keep lying,” he testified.Prosecutor Creighton Waters grilled Murdaugh about what he repeatedly called the lawyer’s “new story” of what happened at the kennels, walking him moment by moment through the timeline and assailing his “fuzzy” memory of certain details, like his last words to his wife and son.A state agent also testified that markings on spent cartridges found around Maggie Murdaugh’s body matched markings on fired cartridges at a shooting range elsewhere on the property, though the defense said that kind of matching is an inexact science.Murdaugh comes from a family that dominated the local legal scene for decades. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the area’s elected prosecutors for more than 80 years and his family law firm grew to dozens of lawyers by suing railroads, corporations and other big businesses.The now-disbarred attorney admitted stealing millions of dollars from the family firm and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit. Before he was charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion.Prosecutors told jurors that Murdaugh was afraid all of his misdeeds were about to be discovered, so he killed his wife and son to gain sympathy to buy time to cover his tracks.Murdaugh’s lawyers will almost certainly appeal the conviction based on the judge allowing evidence of the financial crimes, which they contend were unrelated to the killings and were used by prosecutors to smear Murdaugh’s reputation.

KENOSHA, Wis. —

In the days following the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, clerks filed more than 100 pages of letters to the court expressing praise and anger.

Copies of the letters, obtained by sister station WISN, show some of them were written as the jury deliberated Rittenhouse's fate and after the jurors acquitted the now 18-year-old from Illinois.

The letters were from at least 22 states outside Wisconsin and mainly focused on the polarizing circuit judge, Bruce Schroeder.

"If it had not been for you, that precious, intelligent, wholesome, motivated & alltogether [sic] adorable young man would have been a life wasted," a woman from Ohio wrote.

One of the most high-profile letters of support came from a special prosecutor in Louisiana, Hugo Holland, who also had previously been forced to resign in a firearms acquisition scandal.

"I would not have even bothered to take the Rittenhouse case to a grand jury. I would have pronounced it a good shoot and been done with it," Holland wrote to Schroeder.

The judge did receive several letters from critics as well.

A person from Ohio voiced their "displeasure towards Bruce E. Schroeder because of his obvious and blatant ways of favoritism that he has shown towards the defense."

The person added, "I hope this old and senile person who claims to be a man of the law can rest his head at night..."

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A man watching the trial from New Mexico took his criticism further, writing, "It is disgraceful to interrupt justice as it appears you are trying to do."

He added, "I am going to write to the board of judicial review and ask that you be seriously reviewed by them."

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Among the 115 pages filed Nov. 22 and 23 were two letters addressed to Rittenhouse directly.

"If I had been your father, I never would have let you go downtown," a man from New York wrote to Rittenhouse.

He added in the next sentence he thought Rittenhouse's intentions were "laudable and well meaning."

Investigative producer Jennie Fritz contributed to this report.

Dozens of community activists and shooting victims' families gathered to promote healing and change in Kenosha following the Kyle Rittenhouse trial."What we're here today for is a very simple call. We want to reimagine what our community looks like," said activist Kyle Johnson. “We need to heal, and when we say heal we don’t mean going back to the status quo, because we saw where that got us, we mean improving.” Johnson and other community members said the Rittenhouse verdict should be a new beginning for change."We start a new chapter here in Kenosha," said Kyle Flood, a former school board member and activist. "A chapter where we start to reimagine what Kenosha looks like. We reimagine a demilitarized police where people never have to start a riot."They said they hope to improve the criminal justice system, schooling, housing and other issues in Kenosha."I just want the city of Kenosha to understand ... that nobody here is ever going to stop. No one here is going to stop attempting to expose the flaws in the system," said Hannah Gittings, the girlfriend of Anthony Huber who was shot and killed by Rittenhouse during the 2020 unrest."I miss Anthony every single day," she tearfully said. "I wish I could come home to him to unload, but I can't because he's dead. And now the system is telling me no one needs to answer to that, and I have a problem with that."She said all the community can do now is move forward.

After the Derek Chauvin verdict, the spotlight shifted to the video that showed the interaction between Chauvin and George Floyd. 

Here's why: the initial police report that was released the day after Floyd died went viral.

People criticized the department for leaving out details like what exactly caused Floyd to suffer medical distress.

It did not mention Chauvin's knee on top of Floyd for more than 9 minutes.

The praise is pouring in from all over for Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed the killing, which turned out to be key evidence in this trial. She also testified during the trial.

Tuesday night, Frazier posted on social media sharing her relief. She says she cried and was very anxious but was happy justice was served.

Floyd's family said they were grateful for what she did.

"The sad thing is that if it wasn't been for that 17-year-old girl, Darnella, it would've been another Black man that was killed by the police," said George Floyd's aunt Angela Harrelson.

"And we wouldn't have never had a story. We wouldn't be here today talking."

Even with the end of the Derek Chauvin trial, and as attention again wanes from Minneapolis, the community that occupies the intersection where George Floyd died is as determined as ever to keep his memory alive there.

They're planning for George Floyd Square's next chapter and trying to be a model for a future without traditional policing.

Police are nowhere to be found in George Floyd Square. In fact, they aren't welcome.

A group is trying to prove peace is possible without them.