CA Lawmen Protest Parole of Cop Killer:  Unions representing Los Angeles police and California prosecutors have joined   the widow of a slain LAPD detective in an attempt to block the parole a man who indirectly helped murder him 30 years ago.  Dana Bartholomew of the LA Daily News reports that on August 4, two members of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) recommended the parole of 52-year-old Voltaire Williams, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for conspiracy to commit murder in the death of 42-year-old LAPD Detective Thomas C. Williams (no relation) in 1985. Williams, 26-years-old in 1985, was hired by a man named Daniel S. Jenkins to kill the policeman for $2,000, but didn't go through with it.  Jenkins ended up doing the deed himself, gunning down the officer in front of his six-year-old son.  Critics of Williams' parole believe that the state is trying to "empty out overcrowded penitentiaries by releasing inmates such as Williams on good behavior," noting that 900 such lifers were granted parole this past year.  

Surging Immigration Backlog Overwhelms Judges:  Working conditions for the country's 247 immigration judges are growing progressively worse each year, and 130 of them will be eligible to retire this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.  Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the LA Times reports that according to the Immigration Policy Center, immigration judges typically handle more than 1,400, and some even handle over 3,000 cases at a time, totaling to a massive backlog of more than 450,000 cases, exacerbated by the increasing number of Central American youths seeking asylum.  Judges across the country are outraged at the unmanageable working conditions, and say that the courts need to hire an additional 100 judges "immediately."  An immigration court spokeswoman insists that officials in the U.S. attorney general's office have begun "an aggressive hiring process."

Boston Bomber Wants New Trial, Changed Venue:  In a court filing Monday, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense attorneys said that their client deserves a new trial in a different location "where jurors will be impartial."  The AP reports that their argument states that the widespread outrage and emotional media coverage following the 2013 attack that left three people dead and several others injured prevented Boston jurors from looking at the case or the defendant objectively before finding him guilty and sentencing him to death.  The attorneys request that Tsarnaev's sentence be overturned and the court order a new trial.  The filing also includes arguments, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that "throws many of [Tsarnaev's] convictions into question," believing that he should be acquitted of 15 convictions that were for crimes of violence because the trial court failed to explain which part of the definition they met.