Testimony in the trial of a 19-year-old from Melbourne, Australia man who stabbed a homeless person to death in January after an altercation, seems to be trying to create the defense that Call of Duty had a strong influence on the defendant's state of mind. Easton George Woodhead is facing a murder charge for repeatedly stabbing Morgan Wayne "Mousey" Perry at an encampment of homeless people living on the banks of Melbourne's Yarra River.

According to the Miami Herald Tribune's On Tap in The Capital political column, the "Xbox murders" case is being heard by the Florida Supreme Court today. The Florida Supreme Court will hear appeal arguments in the case of Jerone Hunter, one of the four men convicted of brutally murdering six people in a Deltona, Florida home in 2004.

Imagine if Miami Vice's Crockett and Tubbs spent all their time keeping the public safe from those oh-so-dangerous video games.

That's the image I have in my head after reading the Kickstarter pitch for VID Agents, a satirical, 16-episode web series that will "point the finger back at all the people who get cranky about video game violence!"

The Daily Mail has jumped on the story of South Manchester coroner John Pollard (pictured) who noticed that four teenagers who had committed suicide, in a span of at least two years, had played a Call of Duty game.

Over the weekend, a 22-year-old man went on a stabbing, shooting, and vehicular rampage in Isla Vista, California that left seven people dead (including himself from a reportedly self-inflicted gunshot wound) and 13 others injured.

The head of the Tom Green County, Texas Juvenile Probation Dept. thinks that video games, music, and the general culture of entertainment are influencing children in negative ways. Mark Williams, the Chief Juvenile Probation Officer for Tom Green County, shared his insights into what he believes is influencing kids to break the law recently at the San Angelo Rotary Club. His speech was detailed at length by San Angelo Live.

Earlier this week, the official investigation report for the shooting at Sandy Hook was released to the public and as any rationally-thinking human being could have surmised 11 months ago, video games had precisely squat to do with it.

But will that matter?

A report on the investigation of last year’s horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has been released to the public.  The purpose of the report is to identify persons other than the shooter who are criminally responsible for the twenty-seven homicides that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 and indicate if there will be any state prosecutions.

Oakland, California news station KTVU has a bizarre story about a 16-year-old who set another passenger on fire while he slept on a public bus. Investigators are still trying to figure out why the unnamed teen intentionally set an 18-year-old on fire on AC Transit bus Monday.

MCV points out a pretty astonishing story that recently appeared in the UK newspaper the Daily Mail.

A nine-year old boy from Orlando, Florida has been placed in "home confinement" for bring weapons to school. His father claims that the boy brought "an unloaded handgun, a magazine with six bullets inside, a steak knife and a small-handled sledge hammer" to school because he was emulating what the main character "Steve" does in Minecraft.

"They use hammers to dig and knives and guns to protect themselves from zombies," he said, according to the a report from Orlando news station WFTV.

If you do something really stupid in life, you might try rolling the dice by blaming your favorite video games in the hopes that some foolish judge might buy into the theory. That's what we think 20-year-old college student Zachary Burgess is hoping for, but we're not sure. According to a report on WVTM-TV 13, officers were called to the Tigerland-area (a neighborhood in the city of Baton Rouge) to investigate reports of an erratic driver and a possibly stolen vehicle on September 21, 2013 at around 2:30am.

Okay, this is beyond absurd.  Why are video games still being blamed for violent behavior?

It's not like video games are a new medium; they've been around for decades.  It's not like it's a niche activity either; playing video games is a very common and normal part of most people's lives.  And it's not like there's any evidence to support the idea that playing video games cause people to act violently so why, for the love the Linux penguin, are video games still suffering that stigma?

Fox News can't seem to get enough of trying to connect the dots between real-world mass shootings and violent video games. Part one of a two-part report on the subject gathers the usual suspects to try and say definitively that video games played a central role in inspiring some of the worst shootings in the last decade or so including Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, Adam Lanza, etc.

The heir to a €50 million fortune confessed to killing his father with a spiked bat he claims was inspired by a weapon he had used in Dead Rising 2, according to this Kotaku report. The crime is making headlines in Spain and has other ties to video gaming, according to several Spanish papers. The brutal June 30 slaying of Andreu Bennasar Coll.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says that exposure to violent media such as video games can put those with mental illnesses "over the edge" and that he supports President Obama's plan for more research into violent games. The research - which includes (for the first time) the study of the (possible) connection between guns and mass shootings - was recommended by the Administration in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown Conn. in December of last year which resulted in the deaths of 20 children and six adults.

A man who murdered an entire family with a tire iron in 2009 in their Beason, Ill. home tried to use video games as part of his defense earlier this week. After one day of deliberations a jury delivered a stinging verdict.

In a "Friday Follow-Up" segment that aired on her show, Katie Couric admitted that her recent show on video game violence that featured a "who's who" of anti-video game voices was one-sided. The show, "Are Video Games Ruining Your Life?" aired on April 29 and featured Daniel Petric, who cited video games as being a "catalyst" for shooting and killing his mother on October 20, 2007. It also featured Dr.

Back in March we told you about Moses Lake, Washington teen Nathon Brooks, the 14-year-old charged with attempted murder for shooting his parents with a .22 caliber pistol while they were sleeping because they took away his video games (see this story for more details).

A 14-year-old in Washington state has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting both of his parents in the head after they restricted him from electronic devices - including playing video games. On Monday, Grant County prosecutors asked the court that the 14-year-old, Nathon Brooks, be tried as an adult on attempted murder charges.

A new study from Brad Bushman of Ohio State University comes to the conclusion that some players of violent video games are led there out of a sense of frustration because they cannot engage in taboo behaviors in the real world such as stealing or cheating. Don't worry, the latest Bushman study will connect this to aggression, violent video games, and a negative effect of some kind... The temptation to steal or cheat is sometimes great — especially when the risk of being caught is low.

During a panel discussion on CBS' popular Sunday political show Face the Nation, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole said that politicians rushing to blame video games for the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut are misguided because the evidence does not support their theory.

"It’s my experience that video games do not cause violence," O’Toole told CBS News."However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently."

Update: The New York Daily News claims that "Local media" are reporting that the teen was a "home schooled teen [who] wasn’t allowed to play video games, and that his family never let him watch violent shows on television." We're not sure of the validity of that part of the NYDN story because it's a third-hand account. Thanks Andrew Eisen for passing that bit along.

The Escapist reports that community members in the town of Southington, Connecticut have put a bulls eye on violent video games in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that saw 20 children and six adults murdered by a lone gunmen in mid-December.

University of Missouri Media Researcher Greg Perreault pens an enlightening article on violence and video games over at the Huffington Post, and while the entire article is definitely worth reading an excerpt from it really caught our attention. The excerpt is an exchange between Perreault and an unnamed journalist who contacted him looking to use him as an expert.

UK papers The Telegraph and the Daily Mail seem to be delighted with a new study from researchers at Brock University in Canada published in the journal Developmental Psychology. The study, which bases its findings on 1,492 adolescents surveyed from eight high schools in Ontario over a four year period. Researchers say that 51 percent of those surveyed were female, while 49 percent were male. Participants were ages 14- to 15-years-old at the start of the study and 17- or 18-years-old at its conclusion.

The New York Times reports that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been sentenced to 21 years in prison after an Oslo, Norway court ruled that he was sane when he killed 77 people. While the sentence for his shooting spree may seem short, the court has the ability to extend the sentence if he is considered a danger to society. Brevik's conviction is the harshest sentence permitted under Norwegian law.

A Health Canal report details the concern of a critic of the UK's new video game ratings system saying that it will fail because it doesn't deal with "irresponsible parenting." Yesterday the new PEGI ratings system went into effect in the UK. The new system includes penalties for retailers that sell age inappropriate games to children that do not meet the ratings guidelines.

Unfortunately CNN contributors aren't the only ones speculating on the motivations of 24-year-old Colorado mass-murder suspect James Holmes.

Last night 24-year-old James Holmes used four guns (a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns, according police), and tear gas to shoot, disorientate, and trap theater goers attending the opening of The Dark Knight Rising movie at a theater in Aurora, Colorado. The attack left 12 people dead and 38 59 injured. He was arrested outside the theater by police shortly thereafter.