Results tagged “trial”

Yesterday, Swiss officials refused to grant a bail request for the release of notorious film director Roman Polanski, who has been detained there since late last month following his arrest in Zurich on a thirty-year-old warrant from Los Angeles County. Feeling the flee-friendly and famed French citizen was a flight-risk, the Swiss are not bowing to pressure from members of foreign governments or cinema power-players to let the septuagenarian go.

For the first time since their capture in North Korea, sentencing to a hard labor camp, and return to the US following a diplomatic intervention by former President Bill Clinton, Current TV, the San Francisco-based cable network part-owned by former Vice President Al Gore, has come forward with details of the incident involving their reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The next big date in all things Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, will be January 11th, 2010. In this morning's hearing about the case, backers of Prop 8 desired a 2010 summer date, but proponents of striking the ban down wanted it much earlier. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker denied three gay rights group the ability to join the lawsuit, as well as a anti-gay marriage group's request, too. However, he did allow the City of San Francisco to join, but only to assess the impacts to local governments, explained the Associated Press. Expert witnesses will be designated by October 2nd with discovery concluding on November 30th. The pretrial conference will be on December 16th followed by the designation of rebuttal expert witnesses on December 31st, said the Mercury News.

After a jury found Phil Spector guilty of actress Lana Clarkson's murder, a judge today sentenced the music producer to 15 years to life for second-degree murder and four years for personal use of a gun. "Six years ago, Phil Spector was barely a blip on the American celebrity radar screen," explained the Associated Press of his past. "Although his music lived on, his name and face were only dimly recalled by rock music aficionados until a shooting at his Alhambra mansion propelled him to notoriety." A lottery was done for people who wanted to witness the sentence, noted the LA Weekly. "Deptartment 106 is packing out with media, D.A. types and lottery-drawn spectators," they said.

Many of us would like to count ourselves as 'politically active'. We are an intelligent country, made up of many of the same demographics as seen in other Western countries. We have the students, the high prices, the motivations, and the anger. We just don't have the riots. Excluding recent racial developments in Oakland and the occasional big sports victory, our 'political activism' may well better be titled 'political pacification'. This isn't Spain, or France, and it sure as hell isn't Greece, where protests and work stoppages are routine. How sad is it that, as a people, we'll flip cop cars for Super Bowls but not suicide missions in Iraq. Not for deception in D.C. President Obama has brought a lot of his hope to America, but it took eight years, and there are many broken social stairs to reclimb before we reach the heights we once enjoyed. But this is not a promotion of rioting. Far from it.

Lori Drew's sentencing for charges related to the precedent-setting MySpace Suicide Case has been scheduled for April 30th in Los Angeles According to Associated Press. Lori Drew, who was not present at the hearing, was convicted November 26 of three counts of accessing computers without authorization. It is believed that the suicide of 13 year-old Megan Meier was a result of Drew setting up a fake profile on MySpace of a boy who romanced and then dumped Meier in 2006.

Her dad didn't die, she was at the Breeders' Cup. Along with the big names and beautiful people, the Breeders' Cup also reportedly brought out the missing juror in the corruption trial of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. According to the Washington Post Marian Hinnant, the juror who was dismissed from the trial after telling the judge that her father died in California, admitted today that her excuse was a lie. Hinnant told the judge today that she really flew to California to be in Arcadia to attend the Breeders' Cup. According to the Post, the judge declined to sanction Hinnant who "gave a rambling statement that involved wiretaps, horses and drugs in Kentucky," allowing her to return to her job as a licensed paralegal at a mortgage company. Rambling about wiretaps, horses and drugs in Kentucky would have surely made her the odds-on favorite for first juror dismissed during the jury selection process, unfortunately, Hinnant waited until after the jury began deliberations to hit her stride.

Three witnesses took the stand yesterday in the case where U.S. District Attorneys are trying former elected Orange County Sheriff Michael Corona for illegally winning his 1998 election, taking bribes and returning favors. Both a pilot and a tailor who were asked to give $1000 to his campaign and then reimbursed by friend and eventual assistant sheriff Don Haidl to avoid campaign contribution limits stood on the witness stand describing what they did and knew. In the afternoon, the accountant for Debra Hoffman, Carona's mistress, talked about their "love nest" and a secret account where they would hide their money. Carona's wife, Deborah, is also allegedly involved, but she will stand trial in a separate case later.

They befriended homeless men, gave them life insurance policies for two years, killed them by running over them, claimed their deaths as hit and runs and collected on the insurance. Nearly $3 million was collected between the two men they setup before getting caught. After the second death in 2005 is when authorities became suspicious -- similar incident, similar injuries.

• In part to honor the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and in part to "increase the peace" a 40-hour moratorium on violence goes into effect for the City of Los Angeles starting at 6:01 p.m. tonight. Do your part!
• Because "You can't fire me...I QUIT!" lacks that certain je-ne-sais-quoi, perhaps? An employee in the midst of getting the boot today in Industry stabbed his boss with a pocket knife.
• 31-year-old Keven Lee Graff was sentenced to two life terms in prison today for two murders he committed in June 2004. Graff, a former Marine who is homeless, beheaded a 91-year-old screenwriter then murdered his 69-year-old neighbor.
• The mother of the dead baby found earlier this week near a home in Santa Ana has been arrested by US Marshals after a short stand-off in Henderson, NV. 20-year-old Michelle Pedroza used to reside in one of the houses near where the infant's corpse was discovered by a resident.
• A crowd of about 4,500 gathered today to honor firefighter Brent Lovrien, who died on the job last week in an explosion. His services were held downtown at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and he was remembered as a man with "a true sense of loyalty."
• Actor Chris Rock took the stand for about 15 minutes this morning to testify in the trial of pro-snoop Anthony Pellicano, who allegedly used some shady methods to do is generally shady job. Rock hired the private dick to dig up dirt on a model who claimed the comedian knocked her up.
• Ever wonder if renting a garage is legit in the city? CurbedLA reminds us about housing and tenancy laws in their Ask Curbed column.
• In the days before WeHo, there was grub The Gay Way... EatingLA gives us a culinary chuckle and throwback with a photo of a 1940s era downtown eatery.

Sometimes going to a Dodger game gets to be more than a spectator sport, especially when team rivalries are enacted in the stands.

How about this for an opening about the founder of American Apparel in today's New York Post? "Dov Charney walks around his office in his underwear, sleeps with employees, and calls women bitches, sluts, whores and the c-word - and that's the stuff he admits to."

Jurors began deliberating yesterday in the second degree murder case of Reseda resident, Mark Allen Steffen, who is accused of killing his girlfriend and stuffing her body into his shed for a month and a half. He says he kicked her out and her dead body mysteriously reappeared in his house, so he put her body into the shed until finding proper burial. Prosecutors say this is clearly murder.

The 58-year-old part-time auto repossessor, on trial charged with murdering his girlfriend, Dina Canale, admitted as much before his defense rested Monday.

Continue reading "Valley Man Stuffs Dead Girlfriend Into Shed"

Only one major event for the Los Angeles Fire Department today in which 30 firefighters quickly fought a three-story commercial building at 515 S. Los Angeles St. Lindsay Lohan lawyers claim she's innocent in the crash involving Raymundo Ortega and his black Mercedes, citing that Ortega made an illegal U-Turn to snag a parking space putting him in Lohan's tracks. The case will go to trial in April. Five oriental fruit flies have been...

Not a TOTAL lie, as Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. actually was found not guilty of one of the 5 charges leveled against him. FoxNews.com has regressed from the "fair and balanced" schtick to an even more ridiculous "We report. You Decide." Now that's pretty commanding when spoken by apes. Anyway, for those of you keeping score at home, the Libby trial has gone the Martha Stewart route, as in, he lost, although he...

I'm glad to see that the trial of 89-year-old George Russell Weller is finally getting underway. Like a lot of people you might be asking, who's George Weller? Though he hasn't gained the notoriety he so richly deserves, he's the genius who plowed his Buick LeSabre through the Santa Monica Farmers' Market killing 10 people and injuring 60 others in July 2003. I'm not normally a hang-'em high kind of gal, but there's something...