Convicts

A prosecutor urged jurors Monday to convict a renowned con man of the 1985 killing of his landlady's adult son, calling him a “master manipulator” who buried the victim's body in a San Marino backyard before hiding on the East Coast under a series of false identities. L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian told the downtown Los Angeles jury that strong circumstantial evidence pointed to Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter as the killer, noting that the German native was staying in a guest house on the property where John and Linda Sohus were living when the couple went missing.

Sitting on the dais where he used to preside as mayor, Omar Bradley explained to Compton voters at a candidates forum why he should be elected again after his conviction on public corruption charges nearly a decade ago. "I want to take you on a magic carpet ride 12 years ago," Bradley said. "I want you to imagine the streets of Compton in 2001. Do you see any potholes? I want you to imagine the trees in Compton in 2001. Were they trimmed? I want you to think about the layoffs that are occurring now and the deficit now, and I want you to ask yourself, was it happening then?"

Here's the latest about British artist Graham Ovenden, who was convicted earlier this week for multiple child sex offenses: the Tate in London has removed more than 30 of his prints from its online collection. The Tate also won't be showing any of his works by appointment, or at its Tate Modern and Tate Britain galleries, until it has more information and a full review is completed, it said in a statement on Thursday. Ovenden, 70, was accused of abusing children who had modeled in the nude for him. He has denied the charges.

A 59-year-old man serving a federal prison sentence in Arizona for making bomb threats to Disneyland faces multiple counts of sexual assault involving two Orange County women he met through Pennysaver ads in the 1980s. James Michael Camp, 59, of Anaheim, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on two felony counts of residential burglary, two counts of forcible rape, two counts of forcible oral copulation, one count of grand theft and one count of robbery with a sentencing enhancement for the personal use of a knife.

Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona will continue serving time in federal prison on a witness tampering conviction after a judge denied a request by the former lawman's attorneys to shorten his sentence. Attorneys for Carona, 57, who was once hailed as "America's sheriff," argued that a 66-month sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford on a witness tampering conviction should be adjusted because of changes in the law. So far, he has served two years of 5 1/2-year prison sentence.

Almost a year ago, a former standout football player at Long Beach Polytechnic High School trembled in Los Angeles County Superior Court as a judge dismissed his rape conviction. Outside the courtroom that day, Brian Banks offered cautious hope that one day, he could restart his athletic career. Wednesday, Banks signed a contract with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons, a major step in his quest for redemption. "I can't believe this is happening," Banks told reporters shortly after signing.

After four decades in prison for an Arizona mass murder he has always vehemently insisted he did not commit, Louis Taylor will sometime Tuesday walk out of the shadow of confinement -- a free man. Now 59, he was convicted in 1970 in connection with a Tucson hotel fire that killed 29 people. Taylor was 16 when he went to jail, sentenced to 28 consecutive life sentences. Now that crime and all that time will soon be in his past. He pleaded no-contest to the charges in a Tucson court, allowing the wheels of justice to move toward his freedom.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday continued a pattern of pardons tied to Christian religious days, granting clemency to 65 convicted criminals, including a Los Angeles man who spent 15 years in prison for a 1977 murder conviction. Brown's pardon of Robert Phillip Brown provided no details of the ex-convict's crime, nor his case for clemency, other than to say the man had obtained a Superior Court order last year testifying that since release from prison, "he has lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character and conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen.

Gary Alan Irving was 18 years old in 1978 when he was convicted in Massachusetts of three counts of rape and faced life in prison. But before he was sentenced, the judge allowed him to go home. He soon disappeared. This week, police finally tracked him down. He was married and living in Maine. In a news conference Thursday, officials said Irving, 52, had been living in the town of Gorham and had changed his name slightly to Gregg Irving. When law enforcement officers from Maine and Massachusetts knocked on his door about 9 p.m. Wednesday, he was watching TV with his wife.

NEW YORK - Preet Bharara, the man dubbed the new sheriff of Wall Street, notched another arrest in the government's vast insider trading probe. This time the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan nabbed a top portfolio manager at one of America's biggest hedge funds. SAC Capital Advisors' Michael Steinberg was led out of his Park Avenue apartment building in handcuffs early Friday morning. It's a major arrest at a fund that has long drawn government scrutiny. Bharara, 44, has carved out a reputation for being a tough prosecutor who has overseen some of the most high-profile white-collar criminal cases since the 1980s.