False Imprisonment

An immigration officer was found guilty of false imprisonment Thursday, but a Van Nuys jury acquitted him on 18 other counts involving charges he kidnaped and raped undocumented Latinas he encountered on San Fernando Valley streets. James E. Riley, 34, of Reseda showed no emotion as the verdict in the eight-week trial was read in Van Nuys Superior Court.

The attorney for a teen-age student accused of shooting a boy in the face and holding a drama class hostage at an Anaheim high school said Tuesday that he will not use insanity as a defense, raising the possibility that the youth will plead guilty. Cordell L. (Cory) Robb, 15, reportedly beset with family problems, is accused of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of false imprisonment and bringing a firearm onto school grounds.

Attorneys for Thomas Lee Goldstein, who spent 24 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, announced Wednesday that they had filed damage claims, alleging that police officers and prosecutors had committed egregious acts of misconduct that cost the Vietnam veteran the prime years of his life. "For the police to fabricate evidence and use perjured testimony to achieve their conviction" was an "egregious affront" to Goldstein and the Constitution that calls for compensation, said Ronald O.

A man who was falsely imprisoned after being shot and framed by corrupt Rampart gang officers nearly a decade ago was awarded $6.5 million in damages Wednesday by a jury that found his county public defender was negligent for failing to uncover the police misconduct.

The California Supreme Court, providing a crack in the shield that protects employers from most workers' suits, held Thursday that a Los Angeles Fedco employee can sue the chain for falsely imprisoning her during an interrogation over whether she stole $4.95. The unanimous decision is significant because California workers generally have no recourse in the courts when they are injured physically or emotionally on the job.

A lawsuit filed in San Diego County Superior Court on Friday accuses Costco Wholesale Corp. of breaking California labor law by routinely keeping employees from going home each night for 15 minutes as managers remove jewelry from cases and check registers. The policy, the suit says, amounts to false imprisonment.

In a move that some students called overly harsh, Orange County prosecutors filed criminal charges Thursday against 19 UC Irvine protesters who stormed into an administration building last February and chanted slogans, blew whistles and banged on walls outside the chancellor's office. Authorities said more than 400 people had to be evacuated from Aldrich Hall during the demonstration and that two of the protesters pushed a dumpster up against the administration building and rolled another one into a street, blocking traffic.

Raul Zamudio finally was turning his life around after a failed job and a divorce. At 41, he found steady work as a counselor at a Santa Clara County Probation Department boys' ranch, and he bought a new car and a house in a nice neighborhood here. But in May, all that came to an end when Hollister police arrested him in the Easter weekend rape and murder of Martha De La Rosa, a well-liked and hard-working 22-year-old college student.

Still reeling from the embarrassment of mistakenly releasing 35 Los Angeles County Jail inmates since January 1995, Sheriff's Department officials now say they also erroneously held more than 500 prisoners for too long during the last two years. In many cases, prisoners ordered released by the courts have been kept behind bars an extra three to five days. In rare cases, inmates have been mistakenly detained for a month or longer.

A Fullerton man convicted of false imprisonment for chaining his 21-year-old daughter to her bed was sentenced Wednesday to the 179 days he spent in jail before sentencing. But neither David Mata Avila, 54, nor his wife, Guadalupe, 52, who was acquitted along with him on a felony false imprisonment charge, will be released because of unresolved immigration issues.