Guilty Verdicts

A Muslim charity and five of its former leaders were convicted Monday of funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas -- a long-sought victory in the government's fight against terrorism funding. U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis announced the guilty verdicts on all 108 counts on the eighth day of deliberations in the retrial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the nation's largest Muslim charity.

An Atlanta man who claimed the delusion that he was leading a "slave rebellion" had launched him on a courthouse shooting spree was found guilty of murder Friday. Jurors, who rejected Brian Nichols' insanity claim, on Monday will begin hearing evidence in the sentencing phase of the trial. They must decide whether Nichols, 36, should receive the death penalty or life in prison for the 2005 rampage that left four people dead -- including a judge, a court reporter and two law enforcement officers.

A jury found former Los Angeles city commissioner Leland Wong guilty of public corruption Thursday, ending a criminal investigation that figured in former Mayor James K. Hahn's 2005 election defeat. Wong, a Hahn appointee and longtime member of the city's volunteer commissions overseeing city contracts, was found guilty on 14 felony counts. He was found not guilty of seven other corruption charges. The district attorney's office said Wong faces a potential sentence of more than 10 years.

A retired Marine Corps captain was found guilty by a federal jury in Los Angeles on Thursday of traveling to Cambodia to engage in sex with children. Michael Joseph Pepe, 54, was convicted of violating the federal Protect Act, which strengthened laws against predatory crimes involving children outside the United States. Pepe was accused of drugging, raping and beating seven Cambodian girls ages 9 to 12. Six of the girls flew to the U.S. and testified during the three-week trial in front of U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer.

A federal jury convicted a woman of running a prostitution service that catered to members of Washington's political elite. Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, had repeatedly denied the escort service engaged in prostitution, saying that if any of the women engaged in sex acts for money, they did so without her knowledge. Palfrey will remain free pending her sentencing July 24.

The lawyer for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, on Thursday accused U.S. officials of trying to orchestrate war-crimes convictions for election-year political gain. In his motion for dismissal of the case against Hamdan, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer accused Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann -- legal advisor to the White House official overseeing terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- of exercising "unlawful command influence" over both the prosecution and defense.

A federal judge in Central Islip revoked bail for a wealthy woman convicted of imprisoning and torturing two Indonesian housekeepers in what prosecutors called a case of "modern-day slavery." Varsha Sabhnani, 46, who fainted and was hospitalized after a jury returned guilty verdicts Monday, pleaded in vain to U.S. District Judge Arthur Spatt as the defendant's four children sobbed in the gallery.

The first of the 18 mob-related killings -- forgotten by many amid this city's notoriously corrupt and violent history -- happened more than three decades ago. Two of the men connected to the so-called Family Secrets mob conspiracy case, designed in part to solve these cold-case killings, died before the case ever went to trial. A third was deemed too old and infirm for a courtroom.

Dist. Atty. Mike Nifong was stripped of his law license Saturday and banned from ever practicing law again for grossly mishandling a rape prosecution in which three Duke University lacrosse players were falsely accused. A disciplinary panel of the North Carolina State Bar, saying Nifong had engaged in "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation," found him guilty of withholding evidence, lying to judges and making prejudicial pretrial statements in the highly charged case.

A federal jury in Jackson convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers. Seale, 71, had pleaded not guilty to charges related to the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. After the 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, their bodies were found in the Mississippi River. Federal prosecutors indicted Seale in January almost 43 years after the slayings.