Jail

The sharp cracks echoing from the East Bakersfield street were loud enough to jolt Ruben Ceballos from a midnight slumber. Then he heard screams. The 19-year-old jumped from his living room sofa and hurried to the kitchen door, which offered a view of the violent scene outside - Kern County sheriff's deputies repeatedly striking a man in the head with batons as he lay on the pavement. "I saw two sheriff's deputies on top of this guy, just beating him," Ceballos said in an interview Monday.

A man accused of murder in a 2010 Baldwin Park gang shooting is one of four jail inmates the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has mistakenly released this year, officials revealed Tuesday. According to the department's own investigation, missing paperwork resulted in the erroneous release of Johnny Mata, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said. The department subsequently noted understaffing in the clerical operations and made a decision to hire more clerical staff and to add an additional supervisor to oversee the paperwork process, he said.

WASHINGTON - President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem. Making a hastily scheduled statement at the White House, Obama denounced the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service as "inexcusable" and pledged to "do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. " "Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said.

Another year off, a jail term and Father Time have not diminished Floyd Mayweather Jr. one bit. Boxing's top pound-for-pound fighter dominated his challenger Robert Guerrero Saturday night, winning nine of 12 rounds on all three judges' scorecards to keep his World Boxing Council welterweight belt at MGM Grand. "Defense, continue to box and if the knockout comes, take it," Mayweather (44-0) said in the ring after his brilliant showing. "I was looking for the knockout, could've had it, but hurt my right hand . . . somewhere in the middle rounds.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved an expansion of the county's electronic house-arrest program to 75 inmates at a time and raised the possibility of eventually including higher-risk inmates, who would be monitored by more sophisticated equipment. The county Probation Department began the experimental program a year ago.

Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. entered jail in Clark County, Nev., Friday, beginning an 87-day sentence for reduced domestic battery charges involving the mother of his three children. Five-division champion Mayweather (43-0) wore a gray sweatsuit and sneakers in court Friday, saying nothing as a judge informed him he had fulfilled community service requirements. He was then handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom. "He'll be all right," rapper  50 Cent, a friend of Mayweather's, told reporters outside the courthouse.

Reporting from Jerusalem — The fast lane of the New York hip-hop scene doesn't normally merge with the winding side streets of orthodox Jerusalem, but sometimes life makes exceptions. Shot at 15, Jamal Michael Burrow looked to put gang-banging behind him and poured his anger into music. By the late 1990s, he turned a corner and became the rapper Shyne, the next big thing, protégé and comrade to Sean Combs. The makeover nearly complete, his former life caught up with him. A brawl broke out at Club New York, where he was hanging with Combs and Combs' then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez.

A mother charged with murder in the drownings of her two young girls in the bathtub of their South Los Angeles home committed suicide while in jail, an L.A. County sheriff's spokesman confirmed. The death of Lorna Valle, 33, was reported Feb. 23 at the Lynwood jail but was not made public by sheriff's officials. Los Angeles County coroner's officials said Valle, who was awaiting trial, died of asphyxiation after placing a bag over her head. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Valle died at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood but denied the department had anything to hide, noting jail officials do not routinely release identities of those who commit suicide while in custody.

Supporters say a Russian opposition activist on a hunger strike has been sent back to jail without receiving proper medical attention. Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front movement, has been on a hunger strike for three days. He fell ill Saturday in a courtroom where he was appealing a 10-day arrest for disobeying police orders. The Left Front said in a statement on its website Sunday that supporters called an ambulance and sent him to a hospital. It says medical authorities did not examine him properly and refused to admit him. Udaltsov was detained Wednesday when he tried to lead a march to the presidential compound in Moscow following an authorized rally.

In a jail system facing overcrowding and under growing pressure to release inmates early, one of the most difficult questions confronting the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is: Who do you let out? Officials hope a key part of the answer is computer software that can sift through a matrix of "psychometric" data, including a 137-question survey, and help identify inmates who seem least likely to commit new crimes. The questionnaire delves into personal histories: Were your parents divorced or separated?

LAS VEGAS - A boxer needs an edge, contentment is the enemy. Consider the case of Floyd Mayweather Jr. The unbeaten world welterweight champion used to argue with any doubters that he was superior to Manny Pacquiao in the debate over who was the best pound-for-pound fighter. That's no longer an issue after Pacquiao was knocked out by a man Mayweather previously dominated, Juan Manuel Marquez. Mayweather has also longed to boast about his riches. Then, earlier this year, he signed a 30-month, multi-fight deal with Showtime/CBS that is valued at potentially $200 million, considered the most lucrative deal for any athlete in any sport.

An inmate charged with murder in a 2010 Baldwin Park gang shooting was mistakenly released from the Los Angeles County jail system last month because of a clerical error, sheriff's officials revealed Friday. The department waited nearly a month before alerting the public that Johnny Mata was on the loose. Mata was set free April 4 from the Sheriff's Department's Inmate Reception Center in downtown Los Angeles, according to Capt. Chuck Antuna. "A clerical error occurred and he was released," Antuna said.

Prosecutors are considering whether to file criminal charges against a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy accused of assaulting an inmate who was helping federal authorities investigate a suspected international drug trafficker, according to records and interviews. The inmate accused Deputy Michael Camacho of targeting him, at least in part, because he was cooperating with detectives as an informant, internal records show. The records indicate that in July, the inmate told his sheriff's handlers that Camacho punched him in his torso and ribs.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies say the department hid an inmate working as a federal informant from the FBI, according to a lawsuit they filed this week. The allegations are the latest development in the ongoing question of whether top sheriff's officials obstructed an FBI investigation after learning that an inmate at Men's Central Jail was secretly collecting information on allegedly abusive and corrupt deputies. In the summer of 2011, sheriff's deputies discovered the inmate's cellphone with a history of calls to the FBI. In an unusual move, sheriff's officials responded by transferring the inmate, a convicted bank robber, to a different jail under aliases, including Robin Banks.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - -Two weeks after a Palestinian prisoner died of cancer in an Israeli jail, provoking violent protests in the West Bank, Israel released a critically ill Palestinian prisoner who had served 11 years of a 14-year-sentence. Muhammad Taj, 43, from the West Bank town of Toubas, was admitted to intensive care at the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah immediately after his release Thursday. Doctors there diagnosed his condition as “very critical.” Taj suffers from lung failure and has difficulty breathing.

BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad issued an order Tuesday freeing up to 7,000 prison inmates, but it was not clear whether the decree would apply to any of those jailed for participation in the rebellion that is seeking to overthrow his regime. Assad issued a combination of commuted sentences and a general amnesty for selected prisoners, according to the official state news agency. The amnesty did not include people convicted of "crimes of treason, espionage and terrorism," the news agency's English-language website said, so it presumably excluded opposition activists, whom the government labels terrorists.

Diane Tran is a 17-year-old honor student, a high school junior with two jobs, and now - thanks to one Houston judge and Texas student absentee laws - a criminal. So the world decided to lend her a hand. Going from job to job to support two siblings - while taking advanced-placement and dual-credit college level courses - Diane had missed too many days of school, according to KHOU in Houston, which first reported her story . So a judge, Lanny Moriarty, decided she needed to do some hard time.

The L.A. Board of Education will weigh a proposal Tuesday designed to speed up and improve investigations of teachers accused of sexual misconduct. The point is to quickly oust the guilty and exonerate the innocent after sexual misconduct allegations at Miramonte Elementary School sparked a surge of investigations and pushed the ranks of those in "teacher jail" to more than 300. "You don't need 300 days to figure out who's a monster," said Carpenter Elementary parent Julia Bricklin.

Federal prosecutors examining jail abuse and other problems in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department are expected to interview Sheriff Lee Baca on Friday. Part of the inquiry centers on whether Sheriff's Department officials obstructed an FBI investigation by holding inmate Anthony Brown under aliases and moving him. In an interview this week with The Times' editorial board, Baca said he's been assured that he's not a target of the investigation. Federal officials have declined to discuss details of the case.