Jury Selection

Jury selection began Wednesday in the trial of a former Santa Paula man charged with defrauding several people and writing a bad check to buy a bankrupt hospital. Liam Patrick Russell, 34, now a Los Angeles resident, is charged with 36 felonies, including grand theft, sales tax fraud, forgery, false personation, writing bad checks and perjury. Russell, who is free on $40,000 bail, was indicted twice within the last year by the Ventura County grand jury.

A jury of 11 women and one man was chosen Thursday for the trial of two doctors accused of negligence in the death of Hank Gathers, the Loyola Marymount University basketball star who collapsed on March 4, 1990, while playing in a postseason game. He died less than two hours later of a heart disorder. Selection of the jury came after 59 Los Angeles County residents were questioned in the Southwest District Superior Court in Torrance.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin today in the second trial connected to the 1987 shooting of Mustang topless bar financier William Carroll. Michael Anthony Rizzitello, 62, who has a long history of racketeering and fraud convictions, is accused by prosecutors of shooting Carroll three times in the back of the head, leaving him permanently blind. Prosecutors claim Rizzitello wanted to take over control of the Mustang and decided he would have to eliminate Carroll first.

Jury selection will begin today in the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the parents of college student Cara Knott against Craig Peyer, the former California Highway Patrol officer convicted of her 1986 murder. Attorneys for the Knott family, Peyer, the state of California and the CHP argued pretrial motions Thursday. Knott, 20, of El Cajon was found strangled on Dec. 28, 1986. Her body was found below a bridge near the Mercy Road exit on Interstate 15.

More than 250 potential jurors gathered at a convention center in Port Allen as jury selection began in the first murder trial of the man suspected in a series of killings of women. Derrick Todd Lee is charged in the beating and stabbing death of Geralyn DeSoto, 21, who was found in her home with her neck slashed in January 2002. If convicted, Lee would face a mandatory life prison sentence.

More than three years after eight bodies were found in a smoldering fishing boat in a quiet cove, jury selection begins today in the trial of a crew member accused of the killings. John Kenneth Peel, 25, a boat builder from Bellingham, Wash., faces eight counts of first-degree murder and one charge of first-degree arson.