Misconduct

In a rare case of an active-duty general charged with criminal offenses, a brigadier general at Ft. Bragg, N.C., is scheduled to face a court-martial Tuesday on charges of forcible sodomy, sexual misconduct and compelling female officers to perform sex acts. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, a veteran of five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is accused of conducting improper sexual relationships with subordinate female officers and a civilian. Prosecutors say he forced a female captain to engage in sex and threatened to kill the officer and her family if she told anyone.

Los Angeles school district officials knew of sexual misconduct allegations in 2009 against a teacher at a Wilmington campus who was arrested more than three years later, the district's top administrator confirmed Tuesday. The teacher, Robert Pimentel, 57, was arrested in January. Some of the charges result from alleged conduct at De La Torre Elementary that occurred well after senior administrators apparently became aware of concerns raised by parents in 2009. L.A. schools Supt.

A team of government lawyers prosecuting Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska never fully reviewed evidence that could have bolstered his defense, were inadequately supervised and withheld information that would have “seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness” in his 2008 corruption trial, a special counsel has determined. The 514-page report from Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III, however, stopped short of urging criminal misconduct charges against the six Stevens prosecutors because the federal judge in the case never “specifically” ordered prosecutors to turn over helpful material to the defense.

The Medical Board of California on Friday embraced a host of reforms aimed at combating prescription drug abuse and reducing overdose deaths but balked at a proposal to strip it of its authority to investigate physician misconduct. The board, meeting in Los Angeles, voted to support proposed legislation that would upgrade the state's prescription drug monitoring system, require coroners to report prescription drug overdose deaths to the board, and give the panel new power to halt a doctor's prescribing in some cases.

Fraud, plagiarism and other forms of misconduct are responsible for the majority of retractions in biomedical journals, according to a new study. The finding, published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , contradicts earlier studies that suggest most retractions are the result of errors. In a review of 2,047 retracted biomedical papers, study authors found that only 21% were withdrawn due to research error. But 67% were pulled due to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud, duplicate publication and plagiarism.

LONDON - A senior Scotland Yard detective was found guilty Thursday of trying to sell confidential information to a tabloid in the first conviction of a police officer in a corruption probe spawned by Britain's phone-hacking scandal. A London jury took just a few hours to find Det. Chief Inspector April Casburn, one of the force's highest-ranking female detectives, guilty of misconduct in public office for leaking details of the phone-hacking investigation and seeking payment for it. The publication to which she made the offer, the News of the World, was the very newspaper under investigation for allegedly tapping into the private voicemails of thousands of people to feed its appetite for scoops.

Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans. Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat.

Sarah Jones, a former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader, pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old former student while she was a teacher at a northern Kentucky high school. "I began a romantic relationship while he was a student and I was in a position of authority," Jones, 27, said Monday, her voice cracking during a hearing in Kenton County Circuit Court in Covington, Ky. Jones pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct and custodial interference as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

I came across the Shop Talk article recently regarding when tardiness constitutes misconduct (Aug. 15) and was disappointed in the advice. While it is difficult to show, to the satisfaction of the Employment Development Department, that an excessive tardiness problem is "willful" misconduct, there are ways to prove misconduct. A properly documented final incident is essential to prove misconduct for excessive tardiness. If the employee states that the tardiness was caused by a horrible freeway accident, for example, the EDD will almost always determine that there was no "willful" misconduct.

The Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review has issued a scathing report on internal investigations in the county Probation Department, finding that at least 31 sworn employees who committed misconduct and abuse will probably escape discipline because investigators took too long to complete their cases. "It's a big problem, huge," said Michael Gennaco, the lawyer who led the three-month review at the request of the county's Board of Supervisors. "The system is broken down in so many ways, from the inception of the investigation all the way through.

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.

After weeks of pummeling her rival Eric Garcetti over his ethical standards, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel can run quickly through her list of reasons that she sees her former City Council colleague as dishonest and untrustworthy. For starters, she alleged on a visit to a downtown fashion school Friday, Garcetti hid his Beverly Hills oil drilling investment, took campaign money from a felon and did the bidding of the powerful Department of Water and Power union at City Hall in a way that she never would, despite his accusations to the contrary.

Two senior administrators and two principals have been removed from their jobs pending the completion of an investigation into how they handled sexual misconduct allegations against a teacher at a Wilmington school, district officials told The Times. Those placed on paid leave are Linda Del Cueto, the senior instructional administrator in the San Fernando Valley; Mike Romero, head of the adult education division; David Kooper, principal at Gulf Elementary in Wilmington; and Valerie Moses, principal at Los Angeles Elementary in Harvard Heights.

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.

SACRAMENTO -- The state ethics agency has found insufficient evidence that state Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) violated conflict of interest laws when she asked a staffer to call prison officials for the status of a state claim filed by her husband's company. However, the intervention by her office drew an advisory letter Tuesday from an attorney for the state Fair Political Practices Commission indicating that the activity created an "appearance" of a conflict and "more care should be taken" in the future.

SACRAMENTO - A catalog of recent misconduct cases in California's corrections system includes allegations that prison guards groped and grappled with inmates, brought them drugs, shared their booze and solicited them for sex. The two-volume report, issued this week by the independent Office of Inspector General, chronicles 278 disciplinary cases the watchdog agency monitored from July to December 2012. The report includes numerous allegations of prison workers delivering drugs and mobile phones to inmates, having sex with them and turning a blind eye to or even arranging inmate assaults.

Hundreds of prosecutors in California ? including many in Los Angeles County ? have committed misconduct with near impunity as authorities failed to either report or discipline them, according to a report released Monday. The misconduct ranged from asking witnesses improper questions during trial to failing to turn over evidence that could help a defendant and presenting false evidence in court, according to the report, which was issued by an innocence project at the Santa Clara University School of Law. The researchers discovered 707 cases in which state and federal courts and appellate courts found prosecutorial misconduct in opinions issued between 1997 and 2009.

A team of government lawyers prosecuting Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska never fully reviewed evidence that could have bolstered his defense, was inadequately supervised, and withheld information that would have "seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness," a special counsel said in a report released Thursday. But Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III stopped short of urging criminal misconduct charges against the prosecutors because, he said, the judge in the case never specifically ordered prosecutors to turn over material helpful to the defense.

A catalog of recent misconduct cases in California's corrections system includes allegations that prison guards groped and grappled with inmates, brought them drugs, shared their booze and solicited them for sex. The two-volume report , created by the independent Office of Inspector General, chronicles 117 incidents within state prisons and 93 investigations from July to December 2012. It starts with a cook at a central California prison accused of asking inmates to sit on his lap, "tickle and fondle him. " It ends with the tale of a parole agent who shot the charging dog of his parolee.

The number of Los Angeles County Probation Department employees investigated for serious crimes last year remained roughly the same as in 2011 despite efforts to weed out misconduct through improved training, according to a report released Wednesday. In 2012, 64 employees were either arrested or questioned in crimes ranging from burglary to attempted murder, according to a report by the county's Office of Independent Review. In 2011, 69 probation employees were arrested. "The frequency of off-duty employee misconduct continues to plague the department," according to the report.