CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 1, 2013 | By Tony Perry
Three 19-year-olds were sentenced Friday to prison for the robbery and murder of a San Diego college student who answered a Craigslist ad for a computer. Rashon Abernathy was sentenced to 50 years in prison and Seandell Jones and Shaquille Jordan to 25 years to life, all by Superior Court Judge Kerry Wells. Abernathy was also convicted of an earlier Craigslist robbery of a Navy sailor. During the trial, prosecutors said that the three tricked Garrett Berki, 18, a student at San Diego Mesa College, into going to a location in the Paradise Hills neighborhood in May 2011 by using phony names in the listing. Instead of selling him a computer, the three robbed him at gunpoint of $600, prosecutors said.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 30, 2013 | By Andrew Blankstein and Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times
A 22-year-old Disneyland employee faces the possibility of six years in state prison after Orange County prosecutors Thursday charged him in connection with two explosions that forced a partial evacuation of the Anaheim amusement park. Christian Barnes, who appeared in Orange County Superior Court via a closed-circuit video, entered a not-guilty plea to one count of possessing a destructive device in a public place. The Long Beach man is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, half the amount he was held on when he was first booked by Anaheim police investigators.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 29, 2013 | By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times
A teenager accused of killing his girlfriend's parents and then driving to stores for party supplies with one of the victims in the back of the vehicle was convicted Wednesday of murder. Prosecutors argued that Giovanni Gallardo and his girlfriend plotted the October 2011 killings and later planned to throw a Halloween party in the Compton mobile home where the adults had been slain. The victims' bodies were found in separate, shallow graves. Jose Lara, 51, had been handcuffed and his body covered with a blanket.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 29, 2013 | By Paige St. John
Laywers for Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday argued that he should not be held in contempt for failing to comply with federal court orders to reduce prison crowding, saying it is now up to the Legislature to act. Brown in April offered the federal court plans to reduce prison crowding by about 7,000 more inmates, "under protest" and still not enough to meet the court's population caps. Legislative leaders said they opposed most of what the governor proposed, such as continuing to pay private companies to house inmates out of state.
NATIONAL
May 28, 2013 | By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave a second chance Tuesday to prisoners who come up with strong new evidence of their innocence, but who have waited too long to file an appeal. In a 5-4 decision, the justices lifted the one-year time limit for filing such appeals in a federal court. Only the rare case will benefit from this leniency, they said. A prisoner must make a "convincing showing of actual innocence," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. The new evidence must be strong enough to persuade a judge that "no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find him guilty" at his trial had the jury known of it, she said.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 25, 2013 | By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times
Abel Maldonado was a young Latino rancher and fresh-faced state lawmaker when he addressed the Republican National Convention in 2000 and was hailed as the GOP's future. Nine years later, he parlayed his deciding vote on tax increases into an appointment as lieutenant governor, albeit for a brief stay. He lost a bid to remain in that job in 2010, and was defeated in a run for Congress last year. But he jumped back onto center stage this month with a brash campaign to repeal Gov. Jerry Brown's corrections policy known as realignment.