Prisons

A California man diagnosed with schizophrenia was sentenced to 17 years in prison Monday for his role in a 2011 plot to attack a Seattle military center for new recruits. Walli Mujahidh, 34, born Frederick Domingue Jr. in Long Beach, had pleaded guilty to his role in the plot.  His partner, Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, born Joseph Anthony Davis, 35, received an 18-year sentence two weeks ago after pleading guilty to plotting the attack. Police were tipped off by an informant, Robert Childs, who was later paid $90,400 to help authorities monitor Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh as he pretended to be part of the plot, according to court documents.  Abdul-Latif gave Childs $800 to buy automatic rifles and grenades for the attack, according to the documents.

A man linked to a white supremacist gang has been apprehended in Colorado and will be questioned in the shooting death of the state's prisons chief, officials said Friday. James Lohr, 47, was taken into custody in Colorado Springs on Friday and turned over to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, Lt. Jeff Kramer told the Los Angeles Times. Lohr is being held on three outstanding misdemeanor warrants stemming from events unrelated to the shooting of Colorado Corrections Director Tom Clements, the sheriff's spokesman said by telephone.

A federal judge on Friday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown's claim that California has improved inmate care enough to end 17 years of court oversight of its less-crowded prisons. Brown has vowed to challenge any such rejection, if need be, before the same U.S. Supreme Court that less than two years ago deemed California prison conditions shocking. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's decision is a blow to Brown's larger ambition to remove court caps on prison crowding and end court control over a $1.6-billion prison medical program.

Documentarian Shola Lynch first encountered controversial political activist and professor Angela Davis over 20 years ago while still a student at the University of Texas in Austin. Davis delivered a speech that "was all about justice and race, fighting the good fight," recalled Lynch, now 44, on the phone from her home in New York. "In college, that is what we were all about. That was the time we were trying to figure it out. What did equality mean? What does it mean to be black?

SACRAMENTO - A federal judge Friday rejected Gov. Jerry Brown's claim that California has improved its mental healthcare for inmates enough to end 17 years of court oversight, a victory for prisoners' lawyers who say they will use it to seek further sanctions against the state. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's 68-page decision is a blow to Brown's larger ambition to halt court control of California's entire prison medical program and to remove court limits on the prison population.

Wesley Snipes has been released from prison and transferred into a house-arrest situation. The "Blade" and "White Men Can't Jump" actor got out of the federal pen on Tuesday, TMZ reported , after serving the bulk of a three-year sentence for failing to file tax returns in 1999, 2000 and 2001, during which time he earned $40 million. Snipes was convicted in 2008 in Florida, but fought his sentence vigorously right up until the week or so before he went behind bars in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9, 2010.

In a case that could have impact statewide, a Los Angeles jury Friday found the operators of a west San Fernando Valley charter school guilty of illegally taking or misappropriating more than $200,000 in public funds. Together, Yevgeny "Eugene" Selivanov, 40, and his wife, Tatyana Berkovich, 36, faced 26 felony counts for using state money in ways they insisted were legal under laws that apply to nonprofits and charter schools in California. Over several years, for example, they spent more than $34,000 on meals, entertainment and gifts that they classified as business expenses or gestures of appreciation for teachers.

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.

Eleven members of an elite Indonesian military unit were behind the slayings of four detainees at the Cebongan prison last month, military investigators told reporters this week. Brig. Gen. Unggul K. Yudhoyono said the prison killings were a revenge attack after a member of Kopassus, a military unit that conducts special operations, was fatally stabbed at a cafe, Indonesian media reported. The slain men had been arrested after his death. Masked gunmen stormed into the prison March 23 and fatally shot the four suspects.

Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona will continue serving time in federal prison on a witness tampering conviction after a judge denied a request by the former lawman's attorneys to shorten his sentence. Attorneys for Carona, 57, who was once hailed as "America's sheriff," argued that a 66-month sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford on a witness tampering conviction should be adjusted because of changes in the law. So far, he has served two years of 5 1/2-year prison sentence.