Sentencing

Two people were sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to grand theft for taking at least $700,000 from homeowners looking to prevent foreclosure, the California attorney general's office said. Rosa Conrado, 51, of San Bernardino, charged with six counts, was sentenced to 72 months in prison, and Martin Jesus Flores, 33, of Baldwin Park, got three years' probation on one count. Alejandrina Maldonado, 33, of St. Lucie, Fla., was sentenced Feb.

A Chinese activist who sought to document shoddy construction that contributed to deaths in China's devastating 2008 earthquake has been sentenced to five years in prison for subversion, his lawyer said Tuesday. Tan Zuoren was formally accused of inciting subversion of state power in e-mailed comments about the bloody crackdown on June 4, 1989, on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. But Tan's supporters and Amnesty International say he was detained because he planned to issue an independent report on the collapse of school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake, in which about 70,000 people died.

Kimberly Pandelios moved to Northridge in November 1991 to make it as a model. Instead, the 20-year-old wife and mother was drowned in a mountain stream 13 months later by a man who told her he could help make her dream come true. On Thursday, David Rademaker, 42, of Burbank was sentenced to life in prison without parole for Pandelios' slaying. His attorney, Chad Calabria, said he would appeal.

Raymond Lee Oyler, the Beaumont mechanic convicted of setting the 2006 Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters, was sentenced to death Friday by a judge who said the serial arsonist had set out to "create havoc." "He became more and more proficient," said Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan. "He knew young men and women would put their lives on the line to protect people and property, yet he continued anyway."

Professional skateboarder Joshua Swindell, convicted of the second-degree murder in the fatal beating of a man outside an Azusa bar, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison Tuesday after a judge rejected his attorney's argument that the jury should have been given the option of manslaughter. "This was a vicious felony assault. This was always in my mind a murder case," said Pomona Superior Court Judge George W. Trammell before sentencing the 23-year-old Diamond Bar skateboarder.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass on Monday removed plans to create a commission to reevaluate California's sentencing laws from a package intended to cut spending on state prisons, saying she expected to win approval for the revised proposal later this week. It was unclear whether Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) -- senators ratified a $525-million package of spending reductions Thursday -- would go along with the Assembly's limited version. The sentencing review is one of Steinberg's priorities, and his house would have to approve the Assembly's changes before the legislation could go to the governor.

A Superior Court judge sentenced a 17-year-old girl Tuesday to the California Youth Authority for the slaying of actor Merlin Santana. Monique King, who was tried as an adult, will be released at age 25. She could have been sentenced to 26 years to life in prison. She was 15 when she told Damien Andre Gates, 22, and Brandon Douglas Bynes, 23, that Santana had raped her. They found Santana in South Los Angeles, and Gates fatally shot him. King later admitted she had lied about the rape.

A businessman convicted of second-degree murder in the drowning of the ex-wife of Jackson 5 member Tito Jackson was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison. Donald Bohana, 61, said at the trial that Delores "DeeDee" Jackson died in a swimming pool accident, but prosecutors said she had been beaten and choked. Bohana and Jackson, 39, had been dating about three months when she drowned in August 1994 at his home.

A Santa Barbara County judge sentenced a 22-year-old man to life in prison Tuesday for his role in the abduction and murder of a 15-year-old West Hills boy. Jesse Rugge of Santa Barbara, one of five young men charged in the crimes, was convicted in May of kidnapping Nicholas Markowitz on Aug. 6, 2000, near his home, but was acquitted in the boy's murder that occurred two days later outside Santa Barbara. Senior Deputy Dist. Atty.