Sentencing

Lauryn Hill was sentenced to three months in federal prison Monday for failing to pay taxes on an estimated $1.8 million in income. U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Cox Arleo handed down the sentence in Newark, N.J., ruling that the Grammy-winning singer would have to complete an additional three months under house arrest followed by nine months of supervised release and ordering her to pay a $60,000 fine, according to TMZ, the Associated...

A Santa Ana man was sentenced Friday to 16 years in prison for killing a 2-year-old boy in a drunk driving crash and fleeing the scene. Angel Alberto Cruz Perez, 24, left a restaurant where he had been drinking with a friend on Nov. 9, 2011 , according to prosecutors. Driving a a Toyota SUV, Perez sped through an intersection at North Bewley and 5 th streets in Santa Ana, striking a woman crossing the street with her daughter in her arms and a toddler by her side. The woman, Yesenia Romero, was knocked onto the hood of the vehicle with the 1-year-old girl, and the toddler was pulled underneath the SUV, prosecutors said.

This post has been corrected. See the note below for details. BEIJING -- Adding to the strained relations with the U.S., North Korea said Thursday that an American citizen held since November has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the country. Kenneth Bae, a Korean American tour operator from Washington state, was tried Tuesday by the country's highest court,  the official Korean Central News Agency said. The brief dispatch from the capital, Pyongyang, provided no details of any crime.

  A former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department employee was sentenced Tuesday to 18 years in federal prison for seeking to have sex with children and distributing child pornography, authorities said. Mark Robin Rainwater, 46, was arrested on Oct. 12 at Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Ala., with sex toys and children's toys in his luggage after he had arrived from California to meet two boys, according to federal authorities.  Rainwater was charged with possessing more than 200 videos and thousands of images of child pornography, "some of which involved babies, toddlers and prepubescent children involved in sadomasochistic and lewd and lascivious behavior," the U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham said in a statement.  Rainwater worked for the Sheriff's Department for 14 years in the information technology section, according to the U.S. attorney's office.  Rainwater thought he was going to have sex with an 8-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy, authorities said.

LONDON -- Three men convicted of leading a plot to launch terrorist attacks in Britain to rival the Sept. 11 assault and surpass the 2005 deadly bombings on London's transit system were given sentences Friday ranging from life to 15 years' imprisonment. Sentencing the men in Woolwich Crown Court in East London, Judge Richard Henriques told Irfan Naseer, 31, the ringleader of a gang of would-be bombers from Birmingham, that he would serve a life sentence on each of five counts for planning terrorist acts between December 2010 and September 2011.

Comedian Katt Williams avoided jail Thursday when he was sentenced to 90 days of community service after pleading no contest to misdemeanor reckless evasion of an officer in Sacramento. The original sentence was 180 days in county jail, according to the Sacramento Bee , but the judge converted it to the community service stretch with the other 90 days stayed if he does the work and stays out of trouble. The charge was originally a felony vehicle code violation. PHOTOS: Celebrity mug shots The chase that sparked the charge occurred last November, during a rough patch for the comic as he played dates on the West Coast and bumped up against the law repeatedly along the way. Driving a three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder motorcycle, Williams led police on a chase through sidewalks and walkways in downtown Sacramento after they approached him on a disturbing-the-peace complaint, Fox40 News reported at the time.

Newport Beach Councilwoman Leslie Daigle on Tuesday blasted the recent sentencing of a driver who killed a popular doctor in a September hit-and-run accident. Michael Jason Lopez, 40, of Anaheim was sentenced this month after pleading guilty to killing Catherine "Kit" Campion Ritz, who practiced in Newport and lived in Irvine, while she was bicycling along Newport Coast in September. Four years in prison and one year in county jail is too light a sentence for a man who left the doctor in the street to die, Daigle said during the oral reports portion of Tuesday's council meeting.

When the casket that was supposed to hold the earthly remains of Jim Davis was finally lowered into the ground, the only thing missing was the late Mr. Davis. The coffin had been weighed down to simulate the approximate heft of a corpse. And Jim Davis was not inside the box. Federal prosecutors said the phony funeral was among the inventive tricks that Jean Crump - a onetime Long Beach mortician - used to loot insurance companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. On Tuesday, she was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

Lauryn Hill's sentence in her tax-evasion case has been postponed to May 6 because the singer had not yet paid restitution on the money she owes. She now has a two-week reprieve to gather the funds. The eight-time Grammy winner appeared in a New Jersey federal court Monday to receive her sentence on charges of not paying taxes on $1.8 million in earnings. She had entered a guilty plea to three counts of tax evasion in June 2012, admitting that she intentionally failed to file tax returns in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Two Silicon Valley men were sentenced Monday for a "sextortion" plot in which they tried to extort professional poker players with threats of publicizing naked photographs and other private information stolen from email accounts. Tyler Schrier, 23, of Menlo Park was sentenced to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy, extortion and unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. As part of the plea, Schrier admitted he also extorted $26,000 from professional poker players in another plot.