Trial

The attorney for a gang member kicked in the head by an El Monte police officer at the end of a televised car chase thinks his client has a great case. On Thursday, Nick Pacheco filed a $5-million legal claim against the city on behalf of the 23-year-old. But just in case, the attorney said his heavily tattooed client will be getting an extreme makeover in time for a trial, complete with a thick Tom Selleck mustache -- think "Magnum P.I."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, seeking to make monkeys of the legions of scientists who have suggested that climate change is a significant problem, wants to put them on trial. Specifically, it wants the Environmental Protection Agency to stage a "Scopes monkey trial" for the 21st century, appointing a judge to hear evidence on the question of whether global warming endangers Americans' health. It's an intriguing idea. Congress is considering legislation aimed at fighting climate change that would force the country to reinvent its entire energy infrastructure.

Hard-line supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad employed the nation's judiciary against two major moderate political parties in their boldest attempt to excise Iran's reform movement from the political scene. The prosecution at the fourth session of an extraordinary legal proceeding, derided by international and domestic legal experts as a "show trial," put a severely disabled reformist leader on trial and urged the judge to outlaw the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organization, two pillars of the reform movement that took control of the country's presidency and parliament during a liberal era that began in the late 1990s and ended earlier this decade.

French judges have ordered ex-Societe Generale trader Jerome Kerviel to stand trial over transactions that cost the bank billions of dollars, a judicial official said. Kerviel is charged with forgery, breach of trust and unauthorized computer use. Investigating judges sent the case to trial in Paris on Monday, the official said. The trial is not expected to begin until early 2010. In January 2008, the bank announced losses of more than $7 billion in a scandal it blamed on unauthorized trades by a single trader, Kerviel.

The husband and wife accused of kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard 18 years ago, holding her captive and raping her will be held in jail until they stand trial in the next year or 18 months. El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Douglas Phimister ruled Monday that bail for Phillip Garrido, 58, should be set at $30 million. But because the convicted sex offender is also on a so-called hold for violating parole, there is no chance he would be set free on bail. In setting the high amount for Garrido's bail, Phimister said he considered "the protection of the public, the fact that Mr. Garrido was on parole at the time these events occurred allegedly, the seriousness of the charge and the fact that the court must consider the injuries to the victim."

Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin went on trial Monday, accused of conspiring to smear Nicolas Sarkozy in 2004 and wreck his chances of becoming president. The trial, expected to run for a month, will focus on the biggest political scandal France has seen in years -- a murky story featuring forged documents, spies and bitter enmities. The so-called Clearstream affair nearly destroyed the center-right government of then-President Jacques Chirac, in which the former diplomat De Villepin and the blunt-spoken outsider Sarkozy were rival ministers.

Russell Otis was "a predator" who used his position as boys basketball coach at Compton's Dominguez High School to try and pressure one of his young players into a sexual encounter with him, a prosecutor alleged in court Thursday. Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan King said Otis didn't use a gun or a knife to get his way. The coach's weapon, King said, "was his position of authority." King's comments came during the opening day of Otis' trial on charges that he made unwanted sexual advances to a player and misappropriated a $15,000 check from Nike into his personal bank account.

Five men were convicted today of plotting a terrorist attack by collecting bomb-making instructions and purchasing explosive chemicals in Australia's largest terrorist conspiracy. A jury deliberated for a month before finding the men guilty of conspiring to commit acts in preparation for a terrorist attack. Each faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. During the trial, which began in November, prosecutor Richard Maidment told the jury in New South Wales state Supreme Court that the men planned to use explosive devices or firearms to commit "extreme violence" in a bid to force Australia's government to change its policy on Middle East conflicts.

It's the duel of the decade, if you believe the French press, which has lavishly painted a monthlong trial pitting former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin against his longtime rival, President Nicolas Sarkozy, as the ultimate battle between France's alpha politicians. "Who will kill whom?" ran a recent headline in the French weekly Jeune Afrique. The left-leaning satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo ran a cartoon of a devil-horned Sarkozy holding up De Villepin's head and gripping a bloodstained knife labeled Clearstream, a reference to the bank clearing house at the center of the trial.

A French magistrate Friday ordered former President Jacques Chirac to stand trial on charges of misusing millions of dollars in public funds as mayor of Paris by allegedly paying friends and colleagues for work they did not perform. Magistrate Xaviere Simeoni led the investigation into allegations that Chirac invented job contracts for several friends and colleagues while he was mayor from 1977 to 1995. He is accused of paying them more than $5 million in public-funded salaries.