Trials

After months of testimony, national headlines and the profanity-laced audiotapes, the sweeping public corruption case against former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona may end up coming down to the testimony of one man: Don Haidl.

An e-mail in which Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III allegedly talks about a drug binge can be used as evidence during his criminal trial, a federal judge ruled. Lawyers for Nicholas, an Orange County and Silicon Valley billionaire, had argued that the 2002 message to his estranged wife was privileged because it was a personal communication. However, U.S. District Judge Cormac J.

They listened to the government's secretly recorded tapes over and over. They heard what the prosecution's star witness had to say and didn't believe him. Yet in the end, the jurors who acquitted former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona of five of six felonies Friday were most swayed by U.S. Dist. Judge Andrew Guilford's instruction that they must keep an eye on the calendar.

All charges against Guantanamo prisoners should be dropped in light of the admission by the top war-crimes tribunal official that some of the 22 men facing trial were tortured, the tribunal's defense chief said Friday. The letter to Convening Authority Susan J. Crawford urged her to clear the controversial court's slate before the Tuesday inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has vowed to shut Guantanamo as one of his first actions.

Two jurors in the high-profile corruption trial of former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona complained to the judge during deliberations that they felt intimidated and pressured to side with the ex-lawman, according to interviews and jurors' notes unsealed Wednesday. The revelations provide a glimpse into the strained and sometimes awkward deliberations that unfolded inside the jury room before the panel returned its verdict Friday and acquitted Carona of five felonies.

Raymond Lee Oyler, who is charged with setting the October 2006 Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters, was a serial arsonist whose girlfriend once gave him an ultimatum to stop setting fires or she would leave him, prosecutors said Thursday. In opening statements at Oyler's trial, Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Hestrin told jurors that the 38-year-old auto mechanic had set more than 20 fires in the San Gorgonio Pass area in the months before the fatal blaze.

After weeks of complex scientific testimony in which forensic experts held forth on the intricacies of the human anatomy, the aerodynamics of blood and the microscopic properties of fabric, the prosecution in Phil Spector's murder retrial rested its case Thursday with a lay witness and an appeal to common sense. A suicidal woman, the final government witness suggested, does not buy new shoes.

Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich compared himself to Nelson Mandela on Sunday and impugned the integrity of his impeachment trial the day before it was to begin. Appearing on NBC's "Today" show, Blagojevich said the trial was "rigged and it's fixed." "I think what you'll see is a roll call that will be pre-designed, and we'll see whether or not I even get one vote," he said.

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese militia leader facing charges of recruiting child soldiers to rape and kill, on Monday became the first defendant to go on trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The court is the world's first permanent venue to prosecute war crimes, genocide and other major crimes against humanity. Cases such as these have mostly been tried at temporary courts, from Nuremberg, Germany, to more recent U.N.

Phil Spector was peeved. The most important houseguests of his life -- a dozen jurors, a judge and a cadre of attorneys -- were set to arrive at his turreted mansion to inspect the scene of an actress' death and he was appalled at the setup dictated by the court. "I won't allow it. It's still my [expletive] house," Spector typed in the Aug. 8, 2007, e-mail to his attorneys.