Trials

To her sister, Angie Zapata was a teenage girl in every sense but the biological one. She spent hours spraying her long hair into compliance with Aqua Net, painting her eyelashes with L'Oreal and her skin with Cover Girl. She combed discount stores for clothes that would emphasize her curves. The effect was stunning. When the 18-year-old visited the store where her older sister, Monica, worked, men would make excuses to hover.

Jurors on Friday acquitted "Forrest Gump" actor Mykelti Williamson of attempted manslaughter in the stabbing of his ex-wife's companion. Williamson, 41, best known for playing shrimp-loving Bubba Blue in the Oscar-winning movie, was charged in the Jan. 5 stabbing of Leroy Edwards. Edwards, 32, underwent surgery to close an abdominal wound. Superior Court jurors deliberated about one day before returning the verdict.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department agreed Friday to pay almost $1 million to a sergeant who claimed the department retaliated against him after he ran against Sheriff Lee Baca in the 2002 elections and criticized Baca's management of healthcare in county jails, a sheriff's spokesman said. The settlement was reached shortly after a federal jury found the department liable for retaliation in a lawsuit brought by Sgt. Patrick Gomez, 51. Gomez said he was passed up for promotions and targeted for an internal inquiry because he was critical of Baca in the run-up to the election, in which he and another sergeant waged campaigns against the incumbent sheriff.

In the nation's largest-ever trademark infringement award, a Los Angeles jury Tuesday ordered pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. to pay a British company $143 million for stealing the Trovan name to market its controversial antibiotic. Legal experts called the verdict "staggering," saying it raises the stakes for companies that deliberately infringe other companies' trademarks. Jurors said Pfizer, the second-largest U.S.

On the West Side of San Bernardino, most everyone knew Johnny and Gilbert Agudo. They'd grown up in the tight-knit barrio. Handsome and charismatic, they were the presidents of two cliques of the West Side Verdugo street gang: Johnny, 31, of 7th Street Locos and Gilbert, 27, of the Little Counts. United, they led their gangs in feuds with rivals from other parts of town. But then things took an unexpected turn.

On his dead-end street of Section 8 apartments and slumping clapboard bungalows, Christopher Bowser cut an audacious figure for a young black man who had just arrived on the turf of a Latino gang with a record of killing going back half a century. Whenever Bowser left the Highland Park apartment he shared with his mother, he cruised the streets with a boombox thundering rap music, acting as if "the neighborhood was his neighborhood," in the words of one gang member.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Rarely does Sanya Richards-Ross picture herself climbing atop the medal stand after winning the 400-meter gold medal at the Olympics. Instead, she visualizes the final steps she must take to get there, driven by memories of having victory slip from her grasp at Beijing in 2008 when she faded to third down the stretch while weakened by an ailment she believes was misdiagnosed. "Every time I think about going back to the Olympics, I think about finishing stronger and getting to the finish line first and that's been my motivation the past four years," she said.

The teenage cousin of a drifter convicted of molesting, killing and dismembering a La Habra boy testified Wednesday that John Samuel Ghobrial savagely attacked him several years ago when the killer was still living in Egypt. Seeking to establish a pattern in Ghobrial's behavior, prosecutors brought the cousin and his mother from Egypt to tell his story on the first day of the trial's penalty phase.

Folks who know the civic-minded Hambarian family wonder how one of the clan's sons seemingly wandered so far astray, landing in an Orange County courtroom, accused of swindling millions of dollars from his hometown. Jeffrey Hambarian grew up in Orange, a small town with conservative values, his family steeped in an old-fashioned work ethic. His father, Sam, began collecting the city's garbage in the 1950s, tooling around in a road-weary pickup that spoke to his thriftiness.

The prosecution closed with the mother of victim James E. Chaney describing how the family waited in vain for him to come home for dinner. The defense opened with a brother and sister of the accused, Edgar Ray Killen, telling the court Saturday that Killen was with them that day, at a backyard Father's Day gathering. Killen, 80, is accused of directing the brutal ambush in 1964 that ended in the beating and shooting deaths of Chaney and two other civil rights workers.