Witnesses

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, known for her role on HBO's "The Wire," was released from jail in Baltimore after being picked up on a warrant for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors handling a murder case in which she is a witness. At a Circuit Court hearing Friday, an attorney for Pearson, who had planned to be in New York for the filming of a movie, told the judge she had not received court notices and was willing to honor her obligations as a witness to a killing. Authorities said Pearson witnessed Steven James Lashley stab three men, killing one, in 2005.

A woman who was the only witness to a murder has been slain, forcing authorities to release the three suspects in the original killing. Felicia Stanberry, 23, was found in the street Thursday night with bullet wounds to the head and neck. Police said they would have to release three men implicated in a Jan. 6 murder because Stanberry was the only witness. Assistant Dist. Atty. Thomas Norman said there is "no doubt" Stanberry was killed for cooperating with police.

The former wife of a man accused of raping a female porn star pleaded no contest Thursday to trying to dissuade the actress from testifying. Rebecca Ethel Holland, 33, of Los Angeles was sentenced to a year in county jail and five years' probation. She was accused of threatening the woman that her picture would be in newspapers if she testified. Most actresses in adult films perform under fake names.

A 66-year-old chauffeur who says he has helped solve more than 40 crimes by passing information he gleaned from passengers to Anaheim police said he was repaid with a kidnapping and beating. Police refused to confirm that Kamran Mashayekhi is an informant. They did say that officers arrested Gilbert Carrillo, 26, at his Buena Park home Thursday and that he was being held Monday on charges of robbing and imprisoning Mashayekhi. He was also charged with threatening a witness.

More analysis will determine if footage might be missing from a second cellphone that Kern County authorities seized from witnesses who shot video of sheriff's deputies beating a Bakersfield man who later died, one of the witnesses said Wednesday. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood called in the FBI earlier this week after discovering that another phone that witnesses said contained video of the David Silva beating had no footage. Youngblood said the second phone did have some video of the incident.

A member of Tupac Shakur's entourage who witnessed the rapper's slaying was found shot to death in New Jersey, creating another roadblock for Las Vegas homicide detectives. Yafeu Fula, 19, was shot once in the head and found slumped in the third-floor hallway of a housing project about 3:48 a.m. Sunday in Orange, N.J., Orange Police Capt. Richard Conte said Wednesday. Fula was a member of Shakur's backup group, the Outlaws Immortalz, who toured with Shakur.

Protected criminal witnesses housed at the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix lost their bid Tuesday to prevent double-bunking, a proposal they fear will risk the lives of government witnesses and their families. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate a lawsuit filed by 54 witnesses enrolled in the federal Witness Security Program, which provides special protection and new identities for witnesses who have testified against dangerous criminal figures and organizations.

A 41-year-old man was in custody after a bizarre attempt to rob a Malibu bank using a false beard, wig and bicycle, officials said. Gordon Gleason handed a Great Western Bank teller a note demanding cash, said sheriff's Det. Richard Schilling. While the teller was complying with the demand, other bank employees, tipped off by the suspect's ill-fitting reddish-brown wig and false beard, called the Sheriff's Department, Schilling said.

Police are seeking witnesses to an accident in which an electrical contractor was killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer rig. Robert Anthony Vasquez, 29, was on his way to Disneyland to do contract work about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when his pickup collided with a Peterbilt rig pulling out of a parking lot in the 2100 block of East Ball Road, police investigator Rick Alexander said.

For all its oddities, the presidential impeachment case soon may resemble most other trials in one key respect: There will likely be witnesses. That is what the Senate Republican majority wants. And that, Democrats concede, is what it will get. "If Republicans want witnesses, we have no power to stop them," Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), conceded Friday. Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) added: "In the end, we're going to have witnesses."