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Ex-UFC fighter War Machine gets year in jail
Criminal Law |
2010/07/02 09:15
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Ultimate Fighting Championship competitor War Machine has been sentenced to a year in jail for violating probation after he assaulted people at two San Diego bars. War Machine pleaded guilty Thursday to two felony counts of assault and to violating probation in a previous assault case. He has a professional fight scheduled for July 9 and was ordered to surrender for jail a week later. Prosecutors say the 28-year-old fighter knocked away some bottles and glasses on a bar, cutting a bartender. He also got into a scuffle and punched a security guard. His attorney says an acquaintance started one of the fights but War Machine failed to stop it. The fighter legally changed his name from Jon Koppenhaver.
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Guilty verdict in NYC beating death of immigrant
Criminal Law |
2010/06/29 06:00
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A man was convicted Monday of murder as a hate crime during his retrial on charges that he beat an Ecuadorean immigrant with an aluminum baseball bat after mistaking him and his brother for a gay couple. Jurors deliberated for about seven hours before convicting Keith Phoenix in the death of Jose Sucuzhanay. He also was convicted of attempted assault as a hate crime in the attack on Romel Sucuzhanay. The trial started about six weeks after the mistrial was declared on May 11 when a juror refused to deliberate. The brothers were walking home from a bar after a party at a Brooklyn church on Dec. 7, 2008. Romel Sucuzhanay had put his coat around his brother to keep him warm and was helping him walk because he was drunk. Meanwhile, Hakim Scott, 26 and Phoenix, 30, also leaving a party, pulled up in a sport utility vehicle. They began yelling anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs, according to Assistant District Attorney Josh Hanshaft.
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Calif man accused of extortion through hacking
Criminal Law |
2010/06/24 08:58
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Federal agents have arrested a man accused of hacking into computers to obtain personal data to extort sexually explicit videos from women and teenage girls in exchange for keeping their information private. The Los Angeles U.S. attorney's office says 31-year-old Luis Mijangos was arrested Tuesday in Santa Ana. FBI experts say he infected more than 100 computers used by about 230 people, including at least 44 juveniles. The alleged scheme involved using peer-to-peer networks to infect computers, induce victims to download malware disguised as songs, and control those computers to spread malware through contact lists. Mijangos allegedly searched computers for sexual or intimate images to blackmail victims into making videos for him. Prosecutors say he also was able to control some webcams to capture intimate scenes. |
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5 militia men must stay locked up awaiting trial
Criminal Law |
2010/06/23 04:57
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Five members of a Midwest militia charged with conspiring to rebel against the government and use weapons of mass destruction will remain in jail while awaiting trial, an appeals court said Tuesday, reversing a decision by a federal judge. Each man is dangerous and "no conditions of release will reasonably assure the safety of the community," two judges on the three-judge panel said. During a series of raids in late March, authorities arrested nine members of a southern Michigan group called Hutaree. The government claims they were scheming to kill a police officer, then attack law enforcement who attended the funeral, in the first steps toward a broader rebellion. Over prosecutors' objections, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts had said they could await trial at home under strict conditions, including electronic monitors. The government later dropped its opposition to releasing four but took her decision on the other five to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Defense lawyers say the men legally possessed weapons and that any talk of killing people was simply stupid, hateful speech with no specific targets planned.
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Bishop lawyer says Boston case may help defense
Criminal Law |
2010/06/18 05:43
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The lawyer for a woman charged with killing three university colleagues in Alabama says a new murder charge brought against her for the 1986 shooting death of her brother could be used in an insanity defense in the Alabama case. Roy Miller said Thursday that if the insanity defense is used in Alabama, Amy Bishop's life would become "an open book." If that happens, he says the Massachusetts killing of her 18-year-old brother, Seth, would definitely play a role. But District Attorney Robert Broussard in Huntsville said the indictment, announced Wednesday in Boston, could aid the case against her in the February shooting rampage that killed three professors at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
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OJ jury makeup, judge conduct questioned in appeal
Criminal Law |
2010/06/14 02:55
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The racial makeup of the jury and the conduct of the judge who oversaw O.J. Simpson's conviction have emerged as key issues in the former football star's appeal for the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn his conviction in a gunpoint Las Vegas hotel room heist.
"Mr. Simpson really believed he was recovering his own property," Simpson attorney Yale Galanter told a three-justice panel hearing oral arguments in Las Vegas on Friday. "Our theory of defense was never put before the jury."
Clark County District Attorney David Roger called the September 2008 trial contentious but fair, and the sentences just. He urged the justices to deny both appeals. After Galanter characterized Simpson's conviction as prejudicial "payback" for his 1994 double-murder acquittal, justices Michael Cherry, Mark Gibbons and Nancy Saitta posed pointed questions about whether convicted co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart received a fair trial alongside Simpson. Both men were convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery, conspiracy and other crimes for what Simpson maintained was an attempt to retrieve family photos and mementoes. Four other men took plea deals and received probation after testifying for the prosecution. |
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Cops: Suspect at court tried to sell GPS to owner
Criminal Law |
2010/06/10 03:49
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Police say a Connecticut man who appeared at a courthouse to answer a larceny charge broke into several cars in front of the building, took a GPS unit and inadvertently tried to sell it to its owner. Police say the arrest of 50-year-old Thomas Peno on Wednesday was his 40th. When he tried to sell the GPS to its owner, an argument ensued, and a bystander called police. He has been taken into custody by judicial marshals. Peno was being held on $25,000 bail and is to be arraigned Thursday on charge of burglary, larceny and breach of peace. A court clerk says Peno is not yet represented by a lawyer. |
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