Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rob B. Villeza - who in January granted a motion made pursuant to a special directive to deputies by District Attorney George Gascón and allowed the prosecution to drop special circumstances and sentencing-enhancement allegations in a murder case - has reconsidered the matter and ordered resurrection of the original information.

Two years after he was convicted of aggravated possession of child pornography and sentenced to state prison, a former Bay Area policeman lost his appeal in which he argued the prosecution committed “repeated, pervasive misconduct.”

A judge on Monday denied a bid for resentencing by Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, who pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of her eight-year-old son Gabriel Fernandez. The boy was routinely beaten, tortured, starved, bound, gagged and forced to sleep inside a cabinet until his May 2013 death. Pearl Fernandez, 37, was sentenced in March 2018 to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of her son.

Eyewitness testimony is often crucial in court cases, but can be hard for jurors to assess. So judges tell them what to consider, including how far a witness was from the scene, whether the witness was under stress, whether his or her account has changed, and - until now - how certain the witness was that the identification was accurate.

Statutory provisions which render the grading of State Bar exam answers confidential are not insuperable, the First District Court of Appeal has held, declaring that a judge erred in sustaining a demurrer without leave to amend to a complaint which sought portions of a document reviewed in closed session by a subcommittee of the Committee of Bar Examiners.

The Supreme Court affirmed a more that $2 million court costs bill Thursday against municipalities that had accused Hotels.com and other travel booking agencies of shortchanging them on occupancy taxes. Justice Samuel Alito penned the unanimous opinion, weighing in on the suit San Antonio and more than 170 other Texas municipalities opened in 2006.

In yet another unanimous opinion as the current term draws to a close, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled Tuesday against asylum-seeking immigrants in the companion cases of Garland v. Dai and Garland v. Alcaraz-Enriquez. The cases presented a procedural question that promises to have a profound impact on the cases of individuals seeking asylum in the United States.

One year after the murder of George Floyd sharpened demands in America for police reforms, a Trump-appointed judge held arguments this afternoon on one of the early protests that brought the issue into somewhat improbable relief. Floyd had been dead a week and the nation engulfed in anguish last year when a gaggle of officials departed the White House and marched across Lafayette Square to the nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church.

After the Supreme Court’s spring cleaning last week, the justices were down to just two relists on their rolls. Then on this week’s order list, the court denied cert on one of the remaining two, 10-time relist Johnson v. Precythe, 20-287, involving a death row prisoner’s method-of-execution claim under the Eighth Amendment. Three justices joined two separate opinions dissenting from the denial of review.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in the case of a death row inmate from Los Angeles that challenges the constitutionality of how the death penalty has been applied and could lead to the reversal of hundreds of death sentences. As part of an automatic appeal for Donte McDaniel, who has been convicted and sentenced to death for two 2004 murders, the defense is asking the court whether the procedure in California capital punishment cases has allowed prosecutors to bypass state laws that requires a unanimous jury vote to decide whether the evidence supports a death sentence.

The Sixth District Court of Appeal declared Friday that the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office must be disqualified from the prosecution of a San Jose attorney and fundraiser on conspiracy and bribery charges, saying that his friendship with the district attorney and his chief assistant creates a conflict, and a “grave one.”

In a pair of unanimous decisions, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that tribal police officers may sometimes detain and search non-Native Americans on federal highways and that there is no presumption that testimony from immigrants fighting deportation is credible. The case on tribal officers, United States v. Cooley, No. 19-1414, arose from an encounter in 2016 on a federal highway in the Crow Reservation in Montana.

An Orange County Superior Court judge on Wednesday, June 2, rejected a lawsuit by professors and students at UCI Law School seeking to shut down the district attorney’s one-of-a-kind DNA collection program. Judge William D. Claster dismissed the suit for technical reasons and gave the plaintiffs until June 28 to amend and resubmit it.

Seventeen cities have now issued votes of "no confidence" in Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and the list of cities opposed to his reform policies continues to grow. At the San Gabriel City Council meeting, which didn’t end until after midnight on Tuesday, there were over 100 letters in support of the "no confidence" vote and only five against it. The "no confidence" vote passed by a 4-1 vote.

A Los Angeles judge has ruled that a defense lawyer whom District Attorney George Gascón appointed as special prosecutor to review officer-involved shooting investigations cannot simultaneously represent criminal defendants. L.A. County Superior Court Judge David R. Fields said the appearance of impropriety risked eroding public confidence in the criminal justice system.

On January 9, 2015, four men were shot and killed inside a car in the Lower Haight near Laguna and Page streets. Police eventually arrested Lee Farley Jr. for the killings and were investigating several other suspects. Six years later, the case hasn’t gone to trial, and those other suspects have all died as a result of gang-related violence.

Petitions have been approved for the effort to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. Elected officials must be in office for at least 90 days before a recall effort can be started. Gascon was sworn in on Dec. 7. Recall organizers announced May 20 they had received approval to gather signatures. Gascon has drawn criticism from crime victims and prosecutors over various directives, including not seeking the death penalty, not seeking sentencing enhancements in most cases and keeping cases involving juveniles out of adult courts.

A veteran L.A. County sheriff’s deputy was charged earlier this year with sexually abusing his underage niece in San Bernardino County, according to court records and interviews with the alleged victim’s family. Daniel Wai Whitten, 43, was charged in March with more than a dozen counts of lewd acts with a child, having unlawful sex with a child, possession of child pornography and communicating with a minor for a sexual purpose, according to a criminal complaint filed by San Bernardino County prosecutors.

Murder and torture charges have been filed against a Pomona woman charged with killing her 16-year-old stepson, whose father is accused of being aware that the boy was being abused but did nothing to stop it. Both suspect are slated to arraigned this coming Tuesday.

Criminal charges have been refiled against two sheriff's deputies over the 2015 beating of a surrendering suspect. But charges won't be filed against police who shot a knife-wielding man in a killing that sparked public protests, the San Francisco District Attorney's office announced Thursday.

A Northern California man was charged Friday with using a weapon to assault officers guarding the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Body camera footage caught Sean Michael McHugh, 34, of Auburn pushing a large metal sign into a line of uniformed officers during the riot and spraying an unknown, yellow chemical on police, prosecutors said.

Over the prosecution’s objection, a judge Thursday lowered bail to $5,000 for a former Catholic priest charged with lewd acts involving four boys at two parishes in Palmdale and Redondo Beach between the mid-1990s and 2001. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Katherine Mader ordered Christopher John Cunningham - who had been jailed in lieu of $2.2 million bail - to sign up for electronic monitoring and not to leave the home of a cousin, where he will be staying once he is released from custody, unless he has a medical appointment, a meeting with his attorney or a court hearing.

Advancing the most heralded police reform of the legislative session, the California Senate on Wednesday approved a bill that would create a decertification process and reduce legal immunity for crooked law enforcement officers. By a 26-9 party-line vote, Senate Democrats OK’d the proposal civil rights groups consider to be the most impactful criminal justice reform of the year.

This time a year ago, protestors were taking to the streets after the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day 2020. By July of that summer, the LAPD announced a new Bureau based on community policing and building relationships.

California district attorneys whose campaigns were funded by police unions would have to recuse themselves from investigations of law enforcement officers under legislation approved Wednesday by lawmakers. Supporters say the “first-of-its-kind” bill will prevent conflicts of interest and restore public faith that bad officers will be brought to justice.

A bill to legalize possession of psychedelics in California was approved by the California Senate on Tuesday. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D), which previously cleared three committees, passed 21-16 on the floor. If enacted into law, the bill would remove criminal penalties for possessing or sharing numerous psychedelics - including psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, ibogaine, LSD and MDMA - for adults 21 and older.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s legal bid to avoid meeting with Inspector General Max Huntsman to discuss deputy “secret societies” that many criminal justice advocates characterize as gangs should be dismissed, a lawyer for Los Angeles County argues in new court papers.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer’s director of community engagement and outreach announced Wednesday he is running for L.A. city controller in the 2022 election. “I have dedicated the better part of my career to making a difference in service to the public and working with some of our most effective leaders,” Rob Wilcox said. “Now, at this pivotal moment in our city’s history I am ready to seek a new role and a position which is one of the most consequential in L.A. city government.”

Murders in Los Angeles County have skyrocketed more than 95% so far this year compared to the same period in 2020, and other areas of crime also saw increases, with the local sheriff calling the uptick "very, very troublesome." "We don’t have good news, unfortunately," L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said as before he listed off the latest crime statistics in a video streamed on social media. 

Two inmates are alive today after being saved by two separate doses of Naloxone also known as Narcan, administered by fellow inmates. On Wednesday, May 26th, at approximately 5:37 pm, Deputies assigned to work the North County Correctional Facility (NCCF) were alerted of two inmates in medical distress. Deputies and custody medical staff immediately responded to the dorm and found two inmates on an upper-tier, unconscious, suffering from possible overdoses.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Office of the Chief of Police announces the Department's commitment to the 30X30 Initiative. On Tuesday, May 25, 2021, LAPD Chief of Police Michel Moore informed the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners that the Department signed the 30x30 Pledge, which is a series of low and no-cost actions policing agencies can take to improve the representation and experiences of women in law enforcement.

A brightly painted lifeguard tower adorned with hearts of various colors was officially unveiled Friday on Mother's Beach in Marina del Rey, highlighting a county program to better equip first-responders with tools to interact with children and adults with autism. The program implemented by the Los Angeles County Fire Department, “Sirens of Silence,” began roughly a month ago, providing specialized training for firefighters, paramedics and lifeguards.

The city of Los Angeles agreed this week to pay $30,000 each to four LAPD officers who alleged in state court that they were wrongfully disciplined for participating in a "Blue Flu" protest action last summer. The four officers claimed to have legitimate reasons for calling out sick over the July 4 weekend, when the Los Angeles Police Department alleged that hundreds of officers had engaged in an illegal labor action by calling out sick en masse to send a political message.

Six weeks ago, Los Angeles city park rangers descended on a small group of tents in Griffith Park, arresting a homeless man and at least two community activists who had gone there to show their support. Park rangers said they took that step because camping poses a major fire risk in Griffith Park, and because the group refused to take down their tents, which are prohibited by law in city parks.

Early one morning last month, off-duty Los Angeles police Officer Nicolas Quintanilla-Borja allegedly threatened to kill his cousin and another man with a handgun in Inglewood before being arrested by local police, prosecutors said. Days later, LAPD Chief Michel Moore told the civilian Police Commission that the incident troubled him “a great deal,” in part because Quintanilla-Borja - a probationary officer with less than 18 months on the force - was allegedly “significantly” impaired by alcohol at the time.

A San Bernardino County Sheriff’s who died following a pursuit and shooting Monday in the desert community of Yucca Valley was a father of two daughters, 11 years old and 4 months old. Sgt. Dominic Vaca, 43, died Monday night at a hospital. He was shot following an attempted traffic stop and pursuit involving a person on a motorcycle about 120 miles east of Los Angeles.

An off-duty firefighter opened fire Tuesday morning at a fire station north of Los Angeles, killing a 44-year-old member of the LA County Fire Department, fire officials said. The shooting happened just before 11 a.m. at Los Angeles County Fire Station No. 81 in the 8700 block of Sierra Highway in Agua Dulce and touched off a rapidly unfolding series of events that ended with a standoff and fire that burned for hours at a property about 10 miles away in Acton.

Belief in magic can be charming in a child. Much less so in an adult. So it’s disconcerting to see so many people express a belief that crime and disorder can be wished away if only the right people are chosen to deal with it. The right people, according to Vice News, are not the police. I refer to the May 24 piece by Emma Ockerman that ran under the headline, “What If We Just Stopped Calling the Cops?”

Late this winter, an international hacking syndicate suspected of conducting ransomware attacks around the globe turned its attention to the police department in the San Gabriel Valley city of Azusa. Through means that remain unclear, the hacking group DoppelPaymer appears to have infiltrated computers in the 63-officer department and gained access to critical data. A demand for money followed.

An electric scooter rider was arrested on suspicion of DUI in a collision Saturday night that killed a man walking on a Venice sidewalk. A man and woman were riding on the rented scooter when it struck the man on Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles police said. The man on the scooter was arrested on suspicion of DUI. Details about the victim’s identity and age were not immediately available.

Congress and the White House are trying to overhaul police practices. By tradition in such efforts the obvious will likely be overlooked, so here is the obvious: Violent crime is rising in almost every major American city, after decades of falling. Police departments are in crisis, battered by charges of abuse, targeted for cuts, many struggling under recent bail-reform laws. Officers are demoralized.

Four California colleges and universities failed to accurately or completely report crime statistics as required by federal law, including Sonoma State University that did not include a sexual assault that had occurred on campus in 2019, according to a state audit whose findings were released Thursday. The institutions were the University of California, Irvine, San Joaquin Delta College, Santa Clara University, and Sonoma State University.

A year after protesters massed in the streets of Los Angeles chanting "Defund the police!" and "Abolish the LAPD!" the Los Angeles Police Department is a changed organization but hardly in the ways its critics wanted. Its operating budget was cut by $150 million last May with much fanfare, to $1.71 billion, then more quietly increased this year by about 3% - to $1.76 billion, a huge chunk of the city's overall spending.

A 30-year-old man free on bail after an assault case earlier this month has been arrested on suspicion of killing an elderly man and assaulting another man. David Abbott of Anaheim was accused of attacking a man about noon in the 1300 block of Devonshire Road. The victim suffered minor injuries and was not hospitalized, said Anaheim police Sgt. Shane Carringer.

With his profession taking one hit after another over the past year, LAPD Sergeant Cleon Joseph often felt like he had his back against the wall. Joseph works with LAPD’s Training Division, and with the agency’s Arrest and Control Lifetime Fitness Unit, and helps teach proper use-of-force and de-escalation techniques to both new recruits and veteran officers. But as calls for police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death turned into the anti-police rhetoric and the “Defund the Police” movement took shape, it took an immense toll on Joseph.

Antitrust clouds are gathering over Amazon in a week that saw the retail giant face its first U.S. lawsuit alleging competition-squelching practices just before the company announced its second-biggest acquisition ever. Washington, D.C., filed a suit against the U.S.' largest online seller Tuesday, accusing Amazon of monopolistic behavior. The suit claims the e-commerce giant's dominance allows it to impose onerous terms on third-party sellers on its platform that drive up prices for online shoppers everywhere.

Buried in Amazon's Conditions of Use (COUs) agreement was a binding arbitration clause forcing buyers, marketplace sellers, and infringed trademark-owners to utilize arbitration to settle disputes. The practice allowed Amazon to skirt the traditional court system and dodge plaintiffs aiming to launch big class-action lawsuits against the e-commerce juggernaut.

Severe staffing shortages at the San Francisco Police Department, paired with the local prosecutor's "criminal-first agenda" is creating a dangerous situation on city streets headed into the summer months, union president Tony Montoya said after one of his officers - left patrolling alone in Chinatown - was violently tackled to the ground by a homeless man until bystanders intervened.

Cops have never been so blue. “The morale has never been as low as it is right now in the 50 years I’ve been dealing with it,” says Bill Bratton, the top cop who transformed the police departments in New York and Los Angeles, only to watch much of that progress go up in smoke. I Zoomed with Bratton about his new memoir, “The Profession,” the day after President Biden met in the Oval Office with George Floyd’s family, a poignant image that capped another year of intense debate and soul-searching about why Black Americans are still treated so differently by the police.

One of the blessings of growing older is, when tensions roil the social landscape, being able to look back on the troubled times of an earlier day and say, “Those tribulations I survived, these I shall also.” I am a Baby Boomer, born in the late ‘50s to a World War II Navy veteran and a stay-at-home mother, both of whom were conservative Republicans who did their best to usher their children through the tumult of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Just a few days after Beth Weaver moved from the suburbs to a new townhouse in this city's wealthy Buckhead district, she began to worry that she had made a mistake. One night she sat on her balcony and watched a thief rifle through her BMW. A few weeks later, someone broke into her family’s truck. In November, there was a shootout on her narrow street lined with townhouses that start at a half-million dollars.

A mother charged in the "Varsity Blues" college admissions case asked a federal judge to toss the charges Friday, claiming the heavy show of force agents used in arresting her caused her to suffer a dangerous cardiac incident known as broken heart syndrome. Elisabeth Kimmel claims that a raid on her home by federal agents before dawn on March 12, 2019, caused her to suffer a temporary but dangerous heart condition called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday, May 28, ordered an independent investigation into the high-profile case of Kevin Cooper, a death row inmate convicted in the 1983 slaying of three members of a Chino Hills family and one of their friends. Cooper, who has maintained his innocence, has applied for clemency, and Newsom ordered the investigation to aid him in his decision, the governor’s office said Friday.

The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on U.S. and foreign government agencies and think tanks this week using an email marketing account of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Microsoft says.

Catalytic converters reduce emissions - nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon. While vehicles can still run, loudly, without them, they will not pass emissions tests required in some jurisdictions before owners can renew their registrations. Thefts of catalytic converters are skyrocketing across the United States because they contain three valuable precious metals: rhodium (worth $23,000 per ounce), palladium ($2,861) and platinum ($1,190).

In a study looking at 20 years of active shooter incidents in this country, the FBI found California had more incidents than any other state. The report comes out just a few days after a man opened fire at a Northern California rail yard, killing nine coworkers and then himself. The agency looked at data from 333 incidents between 2000 and 2019. In those incidents, a total of 2,851 people died or were wounded, excluding the shooters.

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander, convicted in a sprawling City Hall corruption case last year, has begun serving his 14-month sentence at the U.S. penitentiary in Arizona, prison records show. Englander was sentenced in January for lying to federal authorities about his dealings with a businessman who provided him $15,000 in secret cash payments and a debauched night in Las Vegas.

A judge ruled a former deputy in Ventura is guilty of sexual misconduct with an inmate after the woman reported the encounter to jail staff in 2019. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Gilbert Romero said Leonard Lopez, 49, pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges, including being a peace officer engaged in a sexual act with an inmate and entering a cell occupied by an inmate of the opposite sex, the Ventura Country Star reported.

A Kern County jury convicts Tokunbo Okwoga of killing three people in 2010: Felipe Bravo Jr., Dyna Caraveo, and Felipe Bravo Sr. The Kern County District Attorney’s Office has announced that Okuwoga is facing multiple life imprisonments with no possibility of parole. In addition to being convicted of first-class murder, he was also found guilty of attempted murder, robbery, and robbery.

Shortly after the sadistic torture slaying and beheading of a convicted killer in a California prison, apparently at the hands of his cellmate, prison guards making their rounds reported that both men were alive, according to two new reports from the state inspector’s general office. The reports on California lockups raise new questions about the heinous attack at Corcoran State Prison in March 2019 that has prompted investigations and a lawsuit by the family of the victim, Luis Romero, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

A former San Diego resident almost missed a life-changing call. What he thought was a robocall turned out to be California Governor Gavin Newsom calling to let him know he was pardoning his 1998 drug case. “I thought it was one of my friends messing with me. You know they always call me with some crazy stuff and so I was like, I was about to hang up on him. But I just got quiet for a second and tried to take it in. And as soon as I put it on speaker she's [His wife] like, ‘Oh my gosh! It's Governor Newsom," said Dan Dogan.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday pardoned more than a dozen people, including two inmate firefighters who faced deportation, and commuted the sentences of three people who were convicted of killings where they didn't pull the trigger. Newsom announced pardons for 14 people, commuted sentences for 13 others and granted medical reprieves for eight state prisoners, most of them in their 60s or 70s, who are considered to be at high medical risk.

A 74-year-old sex offender sentenced to death for killing a woman and three of her children has died on death row, California corrections officials said Tuesday. Richard Allen Benson was found unresponsive alone in his San Quentin State Prison cell early Monday and pronounced dead about a half-hour later. Officials said foul play is not suspected, though his cause of death will be determined by the Marin County coroner.

A gang member and double murderer convicted in the shooting and killing of two teenagers at a party in Los Angeles more than thirty years ago is set to be released from San Quentin on Monday. Howard Elwin Jones has been imprisoned at San Quentin state prison since 1991 for the December 1988 shooting and killing of 18-year-old Chris Baker and another boy at a party in Rowland Heights.

Newsmax apologized on Friday for falsely reporting that a Dominion Voting Systems employee, Eric Coomer, manipulated the results of the 2020 election. In a statement published to its website, Newsmax said it “found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so. Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa,’ nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.”

On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, dozens of gunshots rang out in the middle of the day at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, forcing reporters and bystanders to duck and cover. The symbolism was unmistakable - the yearlong bout of protest and activism after Floyd’s killing has coincided with a surge of urban crime that has made gunplay dismayingly common.

In states with healthy, growing economies, government and the private sector are partners, not adversaries. The business community not only pays taxes to fund the core services of government, but private companies often actually perform those services themselves. Smart governments, including many localities in California, have identified certain government services that are best outsourced, saving taxpayer dollars and allowing the government to focus on areas it has unique competency.

For more ADDA news and information, visit www.laadda.com.