Trials Archives
Capping a morning of impassioned defense pleas and emotional victim-impact statements, Judge Michael E. Pastor passed down sentences for second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, respectively, on Michael Sheridan and his wife, Angela, for the 2007 Mother's Day slaying of musician Rod Poole. Pool, 45, had confronted the pair after Angela Sheridan, then 24, bumped a busboy as she maneuvered her car in the Hollywood parking lot of Mel’s Diner. Within moments of exchanging words with Ms. Sheridan, Poole was on the ground while she kicked his head and her husband, then 25, stabbed him half a dozen times. (See June 14, 2007 L.A. Weekly feature.) Michael’s mother and his two-year-old son remained in the car.
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Britny O is 18 and a dead ringer for Bettie Page, even if it looks as though she outgrew the hound’s-tooth jacket and striped slacks ensemble she wore to court today about 10 years ago. Hers was a harrowing story of how, as a 17-year-old during January and February of 2007, she’d been contacted via MySpace by fashion designer Anand Jon to spend time with him in glamorous Beverly Hills. (Jon is currently facing 24 counts of sexual assault involving nine women.) Her trip to L.A., according to Britny, ended with her passing out after Jon gave her a tumbler brimming with vodka that had possibly been spiked with GHB. The next thing Britny knew, she awoke to “the worst smell I’d ever smelled” – nothing less than Mr. Jon’s anus, which she faced as Jon shoved his penis down her throat as she lay on her back. She had begun her day by putting a skirt and spider-pattern stockings to meet Jon, with whom she’d conducted a six-day email and phone relationship.
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The first of nine alleged sexual assault victims began testifying against fashion designer Anand Jon Thursday. “Jessie B” told deputy D.A. Mara McIlvain she was an 18-year-old aspiring model from Lake Stevens, Washington, when, she was contacted on her MySpace page by Jon.
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“I am my own god and I get whatever I want,” fashion designer Anand Jon is quoted in court documents as telling one of his alleged rape victims. Another girl was a 16-year-old virgin and home-schooled Mormon who, in 2003, was taking her first tentative step into secular society. She claims Jon, 34, whose full name is Anand Jon Alexander, welcomed her to that society by sodomizing her until she bled.
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A semen-stained comforter, a tampon and a camera. These were some of the items listed on a Beverly Hills P.D. search warrant when officers raided fashion designer Anand Jon's pad in March, 2007. Later that year Jon was charged with a list of offenses more often associated with spring break at Lake Havasu than evenings on staid North Palm Drive: forcible rape, lewd acts upon a child, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual battery by restraint and attempted forcible oral copulation.
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With six sheriff’s deputies standing guard, a jury late this afternoon recommended that former Atwater Village gang leader Timothy McGhee be sentenced to death for the murders of three people. McGhee, 35, had been convicted of the murders last November, but the original jury deadlocked on whether he should be put to death or receive life in prison without parole. The ex-Toonerville street gang chief is a charismatic, goateed figure who could pass for a motivational speaker. Last month, as he stood trial for leading a 2005 prison riot in the cell block he commanded, McGhee attended trial attired in a variety of well-pressed suits, his shaved head revealing a scalp tattoo of the eagle and snake found on the Mexican flag. Today, in a nearly empty courtroom, he wore a dark chalk-striped suit as he listened to the 12 jurors individually confirm their decisions to send him to death row. All court officers stood up as the 12-member panel left Department 104 – only McGhee remained seated. Judge Robert J. Perry will sentence McGhee later in the fall.
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News just came in that toxicologist Bruce Kelman, targeted by people who have an almost religious, misguided fear of common household mold, has prevailed in a key case against Mold Queen Sharon Kramer.
Kelman emails the Weekly: "Kramer was found guilty of libeling me."
Their bitter battle was detailed in Weekly freelancer Daniel Heimpel's recent cover story, "The Mold Rush: A California mom helped fuel a national obsession with "toxic" mold that engulfed Ed McMahon and destroyed lives. Moms aren't always right."
Dozens of mold-obsessed commenters attacked Heimpel on the Weekly's site, airing their beliefs with fundamentalist fervor. Like Kelman, Heimpel merely reported the truth, that scientists have repeatedly shown that household mold is not toxic to healthy people and does not make them sick.
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Terry Christensen’s Big Expert Witness Speaks
Tuesday marked Day Two of the defense counterattack waged by former private eye Anthony Pellicano and super-lawyer Terry Christensen, who are accused in federal court of wiretapping and conspiracy. Actually, so far it’s been all Christensen’s defense, with Pellicano passively watching the oratorical fireworks explode over his head.
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The federal trial of private eye Anthony Pellicano and his co-defendant, super-lawyer Terry Christensen, resumed this week after a long, 10-day break. In some ways the case, in which the two men are charged with wiretapping and conspiracy, resembles one of those fish-out-of-water buddy movies from long ago, with a street-savvy gumshoe handcuffed to the cautious head of a white-shoe, Century City law firm.
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“God has spoken!” Timothy McGhee jokingly quipped to a downtown Superior Court room when the earthquake struck at 11:40 a.m. today. McGhee, the convicted triple murderer and Atwater Village street-gang leader, was testifying on the witness stand about his role in a 2005 jail riot when his attorney, H. Clay Jacke, asked him how he could tell the direction from which riot cops were charging to quell the rebellion. Was it, Jacke asked, “a matter of sight or of sound?”
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For one long day and a half government witness Stephen Kolodny, divorce-lawyer-to-the-rich, gave details about his representation of former tennis pro Lisa Bonder in the take-no-prisoners child-custody fight between her and husbeen Kirk Kerkorian.
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Is It The Odd Couple or The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant?
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“Bring me the father. Bring me the father’s head on a platter. Because there is like more than a hundred thousand in it for you, okay?” Thus spake über attorney Terry Christensen in 2002 as he hired super sleuth Anthony Pellicano to discover the true paternity of the daughter of Christensen’s client, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.
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Today jurors gave Juan Alvarez the gift of life 11 times over by sparing him the death penalty, instead sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In June the panel had convicted Alvarez of first-degree murder for his role in the January, 2005 Metrolink train derailment that claimed 11 lives.
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The Daily Koz: Analogies flood blogosphere in Judge Kozinski flap
by Steven Mikulan
June 19, 2008 10:37 AM
After a recent L.A. Times story revealed that Judge Alex Kozinski maintained a bawdy Web site while he was presiding over a federal obscenity trial, law bloggers are still grappling with the ensuing scandal that forced Kozinski to recuse himself from U.S. v. Isaacs. The legal eagles have reduced to handy parables the actions of disgruntled lawyer Cyrus Sanai, who tipped off the Times in order to bring down Kozinski, and the debate over whether or not the judge had a reasonable expectation of privacy when his site could be accessed by the public. Some of the more vivid analogies appear below. They do not compare Kozinski or Sanai to a summer’s day.
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Previously
Update: Judge Says, "Well Rec-u-u-u-se Me!" Jun 13, 2008
“It’s All Deviant!” Judge Alex Kozinski logs onto Trouble.com Jun 12, 2008
Sex and the Shitty: Scat-Porn Trial Unravels Jun 11, 2008
Scat-Porn Trial Bombshell Jun 11, 2008
Shit Happened: Scat Porn Trial Begins Jun 10, 2008
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Cobrasnake: Runway Renegades and Femme Fatales (Some photos NSFW)
Fashion gets bold with in-your-face slogans, pistol-heeled stilettos and barely-there sheers. -
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Chef Octavio Becerra has opened a dream of a restaurant, Palate Food + Wine. ReadMore>>
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