Articles Posted in Criminal

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In May, the former director of UCLA’s Willed Body Program, Henry Reid, was indicted by a grand jury for selling body parts to businessman Ernest Nelson who resold them to medical research companies. The LA Times reports that today, Mr. Reid plead guilty to felony charges that he damaged or destroyed property worth more than $1 million and conspiracy to commit grand theft in a “body-parts-for-profit” scheme.

The Times reports that from 1999 to 2004, Reid and businessman Ernest Nelson conspired to defraud the program of its donor bodies for personal financial gain. Reid allegedly sold human body parts from UCLA’s program to Nelson and then deposited thousands of dollars of proceeds of those sales into his personal bank account.

Reid, an Anaheim native, will be sentenced to four years, four months in state prison under a plea crafted by the District Attorney’s Office. In exchange, Reid agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in their case against Nelson. Reid will also be required to pay restitution to UCLA’s Willed Body Program of between $100,000 to $1 million. He will be sentenced in January.

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According to a recent study, immigrants—including immigrants living in Orange County—are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to commit crime in California. The Public Policy Institute of California report, that can be found here, said that while people born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population they only account for about 17 percent of the adult prison population.

The findings suggest that long-standing fears that immigration jeopardizes public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.

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University of Southern California cornerback Shareece Wright has been charged by San Bernardino law enforcement with resisting a police officer in connection to a party in his hometown of Colton last weekend. Resisting police a police officer using force or violence is a felony in California.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Wright attended a party for someone being deployed to Iraq labor-day weekend. Police detained Wright at the party, but he was not among several people arrested in the early morning hours on Sunday. The San Bernardino District Attorney subsequently filed charges against him and three others. His arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday.

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I couldn’t make this up if I tried. Last Saturday, two California farmworkers awoke to a burglar in their kitchen applying spices to a sausage. After using the sausage to attack the victims, the stranger fled with the owners’ money. Police later found the California man wearing only his boxers and socks in a nearby field and were able to identify him as the sausage-wielding perpetrator, since he left his wallet behind at the victims’ house. The full article can be found here.

In what would seem to be an open and shut case for prosecutors has one catch- the sausage tossed away by the fleeing suspect was subsequently eaten by a dog.

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One Ventura County man seems determined to crash the party at the Playboy Mansion- literally. The Los Angeles Daily News reports that a man crashed his car into the gates of Hugh Hefner’s notorious party palace twice this past week. It is unclear whether Hefner or his three girlfriends were home during the incident, but Los Angeles police reported no injuries, only damage to the gates.

The suspect was arrested and released after the first crash last Thursday night, the police spokesperson said. He then slammed his car into the gates again Tuesday, but fled before police arrived on the scene. Police have not released the man’s name or what may have prompted the crashes, but it’s likely that he’s charged with a felony for his behavior. Comments about this post can be directed to Orange County Criminal Defense Attorney William Weinberg at (714) 834-1400.