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Recently I wrote about Supermarket mogul George Torres trial. (See post here). I was suprised to see this story in The L.A. Times that reported that Torres was set free in his case after prosecutors failed to turn over recordings with possible exculpatory information regarding an informant who testified for the prosecution at trial. Tuesday, the Judge granted the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss based on a constitutional violation—Torres claimed that he was unable to assert his constitutional right to confront his accusers when the government didn’t divulge that exculpatory information existed.

Torres still faces sentencing on lesser convictions but this ruling appears to significantly limit his exposure to prison time. Torres was facing murder and racketeering charges.

U.S. v. Brady is the Supreme Court case that controls this sort of prosecutorial misconduct. In Brady, the prosecution had withheld from a criminal defendant a confession by a co-defendant in his murder trial. The defendant challenged his conviction, arguing the prosecution jeopardized his Due Process rights. The Supreme Court found that withholding evidence violates due process “where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment” and as a result of the ruling, prosecutors are required to affirmatively notify defendants and their attorneys whenever a law enforcement official involved in their case have a record for knowingly lying in an official capacity.

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Kendall Craig Farris, who heads the Over the Wall Foundation in Marina del Rey, was arrested Thursday at a Starbucks after an undercover Redondo Beach officer was allegedly sold methamphetamine and ecstasy.

According to police reports, Farris, arrived at the coffeehouse in a taxi and an undercover officer gave him an envelope containing $480 in exchange for the methamphetamine and ecstasy. Farris was subsequently arrested.

This pills turned out to be fake, but Farris was arraigned Friday on charges of selling a substance that he alleged was drugs. He is being held on $106,500 bail.

Interestingly, Farris is the author of the book “Drugs, Kids and Crime: Surviving Our Drug Obsessed Culture.”

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that an off-duty Gardena police officer was shot and killed a man with a knife who was trying to rob a diner in Bellflower last week.

According to the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office, a five-year vetern of the Gardena police department was eating at a Norm’s Restaurant when the robber came in. Apparently the officer tried to stop the robbery only to be charged at by the man. Fearing for his life, he shot and killed the man, who died at the scene.

After a dozen years in practice, and with over 100 trials and thousands of successful results, Orange County Criminal Defense Attorney William Weinberg understands what has to be done and how to succeed on behalf of clients charged with Orange County Crimes. Mr. Weinberg understands the complicated criminal court system and has a reputation among attorneys, prosecutors and judges as an attorney who aggressively and intelligently fights for his clients.

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Phil Spector’s six years in Los Angeles County’s justice system, that started with an arrest for shooting a actress Lana Clarkson in 2003 will conclude Friday morning when he is sentenced to prison for murder. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, who presided over the music producer’s two trials, has little discretion in punishing Spector, for the shooting– a death that jurors decided last month was second-degree murder.

The conviction carries a mandatory 15 years to life in prison, so the judge’s only choice will be whether to add on three, four or 10 more years to the minimum sentence for the use of a firearm. The music producer also could get three, four or 10 additional years for using a firearm in the killing that occurred at his Alhambra mansion in 2003.

Spector has been in jail since his April 13 conviction and has vowed to appeal his conviction. This appeal is likely to raise issues regarding the trial admissibility of testimony from five women who said Spector menaced them with guns in a manner that prosecutors said were similar to the circumstances of Clarkson’s death in the foyer of his Alhambra mansion—sometimes called “prior bad act” evidence.

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Thursday’s gang bust in Hawaiian Gardens involving 1400 local, state and federal agents resulted in 147 arrests for alleged racially-motivated crimes against African Americans. The L.A. Times is reporting that Operation Knock Out targeted associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens gang (VHG) who were so pervasive in that community that one in 15 people living in the square-mile city just north of Long Beach has ties to it.

In its 193-page indictment outlining the racketeering case, federal authorities accuse the south Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff’s deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive African Americans from their town. The indictments included charges for murder, attempted murder, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and witness intimidation. The gang members, allegedly boasted about being racist, referring to themselves as “the Hate Gang.” The document also details more than a dozen incidents where African Americans were allegedly beaten, shot at or harassed because of their race.

Authorities say that the gang was formed in the 1950s or early ’60s and has more than 1,000 members today–spanning several generations, with many connections to the Mexican Mafia.

In cases as large as this, it is expected that many of the smaller gang players will flip –or decide to testify for the prosecution–in order to implicate larger players and score a better plea bargain for themselves.

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Anna Nicole Smith’s former boyfriend and two of her physicians pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday to charges of illegally providing prescription drugs to the reality star and former Playboy model.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Howard K. Stern is charged with conspiracy to illegally furnish Smith with thousands of prescription pills. In their court filing, prosecutors say that all three knew Smith was an addict and were warned that the prescriptions the doctors were writing were dangerous. The charges are the culmination of a two-year, multi-agency investigation.

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The L.A. Times is reporting that a robbery in a San Bernadino neighborhood has left a mother looking for her three year old son.

The San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office says that two men armed with handguns, allegedly robbed a San Bernardino home Sunday afternoon and tied up a mother and her five children. The men ransacked the home and took an unspecified amount of cash and property, and then kidnapped the three year old child.

According to reports, both suspects are described as thin, light-skinned Hispanic males. According to the Sherriff’s Office, one is believed to be about 18 years old, 5-feet-8 and wearing blue jeans, a green T-shirt and a black baseball cap. The other is believed to be about 24 years old, 5-feet-10 and wearing a black shirt, black pants and boots, and a white bandanna.

The boy is described as 3 feet tall, about 40 pounds, wearing a yellow shirt with blue sleeves, blue striped shorts and sandals.

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The Pasadena Star News is reporting that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detectives who were staking out a robbery suspect on Thursday stopped an alleged rape in progress and captured the suspect. Kenneth Parker of San Gabriel was booked on suspicion of kidnapping to commit rape, attempted rape, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.

Detectives from the Major Crimes Bureau were conducting surveillance looking for a serial robbery suspect when they saw Parker grab and attempt to rape a woman, a Sheriff’s statement said. The woman escaped before the detectives could intervene, but Parker then grabbed second woman moments later and dragged her into a business in on East Valley Boulevard, took the woman into a rear bathroom of the business and locked the door. Detectives rescued the woman and were able to take Parker into custody.

Parker is being held in lieu of $1 million bail and is due for arraignment at Alhambra Superior Court Monday.

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The Los Angeles Times has posted breaking news in the George Torres case. On Monday, Torres, an entrepreneur who built the multimillion-dollar Numero Uno grocery store chain, was convicted by a jury of racketeering, solicitation of murder, bribery in federal court.

In the trial, he U.S Attorney’s Office argued that Torres hired illegal immigrants at his stores, bribed a Los Angeles City planning commissioner and arranged to have people killed. The prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of two former Torres associates–both convicted drug dealers serving lengthy federal prison sentences who were cooperating with authorities in hopes of having the sentences reduced. Despite credibility issues with the prosecution’s star witnesses, jurors ultimately concluded that Torres arranged for the murder of a local gang member who tried to extort protection money. The man, Jose “Shorty” Maldonado was fatally shot as he walked with his girlfriend near Torres’ main market in 1994.

Torres’ legal team plans on asking the Judge for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict—or that despite the verdict, the government had not met its burden of proof. This post-trial hearing is set for June 1. He faces life in prison.

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Last week I posted on the sexting “epidemic” among U.S. teens, citing a statistic that one of five teenagers have shared nude pictures of themselves via cell phone or online. Now, reports are surfacing that show that those alarming statistics are inflated.

The Wall Street Journal reports claim that statistic, which was generated by CosmoGirl.com and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, may be exaggerated because the same teenagers who have engaged in such behavior could be the ones most likely to say they have done so in an online poll. In other words, the sample was skewed towards those likely to be on the internet to begin with. Sources say that cohort might two to four times more likely to send nude photos of themselves than the average teen. The criticism of the study is that it didn’t poll teens by phone or by mail, which would make the group sampled more representative of the population.

So what’s the reality of teens and texting? Probably something probably less than the one in five statistic, but it may be nearly impossible to get information from teens by any other means but the internet. The chance that Janie or Johnnie will respond to a phone call on Mom and Dad’s landline regarding posting nude pictures of themselves on the web seems unlikely.

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