California's Supreme Court yesterday reversed a lower court's finding that a Santa Barbara County prosecutor should have been disqualified in the sensational Jesse James Hollywood (pictured, upper left) murder trial after forming a partnership with a movie director.

Veteran deputy district attorney Ronald Zonen confided in and loaned his official files to Nick Cassavetes in 2003 so that the filmmaker could write what eventually became Alpha Dog starring Justin Timberlake, Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis. The film made $15.1 million at the box office and was featured on cable networks. But Zonen's goal was not monetary—he had no financial interest in the film. He cooperated only to help publicize the crime and apprehend Hollywood, who'd fled the country after the bizarre kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas "Nick" Markowitz.

Two years later, authorities captured Hollywood in Brazil and returned him to California for trial, where he claimed Zonen's arrangement with the movie maker had been illegal and that the prosecutor should recuse himself. A superior court judge didn't agree with Hollywood, but an appellate court panel did—fretting that they didn't want to "embolden other prosecutors to assist the media in the public vilification of a defendant in a case which is yet to be tried . . . . Prosecutors should try their cases in courtrooms, not in the newspapers, television or in the movies. To say that Zonen went too far is an understatement."

Supreme Court justices agreed that Zonen's acts may have been "distasteful" but did not violate Hollywood's right to a fair trial. "The trial court concluded Zonen was only convening his honest assessments of a fugitive defendant to Cassavetes and others in the hope their subsequent portrayal would lead to the fugitive's capture," the justices wrote in an 18-page opinion. "This was not an abuse of discretion."

The ruling might have an impact Orange County prosecutors who have charged a group of people with the sensational 2004 murder of a retired couple at sea. Thomas and Jackie Hawks were bound, tied to an anchor and dropped into the Pacific Ocean somewhere off Southern California during an attempt to steal the expensive boat. Skylar Deleon, a former actor (pictured, lower left), awaits a trial that has garnered interest from local reporters, book authors, network news shows and Los Angeles filmmakers. In 2006, Deleon's wife, Jennifer, was found guilty on two counts of first degree murder for the crime after just four hours of jury deliberation.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

For Buena Park's James Ochoa, the indescribable agony of spending 16 months locked in the Orange County Jail and a California prison for crimes he did not commit is a bit less painful today.

This afternoon, a state board in Sacramento voted 3 to 0 to award Ochoa nearly $30,000 in compensation in one of the final chapters of a bizarre law enforcement case. (Witnesses at the scene say board member Rosario Marin, a member of the governor's cabinet, argued against the payment but must have recorded a favorable vote to join State Controller John Chiang and San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos. California law permits wrongfully imprisoned people to apply for a $100-per-day fee for time spent in prison. Time in county lockup doesn't count.

"It's like a miracle," Ochoa lawyer Scott Borthwick said immediately after the hearing. "Every step of the way James had been screwed by government authorities. Finally, this board stood up and did the right thing."

In 2005, police arrested and prosecutors charged Ochoa—then 20 years old—for a robbery/carjacking near a Buena Park nightclub. A pre-trial article in the Weekly demonstrated numerous gaping holes in the government's case, and yet law enforcement officers refused to drop it. Most significantly, DNA evidence left at the scene of the crime did not match Ochoa. There were also substantial questions surrounding the competence and integrity of a police dog handler. In the middle of the trial, Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald pressured Ochoa to accept a two-year prison deal by threatening to send him away for the rest of his life if a jury found him guilty. Over Borthwick's objections, Ochoa took the deal. Justice arrived 16 months after the ordeal began when crime lab officials matched the DNA from the crime to a prisoner sitting in the Los Angeles County Jail. Fitzgerald quickly released Ochoa from prison.

Earlier this year, the Weekly revealed that prior to trial prosecutors had asked the crime lab to alter its findings that Ochoa was excluded as a source of the DNA. You can read that story here.

The Innocence Project, by famed defense lawyers Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld, features the case on its website.

Ochoa's civil rights lawsuit is set for trial in federal court on May 20 in the Ronald Reagan Federal Court Building.

--R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

When supporters of the 241 (Foothill-South) toll road and its builder, the Transportation Corridor Agencies, hear opponents claim they'll stop the project, the reply is usually along the lines of, "You and what army?"

The United States Army, assholes. That's right, the Army is finally providing the necessary firepower to blow the TCA's lies clean out of the sky.

Colonel Thomas H. Magness is District Commander of the Los Angeles District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE). You may remember their fine work on the levees in New Orleans. Colonel Magness sent a letter (Download file) dated April 7 to Thomas Street, staff attorney for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, "to clarify and augment the project's administrative record before you...." The project in question is the Foothill-South extension.

"My staff consistently endeavors to render fair and balanced decisions within the bounds of our implementing regulations and based on the best available information. For this reason, I am compelled to highlight a few areas of the public record where I have found inaccurate statements as well as inferences that misrepresent the Corps preliminary determinations within the context of our CWA and NEPA statutory responsibilities."

Would you believe it gets better?

Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi has just fragged Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger over the 241 (Foothill-South) toll road. The road, proposed by the Irvine-based Transportation Corridor Agencies, would cut through the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy, itself mitigation for the Talega development, and the inland portion of San Onofre State Beach, not to mention disturb a site sacred to the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians.

In Vietnam, it was not unheard of for unhappy soldiers to toss a fragmentation grenade into the tent of, or "frag," the lieutenant or commanding officer. The enemy could always be blamed, and while it did not guarantee superior leadership in the future, at least it made for a nice change of pace.

Garamendi, along with State Senate President pro tem Don Perata, Senate Natural Resources Committee Chairman Darrell Steinberg and Senator Christine Kehoe, signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez. (Download file)They made three simple demands:

1) You reject TCA’s appeal and uphold the California Coastal Commission’s legitimate authority to deny consistency certification for the Foothill-South Toll Road; 2) Should you take up the issue, hold a public hearing in Southern California and extend the public comment period accordingly; and 3) You prohibit federal agencies from meeting or negotiating with the TCA on this matter while the appeal is pending.

The last politicians who vocally opposed the toll road, Santa Monica City Council Bobby Shriver and his former colleague on the State Parks Commission Clint Eastwood (that's right, Dirty Harry fights to protect dirt), were not asked back to their seats on the Commission. But luckily these new politicians are not the Governor's appointees, and cannot be unjustly sacked in such a fashion.

Governor Schwarzenegger remained publicly undecided about the toll road for years before sending the Coastal Commission a letter of support for the project in the run-up to their February meeting in Del Mar, at which they soundly vetoed the project to the tune of an 8-2 vote against as well as a ruthless grilling and embarrassment of the TCA's new Grand Poo-bah, Tom Margro.

Margro recently penned a Sacramento Bee editorial purported to be a response to the Bee's criticism of Schwarzenegger's replacement of Shriver and Eastwood, but in fact it amounted to little more than the same tired old lines TCA hacks have parroted for decades.

What is much more intriguing is the request that the TCA not meet or negotiate with federal agencies until this is all over. Watch for more on THAT juicy piece of meat.

(Digg this post HERE)

Sources tell OC Weekly that the Orange County Sheriff's Department deputy found dead in a car parked in Aliso Viejo yesterday had been the subject of a sex crimes investigation in the District Attorney's office and may have opted to kill himself rather than face arrest.

Susan Schroeder at the DA's office said she will release a statement today.

The family of an Orange County man who died under mysterious circumstances in an Oklahoma federal prison more than a decade ago has just won its lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department. On March 31, the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ruled that the family of Kenneth Trentadue had suffered severe emotional distress as a result of his bizarre death, which prison officials claim was a suicide-by-hanging.

A big part of their stress: seeing the bruises, footprints and other obvious marks of a violent attack on his body that seemed, shall we say, just a little bit inconsistent with hanging himself from a ceiling vent.

You can read my previous stories about Trentadue here and here. But briefly: here's the gist of the family's suspicions: Trentadue had been arrested crossing back into the US from Mexico amid a massive manhunt in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing for a suspect known as "John Doe 2," whose description--a bulky white guy with a mustache and a dragon tattoo--closely resembled Trentadue.

Trentadue is sent to federal lockup in Oklahoma City and while being processed, undergoes a medical examination that shows his only injury as a blistered foot. A few days later, on Aug. 21, 1995, his battered body is lying in the morgue. Richard Lee Guthrie, a member of a right-wing compound in Oklahoma named Elohim City that bomber Timothy McVeigh may have visited was arrested the following year. He looked a lot like Trentadue, whose family believes was mistaken for Guthrie and perished while being tortured for information about a bombing he knew nothing about.

This is where the story gets even weirder. A year after Trentadue died, Guthrie also was found dead hanging in a prison cell.

Jesse Trentadue, Kenneth's brother and a Salt Lake City attorney who represents the family in its lawsuit, suspects a massive cover-up in his brother's death that has something to do with Guthrie and Elohim City. Court motion he's filed have unearthed reams of documents showing that the FBI had informants at Elohim City who may have heard word of the impending terrorist attack.

Maybe the bureau tried to infiltrate the plan but failed to stop it? It's hard to say, seeing as how most of the documents the government has reluctantly provided Trentadue's family are heavily censored in the interest of U.S. national security.

One thing's now clear: Uncle Sam now officially owes the Trentadue family a total of $1 million in damages. The only catch: this is the third time the family has won its lawsuit and the Justice Dept. keeps appealing the case.

"Of course, the Department of Justice has told us that it will never pay that Judgment and there is no way for us to make them pay," Jesse Trentadue says. "They have also said that they will continue to appeal. So this 13 year war will continue. Even so, it does feel good to kick the Yankee federal government's ass again."

Okay, I'm not trying to pile on Chuck Philips or the Los Angeles Times over the now-retracted story about Sean "Diddy" Combs' alleged involvement in a 1994 attack on Tupac Shakur. Ever since The Smoking Gun ran a withering dissection of the documents on which the whole story depended and the Times was forced to issue a sweeping apology for the piece, that pile has gotten pretty damn big, with both readers and other journalists getting in on the action.

I just want to make sure our readers get a good look at Jimmy Sabatino, the known con artist who appears to have produced the bogus FBI documents that fooled the Times (but not the Smoking Gun). Back in 1999, when I was a staff writer at Miami New Times, my colleague and friend Robert Andrew Powell wrote this story about Sabatino. Read the whole thing, and be sure not to miss this part describing how Sabatino would routinely run up five-figure hotel bills without paying a cent:

Parents of 7th, 8th and 9th grade boys can relax a wee bit more this afternoon. Jeffrey Ray Nielsen--a onetime congressional aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and a serial pedophile--is now in custody of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Superior Court Judge David Thompson sentenced the 37-year-old Nielsen, son of former Fountain Valley Mayor Ben Nielsen, to three years in an as-yet-to-be-named California prison. Read the full story of today's hearing in next week's edition of Moxley Confidential in the Weekly.

Click here for prior coverage of the Nielsen pedophile saga.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Fridays are always tough in Orange County's Central Courthouse at Santa Ana. That's when the majority of convicted defendants face sentencing. Of course, watching killers, rapists and robbers begin to pay for their crimes isn't tough. It's seeing the indescribable pain of victims and their families who attend the hearings.

Today, jail deputies brought Marvin V. Smith to court a final time. Last December 17, a jury convicted Smith—a wealthy businessman from Cypress—for brutally killing his wife Minnie, a retired Raytheon Corp. executive, and then staging a robbery in hopes of masking the killers' identity. It didn't help Smith's cause when a week after the crime, Cypress police detective Chris McShane discovered more than $200,000 of Minnie's allegedly stolen jewelry in the trunk of a car Smith kept in Los Angeles. Despite the efforts of veteran defense lawyer Jennifer Keller, Deputy District Attorney Michael F. Murray successfully argued that Smith had probably murdered his wife to get her half of the couples' $5.5 million fortune.

With two deputies at his side, Smith strutted into Superior Court Judge Daniel McNerney's packed courtroom wearing not only handcuffs, a nice sweater and slacks, but also a smile. It's incredibly bad manners for a convicted defendant to smile at his sentencing hearing. Then again, Smith's a 72-year-old cold blooded killer. And there's a history of bad manners here. On the night of Minnie's murder, Smith talked cheerfully to police about his affection for a woman later identified by law enforcement as one of Smith's numerous mistresses.

I've been covering courts off and on for 22 years, and today will be a day I'll always remember. Murray played a two-minute DVD created by Bennie Thomas, Minnie's son from a previous marriage. It contained dozens of family photos of what was obviously a happy, peaceful woman. In the background, a song played with lyrics that included, “Momma, you know I love you.'' There were tears and crying and sniffing in the public seating section. Judge McNerney and his bailiff, both red-faced, looked touched too.

Smith--represented in court by Kay Rackauckas, ex-wife to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas--showed no emotion. He rested his face on his right hand, looked away and closed his eyes. What thoughts go through a man's head when he's been convicted of killing his wife, leaving her bloody, beaten body nude for police to find? Denial? Twisted satisfaction?

Thomas, a 41-year-old Los Angeles County probation officer and former New Mexico State football star, addressed McNerney, confessed that he had had thoughts early in the case of getting revenge against his ex-stepfather, but said he eventually learned to leave fate in God's hands. “My mother was a giving, loving, considerate person,” he said. “Since this, I understand why some people commit suicide. They don't want to feel the pain.”

With his hands tightly gripping the podium and tears pouring down his face, Thomas concluded, “He deserves the death penalty.”

Bridgette Latham told McNerney that her aunt “epitomized beauty, grace, style and class.”

“Nobody could dislike her,” Latham said. “We won't ever hear that soft, delicate voice again. This [murder] is the ultimate deception and betrayal of our family.”

But Dr. Brenda C. Smith--a Pasadena-based physician specializing in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Smith's daughter—wasn't willing to concede that her father is a killer.

“I know that he is a victim,” said Smith. “My father is innocent. If I thought for one nanosecond that my father had anything to do with Minnie's death, I would not be beside him. But I told him to hold his head high today because he hasn't done anything wrong. We know that one day he will be vindicated of this.”

McNerney then sentenced Smith to a prison term of 25 years to life. The defense has 60 days to appeal. A restitution hearing was set for May 2.

Afterwards, a Smith trial juror who'd attended the hearing said she felt “some closure now.”

“It's just awful what happened to Minnie,” she said. “I'm so sorry for what the family has gone through.”

Click here to see "Lady Killer," the Weekly's December 2007 cover story on the trial.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

In February 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Orange County Republican Lynn Daucher as director of California's Department of Aging. At the time, Daucher--a 2006 campaign loser to Lou Correa for a state Senate seat--uttered a predictable line about the elation of public service.

“I am excited that Governor Schwarzenegger has chosen me to serve aging Californians,” she told reporters.

To be cynical—like we are about the 61-year-old Fullerton resident's credibility, there were $117,997 annual reasons for her joy.

But winning a cushy government post may not have been good enough for Daucher. Sources tell the Weekly that Daucher is embroiled in a behind-the-scenes controversy. The issue, we're told, pertains to Daucher's travel bills. Specifically, there are concerns that she's been improperly charging California taxpayers for personal travel and then attempting to mask the expenditures.

A Schwarzenegger administration official declined to address the issue on the record, but admits Daucher's days could be numbered in the Sacramento-based post.

Sarah Ludeman, spokeswoman at the Department of Aging, did not respond to two days' worth of phone calls.

In 2006, we named Daucher Worst Candidate in Orange County based on a campaign of shameful lies about Correa, a conservative Democrat, and an alleged unspecified plan by homosexuals to take over the world.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

At a press conference this afternoon at the District Attorney's headquarters in Santa Ana, DA Tony Rackauckas announced that a nine-month grand jury investigation by his agency failed to uncover any evidence to charge any Orange County Sheriff's Department personnel for the most bloody murder in the history of the county's jail system.

Rackauckas had just finished a brief appearance at OC Superior Court Judge Thomas Borris' courtroom, where three inmates were charged with the Oct. 5, 2006 murder of inmate John Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo software engineer who was awaiting trial at the Theo Lacy Men's Jail for possession of child porn. Last February, the DA's office had charged six other inmates with the brutal murder, which allegedly began when deputy Kevin Taylor told a white inmate that Chamberlain was a child molester and thus deserving of jailhouse justice.

The attack took place inside the F Barracks of Theo Lacy, a rectangular jail module with a guard tower in the middle that affords deputies a 360-degree view of the barracks. For 20 minutes, according to eyewitnesses interviewed by the Weekly, (see "Blind Spot," March 9, 2007), at least two dozen inmates savagely beat Chamberlain to death. Although cameras should have recorded the incident, deputies claimed the tape recording device malfunctioned. All that remained on tape was footage of deputies reacting to the incident. Deputies working the guard tower, including Taylor, later told investigators they didn't see the attack because they were watching a Dodgers game on television.

Late this afternoon, the District Attorney's press office notified reporters that Tony Rackauckas will publicly address the controversial John Chamberlain jail murder on Friday morning. Prosecutors and the grand jury investigated the killing, but the results have not yet been made public. Rackauckas is expected to announce multiple indictments. Last week, two high-ranking assistant sheriffs, Jo Ann Galisky and Steve Bishop, quit after officials confronted them with their related actions. Stay tuned.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

About an hour ago, I was leaving the Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana when a Sheriff's deputy blocked me from passing through the building's east entrance. Although the crowd of officers that seemed to appear all of the sudden were mum about what was going on, a bystander said that a man had jumped from the roof and was dead. I walked outside the entrance to Civic Center Drive and around back to get a look at what was going on.

Outside the front entrance, people were already talking about what had happened, but details were sketchy. Two guys smoking cigarettes said they heard there was a man threatening to jump. They said they thought there was a standoff going on on the other side of the building.

I noticed the adjacent four story parking garage at the courthouse wasn't blocked by police tape, so I ascended to the top floor to see if I could get a bird's eye view. I made sure to stay clear of the areas that were in throwing distance of the 10 story courthouse building, just in case the guy hadn't jumped yet and might want to use me as a cushion.

All I could see were a bunch of cop cars, fire trucks and paramedic wagons, so I descended back to ground level on the side where all the police were patrolling a yellow tape perimeter. I spoke momentarily with a female officer who said I would have to wait for a public information officer to learn more. She wouldn't give details, but I pressed her to find out if the person in question was dead by saying "is this still a dangerous situation, or is the danger over?"

"No, there is no danger, but I can't comment," she said.

In an opinion issued today, a California Court of Appeal ruled that Orange County prosecutors overstepped their authority to seek tough penalties against hoodlums who violate court-imposed anti-gang injunctions.

In January 2007, Sixto Moreno and Anthony Lopez—two Santa Nita gang members—drank beer in a vehicle parked in a residential driveway after 10 p.m. and in an area of Santa Ana supposedly controlled by a court order that limits gang activity. Police arrested the men for violating the injunction.

Violation of a court order is commonly considered a misdemeanor, but District Attorney Tony Rackauckas' deputies convinced a grand jury to indict Moreno, 28, and Lopez, 42, on three felony counts for the conduct. The key to his logic? The public demands stiffer penalties against violent gang members. If found guilty, the pair could have faced years in prison.

The felony charges "voice the intent of the people that gang-related crimes receive enhanced punishment," Rackauckas' office argued in front of Presiding Justice David G. Sills and Justices William F. Rylaarsdam and Kathleen O'Leary.

But it was Orange County Assistant Public Defender Martin F. Schwarz who won the day. He got the court to issue a pretrial ruling that concludes the DA had "criminalized" what the justices said were "otherwise innocuous acts": sitting in a lawfully parked car while consuming alcoholic beverages. The impact of the opinion written by Sills? Prosecutors can only file misdemeanor charges against gang members accused of being in contempt of a court's injunction.

"This is a huge blow to law enforcement," one veteran cop told the Weekly. "It knocks the teeth out of our ability to keep gangsters from dominating certain high-crime-rate areas."

In July 2006, Rackauckas, area politicians and local police gang units celebrated the injunction, issued by Superior Court Judge Daniel Didier, as a necessary tool to restore order where Santa Nita ruled over residents with fear and violence. The order named 137 gangsters (many of them teenagers) and called for mandatory neighborhood curfews, prohibitions against gang associations or violent activities, and a ban on gang-related clothing. The injunction zone is Harbor Boulevard to the Santa Ana River, and from Trask Avenue in Garden Grove to West McFadden Street in Santa Ana.

At the time of Didier's order, Deputy Alternate Defender Tony Ufland predicted that "it enjoins people from doing things that are completely legal . . . things like wearing certain colors, drinking in places where it is legal to drink, associating with people of your choosing. They are looking for a brass ring and going well beyond what the law says is constitutional in this injunction."

Ufland: candidate for soothsayer of the year?

But happy gangsters, don't order that new tattoo or fire your Glocks into the sky yet. Rackauckas, a gangster as a teen, isn't accepting the decision as final. "We're definitely asking the Supreme Court to review this," he said.

(See Anthony Lopez v The Superior Court of Orange County, G03925.)

—R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

Over at the Orange County Register, ace reporter Peggy Lowe writes tonight on Orange County Sheriff's Department blog news that two of indicted ex-Sheriff Mike Carona's Yes Folks (YF) quit today: assistant sheriffs Jo Ann Galisky and Steve Bishop.

Somehow the third and final major YFer embarrassment, Acting Sheriff Jack Anderson, remains . . . sitting atop the massive police agency, repeatedly uttering four words: "I am the sheriff' and waiting, nervously, for guidance from Carona/GOP operative Mike Schroeder.

Can the public and the honest people at OCSD ever get decent leadership? I ask this to you, Janet Nguyen.

Today's developments prefaced an upcoming unflattering grand jury report on the brutal killing of a man in pre-trial custody in October 2006. The Carona-Galisky-Bishop lie, oops, line was that a deputy standing feet away from the lethal beating (that lasted, perhaps, 20 minutes) suffers from severe ADD. They proposed that he remained clueless to the gory killing because, drum roll, he was too busy watching TV.

According to the new public employee union contract, jail deputies are required to work only during regularly scheduled TV commercials and not at all during sporting events or the airing of porno.

There's good news though. Galisky--who recently hired a criminal defense lawyer (no, really!)--won't join the unemployment line. She's announced that she will head a new private detective firm with Carona and Bishop: Blatant Liar, Screw Em & Duh, LLP.

They'll specialize in sexual harassment, illegal eavesdropping, misuse of public property and unnecessary government employee travel abroad cases. Galisky's focus? Evidence elimination and grand jury preparation tactics.

The ultra-trustworthy Full Disclosure Network reports that other notables are set to participate in the firm too. Don Haidl will supply employee perks--free boats, cash and Bible-based pep talks, but only if he gets to wear a Blatant Liar, Screw Em & Duh badge. Thanks to a grant from a mysterious individual with mysterious interests, Brian Sun and something like nine other Jones Day lawyers will work as, uhhh, "free" employees. Incarcerated Las Vegas titty bar owner Rick Rizzolo and ex-federal prosecutor Wayne Gross, a Carona apologist, have already signed on as clients. Meanwhile, Reg columnist Frank Mickadeit--who lives with Gross!?!?!--is waiting for final instructions from Schroeder before he writes a flattering column on Galisky's new business.

-- R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

According to an official inside the team-based mixed martial arts league known as the International Fight League, we will not have an Orange County team this year.

Last year, our local team-- the Southern California Condors--was coached by Brazilian MMA legend Laguna Niguel-based Marco "King of the Streets" Ruas and competed against teams of fighters from all over the country. However, IFL spokesman Jerry Milani says Ruas wasn't able to get a team ready this year in time to compete, but would not go into details.

The IFL has done some restructuring and has completely scrapped the team names from last season, its first ever, in favor of teams named after their sponsors. So teams like the Raptors, and the Anacondas were eliminated and replaced with teams like Xtreme Couture (an Affliction clothing line named after former UFC Champion Randy Couture) and Ken Shamrock's Lion's Den submission academy.

The news of the Condors demise is another serious setback following last year's tragic suicide of 27-year-old Condors fighter and Orange County native Jeremy Williams.
But Milani said that if Ruas can put a team together sometime this year, the IFL would be more than happy to sponsor them in competition, but they will not be able to vie for this year's team championship.

At noon, the ho-hum shuffle of another Tuesday afternoon was interrupted with a jarring burst of voices. They echoed from the Cal State Fullerton quad in front of the Humanities and Social Sciences building. A noose was throw over a tree branch and dropped in the dirt. Today students from across L.A. and Orange County had a lynching. A lynching of intolerance.

A stuffed effigy riddled with hateful slogans was held swinging from a noose in the background of a protest at CSUF's anti-hate rally. A coalition of African American student activist groups from all over southern California, including CSUF, made their voices heard at the rally, which was held in response to the recent trend of nooses being hung from trees on college campuses nationwide.

One of those campuses was CSUF. Last semester, five spray-painted orange nooses were left dangling from a clothesline in the quad following the events of the Jena 6 case in Louisiana.

Today's rally was a passionate display of student involvement that included educated speeches from CSUF and Cal State L.A. as well as some poetry and song that pulled people in to listen.

Whether or not people agreed with the protest, it was the kind of event that colleges and universities were made for and should thrive on. It's a shame that college students, myself included, can get so wrapped up in the trappings of trying to get ahead or jumping through academic hoops that we forget to poke our heads up and look around at our society. I was pleased to see that some students unaware of what was going on looked uneasy, as though they were waiting for some kind of bomb to explode. That's exactly what we need: a few uncomfortable pokes at our consciousness that challenge us to re-examine our ideas about the acceptance of racism against any culture in our Orange County bubble.

Active Students for African People was one of the primary catalyst organizations that got the event planned, with the help of student activists and organizers from CSUF, CSULA, UCLA, CSUN, Trade Tech, El Camino City College and Pasadena City College.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Arthur Carmona, the 16-year-old kid who was wrongfully arrested, prosecuted and convicted of robbing an Irvine juice shop ten years ago, is dead.

Somebody--witnesses claim he was an angry guy who picked a fight at a trailer park party early Sunday morning in Santa Ana--rammed him with a pickup truck. Police found his body in the street and confiscated the truck. They opened a homicide investigation but haven't named a suspect yet.

Sgt. Jose Gonzalez, a Santa Ana police spokesman, said he had no further information on the crime and the victim's mother, Ronnie Carmona, was unable to take telephone calls today. Yesterday, just hours after getting the news, she sent several reporters an email saying she still hadn't been able to see her son's body. "Arthur is finally free," she wrote. "I would like to extend my deepest thank you to everyone who helped me fight for Arthur's release from prison."

Along with LA Times columnist Dana Parsons, the Weekly published numerous articles on Carmona's Kafkaesque journey through Orange County's justice system. You can read those stories here, here and here. Both the Times and Register published stories about Carmona's death. You can also read readers comments below the Register story which are alternatively touching and idiotic. Our obituary for Carmona will appear in this Thursday's paper.

NB_C News is reporting that Goat Boy, Orange County's favorite terrorist nutball, seems to have disappeared.

Goat Boy would bed Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the former death-metal fan turned Muslim convert who grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County be+fore moving to Garden Grove, where he became a radical M%uslim before heading to Pakistan in the late 1990s. He unveiled himse#lf in a 2004 videotape distributed by al-Qaeda as Azzam the American. Ever since, he has pestered the western world with dire threats of attacks rivaling 9/11 and boring lectures on American imperialism and the virtues of Islam.

Gadahn w!as last seen leaving America in the late 1990s with his pal, Khalil Deek, presumably for Peshawar, Pakistan, which is where Deek, a former Anaheim computer engineer, was last seen. In a Weekly story last year, Saraah Olsen, a former neighbor of Deek, claimed Deek and Olsen's then hus@band Hisham Diab--current wherabouts also unknown--recruited the soft-spoken Gadahn into a terrorist cell.

Deek, for his part, was arrested in Peshawar in December 1999 and charged with helping al-Qaeda encrypt terrorist manuals and forging passports for its members in preparation for the so-called Millennium Eve Plot against tourism targets in Jordan. The Pakistanis sent Deek to Jordan, where he spent months in jail before being released by authorities there in May 2000. He returned to Peshawar and promptly disappeared. His brother says Deek is dead$, a belief also apparently shared by US anti-terrorism experts, but insists he has no idea how or where he died.

So its only fitting that Deek's sidekick Gadahn has followed his reputed mentor into oblivion. Citing "jihadist" sources, NBC reports that Deek had been living in South Wa%ziristan, a wild and wooly area of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan where bin Laden is supposed to be hiding out and which hasn't been conquered by outside forces since Alexander te Great's day. The Pakistani military is afraid to send its troops there.

One of those so+urces claimed Gadahn had told his friends he was attending an "important meeting" in Mir Ali, which the US must have known about since they hit the town with Predator missiles on January 31, killing al-Qaeda's number four man, Abu Laith al-Libi. But US government officials are telling NBC that Gadahn wasn't at the meeting. The F&BI still has a $1 million reward out for his capture, which would surely go a long way in South Waziristan.

That's a lot of AK-47s.

No, not really. But one avid Weekly reader decided to help us out this morning with a little something we like to call a "scoop" in the news business.

Apparently our crack team of investigators dropped the ball again, failing to connect the dots because of our liberal agenda. This intrepid reader had the bravery to speak out and risk being shredded by our treacherous misinformation machine. Among his revelations was the once heavily guarded secret – although actually somewhat obvious in retrospect – fact that "Obama" sort of sounds like "Osama," therefore they are the same.

Hear the truth below, but be prepared to have your mind blown: