Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney handed Chrisstian Pax Joseph Manshack a punishment lighter than that requested by federal prosecutors: eight months in prison plus three years of supervised probation.
But Manshack, who has enjoyed a wild criminal career involving international flight and a brutal Chinese prison, hasn't been able to obey Carney's orders.
This month, federal agents arrested him for going AWOL from a post-prison residential reentry center, repeatedly failing to report to his probation officer and fleeing the region for an unauthorized trip to Santa Cruz, according to court records.
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert N. Block this week ordered Manshack to remain in the custody of U.S. marshals until Carney decides what additional punishment is necessary at a future hearing inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
In his prior case, Manshack–a convicted robber–lied on a passport to flee domestic violence charges and landed in Thailand before China, where communist government agents arrested him on immigration violations.
He was held in a mountain prison and for 70 days forced to endure grueling conditions and frightening guards before his deportation back to California.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
