Prisons

Vietnamese Immigrant Wishes He'd Become a U.S. Citizen Before Cocaine Bust

Born two years before the end of the Vietnam War in Saigon, Dinh Canh Tran lived under dictatorial communist rule until about 1989 when his family relocated to the Philippines in route to live permanently in the United States. You might guess that living in a country where citizens have no real rig ... More >>

Surprise: Orange County Businessman & Prosecutors Differ On Whether Income Taxes Are Mandatory

Poor Brian Fox. Fox, who once lived in a $2.3 million house in the city of Orange, must have forgotten that we can't outrun death or the IRS. From 2005 to 2007, the businessman earned approximately $2.5 million in the financial-services industry, but claimed he couldn't afford to pay about $335,00 ... More >>

Inmates Have Been Reviewing Prisons On Yelp!

Yelp is many things to many people: a bully pulpit or simply just a bully to businesses barely trying to make it. It's been ridiculed, parodied, and satired...but this next story is so surreal, even the people at Yelp probably didn't see it coming. The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com ... More >>

Orange County 7-Eleven Clerk Gets Prison For Brea Mall Meth Deal

With the help of a buddy, Pakistani national Noman Saeed, an Orange County 7-Eleven clerk, plotted to sell 12 ounces of methamphetamine for $12,000 at Brea Mall in November 2010.Saeed and partner Mohammad Masud hoped to split a $1,000 profit as a way to cushion their poor finances, according to cour ... More >>

Notorious Mongols Gangster Admits RICO Guilt in Federal Court

Federal prison will soon get a little bit heavier for many years.A 6-foot-4 and 380 pound, onetime gang leader of the Mongols Nation Motorcycle Club--a rival to the Hells Angels--has admitted he repeatedly violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) including during a ... More >>

Hispanic Prison Gang "Taxed" Street Thugs and Drug Dealers, Reads Indictment of 11

Read my lips: no new taxes . . . imposed by Hispanic prison gangs on street thugs and drug dealers. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Anaheim Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) endorse that message, as their joint investigation netted seven men and ... More >>

The Straight Dope On 'The House I Live In'

Powerful voices explain the failed war on drugs

Little Saigon Ecstasy Dealer Prepares For Long Federal Prison Trip

A 36-year-old Little Saigon man who sold 10,000 Ecstasy tablets while unaware he was under FBI surveillance in an operation called "Candy Maker" had hoped to serve no more than one year in a federal prison.Hung Xuan Dong of Westminster claims that government undercover agents and confidential inform ... More >>

Fullerton Teacher's Aide Caught in FBI Kiddie Porn Sting Gets Punished

A onetime teacher's aide in the Fullerton School District and the Placentia-Yorba Linda School District has been formally sentenced to 70 months in federal prison for collecting and distributing graphic child pornography through the Internet.Emmanuel Moran is lucky that Assistant United States Attor ... More >>

Ivan Von Staich: Killer Loses Parole Battle But Wins the Ugliest Mugshot of the Week War

​The ugliest police mugshot of the week comes not from a cop shop or district attorney's office but the California Department of Corrections, which is charged with continuing the incarcerate Ivan Von Staich with the governor's reversal of the Lake Elsinore 56-year-old's parole.For reasons known on ... More >>

ACLU Study Reveals Almost 200 Allegations Of Sexual Abuse Of Immigration Detainees, Three Cases At Santa Ana City Jail

​A recent American Civil Liberties Union report shows that sexual abuse of people in immigration detention facilities is a widespread, and likely underreported, issue in the U.S. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU learned of almost 200 cases of alleged sexual abus ... More >>

[UPDATED with Victim's Daughter at Parole Denial:] Omaima Aree Nelson and the Prosecutor Trying to Keep the Model-Cannibal in Prison: Then and Now

​UPDATE, OCT. 5, 5:24 P.M.: From the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) statement on Omaima Nelson's parole denial this afternoon:"The victim's daughter Margaret Nelson was also present at the hearing and told the [parole] Board how her father was taken from her when she was a 15-ye ... More >>

Ivan Von Staich, Convicted Murderer Who Scored Win in Parole Bid, Has Menaced Courts for Years

​The state parole board Wednesday found suitable for parole a two-time jail escapee convicted of bludgeoning a former girlfriend with a claw hammer and fatally shooting her husband in 1983. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas opposed Ivan Von Staich's parole bid, but if the 55-year-old is ultimately ... More >>

[UPDATED with Denials:] Ehriberto Arcelara, Killer of Tennis Pro, and Carlos Sanchez, Bus Stop Murderer, Seek Paroles Today

​UPDATE, AUG. 9, 5:26 P.M.: The Board of Parole Hearings, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations today denied the parole requests of Ehriberto Arcelara and Carlos Sanchez, who are currently serving 16 years to life and 15 years to life respectively at Calipatria State Prison in ... More >>

[UPDATED with Continuance to 2016:] Alfonso Gudino, La Habra Gang Banger Who Shot into Random Car, Faces Parole Opposition Today

Pelican walk​UPDATE, JUNE 28, 11:14 A.M.: The possible parole of 32-year-old gang banger Alfonso Gudino from Pelican Bay State Prison has been continued until 2016.Gudin conceded before today's hearing that his parole would be denied, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office. He w ... More >>

Michelle Gee Family Sues County Over Jail Death Exposed by Weekly

Michelle Gee RIP​The family of Michelle Gee, a 41-year-old woman who hung herself inside a medical-ward cell at the Orange County Jail on March 17, 2010, has sued the county over her death. Gee's suicide was first exposed by the Weekly several days after the event, which occurred within hours of a ... More >>

[UPDATED with Conviction:] James Arroyo, Orange County Jail Cook, Groped 2 Lady Inmates

​UPDATE, MAY 16, 5:11 P.M.: Orange County Sheriff's Department jail cook James Arroyo was convicted today of sexually assaulting two female inmates under the 54-year-old Fullerton resident's supervision.Arroyo pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of sexual battery on one woman and two misdem ... More >>

[UPDATED] James Arroyo, Orange County Jail Cook, Charged for Allegedly Groping Two Female Inmates

​UPDATE, MARCH 4, 10:02 A.M.: Fifty-four-year-old James Arroyo of Fullerton could go from being an Orange County jail cook to inmate for allegedly getting touchy-feely with two women behind bars.In a statement on Arroyo's charges (after the jump), the Orange County District Attorney's office annou ... More >>

Immigration Detainee Dies at Theo Lacy Jail

​Remember that cover story that ran in the Weekly a few weeks back about suicides and strange deaths inside Orange County Jails? The one that mentioned how the Sheriff's Dept. is filling up empty bunks with hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees? Well, now we can add an IC ... More >>

[UPDATED]: Dirty Anaheim Cop Sentenced to Four Years in Prison for Sexual Assaults of Undocumented Workers

Wagner​[Update 12:04 p.m., Dec. 16]: When the hearing resumed, Wagner's attorney, Robert Corrado, made several attempts to delay the sentencing, all of which Judge Schwarm denied. Two of Wagner's Jane Doe victims gave victim-impact statements--one a written statement read by a translator, the othe ... More >>

Jose Antonio Franco, Freed Mentally Retarded Immigrant, Part of ACLU Lawsuit Against Feds

​As we told you here, five days after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a petition in March against the federal government for locking up Jose Antonio Franco in a Santa Ana detention facility, officials released the mentally retarded immigrant who had been living in Costa Mesa ... More >>

Dump the Pendejo Already

[¡Ask a Mexican!] Is keeping photos of exes a gabacho thing?

[UPDATED:] Anthony Nicolas Orban, Westminster Police Detective Accused of Brutal Rape, May Have Other Victims

UPDATE: Indictment lays out charges against the accused (details below) . . . Courtesy of Ontario Police DepartmentAnthony Nicolas Orban, a cop, and Jeffrey Thomas Jelinek, a prison guard, are held in brutal crime.​Westminster Police Detective Anthony Nicolas Orban told his wife he lost his servi ... More >>

Mortgage Scheme is "Most Sophisticated and Arrogant Fraud" Judge David O. Carter Has Seen

​Jared Tornow, 34, of San Clemente, was sentenced this morning to nearly six years in federal prison for what U.S. District Judge David O. Carter called one of the most sophisticated and arrogant frauds he has ever seen.According to court documen ... More >>

Arpaio Raises Howls Inside, Heckles Outside Bill Hunt for Sheriff Dinner

​I went to a Bill Hunt for Sheriff fund-raiser tonight, and a Joe Arpaio Dinner Show broke out.

[Moxley Confidential] Killer Billy Joe Johnson Makes His Case for Death Row

Governor Signs Arthur Carmona-inspired Wrongful Convictions Bill

Arthur Carmona R.I.P.​When he died at the hands of a hit-and run driver early last year, Arthur Carmona was still hard at work trying to help people like him who had been convicted of crimes they didn't commit, and whose problems didn't end when, miracle of miracles, the justice system finally cor ... More >>

Ex-Sheriff Carona Walks the Yard (Nervously)

Dream sequence: Mike Carona entertains his fellow inmates.Jack Grimshaw, the Weekly's eagle-eyed proofreader, just whipped up this diddy. Imagine disgraced, prison-bound, ex-Sheriff Mike Carona singing the following to his future minimum security federal pen inmates to the tune of Johnny Cash's "I W ... More >>

Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Child Molester Who Worked For Dana Rohrabacher?

Singing & Dancing in Prison?At least twice a month, someone asks me: Where is Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, the Orange County conservative activist who worked for years as a Washington, D.C. aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and is now a convicted serial child molester?Answer: McFarland, ... More >>

DeWayne McKinney, RIP, WTF?

Just days after the Orange County District Attorney filed murder charges against Felix Abreu, the Santa Ana man who allegedly smashed his car into Arthur Carmona earlier this year, a man wrongfully charged and convicted of burglary a decade ago, another wrongfully convicted inmate from Orange County ... More >>

Is California's Original Three-Striker Innocent of the Car Theft That Sent Him Away for Life?

I CAN HAZ JUSTISS????

A grand jury report and numerous articles have detailed the barbaric system of jailhouse (in)justice administered by the deputies at Theo Lacy jail. Pretty much everyone involved acknowledges that deputies routinely condoned, authorized, facilitated, ordered, and/or ignored the beating of inmates ... More >>

The Kid Is Dead: Arthur Carmona, 1982-2008

Thursday's Headlines & Surprises: Criminal Miscalculations

California's New Math: The LA Times reports today that state prison officials miscalculated the sentences for not 25 or 50 or 100 but for 33,000 current inmates. According to judges, officials have been applying the "wrong formula." Writes reporter Michael Rothfeld, "The sentencing errors range fro ... More >>

Thursday's Headlines & Surprises: Is An OC lawyer also a Slumlord?

Relax, It's Just a Game: Scott Glover and Matt Lait at the Times reveal today that Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies have been playing on-duty law-enforcement competitions. According to an internal department e-mail obtained by the reporters, one game was called “Operation Any Booking,” i ... More >>

LAFF 2007: Dancin' to the Jailhouse Doc

Tased and Not Confused

To lawyer in OC jailhouse-tasing incident, missing footage is no shocker

Over Spitzer's Objection, Gov Delays New Death Chamber

You've got to wonder how state assemblyman Todd Spitzer--a former Orange County supervisor, prosecutor and LAPD reserve officer--tolerates continual Sacramento BS even within his own Republican Party. McClatchy news reported today that GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger--who oddly still enjoys The Ter ... More >>

Thanks for the Work!

An open letter to District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, Sheriff Mike Carona, and the police chiefs and mayors of every Orange County city except Laguna Niguel

Finding Jesus in the OC Jail

Sadistic killer now wants to write books for children

The Trials of Billy Joe, White Supremacist

Gang leader and murder suspect says he was brutalized by jail deputies

Did Matt Lamont Try to Blow Up Hitlers Birthday Party?

For Matt Lamont, the worst thing about jail is the Nazis

Rafael Le Croixs Prison Wisdom

The Untouchables

Biggie & Tupac doesnt solve anything

Bad Rap, Vol. II

Big J-Mos best friend says hes ready to testify for the defense

In the Hole

Santa Ana inmate who asked to go to juvenile hall sent to isolation

The Kid Is Gone

As the battle over his future escalates, Arthur Carmona is sent north

The Devils Are Here

Escape From Death Row!

The falland possible rise againof LBC hip-hop

Criminal Prosecution

Body count grows in war on medical marijuana