An Anaheim man was sentenced today to life in state prison without the possibility of parole for stabbing a 31-year-old Garden Grove man to death over a drug-deal dispute.Johnathan Allen Kincaid, 23, who had fled to Las Vegas after the July 29, 2009, murder, was convicted in February of felony speci ... More >>
In June 2010, Buena Park mobile home resident Andrew Cervantes (AKA "Tank") aged four years in an instant when--at the age of 14 and in the eighth grade--he paused a Santa Ana bicycle ride to buy candy to ask another teenage hoodlum, Manual Orozco, a gang-world question: "Where you from?" Cerva ... More >>
In California criminal cases, judges have three basic sentencing options: midterm, lowterm and upper term.Judges most commonly hand guilty defendants the midterm unless there are valid factors in mitigation or aggravation that deserve the raising or lowering of the punishment.Robert Cande Rodriguez, ... More >>
In 2011, an Orange County jury agreed with prosecutor Cameron Talley's assertion that convicted felon Cesar Gomez savagely beat, robbed and strangled to death a female prostitute inside her room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Garden Garden.In February, Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg gav ... More >>
Jose Joaquin Guzman rode his bicycle to a Del Taco in Anaheim like he'd done many times before to eat but one night he wanted money.Guzman walked in the fast food restaurant's rear entrance and saw no customers. Edith, the manager, was wiping tables clean. She recognized him, said hello and continue ... More >>
Orange County's Paul Gentile Smith is one sick bastard.Somehow Tina Smith, no relation, fell in love with him in 2006 and suffered the consequences.He accused her of stealing $5,000 from him, tied her up with rope, doused her with lighter fluid and tried to burn her alive. But the fireplace lig ... More >>
Armed with a baseball bat and a mop handle, members of the Asian Crips criminal street gang attacked a group of men and women outside the Asian Garden Mall in Little Saigon on Thanksgiving 2001 and murdered one of the victims.The crime went unsolved for eight years until Westminster Police Departmen ... More >>
Poor Orange County Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg.Froeberg probably thought that he was finished with Wyron Jerome Oard in 2006, when he sentenced the hoodlum to a California prison.Little did the veteran criminal judge know that it would take three sentencing hearings over six years as we ... More >>
A year ago, a lone juror prevented Gabriela Mariana Morales from being convicted in the beating death of her 4-year-old son back in May 2008.The Santa Ana 30-year-old did not get so lucky this week, when a jury that deliberated for day found her guilty of second-degree murder, assault on a child lik ... More >>
A 24-year-old man who believes he is the Prince of Wales and that his royal family will eventually intervene on his behalf has been sentenced to be committed for 26 years to life at Patton State Hospital for fatally stabbing his stepmother 67 times until she died in 2008.That did not satisfy 24-year ... More >>
California's uncompromising anti-gang laws reached inside an Orange County courtroom this morning, gave a Buena Park teenager severe punishment and left the defendant's family, who firmly believe the kid's innocent, terribly distraught.Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg sentenced Jesus Art ... More >>
A Los Angeles gangster, undocumented alien and pimp who beat and then strangled a 24-year-old prostitute to death in her Garden Grove hotel room in 2009 tilted his head to the right and then to the left but said nothing when Judge William Froeberg pronounced punishment this afternoon: life in a C ... More >>
In less than 15 seconds in the middle of the night on June 2, 2007 in Orange County's Little Saigon, gun-happy Vietnamese immigrant Anh Duoc Nguyen, though just 17 years old, forever lost his youth and his freedom.Until Jan. 20, Nguyen--a onetime Garden Grove High School student and member of the ... More >>
Samer Mouwakeh: Defeated by a lazy courthouse elevatorEveryone knows traffic in Orange County is often horrible, but the biggest jams aren't always on the streets. At times, the pedestrian traffic congestion at the elevators inside the county's Central Justice Center in Santa Ana seems worse.But ... More >>
Former New England Patriot's linebacker Eric Naposki, now a convicted murderer, took a break from his seemingly continual jailhouse network TV interviews to appear today in court, where he asked that his punishment be delayed until May 18.Naposki entered Superior Court Judge William Froeberg's co ... More >>
YumsVincent Julian Valdez's stupidity on MySpace cost him 10 years in a California prison.In 2007, the trigger-happy Santa Ana hoodlum with the Thug Family Life (T.F.L.) gang obviously didn't get the memo concerning stealth.Valdez attempted to reduce his potential prison exposure after committing ... More >>
"I didn't kill anybody, I'm innocent!" Jason Russell Richardson blurted out in court Monday.Tell it to the judge.Actually, Richardson did, and Orange County Superior Court Judge William Froeberg responded by sentencing the Oceanside 41-year-old to die for the 2007 murder of a Tustin Home Depot ma ... More >>
Glenda's Bail BondsAndrew CervantesAndrew Cervantes, who at 14 was believed last year to be the youngest person charged as an adult for murder in Orange County, today received what is likely the stiffest sentence handed to a 15-year-old here: 40 years to life in state prison.Cervantes was convict ... More >>
Celebrating the Day of the Dead with some of the county's worst offenders
UPDATE, JULY 14, 6:25 P.M.: The Weekly's R. Scott Moxley was in the courtroom this afternoon as the guilty verdict was read in former NFL player Eric Naposki's special circumstances murder trial.Check back for Moxley's latest trial coverage. In the meantime, take a look at his story, "Eric, Get Y ... More >>
OC Register media pool photoProsecutor Matt Murphy nabs another murdererIn most respects, today was a typical day in Orange County: Surfers hit Pacific Ocean waves under a cloudless sky. Shoppers crammed into South Coast Plaza. The notorious 55 freeway wrecked people's schedules. Excited tourists ... More >>
Johnston and Naposki at the time of the murderIn his best chance so far to dominate Judge William Froeberg's Santa Ana courtroom on behalf of murder defendant Eric Naposki, New York-based defense lawyer Angelo MacDonald spent nearly five hours today working diligently to undermine the prosecution ... More >>
OC Register pool photoA tame second quarter for Eric NaposkiI wish I could have yesterday back in the case of the People of California versus Eric Naposki, and not just because of mid-morning indigestion from a rubbery courthouse cafeteria blueberry muffin.On Monday, the trial's opening day, Napo ... More >>
Oops. The killer left this key at the crime sceneIn Day 3 of Eric Naposki's murder trial, jurors learned several damning, pro-prosecution facts, but the ex-NFL player still managed to deliver a big, confident wink at his girlfriend who was in the public seating section of Judge William Froeberg's ... More >>
Naposki: Suit up, boy. It's game time!One-time linebacker for the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, Eric Naposki had been hoping that an Orange County judge would dismiss the murder case against him and an ex-girlfriend in the gun slaying of a wealthy Newport Beach businessman.Defense ... More >>
[Moxley Confidential] Was the cold-case homicide of William McLaughlin cold for so long that exculpatory evidence disappeared?
Le: The latest victim of the Vietnam WarAs a soldier, Peter Nong Le defended South Vietnam in battles with the communists from 1960 to 1975. In 1971, Le became a brutalized prisoner of war (POW) forced to march the Ho Chi Minh trail. Victorious North Vietnamese forces sent him to a post-war conce ... More >>
Courtesy of the Orange County District Attorney's OfficeFelix Abreu's 2008 booking photoEarly in the morning of February 17, 2008, a fight broke out at a house party in Santa Ana. As bystanders raced out of the house, trying to flee the scene, a gray pickup truck careened around the nearest stree ... More >>
Lorey JamesBrenice Lee Smith and his family in Kathmandu, circa 2000Brenice Lee Smith, the last remaining fugitive from the once-infamous 1972 Brotherhood of Eternal Love case, will be set free from Theo Lacy Prison tonight, having pleaded guilty this morning to transporting hashish from Afghanistan ... More >>
Anna, James, Maya: All reminders of a simpler time.Remember 2007? M.I.A. released a really good album, the surge in Iraq was all the talk, Anna Nicole Smith laid to rest her gentle head and everyone assumed Hillary Clinton was going to be the next President.It was also the year in which James Fle ... More >>
Nick SchouBrenice Lee Smith at his first court hearingA man accused of of membership in the so-called "Hippie Mafia"--and who has spent the past three decades living a peaceful, possession-free life in a Nepalese monastery--has now been languishing in jail for more than a month.Brenice Lee Smith ... More >>
Hanna Montessori's Killer Gets An Unpleasant SurpriseJonathan Phong Khanh Tran--dubbed by a homicide detective as "the nicest killer" he'd ever met--has waited 17 months in a California prison in hopes that a state court of appeal would overturn his rape, oral copulation and murder convictions in ... More >>
"I sat down with a killer the other day," begins Tina Dirmann's feature in the March issue of Orange Coast. "Funny, I thought, how, up close the face of evil often doesn't look so very evil at all."Dirmann's subject is Skylar Deleon, the former Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers actor turned con man, dru ... More >>
Dana Point's Michael Lamb ditched his menacing shaved head look and entered Judge William Froeberg's 10th floor Santa Ana courtroom this morning with a full, messy head of hair that still couldn't cover the white supremacist tattoos doting his scalp, face, throat and neck. It wasn't like Lamb, a v ... More >>
White supremacist gangster and killer Michael Lamb (pictured) trotted into a heavily guarded Orange County courtroom this afternoon, chuckled with his lawyers and watched quietly as a court clerk announced the jury's verdict: death. But the proceedings, which took less than two minutes, nearly lef ... More >>
Before a recent Orange County criminal trial of a Vietnamese American defendant, Superior Court Judge William Froeberg asked if any of the prospective jurors could speak Vietnamese. There was silence and then: Juror #126: I know one word of Vietnamese! Froeberg: One word? Juror 126: It's not a ... More >>
This afternoon Superior Court Judge William Froeberg sentenced convicted killer Jacob Rump, a 30-year-old Orange County gangster, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 2002 ambush murder in Anaheim. Details about the case involving Rump (pictured), who is a member of Public Enem ... More >>
Jury deadlocks on ‘ultimate’ punishment for Michael Lamb
Just before lunch today, the jury in the Michael Allan Lamb murder case announced itself "hopelessly deadlocked" on whether the Public Enemy Number One (PENI) Death Squad member deserved the death penalty. The vote was nearly tied after almost three days of deliberating. Six jurors wanted death; f ... More >>
An Orange County jury of seven men and five women took nine days after a nine-week trial to convict two Public Enemy Number One Death Squad hoodlums for the 2002 murder of another gangster and the attempted murder of an undercover Anaheim cop. Michael Allan Lamb, 32 (left), and Jacob Anthony Rump, ... More >>
White supremacists Michael Lamb and Jason Rump must have sighed in relief this afternoon. Despite a week of deliberations following their nine-week trial, the panel hasn't been able to reach unanimous verdicts on the murder and attempted-murder counts. But at lunchtime today, jurors announced they ... More >>
DA roasts Lamb and Rump, two seasoned white supremacists
Superior Court Judge William Froeberg had intended to announce punishment this morning for convicted Montessori killer/rapist Jonathan Phong Khanh Tran, 22. But Tran's mother switched defense lawyers and, through new counsel Al Stokke, asked for a five-month delay. Froeberg granted the request. The ... More >>
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