Federal magistrates seen as a strategic trial choice By America Hernandez Civil rights attorneys fed up with ever-shortening trial time limits in the Central District said they are increasingly considering stipulating to magistrates, who are able to give cases the time they deserve before jurors. Crushing caseloads and the need to prioritize criminal suits may […]

By Jeremiah Dobruck, PressTelegram Tuesday, October 11, 2016 EDITOR’S NOTE: Video contains violence and graphic language. A federal jury Friday awarded more than $1.6 million to two men who claimed Long Beach police beat them with batons and stomped on one of their hands without provocation, leaving them with broken bones and permanently disabling one […]

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to pay $10.1 million to a man who spent 20 years behind bars before having his murder conviction overturned in 2011. Francisco Carrillo Jr. was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1992 in the fatal drive-by shooting of Donald Sarpy in Lynwood. Carrillo, who was 16 at the time […]

LA City Council Approves $24.3 Million Payout For Wrongful Murder Convictions LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The Los Angeles City Council agreed today to pay a total of $24.3 million to settle a pair of wrongful conviction cases filed by two men who each served more than two dozen years in prison for murders they did not […]

By CINDY CHANG The family of a 23-year-old man who committed suicide in Men’s Central Jail will receive $1.6 million from Los Angeles County to settle a lawsuit alleging that jail officials did not properly diagnose his mental illness. Austin Losorelli, the son of an LAPD lieutenant, told jail mental health workers that he was […]

By MAURA DOLAN Two men wrongfully imprisoned for decades may hold Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives and a deputy liable for failing to disclose evidence that pointed toward their innocence, a federal appeals panel unanimously decided Wednesday. In a decision written by Judge Raymond C. Fisher, a Clinton appointee, the three-judge panel said the law […]

9th Circuit: Failure to disclose evidence leaves LA County open to litigation By L.J. Williamson Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies who are facing lawsuits by men who were wrongly imprisoned for decades are not entitled to qualified immunity, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Wednesday. Plaintiffs Frank O’Connell and Francisco Carillo Jr. […]

The parents of Oscar Ramirez Jr., an unarmed man fatally shot by a deputy last year in Paramount, filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The civil lawsuit was filed shortly after 11 a.m. in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawsuit accuses the department of negligence, excessive use […]

On a March morning in 1994, two homicide detectives and a Los Angeles Times reporter stood on the roof of a South L.A. brothel, bullets and spent shells at their feet. The detectives were investigating the fatal shooting of a 29-year-old man who was killed during an apparent robbery the night before. Los Angeles police […]