A notorious gang leader from Los Angeles who has been accused and linked to nine separate murders — three that he was found guilty of carrying out — had his convictions and death sentence overturned last week by the California Supreme Court.

Timothy McGhee, 51, was originally convicted and sentenced in 2009 for three murders and the attempted murders of two police officers. He was once on the U.S. Marshals most-wanted list after disappearing in 2001. Police captured him in 2003 in Arizona.

The three murder convictions that McGhee had overturned were reported between 1997 and 2001, with authorities suspecting that McGhee used violence and his influence as a leader for the Toonerville gang — which has existed in LA since the 1950s, according to the Los Angeles Times — to control the drug trade and intimidate people in neighborhoods surrounding Los Feliz Boulevard between the Los Angeles River and San Fernando Boulevard.

One of the victims, Ronnie Martin, 25, was allegedly shot 28 times by McGhee and several other members of the Toonerville gang. Another victim named Ryan Gonzalez, 17, was gunned down in 2000. The third was killed in 2001.

A Michigan man who accidentally left his 3-year-old son to die inside of a hot car for several hours last summer may, in the end, avoid significant jail time altogether, a judge ruled this week.

In January, Chad Martin, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of leaving a child in a vehicle causing death.

On Thursday, the judge overseeing the case sentenced Martin to spend nine months in the Kalamazoo County Jail — with two favorable conditions. First, the sentence is delayed to start until February 2026. Second, the judge also scheduled a conference for December of this year that could lead to the sentence being jettisoned entirely.

Regardless of his time behind bars, however, the defendant was sentenced to three years of probation that began this week.

An Indiana husband who shot and killed his wife during a dangerous dispute aboard a truck that the victim was driving pleaded guilty this week and received a relatively light sentence — in real terms at least.

David Brinker Jr., 39, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of reckless homicide over the death of his wife, Dorothy Brinker, 36.

The incident occurred just over two years prior.

In the early morning hours on March 6, 2023, after a contemptuous night of communication over the phone, David Brinker and Dorothy Brinker were briefly in each others’ presence at their Oak Avenue residence in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis.

A Texas court has sentenced a man for murdering a cancer researcher who had been out jogging.

As Law&Crime previously reported, police in the city of Plano said that Bakari Abiona Moncrief, 33, tried to break into a local home before fatally attacking Sarmistha Sen, 43, on a nearby trail the morning of Aug. 1, 2020.

“I ain’t a coward,” he told an officer.

Police had noted blood on his shirt and DNA on his body.

A mother from Michigan has learned her fate for abandoning her 1-year-old son on Florida‘s Daytona Beach. The boy’s teenage brother reportedly called the cops on her on the day in question — claiming she was “possessed by demons.”

Shamika Mitchell, 38, was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for her son’s abandonment. She was found guilty in November 2024 of aggravated child abuse and unlawful desertion of a child.

Florida’s Seventh Judicial Circuit Judge Karen Foxman said Mitchell had been using marijuana, drinking alcohol and possibly using meth while caring for the child, who was in the surf and could have drowned if he had not been rescued, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.

The newspaper reported her public defender saying the defendant struggled through a difficult childhood and had a psychotic episode at the time of the incident.

A Virginia man wearing a tricorn-style hat, gas mask, and body armor who clashed with officers guarding the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is going to prison.

Micaiah Joseph, 34, was sentenced on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, to 37 months — or just over three years — in prison. He was also ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced in a press release.

A 71-year-old man in Texas with a dangerous habit of getting behind the wheel while drunk will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars after being convicted of driving while intoxicated for the sixth time.

A jury in Comal County last month ordered Joseph Haren to serve a sentence of life in a state correctional facility for his repeated offenses, authorities announced. Under state law, an individual convicted of three or more DWI offenses and two prior prison sentences from those offenses is subject to 25 years to life in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

A California woman who killed an innocent man while driving drunk was sentenced to the maximum penalty in court on Monday.

Zdeineb Juarez Calderon, 24, was driving drunk for at least the second time in the same year when she ran a stop sign and then struck and killed Jeff Nazaroff, 59, in April 2022. Authorities say she had a .25 blood alcohol content on the day in question. Two months before that, she was arrested for drunk driving with a .30 BAC.

The defendant had not contested the charges against her.

Calderon had hoped the judge overseeing her sentencing would exert some measure of leniency for accepting blame — that did not occur. Instead, she will spend the next 10 years behind bars after pleading no contest to charges of gross vehicular manslaughter, driving with a suspended license, and driving while under the influence.

Federal prosecutors have asked a judge to increase the pending prison sentence for a Florida man who fled ahead of his sentencing hearing for felony convictions stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Christopher Worrell went missing in August days before he was supposed to report to court in Washington, D.C., for sentencing before U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had convicted Worrell in May of seven felonies, including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, civil disorder, and assaulting officers using a dangerous weapon.

Worrell was finally caught weeks later, in late September — and according to a memo filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday, he pretended to overdose on drugs in an attempt to further delay facing his fate.

“He apparently had no intention of ever turning himself in,” the DOJ’s supplemental sentencing memorandum says. “Worrell was recaptured, however, when he attempted to covertly return to his residence. Worrell then faked a drug overdose prior to his arrest, and maintained that lie during a five-day hospital stay, wasting the time and money of both medical staff and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office, which provided deputies to watch Worrell 24/7 in a non-secure hospital location and was left to foot the bill for Worrell’s unnecessary medical care.”

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Criminal Justice

Visiting BigLaw attorney gets prison sentence for insider trading

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 21, 2023, 3:03 pm CST

A Brazilian lawyer has been sentenced to two months in prison for trading on inside information that he obtained while working as a visiting attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols of the District of Columbia sentenced visiting lawyer Romero Cabral Da Costa Neto on Wednesday, according to Reuters, Law360, Bloomberg Law and a Dec. 20 press release from the Department of Justice.

Costa, 33, of Rio de Janeiro, was also ordered to forfeit $42,649. He had earned more than $200,000 per year as a visiting attorney, according to Bloomberg Law.

Nichols said he viewed Costa’s conduct as “egregious,” according to Bloomberg Law. The insider trading wasn’t “spur of the moment or reactive,” the Washington, D.C., federal judge said.

Costa used his position at the law firm to access confidential client files by conducting keyword searches on the internal file management system, prosecutors said. Costa pleaded guilty to insider trading in November.

Prosecutors had sought an eight-month prison sentence.

A Gibson Dunn spokesperson said in August it had cooperated with prosecutors and terminated its relationship with Costa, according to Reuters.