Results tagged “Rolling Hills” from Crime & Courts

Jurors in the Lawrence Saks insurance fraud trial sent a note to a judge on Wednesday indicating that they are deadlocked on all 16 counts, according to a court clerk.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California jury will return to court Thursday. It is expected Judge Consuelo Marshall will speak to them and they will continue their discussions, the clerk added.

The jury has deliberated about two days on the charges.

The Rolling Hills resident, who practiced plastic surgery in Torrance and San Pedro, is accused of double-billing insurance companies on four procedures.

He claims the procedures were medically necessary and the documents he filed were accurate.

Just got word that opening statements were this morning at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in downtown Los Angeles, and that the first witness is on the stand. Lawrence Saks, whose medical license was taken away last December, is on trial before Judge Consuelo Marshall for two indictments - one alleging he worked while collecting disability payments and the other claiming he double-billed insurance companies for procedures.

The former plastic surgeon and Rolling Hills resident, who had offices in Torrance and San Pedro, served six months in a federal penitentiary for a 1990 tax evasion case.

Soon after Joe Nino and Miguel Torres were convicted - for the second time - in May, Nino's former girlfriend sent a letter to Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum claiming she was with Nino on Dec. 2, 2001 - the night Juan Vasquez was shot and killed execution style in a drainage ditch by a Rolling Hills school.

Why the Arizona prison guard waited nearly eight years and two trials to present herself as an alibi is not known. Nino's attorney, Jeff Gray, told Torrance Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor he investigated the claim and believes she is one of several reasons why his client should have a new trial.

However, Miguel Torres' attorneys - Jaclin Awad, who was in court, and Matthew Fletcher, who was not - asked for more time to prepare. Gray didn't want to put off arguing his new trial motion, but his client did. Because Hum will be involved in another murder trial downtown for a couple months, Nino and Torres will return for their motion and sentencing hearing on Oct. 1.

Outside of court, Hum called the former girlfriend's statement "interesting," especially since Nino gave a statement to police about his activities that night and nothing he said mentioned her. She was also interviewed by police back then, but only said Nino's car didn't have an alarm (neighbors near the crime scene reported hearing a car alarm).

Meanwhile, on our last story about the trial, the user comments are quite heated - both from those who know the parties involved and those who don't.

Previously:

Tight security and tense emotions during Rolling Hills murder verdict

Torrance Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor's courtroom was pretty filled yesterday for the reading of the verdicts in Joe Nino and Miguel Torres' trial. About two-thirds of the audience were their family members, while the other third were family and friends of the dead man - Juan Vasquez.

Before the verdicts were read, the audience was silent. A few women on the defendants' side held their hands as if they were in prayer. One woman cupped rosary beads between her hands.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen bailiffs took posts around the courtroom. "Try and control your emotions, no outbursts please," one of them told the crowd. "It's most important that you remain seated so the deputies don't interpret anything." Everyone's cellular telephones were confiscated - a move I've never seen before - to keep onlookers from contacting anyone outside the courtroom. After the verdicts were read, jurors were whisked away out a back door and no one from the courtroom could leave. Vasquez's family was dismissed 20 minutes later, the defendants' family members were allowed to go about 10 minutes after them. It didn't appear that there was any trouble.

Even during the first trial and before, this was an emotionally-driven case with the defendants' supporters vehemently proclaiming Nino's and Torres' innocence and informant Erick Velasquez's guilt. The comments following today's story will give you a pretty good taste of that debate.

Previous entries are here.

The jury, which has deliberated off-and-on over the past week or so, indicated this afternoon they reached verdicts in the murder retrial for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres. However, Torres' defense attorney couldn't make it to the courthouse in time, so the verdicts will be read Monday afternoon at 1:30 p.m.

We'll let you know when we do....

Previously:

Jury out on Rolling Hills murder

After three days of closing arguments and two months of trial, the jury finally has the case in the Joe Nino and Miguel Torres murder trial. We'll keep you posted on the verdicts.

Previously:

Nino and Torres Rolling Hills murder trial closing arguments

I expected to go to day two of three of closing arguments today in the Joe Nino and Miguel Torres murder retrial for the slaying of their friend in Rolling Hills. That's what happens when I don't check before I go. Turns out, there was some disagreement over jury instructions just before closing arguments were to begin Wednesday. They're now scheduled to begin Friday afternoon and expected to last into early next week.

Previously:

Rolling Hills murder trial takes a sabbatical

The trial for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres is on pause so that the court can accommodate jurors' spring break plans. The trial, which began Feb. 18, has far surpassed it's original time estimate of a month. The prosecutor indicates he's still presenting his case-in-chief, and will continue to do so when the trial resumes on April 14.

Previously:

Nino and Torres murder retrial moving along ... slowly

Checked in this morning with Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum, who is prosecuting Joe Nino and Miguel Torres in their second trial for killing a friend in Rolling Hills.

He said the trial is proceeding without any major twists or new revelations that would take it off the course he laid out during opening statements on Feb. 18. It is, however, waaaaaay behind schedule and spring break in a couple weeks may prove a problem for keeping jurors. Hum said he expects there's at least three weeks left in the trial, which is only proceeding in the afternoons.

Previously:

Rolling Hills murder trial underway

Rolling Hills murder retrial - take two

Like I wrote in my story in today's Daily Breeze, it seems Joe Nino and Miguel Torres' second trial won't be vastly different from their first one in terms of evidence, defense and such.

I'm not privy to all the pretrial evidentiary motions Judge Eric Taylor made, but they went over a couple last minute ones before opening statements yesterday that were kinda interesting.

For one, Erick Velasquez, the prosecution's star witness with the immunity deal, cannot tell the jury that he was carrying around a Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun because he wanted to be a badass like Torres - who always carried a gun. This ruling appears subject to Velasquez actually being able to establish with what frequency Torres allegedly carried a gun.

Also, when talking about the car tire rims that supposedly supplied Torres with a motive to kill, no one can mention that that they were stolen. (Juan Vasquez apparently had the rims as a result of a carjacking he did with Nino.)

In addition, in the first trial, it was said that Torres suggested they call Nino to take care of Vasquez by saying "he's a pretty crazy guy." That statement can't be said to the jury this time.

The trial is running in the afternoons only and is expected to take weeks, if not more than a month. We'll be revisting it here and there on the blog, and will, of course, bring you the verdict.

Retrial gets underway this afternoon in Torrance for Joe Nino and Miguel Torres, who are accused of killing a friend they had disputes with. They allegedly conspired together to get a bullet in 20-year-old Juan Vasquez's head in a drainage ditch behind Rancho del Mar Continuation School in Rolling Hills in 2001.

They were convicted of capital murder in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

However, their convictions were overturned in July 2007 by the appellate court, which found prosecutors wrongly booted minorities from the jury.

Opening statements will begin this afternoon, but not expected to conclude until tomorrow. We'll have a full story after everyone gets a turn in Friday's Daily Breeze. Until then, I'll try to do some updates here and Twitter bits from the courtroom @dbreezecourts. You can also check out my Twitter feed over there ---->

The trial is sure to have some drama, partly because Torres' attorney, Matthew Fletcher, is a, uh, strong advocate. We've heard he's already been tossed from the courtroom at least once by Judge Eric Taylor after refusing to drop an argument about whether his client should be called "Miguel" or "Michael" during trial. In the first trial, he was close to being held in contempt and jailed by now retired Judge James Ideman after Fletcher ignored Ideman's order to not ask a certain question of a witness. Fletcher has gone to jail on at least one other case.

We're getting the details in a bit, but it looks like there was some police activity where Rolling Hills Road and Portugese Bend connect. A caller reported that Sheriff's Deputies were out en masse, with their guns drawn. No one from the department could talk to verify details, except to say that whatever it was - no one got hurt, someone is in custody and it's over.

We'll keep you posted.

Dr. Lawrence Saks' federal fraud and money laundering trial, scheduled to begin tomorrow, was postponed until next year, according to the court's online docket. The new date is Feb. 9, 2009 - so mark your calendars now. Based on the feeback I get on this case, it's going to be sell-out.

Saks, a Rolling Hills resident, is out on bail, but a judge ruled a couple weeks ago he no longer has to be electronically monitored.

Dr. Lawrence Saks may have become infamous in the South Bay, but he hails from north of the border. Canada's National Post reports today on Sak's beginnings, and his current problems with the medical board and the law. No new information on the charges, but some quotes from family that are kinda interesting as well as some background about his life.

Federal prison records show that Saks, a Rolling Hills resident, bailed out of jail late last month. He is due back in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles on Monday for a pretrial hearing.

No one wants to talk about it, but the sexual harassment lawsuit filed a year ago against Torrance-based Robinson Helicopter founder Frank Robinson was dismissed today. I don't know why, other than that the plaintiff, Judith Gentry, asked for it. Usually, such an action is taken after the parties reach a settlement - but no settlement is confirmed in this case.

The full report, as sorted out by court filings in the case, will be in tomorrow's Daily Breeze. The Cliff's Notes version is that Gentry was Robinson's executive assistant for nine years and didn't like sexual comments or observations the 78-year-old Rolling Hills resident allegedly made.