Articles Tagged with california

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A woman from California is facing several felonies after allegedly working for many years and in several locations as a dental hygienist without possessing the necessary legal credentials to do so. 

50-year-old woman Elizabeth “Mina” Larijani aka Elizabeth Garcia Costilla is from California. 

According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, between 2015 and 2020 Larijani worked as a dental hygienist at several offices in the cities of San Jose and Campbell. It was also asserted that she applied for additional dental hygienist positions during that timeframe.  

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A man from California who was convicted of rape reportedly failed to register as a sex offender and spent 21-years hiding from the authorities under an assumed name in Florida.

In 1989, 53-year-old David Swenson was convicted of a forcible rape charge in Santa Clarita County. He was incarcerated until 1993, and when he was released he was ordered to register as a sex offender.

In 2000, the authorities reportedly noticed that Swenson had not registered, and a warrant for his arrest was issued.

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During a traffic stop on a speeding vehicle traveling on I-5 in Oregon, a State Police officer uncovered 201 pounds of marijuana in the possession of two men in a rented Ford Explorer. The men were allegedly transporting the large stash to Minnesota.

According to investigators reports Shakopee, Minnesota, resident Pandy Hout and Lor Meng of Sacramento, California, traveled by plane out of Denver and landed in southern Oregon at the Rogue Valley International Airport. After renting an SUV they headed to an unknown site in California and acquired 201 pounds of marijuana. It is purported that they intended to transport the cannabis to Minnesota.

On the afternoon of October 18, Hout, the driver of the vehicle, was speeding which caused an Oregon highway patrolman to pull him over. The officer suspected illegal activity and performed a roadside investigation. He searched the interior of the SUV and discovered several bags containing a total of 201 pounds of marijuana.

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An independent teaching contractor who instructed a music program in more than one Southern California school district is currently under investigation for allegedly contaminating flutes with his semen before giving them to young students.

On September 29th, parents of the students attending elementary schools in Fountain Valley, Los Angeles, Fullerton, Inland Empire, Fullerton, Chatsworth, Capistrano Unified and Newport-Mesa, and a minimum of five other school districts in Southern California received email alerting them about an ongoing investigation regarding the possible contamination of flutes that had been distributed to the children.

It has not yet been determined which of the schools in each district may have been affected by the suspected tainted instruments. Accounting for the time it will take to investigate the considerable amount of sites in the districts, administration felt it was a priority to communicate with parents as soon as possible.

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In passing Assembly Bill 813, California has now joined 44 other states nationwide in allowing a person who has suffered a criminal conviction to challenge that conviction, even though he or she is no longer in custody.

The new statutes allows relief based on 1) a claim of actual innocence; and 2) failure to fully understand the consequences of the plea.

Although the statute applies to both citizens and non-citizens, in practice, this statute is expected to allow immigrants to seek relief for past convictions which hold devastating immigration consequences.

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Until recently, the Federal Government and the State of California defined criminal “misdemeanors” differently. While the federal government defined a misdemeanor as a crime punishable by up to 364 days, California defined it as one punishable by up to 365 days. This one-day difference often proved disastrous for immigrants with convictions, however, because the Federal government considers a crime punished by 365 days a felony and felony convictions often subject immigrants to deportation or exclusion.

In 1996 Congress enacted the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which expanded the crimes for which legal residents can be deported to include crimes which were punished by 365 days. States which continued to defined misdemeanors as including sentences of 365 days unwittingly caused their immigrant-residents to face not only up to a year in jail, but deportation or exclusion from entry as well. This applied to all immigrants, regardless of whether a sentence was suspended or whether a person spent only a few days in jail.

Effective January 1, 2015, California Senate Bill 1310 changed the maximum misdemeanor sentence to mirror the Federal Government’s 364 days. Senate Bill 1242 then applied this change retroactively, allowing those who were sentenced before 2015 to receive the statute’s intended protection.

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A Fresno, CA man is accused of severely beating his wife after she continually posted selfies on Instagram, an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service.

After her husband allegedly beat and threatened to kill her, the victim ran off with their 5 and 7 year old children and called the police. The man reportedly ran off with their 2 year old child. The victim of domestic violence appeared to have been choked and punched, as she suffered injury to her eyes, neck, arms and legs.

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On November 6, 2012, Californians voted in favor of Proposition 36, a ballot measure that allows for shorter sentences for some third-time offenders of the controversial “Three Strikes Law.”

The California Three Strikes Law was established in the 1990s and was intended to discourage repeat offenders from committing serious or violent crimes. Under the law, if a person is convicted of a serious or violent felony, it goes against their record as a “strike.” If he or she commits another serious or violent felony later, the sentencing gets harsher and a second strike is put on their record. Upon receiving a third strike, the criminal must be incarcerated in state prison for 25 years to life.

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