Sara Catania

Khalid Al-Faris has long considered himself a cheerleader for America. Gregarious by nature, he eagerly recounts, in his strong Iraqi accent, his joy at living in the United States, untempered even after 30 years in Southern California. Al-Faris’ personal history, as he tells it, falls into two parts, the first......

Photo by Slobodan Dimitrov Standing on the steps of the federal building downtown last Friday, Ban Al-Wardi struggled to be heard. Earlier, a couple dozen demonstrators sat down in the street to protest the third day of the U.S. attack on Iraq. But with war taking hold, the demonstration had......

Stealing a few golf clubs or videotapes is enough to merit life in prison, according to the nation's highest court. In a ruling this month on two cases challenging California's three-strikes law, the U.S. Supreme Court found that lengthy terms for nonviolent crimes are not "cruel and unusual" punishment. The......

FOR CONDEMNED INMATE Stanley "Tookie" Williams, life has been anything but ordinary, even by the quixotic standards of San Quentin's death row. After being sentenced to death for four murders nearly a quarter-century ago, the co-founder of the Crips street gang gained notoriety when he was twice nominated for a......

Debra DiPaoloHALFWAY THROUGH HER FIRST TERM on the L.A. City Council, Jan Perry is grabbing headlines with her aggressive stance on downtown's homeless. Taking a cue from Santa Monica, which last fall banned outdoor food giveaways to the homeless (that ban is on hold pending a lawsuit by the National......

Excerpts from Sara Catania’s interview with death-row inmate Stanley Williams, who is asking the courts to consider claims of racial bias in jury selection on his case. L.A. WEEKLY: Do you think there was racial bias in the selection of the jury at your trial? STANLEY WILLIAMS: It was axiomatic......

A proposal by Governor Gray Davis to build a new $220 million death row at San Quentin hit a hurdle last week when the Legislature’s top budget expert came out against the plan. As part of her review of Davis’ proposed 2003-2004 budget, nonpartisan legislative analyst Elizabeth Hill found the......

Photo by Ted Soqui It's been nearly six months since attackers beat voiceover artist Trev Broudy with a wooden baseball bat outside his West Hollywood apartment. The beating put him in a coma for 10 days, spurred vigils, an $85,000 reward and calls for swift justice. Within weeks, three men......

THE NATIONS FIRST-EVER MASS IQ testing of death-row inmates has been called off at San Quentin because of widespread opposition from attorneys who feared the tests could produce inaccurate results. Testing of the more than 600 inmates on California’s death row was scheduled to begin in October, but those plans......

Seven-year-old Horace Ray Ferguson, shot and killed in the front yard of his Compton home. Demitri Robledo, 14 months old, dead in Oxnard from a blow to the head. Eight-month-old Angelo Marinda, shaken to death in Daly City. These cases, widely reported across California in the last several months, are......