Sara Catania

Photo by Ted Soqui "This is a terrible night," the driver of the San Quentin shuttle declared, landing hard on the "terr." He pulled the bus doors closed against the blowing rain and shook his head. He was talking about the weather, not the fast-approaching execution of convicted murderer Jaturun......

Gray Davis’ resolve will be pitted against his sense of mercy this week as the new governor determines whether condemned inmate Jaturun Siripongs will live or die. Siripongs, a former Buddhist monk who has a surprising array of supporters, was convicted in 1981 in the double murder of a market......

Photo by Eric LuseEarlier this year, prosecutors sought to make death-row inmate Horace Edwards Kelly the first person in California history to be executed without a chance at a federal appeal. Now, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Kelly will get his day in court, along with......

There are two main arguments death-penalty backers invoke when pressing for an execution: avenging the suffering of the victim’s family and saving taxpayers the cost of lifelong incarceration. Neither one stands up in the case of Jaturun Siripongs, a Thai national scheduled to die by lethal injection at San Quentin......

Carolina Tovar didn't know what to think when the phone rang at her South- Central home last Thursday and the person on the other end said he was Gil Garcetti. She suspected that the call had something to do with her 17-year-old son Ricky, an honors student in his senior......

Legally, he said, he could not show them the police report until the witness's name had been removed, and he refused to hand over any documents until a new attorney was assigned.) Each Sunday, Salvador and Carolina would visit their son, and each time Salvador's feelings of powerlessness worsened. He......

The day after his youngest son's arrest, Salvador Tovar called a family meeting. His three grown children quickly converged on the Tovar home, an aging wood-frame cottage on South-Central's 35th Street. Without a word, they gravitated toward the plastic-covered blue-and-brown floral sofa, a living-room fixture since before Ricky, their 17-year-old......

After months of harangues from riders fed up with wheezing, jam-packed buses, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last month proudly announced delivery of 20 brand-new transit coaches, all of them wheelchair accessible - and all of them diesel-powered. In a remarkable coincidence, the California Air Resources Board, which regulates mobile-source emissions......