Page 3 - Daniel Lowenthal News Today

A Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in a case against a man facing life in prison because the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department held him in cells without beds or blankets for two nights.

Judge Richard Goul, who reviewed a video of the shooting, said he found no legal error in another judge's decision to let the murder case against Eddie Gonzalez proceed to trial.

A Long Beach resident who was initially charged with murder for the discovery of a man's remains buried in his back yard was sentenced today to six years and eight months in state prison for a trio of drug offenses.

"The fact that the defendant didn't call 911 when Mr. Kennedy lost consciousness—and subsequently defiled his body—shocked the conscience, but my role is to apply the law, not to be an arbiter of morality," a judge said.

An L.A. County Superior Court judge upheld a murder charge against former school security officer Eddie Gonzalez in the September shooting death of an 18-year-old girl.

"It wasn’t some stranger she encountered only once," the victim's family said in a statement "It was someone that was supposed to protect her, someone that called himself a friend to the family."

- ADVERTISEMENT - “The imagery of the SUV striking the family will be forever seared in my mind,” Judge Daniel Lowenthal said after hearing two days of vivid testimony and seeing a short video of the crash. His decision means the case against 21-year-old Carlo Navarro can proceed to a full trial some time in the future with the most serious charges intact. Navarro, who was 20 at the time of the crash, is facing three counts of vehicular manslaughter and three counts of murder for the deaths...