Bureau of prisons

A man convicted of arson in a fire at a construction site in Oakland has been sentenced to five years in prison.The San Francisco Chronicle reports Dustin Bellinger was sentenced Monday in federal court in Oakland.Bellinger, who also goes by Faheem Bey, pleaded guilty this summer to setting fire nearly a year ago to the unfinished Hollis Oak apartments on the Oakland-Emeryville border.The fire was one of 10 at under-construction housing complexes in the East Bay since 2012. Investigators linked Bellinger to the Oct. 23 arson fire that burned itself out inside a construction site.U.S. District Judge Haywood Stirling Gilliam Jr. ordered Bellinger to prison and also to spend three years on supervised probation and to pay building owners $97,000 in restitution.___Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com … [Read more...] about Man gets 5 years in prison in construction site arson fire

Authorities still don’t know why a Lemon Grove man got so angry after an argument that he came back and stabbed the other man to death last year.Gustavo Flores, 39, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison for killing 47-year-old Juan Martinez, with an additional year in prison for an unrelated, previous case involving an assault with a deadly weapon.Flores turned himself in a week after the June 21, 2018 stabbing and pleaded guilty a year later to voluntary manslaughter and personal use of a deadly weapon.A dozen of Martinez’ family members showed up in El Cajon Superior Court to hear Judge Robert Amador impose the sentence that was agreed upon when Flores changed his plea to guilty. The oldest of the victim’s two teenage sons told the judge their father “was everything to us,” a man who advised them and took care of them.“I still don’t understand why you didn’t think twice before you did what you did,” said Juan Martinez, … [Read more...] about Lemon Grove man gets prison for fatal stabbing after an argument

California is banning the use of for-profit, private detention facilities, including those under contract to the federal government to hold immigrants awaiting deportation hearings.Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday he had signed a measure into law that helps fulfill his promise to end the use of private prisons.But the state prison system was already phasing them out, despite its mandate to stay under a federal population cap.Immigrant advocates welcomed the bill, which they said would put an end to almost all immigration detention in the state in the next few years. Federal officials said immigration enforcement will still take place. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says California accounts for less than 10% of ICE’s detention capacity.___The bill is AB32. … [Read more...] about California to end use of private, for-profit prisons

By Duc Hung  &nbspOctober 12, 2019 | 07:00 pm GMT+7 Nguyen Thi Hao stands in court on October 11, 2019 for causing forest fire in Ha Tinh Province. Photo by VnExpress/Canh Hoang. A Ha Tinh court Friday sentenced a local woman to two years in jail for inadvertently setting fire to seven hectares of forest. Nguyen Thi Hao, 36, was found guilty of "breaching regulations on fire prevention and fighting," in burning grass near the forest, a crime that carries up to eight years’ imprisonment under Vietnam’s Penal Code. However, the defendant was entitled to leniency as she declared her mistake honestly, the court ruled. According to the indictment, Hao was burning grass on a rice field near the forest in Son Trung Ward of the central Ha Tinh Province, when strong winds caused the fire to spread to the forest in the morning of June 27. Hao and several other people in the area tried to put out the fire but failed. She was arrested on July 10. The same day, … [Read more...] about Woman gets two years in prison for sparking forest fire

A one-time FBI informant-turned-Detroit drug lord will be released from a Florida prison earlier than expected.The Detroit News reports that Richard “White Boy Rick” Wershe Jr. is scheduled to be freed Aug. 17, 2020. His original April 2021 release date has been moved up for good behavior.The 50-year-old Wershe spent three decades behind bars in Michigan on drug charges. He was paroled in 2017 and sent to Florida to serve time for a 2006 conviction involving a car-theft ring while he was imprisoned.Wershe was already an FBI informant at age 14 and helped convict several Detroit drug kingpins. But he was arrested in 1987 with 9,000 grams (317 ounces) of cocaine and $30,000 cash. His story is told in the 2018 movie “White Boy Rick” starring Matthew McConaughey. … [Read more...] about ‘White Boy Rick’ scheduled for early Florida prison release