Johannes Mehserle

A Virginia man who posted several Internet threats against former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle has been sentenced to three years in prison. Jeffrey Weaver, 48, of Roanoke, posted three threats after Mehserle killed Oscar Grant III of Hayward in a scuffle on a BART station platform on Jan. 1. Weaver wrote several messages threatening to kill Mehserle and other officers who have killed people, including a Virginia police officer who fatally Tased a 17-year-old boy. In sentencing Weaver on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Wilson imposed a harsher penalty than recommended, saying Weaver’s threats demonstrated a level of “vileness.” Weaver admitted after ... Read Full Story

OAKLAND — Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle must report to Los Angeles Superior Court on Jan. 8 to begin scheduling his upcoming murder trial. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson set the date Tuesday during his last hearing on the murder case. “Good luck to you all,” Jacobson said as he bid farewell to a case that prompted at least two violent protests in Oakland and forced the county court system to impose higher security provisions every time a hearing date was scheduled. Mehserle, 27, is accused of murder in the fatal shooting of Oscar Grant III, of Hayward, as the 22-year-old ... Read Full Story

The decision to move Johannes Mehserle's trial to Los Angeles County is a setback for the former transit officer charged with killing an unarmed man on New Year's Day. Jurors throughout California are typically sympathetic to police, and the former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer could've expected a leg up before the start of trial in most any courtroom in the state's 58 counties. But legal analysts say Los Angeles is atypical and a bad draw for Mehserle. The former officer will have to overcome the lingering specters of the Rodney King beating, the O.J. Simpson acquittal because of police behavior and other high-profile ... Read Full Story

by Alec Rawls The crescent memorial to Flight 93 would have been stopped long ago if the media was willing to check and report simple facts like the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent. The same thing happens whenever the facts of a case are not congenial to our left-wing elites. Another extreme example is now taking place in Oakland California, where inflammatory reports of police criminality in the New Year’s Day shooting of Oscar Grant are held up by the Oakland street mob as justication for last week’s murder of four police officers. Even after this massacre of Oakland police, the press still refuses ... Read Full Story

OAKLAND — A Los Angeles Superior Court judge will preside over the murder trial against former BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle, the state’s judicial council announced Wednesday. Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry, who first was appointed a judgeship in Los Angeles in 1992, will preside over a case that a local judge ruled should be moved to a new location because of pretrial publicity and the threat of violence. “This will not be a runaway trial,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School who has known Perry for more than 30 years. “People can have a lot of confidence in the ... Read Full Story