prosecutor

A jury found former Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig guilty of obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators Friday in Los Angeles federal court.

The two-week trial concluded with the jury deliberating for nearly two days. Puig, 35, could face up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for May 26.

Puig faces a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison on the obstruction of justice charge and up to five years in prison for the two false statement charges. He remains free on his own recognizance.

The charges stemmed from a January 2022 videoconference interview with federal investigators during which Puig was alleged to have lied about his sports betting. The investigators — led by Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeff Mitchell — were gathering information at the time about an illegal gambling ring headed by Wayne Nix of Newport Coast.

Investigators alleged that Puig denied he had placed bets with Nix despite evidence establishing that he made 899 wagers with the former minor league pitcher on football and basketball games and tennis matches from July to September 2019.

Puig — who was not accused of betting on baseball — lost more than $1.5 million in sports bets, Internal Revenue Service Special Agent Christen Seymour testified, and owed Nix $282,900.

Nix pleaded guilty in 2022 to one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and one count of subscribing to a false tax return. He is awaiting sentencing.

Mitchell would soon be best known for overseeing the investigation and conviction of Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who was sentenced a year ago to 57 months in federal prison for bank fraud and filing a false tax return after stealing $17 million from Ohtani to pay off his own illegal gambling debts.

But Mitchell’s interest in Puig centered around what he knew about Nix, the target of the federal probe in 2022. According to a court declaration reviewed by The Times, Mitchell told Puig’s attorney that he didn’t believe it was a federal crime to make payments to an illegal bookmaker. Investigators were after “an unlawful sports gambling organization,” Mitchell said.

Yet when Mitchell concluded Puig lied about placing bets through Nix intermediary Donny Kadokawa, he swiftly charged the outfielder with making false statements and obstruction of justice.

Puig agreed in August 2022 to plead guilty to one count of lying to federal authorities and would have served no jail time while paying a $55,000 fine. Weeks later, however, he backed out of the agreement, and a judge ruled he could do so because he had not yet entered his guilty plea in court.

“I want to clear my name,” Puig said in a statement at the time. “I never should have agreed to plead guilty to a crime I did not commit.”

It took three more years of pretrial legal wrangling, but Puig finally got his day in court in January. Assistant U.S. Attys. Juan Rodriguez and Michael Morse served as prosecutors after Mitchell resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in May.

Puig’s defense centered around issues with the 2022 interview with Mitchell and investigators who represented the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS.

Defense lawyers Keri Curtis Axel and Brian Klein contended in court filings that Puig, who is from Cuba, was confused because of his language barrier and a dual diagnosis of ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder. The investigators misinterpreted his answers, the attorneys said.

Steven Gebelin, who represented Puig in 2021 and 2022, testified at trial that his then-client tried to be helpful during the interview but, because the interpreter’s Spanish dialect differed from Puig’s, his answers were translated poorly. Puig did not testify at trial.

Axel contended during her closing statement that Puig did not lie about his interactions with Nix and his associates, which occurred two years before the interview with investigators.

The investigators assumed Puig was lying when he became confused by the questioning and felt pressured to accurately recollect the details of his gambling activity, Axel argued, telling the jury that “assumptions and speculation are not evidence, and you shouldn’t rely on it.”

Prosecutors also alleged Puig said during the interview that he had lost $200,000 in 2019 betting on a website he couldn’t identify and that a person whose name he couldn’t recall instructed him to purchase $200,000 in cashier’s checks made out to another client of Nix’s to settle his gambling debt. Investigators considered Puig’s inability to remember the name a lie.

Kadokawa testified that he was the person giving Puig instructions. Axel argued that Puig told the investigators later in the interview that he had placed bets through Kadokawa, according to court documents.

Prosecutors said Puig also lied when he went through the naturalization process to become a U.S. citizen in 2019, producing evidence that he said on an application and in an interview that he never gambled illegally.

After growing up in Cuba, Puig came to the United States in 2012 and signed with the Dodgers. His attorneys called an expert who testified that Puig’s arduous journey from his home country caused post-traumatic stress disorder.

UCLA psychology professor Marcel Pontón, a neuropsychology expert witness for the prosecution, disputed that diagnosis. And Morse rebutted the contention that Puig couldn’t understand English by playing audio of Puig reflecting in English about his interview.

The power-hitting outfielder quickly became a Dodgers fan favorite, finishing second in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2013. Nicknamed the “Wild Horse,” Puig remained a fearsome presence in the lineup for six years and helped the Dodgers to the World Series in 2018 when he hit a three-run homer in Game 7 of the NL Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A man convicted of trying to assassinate Donald Trump on a Florida golf course in 2024 was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison after a federal prosecutor said his crime was unacceptable “in this country or anywhere.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pronounced Ryan Routh’s fate in the same Fort Pierce courtroom that erupted into chaos in September when he tried to stab himself shortly after jurors found him guilty on all counts.

“American democracy does not work when individuals take it into their own hands to eliminate candidates. That’s what this individual tried to do” Assistant U.S. Atty. John Shipley told the judge.

Routh’s new defense attorney, Martin L. Roth, argued that “at the moment of truth, he chose not to pull the trigger.”

The judge pushed back, noting Routh’s history of arrests, to which Roth said: “He’s a complex person, I’ll give the court that, but he has a very good core.”

Routh then read from a rambling, 20-page statement. Cannon broke in and said none of what he was saying was relevant, and gave him five more minutes to talk.

“I did everything I could and lived a good life,” Routh said, before the judge cut him off.

“Your plot to kill was deliberate and evil,” she said. “You are not a peaceful man. You are not a good man.”

She then issued his sentence: Life without parole, plus seven years on a gun charge. His sentences for his other three crimes will run concurrently.

Routh’s sentencing had initially been scheduled for December, but Cannon agreed to move the date back after Routh decided to use an attorney during the sentencing phase instead of representing himself as he did for most of the trial.

Routh was convicted of trying to assassinate a major presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm as a felon and using a gun with a defaced serial number.

“Routh remains unrepentant for his crimes, never apologized for the lives he put at risk, and his life demonstrates near-total disregard for law,” the prosecutors’ sentencing memo said.

His defense attorney had asked for 20 years plus the mandatory seven for the gun conviction.

“The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old,” Roth wrote in a filing. “A just punishment would provide a sentence long enough to impose sufficient but not excessive punishment, and to allow defendant to experience freedom again as opposed to dying in prison.”

Prosecutors said Routh spent weeks plotting to kill Trump before aiming a rifle through shrubbery as the Republican presidential candidate played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club.

At Routh’s trial, a Secret Service agent helping protect Trump on the golf course testified that he spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and run away without firing a shot.

In the motion requesting an attorney, Routh offered to trade his life in a prisoner swap with people unjustly held in other countries, and said an offer still stood for Trump to “take out his frustrations on my face.”

“Just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess forwards, but I always fail at everything (par for the course),” Routh wrote.

In her decision granting Routh an attorney, Cannon chastised the “disrespectful charade” of Routh’s motion, saying it made a mockery of the proceedings. But the judge, nominated by Trump in 2020, said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation.

Cannon signed off last summer on Routh’s request to represent himself at trial. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have the right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge they are competent to waive their right to be defended by an attorney.

Routh’s former federal public defenders served as standby counsel and were present during the trial.

Routh had multiple previous felony convictions, including possession of stolen goods, and a large online footprint demonstrating his disdain for Trump. In a self-published book, he encouraged Iran to assassinate him, and at one point wrote that as a Trump voter, he must take part of the blame for electing him.

Fischer writes for the Associated Press.

PROVO, Utah — Graphic videos showing the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he spoke to a crowd on a Utah college campus quickly went viral, drawing millions of views.

Now, attorneys for the man charged in Kirk’s killing want a state judge to block such videos from being shown. A hearing was held Tuesday. Defense attorneys also want to oust TV and still cameras from the courtroom, arguing that “highly biased” news outlets risk tainting the case.

Prosecutors, attorneys for news organizations, and Kirk’s widow urged state District Court Judge Tony Graf to keep the proceedings open.

“In the absence of transparency, speculation, misinformation, and conspiracy theories are likely to proliferate, eroding public confidence in the judicial process,” Erika Kirk’s attorney wrote in a Monday court filing. “Such an outcome serves neither the interests of justice nor those of Ms. Kirk.”

But legal experts say the defense team’s worries are real: Media coverage in high-profile cases such as Tyler Robinson’s can have a direct “biasing effect” on potential jurors, said Cornell Law School Professor Valerie Hans.

“There were videos about the killing, and pictures and analysis [and] the entire saga of how this particular defendant came to turn himself in,” said Hans, a leading expert on the jury system. “When jurors come to a trial with this kind of background information from the media, it shapes how they see the evidence that is presented in the courtroom.”

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty for Robinson, 22, who is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 shooting of Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem. An estimated 3,000 people attended the outdoor rally to hear Kirk, a co-founder of Turning Point USA, who helped mobilize young people to vote for Donald Trump.

To secure a death sentence in Utah, prosecutors must demonstrate aggravating circumstances, such as that the crime was especially heinous or atrocious. That’s where the graphic videos could come into play.

Watching those videos might make people think, “‘Yeah, this was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel,’” Hans said.

Further complicating efforts to ensure a fair trial is the political rhetoric swirling around Kirk, stemming from the role his organization played in Trump’s 2024 election. Even before Robinson’s arrest, people had jumped to conclusions about who the shooter could be and what kind of politics he espoused, said University of Utah law professor Teneille Brown.

“People are just projecting a lot of their own sense of what they think was going on, and that really creates concerns about whether they can be open to hearing the actual evidence that’s presented,” she said.

Robinson’s attorneys have ramped up claims of bias as the case has advanced, even accusing news outlets of using lip readers to deduce what the defendant is whispering to his attorneys during court hearings.

Fueling those concerns was a television camera operator who zoomed in on Robinson’s face as he talked to his attorneys during a Jan. 16 hearing. That violated courtroom orders, prompting the judge to stop filming of Robinson for the remainder of the hearing.

“Rather than being a beacon for truth and openness, the News Media have simply become a financial investor in this case,” defense attorneys wrote in a request for the court to seal some of their accusations of media bias. Unsealing those records, they added, “will simply generate even more views of the offending coverage, and more revenue for the News Media.”

Prosecutors acknowledged the intense public interest surrounding the case but said that does not permit the court to compromise on openness. They said the need for transparency transcends Robinson’s case.

“This case arose, and will remain, in the public eye. That reality favors greater transparency of case proceedings, not less,” Utah County prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Defense attorneys are seeking to disqualify local prosecutors because the daughter of a deputy county attorney involved in the case attended the rally where Kirk was shot. The defense alleges that the relationship represents a conflict of interest.

In response, prosecutors said in a court filing that they could present videos at Tuesday’s hearing to demonstrate that the daughter was not a necessary witness since numerous other people recorded the shooting.

Among the videos, prosecutors wrote, is one that shows the bullet hitting Kirk, blood coming from his neck and Kirk falling from his chair.

Brown and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has refused to order the pretrial release of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled on Thursday that Brian J. Cole Jr. must remain in jail while awaiting trial. Ali upheld a decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, who ruled on Jan. 2 that no conditions of release can reasonably protect the public from the danger that Cole allegedly poses.

Cole, 30, pleaded not guilty to making and planting two pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

Cole, who lived with his parents in Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Cole has remained jailed since his Dec. 4 arrest. Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for over four years.

Prosecutors said Cole confessed to trying to carry out “an extraordinary act of political violence.” Cole told investigators that he was unhappy with how leaders of both political parties responded to “questions” about the 2020 presidential election — and said “something just snapped,” according to prosecutors.

“While the defendant may have reached a psychological breaking point, his crimes were anything but impulsive,” they wrote. “Indeed, the defendant’s pipe bombs — and the fear and terror they instilled in the general public — were the product of weeks of premeditation and planning.”

Defense attorneys asked for Cole to be freed from jail and placed on home detention with electronic monitoring. They say a defense expert concluded that the devices found near the RNC and DNC headquarters were not viable explosive devices.

“In fact, there was no possibility of death, injury or destruction as the devices were harmless,” they wrote.

If convicted of both charges against him, Cole faces up to 10 years of imprisonment on one charge and up to 20 years of imprisonment on a second charge that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.