Courtroom

A PHILADELPHIA JUDGE Friday stunned a courtroom when she sentenced a gun-wielding thug to the minimum sentence of five to 10 years in state prison for mistakenly shooting two brothers, 8 and 2, while firing at his intended target on a Southwest Philadelphia street in September 2010. Assistant District Attorney Bill Davis, who asked that defendant Kevin Pickard be sentenced to 32 1/2 to 65 years for his June conviction on three counts of aggravated assault, said he would file a motion asking Common Pleas Judge Lisette Shirdan-Harris to reconsider her sentence.

A Philadelphia judge Friday stunned a courtroom when she sentenced a gun-wielding thug to the minimum sentence of 5-to-10 years in state prison for shooting an 8-year-old boy and his 2-year-old brother by mistake while shooting at his intended target on a Southwest Philadelphia street in September 2010. Assistant District Attorney Bill Davis, who asked that defendant Kevin Pickard be sentenced to 32 1/2 to 65 years for his June conviction on three counts of aggravated assault, said he would file a motion asking Common Pleas Judge Lisette Shirdan-Harris to reconsider her sentence.

Daily News Staff Writer After a string of courtroom victories this year, the Occupy Philly movement felt the sting of defeat Wednesday, when 12 members were found guilty of defiant trespassing and conspiracy, stemming from a November sit-in protest at a Center City Wells Fargo Bank. After a more than five-hour trial, Municipal Judge Marsha Neifield said she believed that prosecutors had proved their case, then announced the sentences for the 12 defendants: each is to pay a $500 fine plus court costs.

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Outside Beaver Stadium, the area around the Joe Paterno statue was quiet the other day. It was as you would expect. School is out, football has not restarted, and the Jerry Sandusky child-sexual-abuse trial is about 10 miles away in Bellefonte. In recent months, tumultuous months, the statue has been the scene of defiant protest, prayerful vigil, and a heartfelt memorial. There was no evidence of any of that, though. A single, cheap-glass vase sat at the base of the statue.

After a string of courtroom victories this year, the Occupy Philly movement felt the sting of defeat Wednesday, when 12 members were found guilty of defiant trespassing and conspiracy, stemming from a November sit-in protest at a Center City Wells Fargo Bank. After a more than five-hour trial, Municipal Judge Marsha Neifield said she believed that prosecutors had proved their case, then announced the sentences for the 12 defendants: each is to pay a $500 fine plus court costs.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - One by one, the photos of eight boys flashed onto the courtroom viewing screen, blond and dark haired, dressed in T-shirts or long-sleeved flannels, alike only in their youth and their smiles. All but one shot was in color, the lone black-and-white the picture of a boy who spent so many years in foster care that he eventually aged out of the system, never having gotten a good color photo of himself. Jerry Sandusky, a former Pennsylvania State University football coach on trial here on charges of sexually abusing those children, didn't look at the faces on the screen.

Moments after a jury convicted 20-year-old Donte Johnson on all charges in the rape and murder of Sabina Rose O'Donnell, a judge sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 to 80 years, ensuring that Johnson will live out the rest of his life behind bars. "Frankly, based on these facts, it's better than you deserve," Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn Bronson said Wednesday. In a scathing rebuke to Johnson's attorneys, who had asked that Johnson be given some hope of release in the distant future, Bronson told Johnson he was an extreme danger to the public because he lacked human decency and empathy.

JESSICA KISBY was the star witness in the Taj Mahal kidnapping-murder case that concluded Thursday, but she clearly was not a favorite of even the prosecution. In closing arguments before an Atlantic County jury, First Assistant County Prosecutor James McClain described Kisby, 26, as a "cold-blooded murderer. " In a dramatic summation that capped the 10-day trial, McClain told the jury, "At the time she testified, she was one of two coldhearted, cold-blooded murderers in the courtroom . . . . The other was . . . Craig Arno.

Stalking. Groping. Gay bondage porn. A sexually graphic love letter to a grade-school boy. The topics discussed in a third-floor Philadelphia courtroom last week might unnerve most observers. That they emerged in testimony about priests - and at times, from priests - only amplified the uneasiness. After all, a prosecutor told jurors at the start of this landmark clergy sex-abuse trial in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, priests are viewed as God's agents on Earth. Though much of the evidence introduced against Msgr.

The University of Pennsylvania law school on Monday officially dedicated a new courtroom at Golkin Hall that was funded by Philadelphia plaintiffs lawyers Thomas Kline and Shanin Specter, on behalf of their law firm, Kline & Specter P.C. The courtroom will be used for student education and includes the latest in courtroom technology, the law firm said. Golkin Hall, a newly constructed 40,000 square foot addition to the law school campus, itself will be officially dedicated April 5 at an event to be attended by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.