Probation

The man who calls himself NJ Weedman was sentenced Tuesday to a harsher term for violating probation than he had received for possessing a pound of marijuana. Ed Forchion, 48, received nine months in the Burlington County Jail for failing to sign up immediately with the probation department after he was sentenced in January to two years on probation on an April 2010 drug charge. Forchion, a former New Jerseyan who lives in Los Angeles, was arrested Jan. 31 at Philadelphia International Airport as he prepared to fly home.

A Superior Court judge in Burlington County sentenced the man known as NJ Weedman to two years of probation and more than $3,400 in fines and fees Wednesday for possessing a pound of pot in his car nearly three years ago. Marijuana activist Ed Forchion had used the inconsistency of criminal and medical-marijuana drug laws to win acquittal on the more serious charge of drug distribution when he was tried in October. Forchion could have faced 10 years in prison on the distribution charge.

A Superior Court judge in Burlington County sentenced a nationally known marijuana activist to two years' probation and more than $3,400 in fines and fees on Wednesday for possessing a pound of pot in his car nearly three years ago. Ed Forchion, who calls himself "NJ Weedman," had exploited the inconsistency of criminal and medical-marijuana drug laws to win acquittal of the more serious charge of drug distribution when he was tried in October....

ALICIA CARRANCO's 19-year tenure as a school- crossing guard came to a bloody end on Sept. 17, 2010. That's the day a motorist, furious after Carranco scolded her for nearly hitting two students that Carranco was helping cross the street outside a Hunting Park elementary school, beat her so severely that medics rushed her to the hospital with her eyes swollen shut. Her convicted attacker, Shaquana Outlaw, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. But because crossing guards aren't a protected class of public servants the way police and firefighters are, Outlaw will likely get just probation for the beating.

His ludicrous lawsuits against people ranging from Kim Kardashian to Jerry Sandusky have earned Jonathan Lee Riches a reputation as a gadfly of the federal court system. But the 36-year-old West Chester man's recent escapade in Newtown, Conn. - days after a gunman fatally shot 20 children and six educators there - may earn Riches a stint behind bars. West Goshen Township police arrested Riches on Dec. 19 on an apparent probation violation after he returned from the Connecticut town, where he posed as the uncle of gunman Adam Lanza.

In a surprising conclusion to a case that has spanned nearly five years and included two trials, a Delaware County mother and son pleaded guilty Thursday in the death of the family's patriarch. Parth Ingle, 26, and Bhavnaben Ingle, 53, both admitted playing a role in the killing of Arunkumar Ingle, 55, who was found beaten and stabbed in a bedroom of the family's Middletown Township home in January 2008. Parth Ingle pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was immediately sentenced to 33 to 44 months in state prison, followed by eight years of probation.

I NEVER 'GOT' rap. It just seemed like a musical version of the emperor's new clothes, where everyone around you is saying, "Wow, how outrageously innovative!" and all you hear is the sound a car makes when it's dying. To me, this is not art. Someone once suggested to me that this aversion to the genre was an innocent form of racism, in which an otherwise well-meaning white person fails to appreciate the nuance of black culture. My answer to that was along the lines of, "I don't believe black culture is all about baby mamas, drive-by shootings and getting high.

LEONARD E. FERGUSON Jr. had to deal with problems many kids face in the sometimes-mean streets of a big city. So he was in an ideal position to help new generations of youngsters cope with the same challenges. As a juvenile-probation officer for the city of Philadelphia, Len saw it as his life's purpose to give troubled kids a chance to overcome the situations that got them into the toils of the law. "Growing up in the city, he knew what a lot of these kids were going through," said his son Lateef Ferguson, a Pennsylvania state trooper.

  LINDSAY LOHAN may be heading back to the slammer. It's unlikely - Fox News says her judge prefers counseling over jail, and it is only Lindsay's 432nd strike - but her probation was revoked Wednesday, and that could mean a sentence of up to eight months. The ruling in Los Angeles came as the former teen star - who was not in court - faces misdemeanor counts of reckless driving, lying to a police officer and obstructing an officer from performing duties after an accident in which her Porsche rammed the back of a dump truck in June.

The sentencing should have been routine: a guilty plea to witness intimidation, a probationary sentence agreed to by prosecution and defense. But Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner, citing his often-frustrating 14 years as a homicide judge, decided to make it a teachable moment. "I don't know if any of this will register, but you have to sit there until I'm done talking," Lerner, 71, told Toteyana Jones. "Today's victims' families are tomorrow's defendants' families, and one reason for this is the stupid, ignorant no-snitch culture," Lerner said Wednesday as Jones sat quietly with attorney Bruce Wolf.