Courtroom

Kristy Johnson found out the hard way that she could not overpower or subdue her creative side. The Chicago native and lone female cast member in South Coast Repertory's production of the August Wilson play "Jitney," which opens on Friday night, gave up a promising legal career to start over again as an actor. "I discovered that what I said I wanted for my life was not what I wanted at all," she said in an interview. After a straight trajectory through Harvard University, the University of Chicago Law School and a great position at a top Chicago law firm, Johnson decided to scrap a career in the courts to pursue one on the stage.

SANTA ANA — An allegedly intoxicated driver who hit and seriously injured a Newport Harbor High School student was charged Thursday with felony driving under the influence with an enhancement for causing brain injury and paralysis. Marnie J. Lippincott, 38, of Costa Mesa was also charged with a misdemeanor count of driving with a suspended license. Her arraignment in Orange County Superior Court was delayed Thursday until later this month. Prosecutors said Lippincott was under the influence of drugs and alcohol Tuesday afternoon when her black Chevy Tahoe hit Crystal Morales, 17, as she crossed Margaret Drive in a crosswalk near of the school, which had just let out for the day. Morales suffered serious internal and head injuries.

NEWPORT BEACH - A Newport Beach woman will stand trial on charges that she was driving drunk and texting when she hit and killed a bicyclist in Newport Coast, Orange County Superior Court Judge Derek G. Johnson ruled Thursday. Danae Miller, 23, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. The felony charge stems from a Feb. 21 accident on San Joaquin Hills Road that killed Amine Britel, a Moroccan athlete who had moved to the United States and ran a successful local business.

For first-time novelist A.G.S. Johnson, inspiration struck like lightning and immediately slowed to a crawl. "I was awakened one night, maybe 15 years ago, by this cocky female voice that was so intriguing to me that I jumped out of bed, literally, and I wrote as fast as I could," Johnson said, talking about the would-be foundation for her debut novel. "It was a couple of paragraphs of what this voice was saying … So I carried this stupid piece of writing around for probably a few years.

SANTA ANA - The Irvine 11 appears poised to become the Irvine 10. The Orange County district attorney's office and defense attorneys on Thursday announced an agreement to dismiss the charges against one of the students if he completes 40 hours of community service in Costa Mesa. The students are accused of conspiring to interrupt and then interrupting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's speech at UCI in February 2010. The charges against Hakim Nasreddine Kebir are expected to be dropped once he completes his community service hours at the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen.

The son of slain Newport Beach yacht owner Tom Hawks stood at the podium in Judge Frank Fasel’s courtroom Thursday afternoon and told the family of convicted murderer Jennifer Henderson Deleon that they should give up her children for adoption. Henderson Deleon, a mother of two, was sentenced Thursday to two consecutive terms of life without parole for the murders of Tom and Jackie Hawks. “I wish for the defendant’s family to give her children up for adoption so they may grow up not knowing who their parents were or what they did or how they were used as decoys for financial gain,” Hawks said.

Marisa O'Neil One juror appeared to cringe, some took notes and others stared blankly as they watched a videotape in court Thursday that prosecutors say shows three teenage boys gang-raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl. The tape, a key piece of evidence in the retrial of now 19-year-old Greg Haidl and Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both 20, was shown Thursday on four small, flat-screen monitors and one large one in Judge Francisco Briseno's courtroom.

SANTA ANA — A former Newport Harbor High School football player was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison for killing a Newport Beach liquor store owner and clerk during a shoplifting dispute over an adult magazine. Weston Scott Kruger, 32, received the sentence for the 2007 killing of Hao "Tony" Huynh, the longtime proprietor of Sportsman's Liquor Store on Newport Boulevard. On Tuesday, Kruger was dressed in a dark, somber suit that matched his demeanor. Just before leaving the courtroom, the judge commended Kruger for being cooperative during the trial.

SANTA ANA — Family and friends of a slain Newport Beach businessman cried and hugged in a courtroom here Monday when the second of two killers was convicted of murder. Following almost four hours of deliberations, a jury of nine women and three men convicted Nanette Packard-McNeal, 46, of murder for financial gain in the 1994 shooting of her then-boyfriend, Bill McLaughlin. Eric Naposki, a former NFL player, was convicted last summer of pulling the trigger. While Packard-McNeal was with McLaughlin, she was also dating Naposki on the side.

Deepa Bharath SANTA ANA -- Seconds after Eric Bechler told a packed courtroom that he loved his wife and did not kill her, a Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Frank F. Fasel said he agreed with a 12-member jury, which on Feb. 1 found the 33-year-old man from Newport Heights guilty of first-degree murder for bludgeoning his 38-year-old wife, Pegye Bechler, on a boat and then dumping her body in the ocean in trash bags filled with weights.