Testimony

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District paid about $10,000 for legal representation to attend former Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard's criminal trial and report back information about the proceedings, school officials said. Instead of paying the regular rate of $195 an hour, the district was charged a paralegal rate, $115 an hour, by the law firm Parker & Covert LLP, according to district spokeswoman Laura Boss. The district was charged for 89 hours, bringing the bill to $10,235. Money to pay the fee came from the district's legal fund, Boss said.

Police are investigating a 23-year-old Irvine resident's death as a suspected suicide, according to the county coroner. The man was found dead Friday afternoon at 4300 Campus Drive on the UC Irvine campus after university police received a call at 5:01 p.m., according to the coroner's office. UPDATE: The UCI LGBT Resource Center and campus police are reporting that the resident was a transgender male known for his activism in the university's LGBT community. We previously reported the gender as female, based on information provided by the coroner's office.

The Coast Community College District on Wedensday shot down a request to draft an agreement that would pre-negotiate hiring terms with local unions for almost $700 million in construction projects. The idea has split the Board of Trustees and drawn sometimes-heated debate for months. And that acrimony could continue, according to one trustee. "Our future as a board is going to be intensely divided after this because this is a basic human right in my opinion," Trustee Jerry Patterson said.

Hours before he played the romantic lead in a play opposite his real-life fiancee, authorities allege Daniel Patrick Wozniak shot and killed his neighbor. Not long after that performance, he slipped out of the Costa Mesa apartment he shared with his then-fiancée, Rachel Buffett, 25, and allegedly killed the first victim's tutor, according to police, prosecutors and Buffett's account of events. Authorities say that when they questioned Buffett, she lied to protect Wozniak, 28. More than two years after the May 2010 crimes, she was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact.

Months before a Newport Beach man was kidnapped and severely beaten last year, he had traveled to Las Vegas with a business acquaintance he knew from his Orange County medical marijuana dispensary, according to court testimony given Wednesday by police detectives who investigated the attack. On that trip to the desert, the Balboa Peninsula resident spent tens of thousands of dollars on hotel suites and gambling and allegedly paid for his associate to have a massage that included a sexual act, according to the Newport Beach Police detectives.

Imagine for a moment that you can't walk or reach out to embrace your loved ones, and that every breath you take, each beat of your heart, requires a herculean effort from your weakening body. That is life for my neighbor Dusty Brandom and millions of boys and young men worldwide who suffer from the incurable, muscle-wasting genetic disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common fatal genetic disorder diagnosed in children. Readers might recall Dusty from previous columns, including one in which I wrote of his meeting with President Obama at the White House in the spring of 2011.

After hearing from the victim's daughter and the prosecutor on the case, on Wednesday the state denied parole for a Costa Mesa woman who killed her husband and then froze, cooked and tasted portions of his body over Thanksgiving weekend in 1991. Omaima Aree Nelson, 43, has served about 20 years of her 27-years-to-life sentence for killing William Nelson, 56. According to court testimony in her trial, she ate portions of his ribs and other remains. The original prosecutor on the case, Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Randy Pawloski, and the victim's daughter, Margaret Nelson, attended the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hearing to urge the board not to release Nelson, according to the D.A.'s office.

It’s as if Skylar Deleon’s childhood were separated into two very different worlds. In one world, when he lived with his father, John Jacobson Sr., relatives testified Deleon was constantly beaten without provocation and was told he was worthless. Held up to an impossible standard, Deleon consistently fell short in the most trivial of ways, such as not properly tucking in his shirt, and he would pay dearly for it. In the other world, away from Jacobson, who was in prison for a few years, family testified that Deleon was loved.

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.

Charges against a Costa Mesa man accused in a double murder can stand, a judge ruled Friday. Orange County Superior Court Judge James Stotler denied a request to dismiss charges against Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 28, who is accused of killing his neighbor and his neighbor's tutor in 2010. Wozniak's attorney argued that police did not properly inform the defendant of his 5th Amendment — or Miranda — rights against self-incrimination before interviewing him. Prosecutors said that Wozniak eagerly asked to talk with police shortly after the crimes.