The jurors returned their decision against Brendt Christensen, 30, on their second day of deliberations. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. Prosecutors and Zhang’s family had pushed for the death penalty, but a jury decision on that had to be unanimous. If even one juror opposed, then the life sentence was applied.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law.
Prosecutors said Christensen raped, choked and stabbed Zhang before beating her to death with a bat and decapitating her. Christensen has never revealed what he did with Zhang’s remains.
Christensen, a native of Stevens Point, Wis., began his studies in Champaign at the university’s doctoral program in physics in 2013.
Prosecutor Eugene Miller said that on June 9, 2017, Christensen posed as an undercover officer and lured Zhang into his car when she was running late to sign an apartment lease. The muscular Christensen probably forced the 5-foot-4 Zhang into a 6-foot-long duffel bag that he bought online days earlier and carried her up to his apartment in Urbana, 140 miles southwest of Chicago, Miller said. Once inside, he raped and killed her.
— Associated Press
FLORIDA
Man sentenced for postings on bombs
A Florida man was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in federal prison for posting bombmaking instructions on websites frequented by extremist groups such as the Islamic State.
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore imposed the maximum possible sentence on Tayyab Tahir Ismail, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan. The FBI says Ismail, 34, posted bomb instructions last year on five occasions and that they were accurate.
Ismail, who lived in Pembroke Pines, Fla., expressed remorse and renounced violence at Thursday’s hearing.
Ismail was also an associate of James Medina, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for plotting to blow up a South Florida synagogue and Jewish school. He was snared in an FBI sting with a fake bomb. The FBI said Ismail knew about that plot and did nothing, but he was not charged then.
Aside from the bombmaking instructions, authorities say Ismail also posted numerous messages of support for the Islamic State and advocated killing people.
— Associated Press
NEW YORK
Trade Center victim's remains identified
Authorities have identified the remains of another 9/11 victim found at the World Trade Center.
The New York City medical examiner’s office on Thursday said the woman is the 1,644th person to be identified in the nearly 18 years since hijackers crashed airplanes into the trade center’s twin towers in 2001.
The victim’s name, which is being withheld, was confirmed through DNA testing of remains recovered in 2002. It’s the second new identification of a World Trade Center victim in 2019.
The medical examiner says about 40 percent of the 2,753 people reported missing remain unidentified.
— Associated Press
NEVADA
Ex-lawmaker gets jail for misusing funds
A former top Nevada Democratic lawmaker was sentenced Thursday to more than two years in federal prison and fined almost $250,000 for misusing campaign funds to pay personal bills and open a downtown Las Vegas nightclub where he hosted political fundraisers.
Former Senate majority leader Kelvin Atkinson told U.S. District Judge James Mahan in Las Vegas he was embarrassed, and called his fall from grace after 17 years in elected office “regrettable.”
Atkinson’s attorney Richard Wright acknowledged that Atkinson commingled, misappropriated, embezzled, stole and improperly used at least $195,000 in contributions while he was in the state Assembly and Senate. Atkinson, 50, of North Las Vegas, served 10 years in the Assembly before being elected to the Senate in 2012.
He became the first openly gay member of the Legislature when he came out in 2013 during a Senate same-sex marriage debate. He and his husband, Sherwood Howard, became the first same-sex couple to marry in Las Vegas in October 2014.
Atkinson resigned from the Senate in March and pleaded guilty less than a week later to federal wire fraud.
Court documents said he used $75,000 in campaign money to open and operate the nightclub called the Urban Lounge; $20,000 to lease a Jaguar SUV; $8,600 to repay a personal loan and at least $100,000 to pay off credit card charges.
— Associated Press
Philadelphia suspends 13 police officers over Facebook posts: The Philadelphia Police Department is suspending 13 officers with intent to fire them following an investigation into offensive Facebook posts, the police commissioner announced Thursday. In June, the department had placed 72 officers on administrative leave after a nonprofit group published the results of a two-year review of personal Facebook posts or comments from officers in Philadelphia and seven other U.S. police departments.
— Associated Press
