Preacher gets prison for pyramid scheme

Rome, Ga.

A small-town preacher was sentenced to 17 ½ years in prison yesterday for stealing nearly $9 million from about 1,600 black churches by promising big returns on small investments in a pyramid scheme.

Abraham Kennard was also ordered to pay nearly $8 million in restitution and almost $600,000 in back taxes.

Kennard, 46, was found guilty by a federal jury in February on 116 counts, including fraud and tax evasion.

Santa Maria, Calif.

Jackson's defense calls first witness

Michael Jackson's lawyers opened their case yesterday in his molestation and conspiracy trial, calling a young man who said he repeatedly slept in the pop star's bedroom without incident as a boy.

The defense opened after Judge Rodney Melville denied its motion for an acquittal. Jackson's attorneys had argued that the state failed to prove its case, and that prosecution witnesses had "a tendency to self-destruct" on the stand.

The first defense witness, dancer and film director Wade Robson, said he has known Jackson since age 5 and stayed at the singer's Neverland ranch more than 20 times.

He slept in Jackson's bedroom on all but three or four of those visits, he said. The two played video games, watched movies, talked and sometimes had pillow fights, but Robson, 22, said Jackson never touched him in an inappropriate or sexual way.

Georgetown, Texas

Wife gets 20 years for faking felon's death

A woman who helped her husband dig up a corpse and use it to fake his death in a fiery, staged car accident was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison.

A jury sentenced Molly Daniels after she pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and hindering apprehension. She was also fined $10,000.

Officials said the body of an 81-year-old was used in the fake death June 18, before husband Clayton Wayne Daniels was scheduled to report to jail for failing to report to his probation officer. He had been on probation for sexually assaulting a girl.

Clayton Daniels is in jail, awaiting trial on arson charges.

San Francisco

Murder conviction in mauling upheld

A state appeals court yesterday reinstated the second-degree murder conviction of an attorney whose giant dogs killed a neighbor in an apartment hallway.

The 1st District Court of Appeal reversed a ruling by a lower court judge who vacated the jury's finding against Marjorie Knoller and reduced her conviction to manslaughter. She was freed after serving two years of a four-year sentence, but the murder count is punishable by 15 years to life in prison.

Knoller and her husband, attorney Robert Noel, were convicted in the 2001 mauling death of Diane Whipple, 33, who was attacked outside her apartment by the couple's two 100-pound-plus Presa Canario dogs.

Cincinnati

2 taken off duty for handcuffing boy, 5

Two officers accused of handcuffing a 5-year-old boy after a fight on a school bus have been suspended from police duties while the city investigates, authorities said.

Chief Tom Streicher assigned officers Douglas Snider and Kaneshia Howell to desk work Tuesday and took away their guns, police officials said. Mekel Finch, the boy's mother, sued the police department, the bus company and the driver in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on April 29. She is asking for more than $50,000.

The lawsuit claims the driver improperly detained the boy after he was struck by another child on the bus Jan. 13. It also claims the boy was hiding under a seat when the officers arrived and put him in handcuffs. The child wasn't charged.

Also

Courthouse shooting: Brian Nichols, the suspect in the March shootings at an Atlanta courthouse that left four people dead, including a judge, was indicted yesterday on murder charges. District Attorney Paul Howard said he will pursue the death penalty. No trial date has been set.