The man suspected of mowing people down during a hit-and-run spree in August 2006 , Omeed Aziz Popal, 30, pleaded not guilty today in San Francisco Superior Court. Really. For those of you who don't remember, Popal allegedly went after 16 pedestrians with his SUV during a 15-minute death span on the streets and sidewalks of northern San Francisco. Accused of a whopping 16 counts of attempted murder--including the murder of 54-year-old Stephen Jay......

Denied. Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu - who helped raised cash for Mayor Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Fiona Ma, Hillary Clinton, and the victorious Barack Obama - was sentenced to three years in prison today for defrauding investors of nearly $1 million over 15 years ago. He was ordered to spend a sojourn behind bars after a Ponzi scheme involving latex gloves. This case is separate from a "separate federal complaint ... by the U.S.......

Today's Chron Bay Area section takes a break from covering the plight of lungless salamanders in Korea (why is this in the Bay Area section? Yes, yes, we know, it's because Cal researchers are researching them -- we're asking the question in a more philosophical sense.) to report that: oh no! Ed Jew's state criminal trial has been postponed again, to at least April 08. To justify the request for a further delay, Ed Jew's......

After a 10-month protest atop an oak grove next to Memorial Stadium, a judge ruled on Monday that UC Berkeley can now start removing up-in-a-tree protesters, as well as their ground support, even if police can't identify the protesters by name. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Richard Keller amended his ruling from a month ago. At that time, his decree gave authorities the power to strip the environmental activists off of the UC-owned land,......

After telling the public that he wanted his day in court as soon as possible -- similar to telling the public that he lived in SF, among other massive fibs -- Jew won a seven-week (!) delay for his trial start date. As always, whatever works best for you, Ed. District Attorney Kamala Harris opposed the delay, but Superior Court Judge Chuck Haines ruled that Jew's trial will start Oct. 26. That's more than......

Fundraiser, five-head sufferer, and possible one-time kidnapping victim Norman Hsu skipped his San Mateo County Superior Court appearance this morning and is now the lam! He is wanted for a 15-year-old felony warrant for grand theft. Some fear that since he was supposed to return his passport this morning, but failed to do so, he might be en route to Antarctica, or somewhere, by now. Run, Norman, run! Hsu has donated to such Democrat......

Since February, that's $670,381.39. It's been a busy month for lawyers: Muni's conceding $131,695.06 (about the cost of a bribe to Ted Stevens, or one foot of collapsed-bridge repairs, or a single union employee, or an English teacher in Seoul, or your very own hair salon) in settlements for August in nine separate cases. The biggest payout is $47,500 to a guy who broke his ankle when the bus lurched forward before he could......

Look what we just got in the SFist editor's inbox!! Jury Duty with Ed Jew! This juror, being a good citizen, had to wait two days before the case resolved before being able to talk to us about it. We love you, juror reader! By now, you’ve heard it reported that Ed Jew got called up for Jury Duty on Monday. Well, I was actually in his juror pool and got to see the whole......

According to a press release put out on PR Newswire by her attorney, Dr. Arlene Ackerman has filed suit against the San Francisco Unified School District in San Francisco Superior Court....

We've all had to deal with loud, bothersome neighbors moving in next door, right? Just imagine having the neighbors at the Seneca Hotel, operated by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. The city supplies the THC with folks in need, and the clinic must oblige by providing housing, no matter how uncomfortable those folks might make the hotel's non-clinic residents. One such resident -- he moved in years ago, when it was just a normal hotel......

For those of you keeping score at home, that's $283,557.08 awarded since February to folks who've been struck down by Muni's cruel wheel of chance. It's like the lotto, only you don't have to be dumb to play! Just fragile. We can't get any details on this month's cases, sadly, because the SF Superior Court website seems to have been completely demolished. (Maybe the SFMTA website ran into it.) We have it on good......

Twenty-three thousand nine hundred seventeen dollars and eighy-three cents -- but let's just round it up to a solid $24,000. That's how much the MTA (Muni's parent agency) is going to be allotting to pay off this month's round of settlements. Collecting Muni money in February are State Farm Insurance, Nikita and Vivienne Johnson, and Tokuko Yamagishi. The Johnsons' case is dramatic -- they claim that back in 2004, a driver on the 9......

A guy named Penisimani Schneider was arrested in Mountain View for assaulting his wife and trying to slash her with a knife, with five of his children present in the house. Yes, it's terrible, but we've gotta ask -- what kind of name is Penisimani? Is this like Mike Litoris? New contributor SFist Sarah L passed along the following East Bay tidbit: an Emeryville man was arrested after attacking his girlfriend with her own shoe.......

Victor Willis, the Village People cop, is the gift that keeps giving to the Blotter patrol! (We especially liked the headline, "Willis's destiny is the J-A-I-L" from the San Mateo County Times.) Willis failed to show up for court -- again -- despite the fact that his lawyer's worked out a plea bargain where if he surrenders, he'll serve 16 months. America's Most Wanted had a film crew on site to film what turned out to be the no-show. And hey -- we had no idea Willis had been married to Phylicia Rashad! San Francisco Superior Court judge Newtom Lam's mother died of several heart attacks three days after being struck by a cable car on a blind hill at Filbert and Mason. At the time of the accident, Mrs. Lam seemed okay and was speaking with investigators, but it turns out she fractured her skull and had broken her ribs, collarbone, and hip as well. Walk SF is holding a vigil on Monday at noon and participants should bring bells. ...and you thought you were unenthusiastic about school starting again! San Jose State put out a nationwide APB when a meteorology professor went AWOL for the first week of class. The professor hadn't called in, hadn't been seen since finals last semester, and was reported to have been having "employment and personal issues." He was found when someone at a Comfort Inn in Pennsylvania looked up from browsing Merc News articles online and saw the very guy whose picture was filling up the screen. Turns out the professor had been hiding out there for over a month. ...

Good ol' Chris Daly -- in an interview with the NY Times about Proposition H (reduces swelling), he said about the anti-H forces, "I'm crazy, but they're crazier." (Special bonus quote from the article: Daly is described as "a self-described far-left progressive." Yes he is!) Well, Daly may or may not be proven right as the NRA rumbles into town, so upset about the 58% yes on H vote that they filed suit directly in the state appellate court. Why don't they have to go through the Superior Court like everyone else, huh? They shoot their way in or something? Prop. H prohibits any SF resident from owning a handgun, and will require that everyone turn in their guns by April 1, 2006. Second Amendment advocates are claiming that the law makes us unsafer, would require cops to go gun-free, and would prohibit people from using guns in opera productions. Daly says police are exempt and operas and school plays can just use toy guns. Dennis Herrera, fresh from his 98% victory (almost as popular as Saddam Hussein!), says he's confident the city as a local municipality can regulate guns however it wants. ...

Last Wednesday, word got out about a class-action suit being brought by Gonzalez & Leigh on behalf of employees at the Courtyard Marriott in San Francisco Superior Court. Originally filed September 23rd, the recently amended complaint alleges that Marriott has failed to comply with the San Francisco Minimum Wage Ordinance since it was enacted on February 23rd, 2004. Further, it's alleged that the ordinance itself wasn't posted for employees and that one employee, Joseph......

See The Lineup and Dirty Harry tonight at the second-to-last night of the Balboa's Reel SF film fest! A disgruntled former employee stormed the Conard Community Services Center at 9th and Mission yesterday morning and shot a caseworker dead. It could have been much worse, but for the quick thinking of another employee, a man coming by to pick up a public assistance check, and a third homeless man in the area, who wrestled the shooter to the ground and disarmed him. The shooter was carrying a handgun, a shotgun, and an axe. Y'know, coming back and shooting up your former office just confirms that they were probably right to let you go in the first place. The finger lady's back in town! Anna Ayala was arraigned (check out that smirk!) in Santa Clara Superior Court yesterday, with a cheering crowd of 12 present. (They were asked to cover up their homemade INNOCENT shirts before entering the courtroom.) Ayala waved big and repeatedly mouthed "I love you" to them and the cameras, and let out a big whoop when the judge set bail at $500,000. Meanwhile, the cops are now searching a ranch in Mexico. And the student leader of the gay-straight alliance at Tamalpais High in Mill Valley has confessed to faking incidents of anti-gay vandalism at the school, saying that she just wanted some attention. The school had been investigating anti-gay graffiti on the walls and doors of openly gay teachers, and the vandalism of the gay-straight alliance student leader's car. The school has stripped the student, a wrestler, of her award for Best Student Athlete as a result. ...

Back in the 1970s, everyone was talking about Traffic Commissioner Jerry Levitin. Commish Levitin, a former criminal defense attorney, spent the decade of stagflation reducing or just outright vacating over 200,000 tickets, and giving what sounded like hilarious colloquies from the bench about the injustice of the San Francisco DPT. Loved by the people! Hated by government! So in 1980, when Levitin was preparing to run for a Superior Court judgeship, KRON came out with a report that Levitin had been lowering parking ticket fees for his political supporters. The report was wrong (Levitin had been reducing parking fees for everyone, supporters and detractors alike), but in the meantime, he lost his job at the traffic court and the DPT went back to its red-zone-enforcing ways. At the time, Levitin wrote a play about his experience -- which sat unproduced for the next 15 years as he and his wife moved to Maine to start a B&B and write travel books. Well, after 15 years, the play has finally been staged (with some help from Kamau Bell), at the Shelton Theater. Called "I'd Kill for a Parking Place," it's described as a murder mystery-comedy "written for revenge," starring a beleaguered traffic court commissioner. You know we gotta see this! Our review's after the jump. Thanks to Bruce Pachtman for his support of our coverage!...

Breaking news: Judge Kramer of the San Francisco Superior Court has ruled that laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals violate the California constitution. We're still looking for links to the order, and reporting about reactions, but it's probably safe to say right now that the order's probably going to be appealed. Picture off the AP...

SFist Jackson's not here today, but we know he'd want us to let you know that, as expected, Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Kleinberg ruled against the bloggers and for Apple. Judge Kleinberg found (.pdf) that California's shield law protecting reporters who decline to reveal their sources didn't apply to bloggers, and ordered the bloggers to tell Apple who tipped them off about project "Asteroid", about the FireWire audio interface for GarageBand. The Electronic Freedom Foundation, who's representing the bloggers, will be filing an immediate appeal. We'd tell you to give us good gossip on the case anonymously in the comments or to editor@sfist.com, but, well, don't bother now. We'll just limp through, posting rehashes of Chronicle articles and gossip from Adriel Hampton. ...

Well, we'd reported on kerfuffle between Apple Computer and a few punk bloggers (AKA Apple v. Does) before, but now there have actually been some legal developments in the case. And while it doesn't look good, it's not entirely hopeless yet, either. At stake is something that SFist holds very dear to our heart -- the concept that bloggers have what journalists working in any other medium have, namely, journalistic privelege. We have our......

After last Thursday’s nice, legalistic hearing on the legality of gay marriage, Friday’s hearing, the last of the two-day hearing, took a turn to the not so nice as the two conservative legal groups arguing against gay marriage said that gay people can’t get married because it would go against the whole point of marriage. Attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund and the Campaign for California Families argued that since the whole point of marriage......

Hearings began Wednesday in San Francisco Superior Court on the legality of Same-Sex Marriage. On one side is the City of San Francisco, representing twelve plaintiffs who filed suitafter the California Supreme Court ruled against the sanctioning of the marriages. All twelve of the plaintiffs were married last spring- in fact, two of the plaintiffs, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, were the very first couple to have been married. On the other side is......

While both Bay Area teams choked in gruesome, horrible, gut-wrenching fashion, there is some joy in Mudville a judge ruled that Steve Williams, the man who walked home with Barry Bonds' homerun ball #700, is - allowed to sell the ball. After a ninety-minute hearing on Friday, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay ruled that there was insufficient evidence to rule against Williams for Timothy Murphy, the man who brought forth the suit.......