Wesley Yiin

What does it mean, exactly, for something to be lost in translation? The answer, it seems, can be demonstrated in a densely packed courtroom in Alhambra. Department 005 of the Alhambra Courthouse is unusually full, but that might just be because the entire left side of the gallery is blocked off by yellow caution tape, as if it were a crime scene. The remaining seating area is mostly occupied by people of Asian descent, though there are also a handful of Latinx folks and a Black man and woman sitting at the dead center of the room. The racial diversity...

On Saturday, June 1, 2019, Defy Ventures held an event called Business Coaching Day at the NationBuilder offices in downtown Los Angeles. As a nonprofit focused on reducing recidivism by supporting currently and formerly incarcerated men to become entrepreneurs, Defy puts on Business Coaching Days to give their participants, known as “Entrepreneurs-in-Training” or EITs, an opportunity to learn from and be mentored by local executives. But their June event was unique: It was the first Business Coaching Day held outside prison, and therefore primarily aimed to help EITs in transitional housing. There were roughly 10 EITs and about as many...

From the looks of it, Robert Durst’s legal team has expanded a bit since the first hearing that Crime Story reported on here. It’s 9:45 am, 15 minutes before the hearing is scheduled to begin, and the bloat on the defense’s side of the courtroom concerns Robin Armstrong, the clerk. With the calmness and firmness of a middle-school teacher, she requests that some attorneys sit in the gallery. They oblige, relegated to the gallery’s front row, their knees bumping up against the partition. Durst’s jury trial is scheduled for September, which is quite a few months away. But he’s been...