By ANDY FURILLO, Sacramento Bee

Fifteen years after passage of California's landmark "three strikes" sentencing law, prosecutors have become far more selective in applying the full force of the statute, reducing the number of lifetime prison terms being sought for third strikers to a relative trickle.

At least temporarily, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye blocked a Sacramento judge Monday from forcing a juror to turn over his Facebook postings from a recent gang beating trial.

The chief justice issued the one-paragraph stay order until the full court takes up the issue on its merits.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In a time of trouble for some California crime labs, a state panel that oversees the scientific investigators who can make or break a court case convened this month and voted itself out of existence.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Michael Beaton worked security at Suzie's Adult Superstore and helped out on sales as needed at the sex shop.

But when he asked for a promotion to a full-time sales slot, Beaton claims, he was turned down because he isn't gay.

Now he's suing the store alleging discrimination.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The fury unleashed in Sacramento over the early releases of a couple hundred inmates has set the stage for a more massive but less detectable state-prisoner-population shift about to unfold.

California's attack on the potentially crop-threatening light brown apple moth and its mating pattern has come under legal attack from environmentalists.

Two Northern California groups filed a lawsuit this week to stop the state's agriculture department from using a chemical sexual attractant to disrupt the male moth's pursuit of the female.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A Sacramento jury set an eye-popping standard this week on the cost of radio station contests that kill and the resulting loss of a mother's love and a wife's companionship.

The tab for Entercom Sacramento LLC came to $16,577,118 in the water-intoxication death of Jennifer Lea Strange in a contest put on by radio station KDND "The End" (107.9 FM).

Organized crime rings that stretch from Sacramento to San Francisco to China, independent investment groups, connections to legitimate business -- they've all come into focus as authorities dig deeper into the mystery behind the region's indoor pot farms.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Army National Guard Spc. James Roland Ambler III said his uniform put steel in his spine and transformed a life headed nowhere into one worthy of the tattooed inscription displayed on his inner forearms: "American Soldier."

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Republican lawmakers have rejected a $7 billion plan to add 10,000 new health care beds to California's prison system, an action Democrats predicted will lead to early inmate releases and a gaping new budget hole.