LONDON (AP) — Alexei Navalny was asked four years ago what he’d tell Russians if he were killed for challenging President Vladimir Putin.

“You’re not allowed to give up,” he told a documentary maker. “If they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong and we need to use this power.”

Russia’s prison agency announced Friday that Navalny had died in the Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. His death sparked accusations around the world that he had been killed.

WHAT DOES THE OPPOSITION DO NOW?

Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways. The Russian opposition has lost its brightest star with Navalny’s sudden death. Now the question on everyone’s mind: What does it do now?

Most of Russia’s opposition is either dead, scattered abroad in exile or in prison at home. Remaining opposition groups and key political figures have different visions about what Russia should become, and who should lead it. There is not even an anti-war candidate on the ballot to give Putin a token challenge in next month’s election for a sixth term.

THE END OF DISSENT?

Although Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has vowed to continue his work, many are wondering if his elimination from the picture is the end of political dissent in Russia.

“Alexei Navalny was a very bright and charismatic leader. He had the talent to ignite people, to convince them of the need for change,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former tycoon who spent a decade in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Putin’s rule in the early 2000s.

“This is a very difficult loss for the Russian opposition,” he told The Associated Press after his death.

Graeme Robertson, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of a book about Putin and contemporary Russian politics, says the biggest problem that has plagued the Russian opposition “is that it has been unable to break out from small liberal circles to attract support from the broader population.”

Khodorkovsky, who lives in London, is one of several Russian opposition politicians trying to build a coalition with grassroots anti-war groups across the world and exiled Russian opposition figures. They include Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Russian prime minister and Vladimir Kara-Murza. who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in Russia for treason after criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But, in a reflection of how the opposition is splintered, Navalny’s team, and the Anti-Corruption Foundation he founded, are not a part of it.

“We constantly tell the guys from the Anti-Corruption Foundation … that it would be great if we all met not only in front of television cameras, but sat down at the table,” Khodorkovsky said in another interview before Navalny’s death, referring to a television debate in January hosted by the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd.

While Navalny was the first leader to build a national Russian opposition, there were other opposition factions who didn’t like him or his organization.

Before his death, there were public and heated disagreements on social media between members of his team and other politicians about how they could challenge Putin in March’s upcoming election.

PUTIN CONSOLIDATES POWER

Meanwhile, the Russian leader has continued to consolidate his grip on power, cracking down on dissent at home, imprisoning critics of the war in Ukraine, and silencing independent media.

Squabbling among the opposition, “doesn’t help,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British ambassador to Belarus and senior fellow for Russia & Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

But, even if the opposition were united, he questioned whether “given the instruments of coercion, repression and intimidation available to the Russian state, what difference, at least in the short term, would that make?”

THREE DECADES OF PUTIN

Putin is eyeing at least another six years in the Kremlin, which means he could effectively rule Russia for almost three decades.

Russia’s remaining opposition leaders and activists, largely outside the country, are now grappling with the question of how to mount an effective challenge to the Kremlin. That would mean breaking through state propaganda to reach Russians inside the country and offer them an alternative to the Kremlin’s vision of the future.

It is a difficult task, one which even Navalny struggled with after he returned to Moscow in February 2021 to face certain arrest after recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.

Shortly after his return while he was in jail, his team released a social media investigation into corruption that was viewed millions of times. It provoked a series of anti-graft protests across Russia but the police brutally cracked down and detained thousands of people.

While Navalny’s team continued to publish successful investigative reports, they ultimately suspended the protests and said they would switch to different tactics.

Although Navalny had his finger on the pulse, and his team succeeded in widely publicizing the investigation, the anti-corruption message ultimately failed to produce political change inside Russia, Robertson said, because most Russians “know their country is badly governed and that their elite is corrupt, but they don’t see it being any other way.”

In the three years since Navalny was jailed, Russian authorities have introduced more laws tightening freedom of speech and jailing critics, often ordinary people, sometimes for decades.

Khodorkovsky said the response to Navalny’s death should be to join forces and continue work started before he died, trying to convince ordinary Russians to protest in any way they can during March’s presidential election.

He called on Russians to protest by writing Navalny’s name on the ballot paper during the election. The Russian Anti-War Committee, backed by Khodorkovsky and other politicians, is also asking Russians to attend “Noon against Putin” — calling on people to gather at polling stations at 12 p.m. on March 17 as a signal that they don’t support Putin.

The idea was supported by Navalny in early February.

OPPOSITION IN EXILE

In the meantime, the Russian opposition faces a future largely in exile without one of its brightest leaders.

It will be incredibly difficult, but Russia’s exiled politicians say they are determined that the hope of democracy in their country does not die along with Navalny.

“Putin,” Khodorkovsky said, “must understand that he can kill his political opponent, but not the very idea of a democratic opposition.”

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A Florida man described by prosecutors as one of the most violent rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison, court records show.

Kenneth Bonawitz, a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group’s Miami chapter, assaulted at least six police officers as he stormed the Capitol with a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. He grabbed one of the officers in a chokehold and injured another so severely that the officer had to retire, according to federal prosecutors.

Bonawitz, 58, of Pompano Beach, Florida, carried an eight-inch knife in a sheath on his hip. Police seized the knife from him in between his barrage of attacks on officers.

“His violent, and repeated, assaults on multiple officers are among the worst attacks that occurred that day,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean McCauley wrote in a court filing.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb sentenced Bonawitz to a five-year term of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, according to court records.

The Justice Department recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months for Bonawitz, who was arrested last January. He pleaded guilty in August to three felonies — one count of civil disorder and two counts of assaulting police.

Bonawitz took an overnight bus to Washington, D.C., chartered for Trump supporters to attend his “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6.

Bonawitz was one of the first rioters to enter the Upper West Plaza once the crowd overran a police line on the north side. He jumped off a stage built for President Joe Biden’s inauguration and tackled two Capitol police officers. One of them, Sgt. Federico Ruiz, suffered serious injuries to his neck, shoulder, knees and back.

“I thought there was a strong chance I could die right there,” Ruiz wrote in a letter addressed to the judge.

Ruiz, who retired last month, said the injuries inflicted by Bonawitz prematurely ended his law-enforcement career.

“Bonawitz has given me a life sentence of physical pain and discomfort, bodily injury and emotional insecurity as a direct result of his assault on me,” he wrote.

After police confiscated his knife and released him, Bonawitz assaulted four more officers in the span of seven seconds. He placed one of the officers in a headlock and lifted her off the ground, choking her.

“Bonawitz’s attacks did not stop until (police) officers pushed him back into the crowd for a second time and deployed chemical agent to his face,” the prosecutor wrote.

More than 100 police officers were injured during the siege. Over 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials. Over 750 have been sentenced, with nearly 500 receiving a term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

Dozens of Proud Boys leaders, members and associates have been arrested on Jan. 6 charges. A jury convicted former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants of seditious conspiracy charges for a failed plot to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.

Bonawitz isn’t accused of coordinating his actions on Jan. 6 with other Proud Boys. But he “fully embraced and embodied their anti-government, extremist ideology when he assaulted six law enforcement officers who stood between a mob and the democratic process,” the prosecutor wrote.

Bonawitz’s lawyers didn’t publicly file a sentencing memo before Wednesday’s hearing. One of his attorneys didn’t immediately respond to emails and a phone call seeking comment.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for a man at the center of a right-wing conspiracy theory about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — an attack that he has admitted to joining.

Ray Epps, who is scheduled to be sentenced next Tuesday, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct on restricted grounds.

Epps, a onetime Donald Trump supporter from Arizona, became the focus of a conspiracy theory that he was an undercover government agent who incited the Capitol attack. Right-wing news outlets amplified the conspiracy theory and drove him into hiding after the Jan. 6 riot.

Epps, who worked as a roofer after serving four years as infantry in the U.S. Marine Corps, has vehemently denied ever working for the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon said during Epps’ plea hearing in September that he was not a confidential source for the FBI “or any other law enforcement agency.”

In videos shared widely on social media and right-wing websites, Epps is seen the day before the riot saying, “Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol … peacefully.” On Jan. 6, video shows him saying, “As soon as the president is done speaking, we go to the Capitol.”

Epps has said he left Capitol grounds when he saw people scaling walls and never actually went inside the building.

Prosecutors say Epps participated in a “a rugby scrum-like group effort” to push past a line of police officers.

“Even if Epps did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct,” they wrote in a court filing.

But they also noted that Epps turned himself in to the FBI two days after the riot after learning that agents were trying to identify him. The false conspiracy theory about Epps not only has harmed him “but also attempts to undermine the integrity of the ongoing and overall federal prosecution,” prosecutors said.

“Epps only acted in furtherance of his own misguided belief in the ‘lie’ that the 2020 presidential election had been ‘stolen,’” they wrote. “However, due to the outrage directed at Epps as a result of that false conspiracy theory, he has been forced to sell his business, move to a different state, and live reclusively.”

The charge to which Epps pleaded guilty is punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars.

Epps served as an Arizona chapter leader for the Oath Keepers before parting ways with the anti-government extremist group a few years before the Jan. 6 attack.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and other members were convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack for what prosecutors said was a weekslong plot to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Rhodes was sentenced in May to 18 years in prison.

More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials decided by a judge or jury.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A former leader of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group was sentenced on Tuesday to more than three years behind bars for joining a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol nearly three years ago.

Charles Donohoe was the second Proud Boy to plead guilty to conspiring with other group members to obstruct the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress for certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. His sentence could be a bellwether for other Proud Boys conspirators who agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

Donohoe, 35, of Kernersville, North Carolina, apologized to his family, the law-enforcement officers who guarded the Capitol on Jan. 6, and “America as a whole” for his actions on Jan. 6.

“I knew what I was doing was illegal from the very moment those barricades got knocked down,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced him to three years and four months in prison. Donohoe could be eligible for release in a month or two because he gets credit for the jail time he already has served since his March 2021 arrest.

The judge said Donohoe seems to be doing everything in his power to make amends for his crimes.

“I think you’ve got all the ingredients here to put this behind you,” Kelly said.

Donohoe was president of a local Proud Boys chapter in North Carolina. He was a lieutenant of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison — the longest prison term so far in a Capitol riot case.

In May, a jury convicted Tarrio and three other former Proud Boys leaders of seditious conspiracy charges for plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Biden.

Donohoe agreed to cooperate with federal authorities when he pleaded guilty in April 2020 to two felony counts: conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting or impeding police. But he wasn’t called to testify at the trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys earlier this year.

Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence ranging from 35 to 43 months for Donohoe. Sentencing guidelines recommended a prison term ranging from 70 to 87 months.

“Donohoe and his co-conspirators organized and led a small army as they launched an attack on the heart of our democracy. They took these actions because they did not like the outcome of the election,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

A New York man, Matthew Greene, was the first Proud Boys member to plead guilty to conspiracy. Greene’s sentencing hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet.

Donohoe acted as the “eyes and ears of the group on the ground” in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, Justice Department prosecutor Jason McCullough told the judge. But prosecutors argued that Donohoe deserves credit for his early acceptance of responsibility and cooperation with the investigation.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Donohoe marched with over 100 members of the Proud Boys to the Capitol. He didn’t enter the Capitol, but he threw two water bottles at officers confronting the mob outside the building.

Donohoe, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served two deployments in Iraq, has “eagerly divorced himself” from the Proud Boys, said defense attorney Ira Knight.

“It took Charlie time to understand the nature of his wrong,” Knight said.

More than 1,200 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a judge or jury after trials. Over 700 have been sentenced.

A case unsealed on Monday charges a local political activist from Florida with storming the Capitol building on Jan. 6 with a Proud Boys member. Barbara Balmaseda, 23, of Miami Lakes, Florida, was arrested in her hometown last Thursday on charges including obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct.

A Fox News journalist who interviewed Balmaseda in 2021 identified her as director-at-large of Miami Young Republicans. Her attorney, Nayib Hassan, claims the case against Balmaseda is politically motivated and asserted that her arrest was a “waste of law enforcement resources.”

“She is relieved this process will finally move toward a final resolution,” Hassan said in a statement.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson could get as much as 30 years to life in prison at his sentencing Thursday for the rapes of two women two decades ago.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo is set to sentence the 47-year-old actor after ruling on a defense motion for a new trial that she’s very likely to reject, and after hearing impact statements from the victims.

A jury of seven women and five men found Masterson guilty of two counts on May 31 after seven days of deliberations. Both attacks took place in Masterson’s Hollywood-area home in 2003, when he was at the height of his fame on the Fox network sitcom “That ’70s Show.”

The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on a third count, an allegation that Masterson also raped a longtime girlfriend.

The verdict came in a second trial after a jury failed to reach verdicts on three counts of forcible rape in December and a mistrial was declared.

Prosecutors alleged that Masterson used his prominence in the Church of Scientology — where all three women were also members at the time — to avoid consequences for decades after the attacks.

The women blamed the church for their hesitancy in going to police about Masterson. They testified that when they reported him to Scientology officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller told jurors at the trial. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them.”

The church said in a statement after the verdict that the “testimony and descriptions of Scientology beliefs” during the trial were “uniformly false.”

“The Church has no policy prohibiting or discouraging members from reporting criminal conduct of anyone — Scientologists or not — to law enforcement,” the statement said.

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

The women whose testimony led to Masterson’s conviction said that in 2003, he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them.

Olmedo allowed prosecutors and accusers to say directly in the second trial that Masterson drugged the women, while only allowing the women to describe their condition in the first.

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there was no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion. The issue could be a factor in a planned appeal from the defense of Masterson’s conviction.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they’ve been sexually abused.

Masterson starred with Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace in “That ’70s Show” from 1998 until 2006.

He had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy “The Ranch,” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed the following year.

While that investigation began before a wave of women shook Hollywood with stories about Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, the conviction and sentencing of Masterson still represents a major #MeToo era success for Los Angeles prosecutors, along with the conviction of Weinstein himself last year.

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Ray Brewer, 66, of Porterville was sentenced Monday to six years and nine months in federal prison in a years-long scam that bilked investors out of $8.75 million, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

Brewer ran a scheme from 2014 through 2019 in which he claimed to be building anaerobic digesters at dairies in California’s Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties and in Idaho, prosecutors said.

Anaerobic digesters “use microorganisms to break down biodegradable material and turn it into methane” that can be sold and that also provide the producers with renewable energy credits for producing green energy, the statement said.

Brewer told investors he would turn cow manure into methane while they would receive 66% of net profits and tax incentives, federal prosecutors said.

Brewer took investors on tours of dairies where he allegedly planned to build the digesters and claimed to have raised millions of dollars for the work. He sent them forged lease agreements with dairy owners, faked loan agreements with banks, phony contracts with multinational companies and bogus pictures of the machines under construction, prosecutors said.

The investors’ money went into several bank accounts, and Brewer spent it on himself, buying up land, a custom home and new Dodge Ram pickup trucks, authorities said.

He also kept his investors up to date on the non-existent construction with fake schedules, invoices, power generation reports and pictures, authorities said.

Brewer also refunded money to some investors, using money obtained from other investors.

When investors found out they had been bilked, some won lawsuits against him. But Brewer moved to Sheridan, Montana, and assumed a new identity before he was finally arrested, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — As Elizabeth Holmes prepares to report to prison next week, the criminal case that laid bare the blood-testing scam at the heart of her Theranos startup is entering its final phase.

The 11-year sentence represents a comeuppance for the wide-eyed woman who broke through “tech bro” culture to become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, only to be exposed as a fraud. Along the way, Holmes became a symbol of the shameless hyperbole that often saturates startup culture.

But questions still linger about her true intentions — so many that even the federal judge who presided over her trial seemed mystified. And Holmes’ defenders continue to ask whether the punishment fits the crime.

At 39, she seems most likely to be remembered as Silicon Valley’s Icarus — a high-flying entrepreneur burning with reckless ambition whose odyssey culminated in convictions for fraud and conspiracy.

Her motives are still somewhat mysterious, and some supporters say federal prosecutors targeted her unfairly in their zeal to bring down one of the most prominent practitioners of fake-it-til-you-make-it — the tech sector’s brand of self-promotion that sometimes veers into exaggeration and blatant lies to raise money.

Holmes will begin to pay the price for her deceit on May 30 when she is scheduled begin the sentence that will separate her from her two children — a son whose July 2021 birth delayed the start of her trial and a 3-month-old daughter conceived after her conviction.

She is expected to be incarcerated in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of her hometown of Houston. The prison was recommended by the judge who sentenced Holmes, but authorities have not publicly disclosed where she will be held.

Her many detractors contend she deserves to be in prison for peddling a technology that she repeatedly boasted would quickly scan for hundreds of diseases and other health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

The technology never worked as promised. Instead, Theranos tests produced wildly unreliable results that could have endangered patients’ lives — one of the most frequently cited reasons why she deserved to be prosecuted.

Before those lies were uncovered in a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal beginning in October 2015, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of savvy investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It was the duping of those investors that led to her prison sentence and a $452 million restitution bill.

Holmes’ stake in Theranos at one point catapulted her paper wealth to $4.5 billion. She never sold any of her stock in the company, though trial evidence left no doubt she reveled in the trappings of fame and fortune — so much so that she and the father of her children, William “Billy” Evans, lived on a palatial Silicon Valley estate during the trial.

The theory that Holmes was running an elaborate scam was buttressed by trial evidence documenting her efforts to prevent the Journal’s investigation from being published. That campaign compelled John Carreyrou — the reporter responsible for those bombshell stories — to attend court and position himself in Holmes’ line of vision when she took the witness stand.

Holmes also signed off on surveillance aimed at intimidating Theranos employees who helped uncover the flaws with the blood-testing technology. The whistleblowers included Tyler Shultz, the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, whom Holmes befriended and persuaded to join the Theranos board.

Tyler Shultz became so unnerved by Holmes’ efforts to shut him up that he began sleeping with a knife under his pillow, according to a wrenching statement delivered by his father, Alex, at her sentencing.

Holmes’ supporters still contend she always had good intentions and was unfairly scapegoated by the Justice Department. They insist she simply deployed the same over-the-top promotion tactics as many other tech executives, including Elon Musk, who has repeatedly made misleading statements about the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving cars.

According to those supporters, Holmes was singled out because she was a woman who briefly eclipsed the men who customarily bask in Silicon Valley’s spotlight, and the trial turned her into a latter-day version of Hester Prynne — the protagonist in the 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter.”

Holmes steadfastly maintained her innocence during seven often-riveting days of testimony in her own defense — a spectacle that caused people to line up shortly after midnight to secure one of the few dozen seats available in the San Jose courtroom.

On one memorable day, Holmes recounted how she had never gotten over the trauma of being raped while enrolled at Stanford University. She then described being subjected to a long-running pattern of emotional and sexual abuse by her former lover and Theranos conspirator, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, and suggested his stifling control blurred her thinking.

Balwani’s lawyer, Jeffrey Coopersmith, denied those allegations during the trial. In Balwani’s subsequent trial, Coopersmith unsuccessfully tried to depict his client as Holmes’ pawn.

Balwani, 57, is now serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy.

When it came time to sentence the then-pregnant Holmes in November, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila seemed as puzzled as anyone about why she did what she did.

”This is a fraud case where an exciting venture went forward with great expectations and hope, only to be dashed by untruth, misrepresentations, hubris and plain lies,” Davila lamented while Holmes stood before him. “I suppose we step back and we look at this, and we think what is the pathology of fraud?”

The judge also hearkened back to the days that Silicon Valley consisted mostly of orchards farmed by immigrants. That was before the land was ceded to the tech boom beginning in 1939 when William Hewlett and David Packard founded a company bearing their surnames in a one-car garage in Palo Alto — the same city where Theranos was based.

“You’ll recall the wonderful innovation of those two individuals in that small garage,” Davila reminded everyone in the rapt courtroom. “No exotic automobiles or lavish lifestyle, just a desire to create for society’s benefit through honest hard work. And that, I would hope, would be the continuing story, the legacy and practice of Silicon Valley.”

___

Michael Liedtke has been covering Silicon Valley for The Associated Press for 23 years.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes appears to be soon bound for prison after an appeals court Tuesday rejected her bid to remain free while she tries to overturn her conviction in a blood-testing hoax that brought her fleeting fame and fortune.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling comes nearly three weeks after Holmes deployed a last-minute legal maneuver to delay the start of her 11-year prison sentence. She had been previously ordered to surrender to authorities on April 27 by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who sentenced her in November.

Davila will now set a new date for Holmes, 39, to leave her current home in the San Diego area and report to prison.

The punishment will separate Holmes from her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, their 1-year-old son, William, and 3-month-old daughter, Invicta. Holmes’ pregnancy with Invicta — Latin for “invincible,” or “undefeated” — began after a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence at a women’s prison in Bryan, Texas. It hasn’t been disclosed whether the federal Bureau of Prisons accepted Davila’s recommendation or assigned Holmes to another facility.

Holmes’ former lover and top lieutenant at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny’ Balwani, began a nearly 13-year prison sentence in April after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July in a separate trial. Balwani, 57, was incarcerated in a Southern California prison after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.

The verdict against Holmes came after a 46 days of trial testimony and other evidence that cast a spotlight on a culture of greed and hubris that infected Silicon Valley as technology became a more pervasive influence on society and the economy during the past 20 years.

The trial’s most riveting moments unfolded when Holmes took the witness stand to testify in her own defense.

Besides telling how she founded Theranos as a teenager after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003, Holmes accused Balwani of abusing her emotionally and sexually. She also asserted she never stopped believing Theranos would revolutionize healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood.

While pursuing that audacious ambition, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of well-heeled investors that included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Those sophisticated investors all lost their money after a Wall Street Journal investigation and regulatory reviews exposed dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology.

Holmes’s lawyers have been fighting her conviction on grounds of alleged mistakes and misconduct that occurred during her trial. They have also contended errors and abuses that biased the jury were so egregious that she should be allowed to stay out of prison while the appeal unfolds — a request that has now been rebuffed by both Davila and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Angel Ramos-Corrales, 19, of Riverside was sentenced for a February assault during which he brutalized his 4-month-old puppy named Canelo, breaking its skull and ribs, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

“The dog’s injuries caused it to continuously fall headfirst, and Ramos-Corrales recorded a video of the injured puppy and posted it on his Instagram account,” the statement said.

The same day, Ramos-Corrales slit the dog’s throat, leaving a two-inch gap, and posted a Snapchat video showing Canelo lying on a bathroom floor during which Ramos-Corrales said “I’m cold-hearted” and kicked the unconscious puppy, prosecutor said.

Corrales was taken into custody by police following complaints by people who saw the video.

Officers found Ramos-Corrales with fresh blood stains on his clothes and fresh cut wounds on his hands, and there were blood spatters in a bathroom and bedroom, according to the criminal complaint.

Ramos-Corrales said the dog had become “moody” and had nipped him, “which caused him to lose control,” the complaint said.

“Ramos-Corrales called himself a ‘cold blooded killer’ and said he could not stop himself from hurting the dog,” according to the complaint.

The puppy had to be euthanized.

Ramos-Corrales told police that he had smoked marijuana all day, according to a court document that indicated he also may have used alcohol and methamphetamine.

The document, which laid out the government’s sentencing position, says Ramos-Corrales brutalized the dog for two hours, “reveled heartlessly in exacting mortal wounds to Canelo, gave no aid to Canelo in his suffering, and cursed Canelo as he lay dying.”

Corrales pleaded guilty in June to one count of animal crushing, which involves causing serious injury to an animal causing extreme physical pain, long-term damage or risk of death.

AP | Contributed

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In the sentencing hearing, the victim’s stepmother and father gave their testimonies. They both highlighted how much the victim meant to them, and how his death had torn their family apart.

The victim’s stepmother emphasized his role as a defender and a protector, especially his ties with a homeless community near where he lived.

The victim had lived in a storm tunnel as a way to cope after the loss of the love of his life, who passed 13 years before his murder. He had two stepchildren and one biological son with her.

Conflict between the victim and Tara started on July 29, 2020, when Tara and another man were involved in a drug-related disagreement that ended with Tara shooting the other man, who survived the murder attempt.

The victim criticized Tara for drawing scrutiny to the homeless population in the storm channel, which was near the scene of the attempted murder.

After multiple disagreeable exchanges online, Tara shot the victim in the storm channel on Aug. 17, 2020. The victim immediately died and Tara was taken into custody ten days later.

The victim’s father hopes that Tara “will never be released in his lifetime.” He even spoke directly to Tara, saying “not only did you take my son from me, but you took your mom’s son from her.”

The victim’s stepmother testified that she “[wants] nothing more than for him to spend the rest of his life paying for what he’s done,” and her wish came true.

Tara was sentenced to life in state prison without parole, and given an additional 57 years set to run consecutively; his charges include first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, firearm advancement, and the discharging of a firearm that caused great bodily harm.

Catherine Hamilton and Amy Berberyan | Contributed

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