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Federal courthouse in Peoria.
Tanya Koonce/Illinois Public Media

News Local/State

Jury Begins Deliberations On Life Sentence Or Death Penalty For Brendt Christensen

Jurors received Brendt Christensen’s capital case for a second time about 1:40 P.M. Wednesday. A few weeks earlier, the same jury found Christensen guilty of the 2017 kidnapping and murder of University of Illinois visiting scholar Yingying Zhang. This time, the question is the sentence for Christensen’s crime: life in prison or death by lethal injection.

Federal Public Defender George Taseff.
Tanya Koonce/Illinois Public Media

News Local/State

Closing Arguments Set For Wednesday in Christensen Trial Sentencing Phase

The sentencing phase of Brendt Christensen’s federal death penalty trial will go to the jury Wednesday. There’s only one question the jury at the federal courthouse in Peoria needs to answer, and that’s whether Christensen will receive the death penalty or life in prison, for the 2017 kidnapping murder of University of Illinois visiting scholar Yingying Zhang.

contraceptives
Lisa Gillespie/Side Effects Public Media

News Local/State

Why This Group Hands Out Free ‘Morning After’ Pills

Rows of silver and pink plastic packages sit on the bathroom counter inside Bean, a Louisville coffee shop. Each package carries these words: emergency contraception. The medication? It’s called Preventeza, from the company that also makes Vagisil. It was on the market for less than a year and didn’t do well – pills worth $2 million were sent to advocacy groups in Kentucky, Indiana and other states.