Illinois Public Media News

The man convicted of murdering University of Illinois visiting scholar Yingying Zhang will spend the rest of his life in federal prison “without release”. That was the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Jim Shadid Thursday, after a jury spent about nine hours deliberating before determining they could not reach a unanimous verdict on the death penalty for Brendt Christensen. 

A former University of Illinois doctoral student was spared the death penalty Thursday and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and killing of a 26-year-old scholar from China. Her parents, disappointed he was not sentenced to death, publicly begged for the killer to reveal where her remains are so they can be returned home.

50 years ago, an Illinois engineer named Barbara Crawford Johnson helped land astronauts on the moon. We learn about her life, and what it was like to work on the space program all those years ago. Plus, there are many reasons why people don’t drink alcohol, and those numbers of people continue to grow. We talk about how bars and restaurants are starting to cater cocktails to the sober set. Also, a new study finds that just half of collegiate level sports programs follow the medical model of care for student athletes. 

Efforts to restrict abortions are playing out in state legislatures and courts across the Midwest. But often an important voice is missing from the conversation –- people who have had abortions themselves. 

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.