Federal prosecutors will officially rest their case Wednesday in the sentencing phase of Brendt Christensen’s trial for kidnapping and killing University of Illinois visiting scholar Yingying Zhang. Government prosecutors spent the second day of the sentencing phase presenting testimony from Zhang’s family and other loved ones, as they tried to prove the aggravating factors that would qualify Christensen for the death penalty.
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The penalty phase of the trial of the man convicted of kidnapping and killing a University of Illinois visiting scholar is underway.
A federal jury that convicted a former University of Illinois doctoral student of kidnapping, torturing and killing Yingying Zhang, a young scholar from China, now must decide if Brendt Christensen should be put to death.
A 20-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to 69 years in prison for the fatal shooting of a man at a party in Champaign’s Campustown area in 2016.
On the 21st: Voting rights advocates are trying to build support for an automatic voter registration bill. Plus, the story of how seven people in Chicago were killed by Tylenol that had been poisoned - and a brief reflection on our one year anniversary with Illinois Public Media CEO Moss Bresnahan.
