Former GM engineer, husband sentenced in trade secret theft case

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - A former General Motors Co engineer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and her husband was sentenced to three years for conspiring to steal trade secrets for use in China, federal prosecutors said.

Former engineer Shanshan Du, 54, and her husband Yu Qin, 52, each received sentences well below the roughly eight to 10 years that the government had sought. Both were sentenced on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani in Detroit.

Both defendants are U.S. citizens, and their case is part of a crackdown by the U.S. Department of Justice on trade secret theft, whether involving China or other countries.

Last November, a federal jury convicted Du and Qin on two counts each of unauthorized possession of trade secrets and one count of conspiracy to possess the secrets without permission.

Qin was also convicted on three counts of wire fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.

The defendants had been accused of taking confidential GM information from the Detroit-based automaker related to hybrid vehicles, and trying to pass it to competitors, including China's Chery Automobile Co, through their firm Millennium Technology International.

Investigators accused Du of copying more than 16,000 GM files soon after the automaker in January 2005 gave her a severance offer. They said Qin later claimed, while pitching his services, to have invented some of the stolen GM technology.

"These defendants stole trade secrets, which General Motors spent many years and millions of dollars to develop, to give an unfair advantage to a foreign competitor," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade in Detroit said in a statement. "Stealing trade secrets harms Michigan businesses and costs jobs."

Prosecutors said GM has estimated that the value of the stolen documents exceeded $40 million. The defendants had argued that the documents in question were not trade secrets.

"I'm pleased that the judge went below the sentencing guidelines, and took into consideration Mr. Qin's contributions to the engineering field, his respect in that field, and his remorse," Qin's lawyer Frank Eaman said in an interview. He nonetheless said he was planning to appeal the conviction.

A lawyer for Du did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. McQuade's office was not immediately available for comment.

The case is U.S. v. Qin et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, No. 10-cr-02454.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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Alaska woman acquitted of murdering husband

PALMER, Alaska (AP) — A jury acquitted an Alaska woman who shot her husband six times as he slept, killing him, after she said the man held her against her will and tortured her for three days.

A Palmer jury on Tuesday found Lisa Donlon not guilty on all counts after several days of deliberations following a four-week trial, according to KTUU-TV (http://is.gd/PomdRg). Donlon was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

She shot her husband, Jason Donlon, once in the head and five times in the back with a .45-caliber handgun while he slept Oct. 7, 2010. The mother of three called 911 to report the shooting.

The defense argued Jason Donlon had been raping and torturing his wife for three days. They say he was keeping her against her will in a cabin or storage shed in Butte, about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage.

Prosecutors argued the killing was non-confrontational, and they said that while medical records showed evidence of scrapes and bruises there was nothing to indicate Lisa Donlon had been tortured.

A grand jury initially declined to indict Donlon but reconsidered after prosecutors presented new evidence.

Her lawyer argued that she was a victim of domestic violence and the shooting was justified.

The Donlons married in South Carolina in 1995, and court papers show trouble in their marriage when they were living in Eagle River in 2006. That year she obtained a restraining order against her husband and doctors documented her injuries.

In a petition for the restraining order, she said he became enraged when she announced she wanted a divorce.

"He packed his things, told the kids 'bye,'" she wrote. "Twenty minutes later he came back with his two loaded guns. He was trying to force me to call the police because he wanted to be shot by police officers so it wouldn't look like a suicide."

She wrote that her husband had pointed a gun to her chest before, had thrown her out of the house with no clothes on — an event she said was witnessed by one of their sons. She also stated that her husband had choked her unconscious.

She said she didn't call police because she was scared.

"I have a feeling that he would use his guns easily, and I don't want to create any situation that would trigger that," she wrote.

Two days after she obtained the restraining order, Jason Donlon, who was a computer technician for the Alaska Army National Guard, filed for divorce, seeking custody of the children.

The couple soon reconciled and were living in a small building behind the home of his mother and stepfather.

Defense Attorney Zachary Renfro said that while Donlon was in jail she had weekly visits from her three sons. He said the next step is to work on a plan to reunite her with her children.

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Information from: KTUU-TV, http://www.ktuu.com

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