A Queens teacher who was arrested in April for having sex with a 14-year-old girl has pleaded guilty to statutory rape charges.

Daniel Reilly, 36, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape in Queens Criminal Court on Monday.

Reilly, who was a sixth-grade English teacher at I.S. 237 in Flushing, admitted to having sexual intercourse with a former student at his Forest Hills residence in April, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 22. Reilly will be sentenced to six months in jail and 10 years’ probation. He must also give up his teaching license and register on the state’s sex offender registry.

The relationship between Reilly and the girl was discovered by the girl’s sister, who found sexually explicit text messages from the former teacher on her sister’s phone. The two had an ongoing sexual relationship for seven months, the New York Post reports.

Reilly is married and has a 1-year-old daughter, according to the Post.

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An Arizona jury found Jodi Arias guilty on Wednesday of first-degree murder in the death of her ex-boyfriend in a sensational capital case that has snared media attention since January. Arias teared up as the verdict was announced. Family members of victim Travis Alexander embraced each other in the courtroom.

Arias, 32, could face the death penalty now that she is convicted of murdering 30-year-old Alexander, whose body was found in the shower of his suburban Phoenix home in June 2008. He had been shot in the face, stabbed multiple times and his throat had been slashed.

Arias has admitted to killing Alexander, but said it was in self-defense after he attacked her because she had dropped his camera while taking photos of him in the shower.

The jury reached its verdict on the third full day of deliberations. Judge Sherry Stephens, who gave them the case on Friday afternoon, had instructed jurors that they could consider the charges of first- and second-degree murder or the lesser charge of manslaughter, and that they should reach a unanimous verdict. First-degree murder requires proof of premeditation.

The trial, which began in early January and was punctuated by graphic testimony and evidence including a sex tape, was streamed live on the Internet and drew widespread media attention.

During the trial, the court heard how the petite, dark-haired Arias met and began dating Alexander, a businessman and motivational speaker, in 2006.

During 18 days of often gripping and salacious testimony, Arias said that she and Alexander continued to have sex despite their break-up from a relationship that was marked by emotional and physical abuse.

Arias said Alexander had made her feel “like a prostitute” and that he kicked and attempted to choke her, although she admitted never reporting the alleged abuse to the police, seeking medical treatment or documenting it in her journal.

Defense attorney Kirk Nurmi said Arias had snapped in the “sudden heat of passion” in the moments between a final photograph she took showing Alexander alive and taking a shower and a subsequent picture showing him covered in his own blood.

ARIAS PORTRAYED AS MANIPULATIVE

Prosecutor Juan Martinez painted a different picture of Arias, portraying her as manipulative and prone to jealousy in previous relationships, and said she had meticulously planned to kill Alexander.

“Nothing indicates that this is anything less than a slaughter,” he told jurors in his summing up on Friday, asking them to return a verdict of felony first-degree murder.

Martinez accused Arias of bringing the pistol used in the killing, which has not been recovered, with her from California, and said she rented a car, removed its license plate and bought gasoline cans and fuel to conceal her journey to the Phoenix suburbs to kill Alexander.

Martinez said that Arias lied after the killing to deflect any suspicion that she had been involved in his death, leaving a voicemail on Alexander’s cellphone, sending irises to his grandmother and telling detectives she was not at the crime scene before changing her story.

The jury had more than 100 questions for Arias. They grilled her on her claims that her mind went blank after she shot Alexander, and wanted to know why she had not called emergency responders – questions she struggled to answer.

The defense called a psychologist who testified that Arias’ memory lapses stemmed from post-traumatic stress as a result of Alexander’s alleged abuse and the killing itself – claims disputed by prosecutors.

In closing arguments, Martinez told the jury Alexander had sent an instant message weeks before his death saying he was “extremely afraid” of Arias because of her “stalking behavior.”

Nurmi also reminded the jury that Arias was charged with murder and not with lying.

“Did she lie? Of course she did, but that’s not in your verdict instructions,” he said.

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City Comptroller John Liu’s former campaign treasurer and former fundraiser were found guilty on Thursday for their roles in a scheme to illegally funnel money into Liu’s campaign.

Liu, who was not charged, said on Thursday that he was “deeply saddened” by the verdict but that he would continue with his run for mayor, the New York Times reported.

Though the scandal has raised questions about how much Liu knew about the scheme, he said on Thursday, “I have nothing to hide. I have a clear conscience.”

His two associated were charged more than a year ago with scheming to use straw donors to raise money and obtain matching funds from the city.

Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan, a former fundraiser, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and attempted wire fraud.

Ex-campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou was acquitted of conspiracy but convicted of attempting wire fraud, obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents.

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A former New York City police officer plotted to kidnap, kill and cook women, a jury decided Tuesday.

After 16 hours of deliberation, a jury reached the verdict that Gilberto Valle, 28, was guilty on all charges.

Prosecutors charged that Valle plotted to kidnap women, keeping files on more than 100, and conspired to eventually kill and cook them.

His defense lawyer portrayed his actions as harmless sexual fantasies, telling jurors he should not be convicted for his thoughts.

Evidence included online communications in which prosecutors said he plotted to cook women, judging whether his oven could fit one if he folded her legs. He also agreed to a payment of $5,000 to deliver a woman bound, gagged and alive, prosecutors said.

His wife, who was among his planned victims, prosecutors said, testified against him at trial. He cried during her testimony.

Valle, a Forest Hills resident who had patrolled in Harlem, faces life in prison.

Former Brooklyn prosecutor and attorney Michael Weinstock said the “game changer” in the case was Valle illegally using a crime database to find information on potential victims, which was itself a crime and showed taking an action past chats.

“He’s not just going onto a website with weirdos and talking about killing his wife,” Weinstock said. “That would be weird, and that would be disturbing, but that alone would not have gotten the guy convicted.”

In his opinion, he continued, “If he had simply said twisted things with other peculiar nerds online, it never would have been prosecuted, but once he opened the database, it was a game changer.”

But he said he did not think this case would set a precedent for others involving conspiracy to commit crimes, simply because prosecutors do not have the resources to patrol every sexual fantasy.

“They’ve got their hands full,” he said.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that the case showed that the web cannot be used for planning crimes.

“Today, a unanimous jury found that Gilberto Valle’s detailed and specific plans to abduct women for the purpose of committing grotesque crimes were very real and that he was guilty as charged,” Bharara said. “The internet is a forum for the free exchange of ideas, but it does not confer immunity for plotting crimes and taking steps to carry out those crimes.”

Prosecutors’ allegations

Planned to abduct and cook 100 women
Negotiated price of $5,000 to deliver a woman bound, gagged and alive
Used the National Crime Information Center to find potential victims
Kept files including a document entitled, “Abducting and Cooking [Victim-1]: a Blueprint,” with name, birthday, height, weight and bra size

Excerpts from the alleged planning

“[My oven] is big enough to fit one of these girls if I folded their legs.”

“I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus … cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible.”

“I love that she is asleep right now not having the slightest clue of what we have planned. Her days are numbered.”

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The U.S. Army private accused of providing diplomatic cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website pleaded guilty to misusing classified material on Thursday, but denied the most serious charge in the case, aiding the enemy.

Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, entered the pleas prior to his court martial, which is set to begin on June 3, in a case that centers on the biggest leak of government secrets in U.S. history.

He was expected to testify later on Thursday.

Manning pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, through his attorney. Manning, who has been jailed at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia for more than 1,000 days, could face life imprisonment if convicted of that charge.

But he pleaded guilty to a series of 10 lesser charges that he misused classified information at the hearing before military judge Colonel Denise Lind. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for those charges.

Manning, an Army intelligence officer, was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq and charged with downloading thousands of intelligence documents, diplomatic cables and combat videos and forwarding them to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks began exposing the U.S. government secrets in the same year, stunning diplomats around the world and outraging U.S. officials who said damage to national security from the leaks endangered U.S. lives.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden for alleged sex crimes.

Manning had offered to plead guilty to various lesser charges in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including the unauthorized possession and willful distribution of information accessed in the Combined Information Data Networks, a military database, for Iraq and Afghanistan.

He is prepared to take the witness stand to read aloud from a 35-page statement defending himself in the espionage case, but only after Lind rules on how much of it he will be allowed to read.

Under a ruling last month by Lind, Manning would have any sentence reduced by 112 days to compensate for the markedly harsh treatment he received during his confinement. While at Quantico, Manning was placed in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day with guards checking on him every few minutes.

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